Preface

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THE
DIVINITY OF OUR LORD
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Che Divinity of Our Lord and Sabiour Jesus Christ
EIGHT LECTURES PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN THE YEAR 1866
ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, M.A.
CANON OF SALISBURY
BY
H. P. LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. Camn.
LATE CANON AND CHANCELLOR OF ST, PAUL’S, AND IRELAND PROFESSOR AT OXFORD
‘Deus Verbum non accepit personam hominis, sed naturam, et in eternam Personam Divinitatis accepit temporalem substantiam carnis.’ 5. I'ulg. de Fide ad Petrum, ο. 17.
TWENTIETH IMPRESSION
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‘Wenn Christus nicht wahrer Gott ist, die mahometanische Religion eine unstreitige Verbesserung der christlichen war, und Mahomet selbst ein ungleich gréssrer und wiirdigerer Mann gewesen ist als Christus.’
Lessing, Séimmtl. Schriften, Bd. 9, p. 291.
‘Simul quoque cum beatis videamus Glorianter vultum Tuum, Christe Deus, Gaudium quod est immensum atque probum,
Secula per infinita seculorum.’ Rhythm. Eccl.
93261 JUN 4.9 1074
EXTRACT
FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE LATE
REV. JOHN BAMPTON,
CANON OF SALISBURY.
“T give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the “Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford “for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands or “Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter “mentioned ; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice- “ Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall “take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and “(after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) “that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight “Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the “said University, and to be performed in the manner following :
“T direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter “Term, a Lecturer may be yearly chosen by the Heads of Col- “leges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the “ Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and “two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture “Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary’s in Oxford, between
“the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the
“end of the third week in Act Term.
vi Extract from the Rev. Fohn Bampton’s Will.
“ Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture “Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following “ Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and “to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine “authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the “ writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice “of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and “ Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost— “upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in “the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed.
“ Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec- “ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after “they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chan- “cellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every “College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and “one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the “expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of “the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture “Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled “to the revenue, before they are printed.
“ Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified “to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken “the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Uni- “versities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person “shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.”
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST. EDITION.
PERHAPS an apology may be due to the University for the delay which has occurred in the appearance of this volume. If so, the writer would venture to plead that he undertook the duties of the Bampton Lecturer at a very short notice, and, it may be, without sufficiently considering what they involved. When, however, the accomplished Clergyman whom the Uni- versity had chosen to lecture in the year 1866 was obliged by a serious illness to seek a release from his engagement, the vacant post was offered to the present writer with a kindness and generosity which, as he thought, obliged him, although entirely unprepared, to accept it and to meet its requirements as well as he could.
Under such circumstances, the materials which were made ready in some haste for use in the pulpit seemed to require a close revision before publication, In making this revision— which has been somewhat seriously interrupted by other duties —the writer has not felt at liberty to introduce alterations except in the way of phrase and illustration. He has, however, availed himself of the customary licence to print at length some considerable paragraphs, the sense of which, in order to save time, was only summarily given when the lectures were delivered. And he has subjoined the Greek text of the more important passages of the New Testament to which he has had occasion to refer ; as experience seems to prove that very many
Vili Preface to the First Edition.
readers do not verify quotations from Holy Scripture for them- selves, or at least that they content themselves with examining the few which are generally thought to be of most importance. Whereas, the force of the argument for our Lord’s Divinity, as indeed is the case with other truths of the New Testament, is eminently cumulative. Such an argument is to be appreciated, not by studying the comparatively few texts which expressly assert the doctrine, but that large number of passages which indirectly, but most vividly, imply it.
It is perhaps superfluous to observe that eight lectures can deal with little beyond the outskirts of a vast, or to speak more accurately, of an exhaustless subject. The present volume attempts only to notice, more or less directly, some of those assaults upon the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity which have been prominent or popular of late years, and which have, unhappily, had a certain weight among persons with whom the writer is acquainted.
Whatever disturbing influence the modern destructive criti- cism may have exerted upon the form of the old argument for the Divinity of Christ, the main features of that argument remain substantially unchanged. The writer will have deep reason for thankfulness, if any of those whose inclination or duty leads them to pursue the subject, should be guided by his references to the pages of those great theologians whose names, whether in our own country or in the wider field of Catholic Christendom, are for ever associated with the vindication of this most fundamental truth of the Faith.
