Читать книгу The Churches and Modern Thought - Vivian Phelips - Страница 18

WE MUST ACCEPT THE WHOLE OR REJECT THE WHOLE

The orthodox and traditional view of the Old Testament is preserved in the unrepealed “Blasphemy Act,” 9 and 10, William III., cap. 32, which enacts that any person who shall deny the “Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament” to be of “divine authority” shall be incapable of holding any public office or employment, and shall, on a second conviction, also suffer imprisonment for a space of three years. The Vatican Council of 1870, “speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,” declared that the books of the Old and New Testament “have God for their author, and, as such, have been delivered to the Church.” The Council, therefore, ordained that the man should be anathema who refused “to receive, for sacred and canonical, the books of the Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts.”

Dr. Bayley expressed the opinion of his day when he wrote77: “The Bible cannot be less than verbally inspired. Every word, every syllable, every letter, is just what it would be had God spoken from heaven without any human intervention. Every scientific statement is infallibly correct; all its history and narratives of every kind are without any inaccuracy.”

Listen, again, to the words of a well-known divine of our own Church, spoken but yesterday: “The whole of the teaching of the New Testament is based upon the supposition that God made a covenant with Abraham.”78 “You have our Lord Jesus Christ building His whole life on the Scriptures, and submitting to death in obedience to them.”79 This is the strictly orthodox opinion, and it is consistent with Christian doctrine. Yet, for obvious reasons, the Old Testament is now regarded as an incubus by an increasing number of earnest Christians.

In the New Testament there are many cruel sayings attributed to Jesus. Only the few are to be saved from the eternal torments of the damned (St. Matt. xiii. 10–13, xxii. 14, xxv. 41; St. Mark iv. 11–12, xvi. 16, etc.). Happily, owing to the rise of Rationalism and the consequent subjection of the Bible to criticism, the dogma of eternal torment is disputed on all sides, and the Athanasian Creed will soon no longer be forced upon us. The principle of the “chosen few” is so clearly Christ’s teaching, and furnishes such a convenient explanation for the attitude of the many, that it is commonly adhered to; but liberal theologians no longer hold that “he that believeth not shall be damned,” or that the punishment of the sinner is to be excruciating torture for all eternity. Unbelievers and sinners may all ultimately be saved, or at the worst their existence will end with this life. Good, very good; such views appeal to us as being more humane and rational; but are they compatible with the truth of the Bible? Mark the words of the late Bishop of Manchester: “The very foundation of our Faith, the very basis of our hopes, are taken from us when one line of that sacred volume, on which we base everything, is declared to be untruthful and untrustworthy.” Thus it is that there are many who would still retain the inhuman doctrines ascribed to the Master. Fearful of losing the basis of their hopes, and unconscious, apparently, of their sublime egoism, they reason, and reason with logic: We must accept the whole or reject the whole.

SILENCE OF HISTORIANS

That the Bible should be open to criticism at all seems to me inconceivable if it really be God’s gift to mankind. How could God, having determined after æons of time to make a definite revelation of Himself to His human creatures, permit the account of this revelation to be handed down in such a haphazard fashion that future generations cannot be sure that they possess a reliable record? This, too, when a trustworthy record was the more essential on account of the miraculous nature of the narrative. As Professor Schmiedel remarks, the meagreness of the historical testimony regarding Jesus, whether in canonical writings outside of the Gospels or in profane writers such as Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, is most pronounced. Not a single passage can be produced from the writings of the great historians and philosophers who flourished between A.D. 40 and A.D. 140 which makes the slightest allusion to the astounding phenomena connected with the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.

It was at one time claimed that Josephus spoke of Jesus. That this has been given up by theologians may be verified by a reference to Canon Farrar’s Life of Christ, vol. i., p. 63 (and p. 31 of the cheap edition), where we read that “The single passage in which he (Josephus) alludes to Him is interpolated, if not wholly spurious.” There is also a disputed passage80 in Tacitus, where he speaks of Christians having “their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator, Pontius Pilate.” And that is all! Could anything be more disappointing than this must be to thoughtful Christians who wish to establish the historical accuracy of the miraculous story of God’s life on earth? Eusebius (A.D. 315–340), the celebrated ecclesiastical historian, is apparently reduced to appealing to a Pagan oracle for a proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for he says to the heathen: “But thou at least listen to thine own gods, to thy oracular deities themselves, who have borne witness, and ascribed to our Saviour (Jesus Christ) not imposture, but piety and wisdom, and ascent into heaven.”

The silence of secular historians is accounted for, by certain divines, by falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt. Thus Dean Farrar thinks that Josephus’s silence on the subject of Jesus and Christianity was as deliberate as it was dishonest (see his Life of Christ, vol. i., p. 63). Except that this offers a much-needed explanation, I am not cognisant of any reason for suspecting the famous secular historian, although, of course, the untrustworthiness of the Christian historians is notorious. Eusebius, for example, the gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, confesses, with commendable frankness: “We have decided to relate nothing concerning them [the early Christians] except the things in which we can vindicate the divine judgment.”81

With regard to the prodigy of the darkness, etc., that occurred at the death of Jesus, Gibbon informs us as follows: “It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature—earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses—which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. But the one and the other has omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.”82 Any attempt to explain this away by supposing that the darkness of three hours was local only detracts from the magnitude of the miracle, which was intended, by its very magnitude, to be one of the proofs of the death of a God.

