SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE LORD FROM HEAVEN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY: THE QUESTION AT ISSUE
"THE great English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, has
somewhere observed that mankind cannot be too often reminded that there was
once a man of the name of Socrates. That is true; but still more important is
it to remind mankind again and again that a man of the name of Jesus Christ
once stood in their midst."
These are the opening sentences of a well-known
work from the pen of the greatest of living Rationalists. But in this twentieth
century such a reminder is an anachronism. For infidelity has changed its
ground, and the facts of the life and ministry of Christ no one now denies. The
only question in dispute today relates to His personality. Who and what was the
Great Teacher whose advent changed the history of the world?
As the result
of the controversies which raged around that question in the early centuries,
the creed of Christendom proclaims His Deity. But in these days the creed of
Christendom has been thrown into the melting-pot. And the real aim of the
Christianised Rationalist, concealed beneath a cloak .of Christian terminology,
is to prove that the "Jesus Christ" who once stood in our midst was but a man.
And the great problem of the ages has today assumed a new and subtle phase. For
that which was formerly the issue in the Unitarian controversy is no longer in
dispute. The divinity of Christ is now, acknowledged even by the infidel. "Rest
now in thy glory!" Renan exclaims in an outburst of enthusiastic homage. "Thy
work is achieved, thy divinity established. . . . Between thee and God men
shall distinguish no longer." Indeed it is accepted even by the base apostasy
which masquerades as "the New Theology."
For, we are told, God is
"immanent" in human nature, and we are all His sons. The Nazarene's title to
divinity therefore is not only undisputed, but it is admittedly preeminent,
albeit it is not exclusive. Every prince of the blood is a royal personage. But
not even the Prince of Wales, unique though his position be, has either the
power or the dignity of kingship. The parable needs no interpreting: the
question at issue today is not the divinity of Christ, but His DEITY. In dark
days now past, when the avowal of "heretical" beliefs involved suffering and
loss, men thought deeply before they strayed from the beaten tracks of
"orthodoxy." They knew what it meant to "gird up the loins of their mind." But
slovenly-mindedness is a marked characteristic of religious thought in this
shallow and silly age of ours. The catch phrases of the fashionable pulpit or
the popular press are accepted without any sort of mental struggle; and
"historic beliefs" are jettisoned without the slightest exercise of heart or
conscience. And yet, having regard to the transcendent importance and solemnity
of the questions here at issue, such levity is intolerable. For if the
"historic beliefs" are true, the coming of Christ was the crisis of the
world.'
While then, with the Rationalist, the Great Teacher was "a man of
the name of Jesus Christ," the Christian maintains His Deity. This belief,
moreover, is based on the writings of His first disciples; and if the beliefs
of the Apostles and other writers of the New Testament on a subject of such
supreme importance do not reflect the teaching of their Lord, and of the Holy
Spirit who was given to guide them into all truth, faith in Christianity is
mere superstition.
That the New Testament teaches the Deity of Christ is so
indisputable that the infidel accepts the fact, and the task he sets himself is
to disparage the testimony of the writers. In Baur's day this was achieved by
maintaining that most of the sacred books were not written by the men whose
names they bear, but belong to a later age. It is achieved in our day by
insisting that, just because the writers were His disciples, they were not
impartial witnesses, and their evidence is therefore unreliable.
Such are
the ways of those who attack the Bible. "The Tubingen school" implicitly
allowed that if the New Testament had been written by the Lord's
contemporaries, the evidence would be valid. The Schmiedel school to-day insist
that, just because the writers were His personal disciples, they were not
impartial, and their evidence should be rejected! To put it tersely, no one who
believed in His claims should be allowed a hearing in support of His
claims.
The conception of a tribunal which acted on this principle would be
delightful in a "nonsense book" or in a farce to be acted on the stage. It is a
theory of evidence unknown in any civilised community - ancient or modern. And
no less absurd would it be if applied to history. Suppose, for example, a life
of Queen Victoria written on the system of excluding everything derived from
those who knew and honoured her!
How, then, does the matter stand? Upon the
question here at issue, the testimony of the disciples is so clear that even
the infidel acknowledges that it would deserve acceptance if it were confirmed
by independent evidence. But no confirmatory evidence is more convincing than
that of hostile witnesses, and the fact that the Lord laid claim to Deity is
incontestably established by the action of His enemies. We must remember that
the Jews were not a tribe of ignorant savages, but a highly cultured and
intensely religious people; and it was upon this very charge that, without a
dissentient voice, His death was decreed by the Sanhedrim - their great
national Council, composed of the most eminent of their religious leaders,
including men of the type of Gamaliel and his great pupil, Saul of Tarsus. That
He was of the royal house of David was proved by the official genealogies. That
He did great miracles was universally acknowledged, and not even His enemies
denied that all His acts and, save on one vital point, all His words, were
Worthy of His Messianic claims. How, then, can the fact be accounted for that
good men - men who had a zeal for God- condemned Him to death as a blasphemer?
The answer is not doubtful. It was not for His good deeds that He had been
threatened with stoning, but because, said they, "Thou, being a man, makest
Thyself God." And upon this charge it was, I repeat, that He was arraigned. Had
that charge been false, had it been due to a perversion of His words, He would,
as a devout Jew, have repudiated it with indignant earnestness, whereas His
acceptance of it was unequivocal.
"Not so," the Unitarian will object, "the
accusation was not that He claimed to be God, but that He called Himself the
Son of God; and the answer He gave- that He was yet to sit 'on the right hand
of power '- was in keeping with all His teaching. The very assertion of His
Sonship was itself an acknowledgment that He took a subordinate place, and
owned the Supreme as His Father and His God."
Are we to conclude, then,
that the crucifixion of Christ was due to a misunderstanding which any one of
us might have put right, if only we could have gained a hearing before the
Sanhedrim on that fateful day? The alternative to this absurd suggestion is
that the assertion of His Sonship was essentially a claim to Deity. And this
suggests an inquiry of extreme interest and importance respecting the use and
meaning of the word " son" in the New Testament.
Chapter Two
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