In passing the sheets of this work through the press, the writer has been more largely indebted than he can well say to the invigorating sympathy and varied learning of the Rev. W. Bright, Fellow of University College; while the Index is due to the friendly interest of another Fellow of that College, the Rey. P. G. Medd.
That in so wide and so mysterious a subject all errors have been avoided, is much more than the writer dares to hope.
Preface to the First Edition. ix
But at least he has not intentionally contravened the clear sense of Holy Scripture, or any formal decision whether of the Undi- vided Church or of the Church of England. May He to the honour of Whose Person this volume is devoted, vouchsafe to pardon in it all that is not calculated to promote His truth and His glory! And for the rest, ‘quisquis hee legit, ubi pariter certus est, pergat mecum; ubi pariter hesitat, querat mecum ; ubi errorem suum cognoscit, redeat ad me; ubi meum, revocet me. Ita ingrediamur simul charitatis viam, tendentes ad Eum de Quo dictum est, Querite Faciem Ejus semper ἃ. ἢ
Crist CHURCH, Ascension Day, 1867.
® §, Aug. de Trin. i. 5,
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Tue kindly welcome given to this volume, both at home and in America, has led to a demand for another edition, which has taken the writer somewhat by surprise. He has, however, availed himself of the opportunity to make what use he could of the cri- ticisms which have come, from whatever quarter, under his notice. Some textual errors have been corrected. Some ill-considered or misunderstood expressions have been modified. References to authorities and sources of information, which were accidentally omitted, have been supplied. To a few of the notes there has been added fresh matter, of an explanatory or justificatory cha- racter. The index, too, has been remodelled and enlarged. But the book remains, it is needless to say, substantially unchanged. And if it is now offered to the public in a somewhat altered guise, this has been done in order to meet the views of friends, who have urged, not perhaps altogether without reason, that ‘in the Church of England, books on Divinity are so largely adapted to the taste and means of the wealthier classes, as to imply that the most interesting of all subjects can possess no attractions for the intelligence and heart of persons who enjoy only a moderate income.’
Of the topics discussed in this book, there is one which has invited a larger share of attention than others, both from those who share and from those who reject the Faith of the Church.
- It is that central argument for our Saviour’s Deity, which is based on His persistent self-assertion, taken in conjunction with
Preface to the Second Edition. xi
the sublimity of His Human character. The supreme importance of this consideration is indeed obvious. Certainly, in the order of historical treatment, the inferences which may be deduced from Prophecy, and from Christ’s supernatural design to found the ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ naturally precede that which arises from His language about Himself. But, in the order of the formation of conviction, the latter argument must claim prece- dence. It is, in truth, more fundamental. It is the heart of the entire subject, from which a vital strength flows into the accessory although important topics grouped around it. Apart from Our Lord’s personal claims, the language of prophecy would have been only a record of unfulfilled anticipations, and the lofty Christology of the Apostles only a sample of their misguided enthusiasms ; whereas the argument which appeals to Christ’s claims, taken in conjunction with His character, is independent of the collateral arguments which in truth it supports. If the argument from prophecy could be discredited, by assigning new dates to the prophetical books, and by theories of a cultured political foresight ; if the faith of the Apostles could be accounted for upon grounds which referred it to their individual peculiar- ities of thought and temper ; there would still remain the unique phenomenon of the sublimest of characters inseparably linked, in the Person of Jesus, to the most energetic proclamation of self. In this inmost shrine of Christian Truth, there are two courses open to the negative criticism. It may indeed endeavour to explain away Our Lord’s self-assertion in the interests, as it con- ceives, of His HumanCharacter. The impossibility of really doing this has been insisted upon in these lectures. For Christ’s self- assertion is not merely embodied in statements which would be blasphemy in the mouth of a created being; it underlies and explains His entire attitude towards His disciples, towards His countrymen, towards the human race, towards the religion of Israel. Nor is Christ’s self-assertion confined to the records of one Evangelist, or to a particular period in His ministry. The three first Evangelists bear witness to it, in different terms, yet
Bee Preface to the Second Edition.
not less significantly than does St. John ; and it belongs as truly, though not perhaps so patently, to Our Lord’s first great discourse as to His last. From first to last He asserts, He insists upon the acceptance of Himself. But when this is acknowledged, a man must either base such self-assertion on its one sufficient justifica- tion, by accepting the Church’s faith in the Deity of Christ; or he must regard it as fatal to the moral beauty of Christ’s Human character.—Christus, st non Deus, non bonus.