THOUGHTS ON “TRADITION” AS GOD’S METHOD FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF TRUTH TO POSTERITY

Have you ever, in the days of your early youth, played the game of “gossip”? It is an amusing game, and also points a moral. A number of persons put themselves in a long row, and the first will think of some little incident, which he will carefully whisper to his neighbour, who will then pass it on, and so on, and so on, till it reaches the last person, who will proceed to repeat out loud the story he has heard. The original story will then be divulged, and much amusement is caused by the differences that are found between the two stories. This illustration of what occurs in “gossip” came back to my mind with much misgiving when I first heard how the story of my Saviour’s life on earth was handed down for a long period “by tradition.” Apparently, Christian theologians look quite complacently, and without any misgiving, upon this process for the transmission of the Christian verities; but, for myself, whether it were a century, or whether it were only a matter of thirty or forty years, before the final committal to writing, it was a heartrending discovery, and all my confidence in the truth of the Bible story was shaken. My dismay was not diminished when I learnt also that it was extremely doubtful whether the authors were eye-witnesses of the events, or especially inspired by God for their task; also, that there had been subsequent interpolations by equally unknown and uninspired writers, who, to speak plainly, were nothing more nor less than forgers, actuated, possibly, by pious motives. That the writers of the Gospels were vouchsafed any unusual facilities through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is discredited by the remarks of the apologists themselves. Thus, Dr. Robinson, in his book already referred to, alludes to St. Peter’s illiteracy, St. Mark’s poor literary attainments, and the limitations to which all the evangelists in ancient times were subjected.

We find ourselves asking the questions, “Did not God know that a time would come when we should discover that nature’s laws were not of the fragile or elastic character which our forefathers had supposed? Did He not know that we should therefore require absolute proof before we could believe that they had been broken in a bygone and credulous age?” Instead of this, the only proofs afforded us are copies of documents concocted from hearsay—we are not sure when or by whom—and from time to time fraudulently manipulated by interested though “pious” forgers. Did He, in His Omniscience, purposely allow events to take their course, and intend the story of His Son’s life upon earth to be handed down to us by the same unsatisfactory process as that of many another ancient tradition now known to be historically worthless? If ever special interference with the course of nature were necessary, surely it would be here—a miracle to prove the miracle on which our hopes are staked. Or, if this be asking too much, if it be argued that it is no longer God’s pleasure to break the laws which He has made, and that He now accomplishes His purposes by means of these laws only, how comes it that, for the safeguarding of this great truth, the most ordinary precautions have been neglected?

We are often asked to consider the yearnings of man as a proof that the thing yearned for is a reality. His yearnings, therefore, are not a negligible quantity. Do not, then, the yearnings of millions of Christians in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches for miraculous proofs of God’s residence once upon earth count for something? Are not all the “miraculous” relics and “wonder-working” ikons a proof that man feels that God’s revelation ought to be assured to us by the continuance of miracles? In our own Church, Holman Hunt’s painting of “The Light of the World” is being sent round our colonies, to strengthen people’s belief in Jesus Christ. Why, oh why, have we not the real picture of our Saviour, bringing our God nearer to us, and enabling us to focus our thoughts on Him? I once mentioned my feeling on this subject to a clergyman, a doctor of divinity, well versed in Church history. He replied by suggesting that there was a tradition which indicated that the true likeness of our Lord had been miraculously transmitted, and that from this the great Italian painters had caught their inspiration.83 It seems hardly necessary to have recourse to the supernatural when there were natural sources available in the shape of representations of pagan gods. Thus Mercury, attired as a shepherd, with a lamb upon his shoulders, was no infrequent object in ancient art, and this has, in some cases, led to a difficulty in distinguishing between Mercury and Jesus Christ. Similarly we know that the pictures and sculptures wherein Isis is represented in the act of suckling her child Horus formed the foundation for the Christian figures and paintings of the Madonna and child.

THE ALLEGED SINLESSNESS OF JESUS CHRIST

It may be urged that we have, what is of far more importance, the picture of His character. Have we? The absolute sinlessness of Christ is one of the chief proofs held out to us of His divinity. It is described as being in itself a miracle so great that it furnishes us with sufficient grounds for belief in other miracles. Many pious and learned theists feel that the character of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels betrays imperfections. But let this pass. What do we know of His life? Let us assume that in the Gospel of St. Mark we are put in possession of the impressions of an eye-witness. St. Peter’s personal knowledge of the private life of Jesus was confined to his recollections concerning a beloved Master during the period of His public ministry. And that ministry extended over one year, or at most three years. Have not the disciples of great teachers in the past invariably extolled the perfections of their masters? Have they ever dwelt upon their imperfections? Has not the picture handed down by tradition, and afterwards committed to writing, often been that of a perfect man? That the writers of the Gospels recognised the need for Christ to appear sinless, and adopted questionable methods for their purpose, is only too evident. Dr. Robinson explains84 the disappearance from the other Gospels of St. Mark’s references to “anger,” “grief,” “groaning,” “vehemence,” etc., as being “the result of a kind of reverence which belonged to a slightly later stage of reflection, when certain traits might even seem derogatory to the dignity of the sacred character.” Comment is superfluous.

THE IGNORANCE OF JESUS CHRIST

There is another difficulty of belief in the divinity of Christ, which it is all the more essential to bring into prominence because it usually receives but scant notice from the pulpit. I refer to the “ignorance” of Jesus Christ. In a review of Le Réalisme Chrétien et l’Idéalisme Grec