It is urged by persons whose opinions are entitled to great respect that, however valid this argument may be, its religious expediency must be open to serious question. And undoubtedly such like arguments cannot at any time be put forward without involving those who do so in grave responsibility. Of this the writer, as he trusts, has not been unmindful. He has not used a dangerous weapon gratuitously, nor, so far as he knows his own motives, with any purpose so miserable as that of producing a rhetorical effect.
What, then, are the religious circumstances which appear to warrant the employment of such an argument at present ἢ
Speaking roughly, men’s minds may be grouped into three classes with reference to the vital question which is discussed in these lectures.
1. There are those who, by God’s mercy, have no doubt on the subject of Our Lord’s Godhead. To mere dialecticians their case may appear to be one of sheer intellectual stagnation. But the fact is, that they possess, or at least that they have altogether within their reach, a far higher measure of real ‘life’ than is even suspected by their critics. They are not seeking truth; they are enjoying it. They are not like Alpine climbers still making their way up the mouutain side; they have gained the summit, and are gazing on the panorama which is spread around and beneath them. It is even painful to them to think of ‘prov- ing’ a truth which is now the very life of their souls. In their whole spiritual activity, in their prayers, in their regular medita- tions, in their study of Holy Scripture, in their habitual thoughts
Preface to the Second Edition. xiii
respecting the eternal Future, they take Christ’s Divinity for granted ; and it never occurs to them to question a reality from which they know themselves to be continually gaining new streams of light and warmth and power.
To such as these, this book may or may not be of service. To some Christians, who are filled with joy and peace in be- lieving, a review of the grounds of any portion of their faith may be even distressing. To others such a process may be bracing and helpful. But in any case it should be observed that the foot-notes contain passages from unbelieving writers, which are necessary to shew that the statements of the text are not aimed at imaginary phantoms, but which also are not unlikely to shock and distress religious and believing minds very seriously. In such a matter to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
2. There are others, and, it is to be feared, a larger class than is often supposed, who have made up their minds against the claims of Divine Revelation altogether. They may admit the existence of a Supreme Being, in some shadowy sense, as an In- finite Mind, or as a resistless Force. They may deny that there is any satisfactory reason for holding that any such Being exists at all. But whether they are Theists or Atheists, they resent the idea of any interference from on high in this human world, and accordingly they denounce the supernatural, on ἃ priori grounds. The trustworthiness of Scripture as an historical record is to their minds sufficiently disproved by the undoubted fact, that its claim to credit is staked upon the possibility of certain extra- ordinary miracles. When that possibility is denied, Jesus Christ must either be pronounced to be a charlatan, or a person of whose real words and actions no trustworthy account has been transmitted to us.
Whichever conclusion be accepted by those who belong to the class in question, it is plain that this book cannot hope to assist them. For it treats as certain, facts of which they deny even the possibility. It must of necessity appear to them to be guilty of a continuous pelitio principii, since they dispute its
xiv Preface to the Second Edition.
fundamental premises. If any such should ever chance to ex- amine it, they would probably see in it ‘ only another illustration of the hopelessness of getting “orthodox” believers even to appreciate the nature and range of the difficulties which are felt by liberal thinkers.’
It may be replied that something should have been done towards meeting those particular ‘difficulties.’ But, in point of fact, this would have been to choose another subject for the lec- tures of 1866. A few lectures, after all, can only deal with some aspects of a great Doctrine; and every treatise on a question of Divinity cannot be expected to begin αὖ ovo, and to discuss the Existence and the Personality of God. However little may be assumed, there will always be persons eager to complain of the minimized ‘assumption’ as altogether unjustifiable; because there are always persons who deny the most elementary Theistic truth. This being the case, the practical question to be determined is this :—How much is it advisable to take for grauted in a given condition of faith and opinion, with a view to dealing with the doubts and difficulties of the largest number? The existence and personality of God, and the possibility and reality of the Christian Revelation, have been often discussed ; while the truth and evidential force of miracles were defended in the year 1865 by a Bampton Lecturer of distinguished ability. Under these circumstances, the present writer deliberately assumed a great deal which is denied in our day and country by many active minds, with a view to meeting the case, as it appeared to him, of a much larger number, who would not dispute his premises, but who fail to see, or hesitate to acknowledge, the conclusion which they really warrant.
3. For, in truth, the vast majority of our countrymen still shrink with sincere dread from anything like an explicit rejec- tion of Christianity. Yet no one who hears what goes on in daily conversation, and who is moderately conversant with the tone of some of the leading organs of public opinion, can doubt the existence of a wide-spread unsettlement of religious
Preface to the Second Edtvtion. XV
belief. People have a notion that the present is, in the hack- neyed phrase, ‘a transitional period,’ and that they ought to be keeping pace with the general movement. Whither indeed they are going, they probably cannot say, and have never very seriously asked themselves. Their most definite impression is that the age is turning its back on dogmas and creeds, and is moving in a negative direction under the banner of ‘freedom.’ They are, indeed, sometimes told by their guides that they are hurrying forward to a chaos in which all existing beliefs, even the fundamental axioms of morality, will be ultimately sub- merged. Sometimes, too, they are encouraged to look hopefully forward beyond the immediate foreground of conflict and confu- sion, to an intellectual and moral Elysium, which will be reached when Science has divested Religion of all its superstitious incum- brances, and in which ‘ thought’ and ‘ feeling,’ after their long misunderstanding, are to embrace under the supervision of a philosophy higher than any which has yet been elaborated. But these visions are seen only by a few, and they are not easily popularized. The general tendency is to avoid specula- tions, whether hopeful or discouraging, about the future, yet to acquiesce in the theory so constantly suggested, that there is some sort of necessary opposition between dogma and good- ness, and to recognise the consequent duty of promoting good- ness by the depreciation and destruction of dogma. Thus, the movement, although negative in one sense, believes itself to be eminently positive in another. With regard to dogma, it is negative. But it sincerely affects a particular care for morality; and in purifying and enforcing moral truth, it endeavours to make its positive character most distinctly apparent.
It is easy to understand the bearing of such a habit of mind ‘when placed face to face with the Person of Our Lord. It tends to issue practically (although, in its earlier stages, not with
" any very intelligent consciousness) in Socinianism. It regards
the great statements whereby Christ’s Godhead is taught or guarded in Scripture and the Creeds, if not with impatience
xvi Preface to the Second Edition.
and contempt, at least with real although silent aversion. Church formularies appear to it simply in the light of an incubus upon true religious thought and feeling; for it is in- sensible to the preciousness of the truths which they guard. Hence as its aims and actions become more and more defined, it tends with increasing decision to become Humanitarian. Its dislike of the language of Nicea hardens into an explicit denial of the truth which that language guards. Yet, if it exults in being unorthodox, and therefore is hostile to the Creed, it is ambitious to be pre-eminently moral, and therefore it lays especial emphasis upon the beauty and perfection of Christ’s Human character. It aspires to analyse, to study, to imitate that character in a degree which was, it thinks, impossible during those ages of dogma which it professes to have closed. It thus relieves its desire to be still loyal in some sense to Jesus Christ, although under new conditions: if it discards ancient formularies, it maintains that this rejection takes place only and really in the interest of moral truth.
Now it is to such a general habit of mind that this book as a whole, and the argument from Our Lord's self-assertion in par- ticular, ventures to address itself. Believing that the cause of dogma is none other than the cause of morality,—that the perfect moral character of Jesus Christ is really compatible only with the Nicene assertion of His absolute Divinity,—the writer has endeavoured to say so. He has not been at pains to disguise his earnest conviction, that the hopes and sympathies, which have been raised in many sincerely religious minds by the so-called Liberal-religious movement of our day, are destined to a rude and bitter disappointment. However long the final decision between ‘some faith’ and ‘no faith’ may be deferred, it must be made at last. Already advanced rationalistic thought agrees with Catholic believers in maintaining that Christ is not altogether a good man, if He is not altogether Superhuman. And if this be so, surely it is prudent as well as honest to say so, They who do not wish to break with Christ Our Lord,
Preface to.the Second Edition. XVii
and to cast out His very Name as evil, in the years to come, will be thankful to have recognised the real tendencies of an anti-dogmatic teaching which for the moment may have won their sympathies. It is of the last importance in religious thinking, not less than in religious practice, that the question, Whither am I going? should be asked and answered. Such a question is not the less important because for the present all is smooth and reassuring, combining the reality of religious - change with the avoidance of any violent shock to old convic- tions. It has been said that there is a peculiar fascination in the movement of a boat which is gliding softly and swiftly down the rapids above Niagara. But a man must be strangely constituted to be able, under such circumstances, so to abandon himself to the sense of present satisfaction as to forget the fate which is immediately before him.
The argument from Christ’s character to His Divinity which is here put forward can make no pretence to originality. To the present writer, it was suggested in its entirety, some years ago, upon a perusal of Mr. F. W. Newman’s ‘ Phases of Faith.’ The seventh chapter of that remarkable but saddening work yielded the analysis which has been expanded in these lectures, and which the lecturer had found, on more than one occasion, to be serviceable in assisting Socinians to understand the real basis of the Church’s faith respecting the dignity of her Head. It agrees, moreover, even in detail, with the work of the great preacher of the Church of France, to whose earnestness and genius the present writer has elsewhere professed himself to be, and always must feel, sincerely indebted.
The real justification of such arguments lies in a fact which liberal thinkers will not be slow to recognise*. If the moral
* Do we not however find a sanction for this class of arguments in appeals such as the following? St. John vii. 42: ‘If God were your Father, ye would have loved Me.’ St.John v. 38: ‘And ye have not His Word abiding in you: for, whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not.’ And is not this summarized in the apostolical teaching? 1 St. John ii. 23: ‘ Who- soever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.’ Such passages
b
XVili Preface to the Second Edition.
sense of man be impaired by the Fall, it is not so entirely dis- abled as to be incapable of discerning moral beauty. If it may err when it attempts to determine, on purely ἃ priort human grounds, what should be the conduct and dispensations of God in dealing with His creatures, it is not therefore likely to be in error when it stands face to face with human sincerity, and humility, and love. At the feet of the Christ of the Gospels, the moral sense may be trusted to protest against an intellectual aberration which condemns Him as vain and false and selfish, only that it may rob Him of His aureole of Divinity. ‘In the seventh chapter of the “ Phases of Faith,” ’ 1 quote the words of a thoughtful friend, ‘there is the satisfaction of feeling that one has reached the very floor of Pandemonium, and that a rebound has become almost inevitable. Anything is better than to be sinking still, one knows not how deeply, into the abyss.’
It may be said that other alternatives have been put for- ward, with a view of forcing orthodox members of the Church of England into a position analogous to that in which the argu- ment of these lectures might place a certain section of Lati- tudinarian thinkers. For example, some Roman Catholic and some sceptical writers unite in urging that either all orthodox Christianity is false, or the exclusive claims of the Church of Rome must be admitted to be valid. Every such alternative must be considered honestly, and in view of the particular evidence which can be produced in its support. But to pro- pound the present alternative between Rome and unbelief, is practically to forget that the acceptance of the dogmatic prin- ciple, or of any principle, does not commit those who accept it to its exaggerations or corruptions; and that the promises of Our Lord to His people in regard alike to Unity and to Holiness, are, in His mysterious providence, permitted to be
appear to shew, that to press an inference, whether it be moral or doctrinal, from an admitted truth, by insisting that the truth itself is virtually re- jected if the inference be declined, is not accurately described as a trick of modern orthodoxy.
Preface to the Second Edition, xix
traversed by the misuse of man’s free-will. In a word, the dilemma between Roman Catholicism and infidelity is, as a matter of fact, very far from being obviously exhaustive : but it is difficult to see that any intermediate position can be really made good between the denial of Christ’s Human per- fection and the admission that He is a Superhuman Person. And when this admission is once fairly made, it leads by easy and necessary steps to belief in His true Divinity.
The great question of our day is, whether Christ our Lord is only the author and founder of a religion, of which another Being, altogether separate from Him, namely, God, is the ob- ject; or whether Jesus Christ Himself, true God and true Man, is, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the Object of Christian faith and love as truly as, in history, He was the Founder of Christendom. Come what may, the latter belief has been, is, and will be to the end, the Faith of His Church.
May those who are tempted to exchange it for its modern rival reflect that the choice before them does not lie between a creed with one dogma more, and a creed with one dogma less, nor yet between a medieval and a modern rendering of the Gospel history. It is really a choice between a phantom and a reality; between the implied falsehood and the eternal truth of Christianity; between the interest which may cling to a dis- credited and evanescent memory of the past, and the worship of a living, ever-present, and immaculate Redeemer.
Curist CHuRcH, Whitsuntide, 1868,
PREFACE
TO THE NINTH EDITION.
More than thirteen years have elapsed since any alteration was made in the text or notes of this volume; but some criti- cisms, more or less direct, have appeared, of which the writer has long been anxious to take advantage, by correcting proved inaccuracies or by the addition of explanatory matter. In doing this he has found reason to regret that it is not possible to reconstruct the book, on a larger scale, without destroying its identity, and thus forfeiting its place in the series to which it belongs. If he has left some objections unnoticed, this is because he could not afford, on the score of space, to notice any but such as have enabled him to improve his work. Thus an objection that passages of the New Testament which assert our Lord’s Humanity had been overlooked will be found to be answered incidentally by the more complete Index of texts, for which this edition is indebted to the Rev. J. O. Johnston, M.A., of Keble College. Criticisms which imply a difference of funda- mental principle could not be adequately considered without entering upon discussions, any one of which might furnish matter for a separate treatise®.
Crist CHURCH, Advent, 1881.
® See Note I, p. 549.
PREFACE
TO THE THIRTEENTH EDITION,
TWENTY-THREE years have passed since these lectures were delivered. Of late the writer has been asked more than once by persons sitting loosely to the faith of the Church of God, whether he would still accept the responsibility of teaching as Divine Truth the doctrine which they assert. Deeply and increasingly conscious as he is of the many and grave imperfections of his work, he feels that he can best answer his questioners by pub- lishing another edition of it.
Of late years we have heard much of a ‘New Reformation,’ which is, it seems, in some way to transform and to reanimate Christianity. The New Reformation differs from the Reforma- tion of three centuries ago in many respects, but especially in this,—that while the old Reformation endeavoured, whether successfully or not, to establish and to enhance the authority of Holy Scripture, the ‘New Reformation’ proposes to emancipate us, in all serious senses, from that authority. In the words of its most enthusiastic exponent, it is a ‘revolt against miraculous belief ;’ and since Holy Scripture from beginning to end pre- supposes and is replete with miracle, it is a revolt against Holy Scripture. The ‘New Reformation’ may consent to leave us with a Bible, from which the supernatural, whether in the form of miracle or of predictive prophecy, has been carefully expurgated: it may leave us such shreds of the Book of Gop, as can survive
® Nineteenth Century, March, 1889, p. 480
xxii Preface to the Thirteenth Edition.
a criticism which sets to work with the irrational postulate that all bond fide miracle is impossible. This meagre and tattered fragment of Holy Scripture is worth little or nothing for religious purposes. The Old Testament of Wellhausen or Kuenen, and the New Testament as it issues from the hands of F. C. Baur and his pupils, can make scant provision for the building up of saints or the conversion of sinners. Souls are not to be won to a new life by a mass of literary material which, however in- teresting from a critic’s point of view, is believed by its ex- ponents to be largely composed of legends and forgeries.
In no respect does the ‘New Reformation’ display its real character more clearly than when it essays to handle the Person of our Adorable Lord. He must not, it urges, be ‘ put alone on any non-natural pinnacle>,’ He must cease to be distinguished by anything that raises Him above His brethren; He must submit in all respects, though at the cost of the narratives which tell us anything trustworthy about Him, to the conditions and laws of the natural world. He must be stripped of His miraculous Birth, of His Resurrection from the grave, of that equality with the Father which He could claim, without violence, as His own*. The ‘New Reformation’ leaves us in its Jesus of Nazareth, an uncrowned and ignorant Galilean peasant, in whom neverthe- less, ‘through all human and necessary imperfections,’ it still strangely professes to recognise ‘the natural leader of its inmost lifed.” If the question be asked how it can detect so much in him as this, it replies that ‘history, led by the blind and yet divine instinct of the race, has lifted this life from the mass of lives’ ; so that ‘in it we Europeans see certain ethical and spiritual essentials concentrated and embodied, as we see the essen- tials of poetry and art and knowledge, concentrated and embodied in other lives®.’ But can ‘we Europeans’ hope to continue to see even as much as this if the ‘New Reformation’ takes us altogether under its charge and guidance? Will men
> Nineteenth Century, March, 1889, p. 480. 9 Phil. ii. 6, 4 Nineteenth Century, p. 478. 9 Ibid. p. 480.
Preface to the Thirteenth Edition. xxiii
not ask whether a Christ who is not Divine and who did not rise from the dead, has any moral right to speak of himself in the terms which are constantly employed by the Christ of the Gospels? And whether, if the altogether human and erring Christ who is offered to the world by the ‘New Reformation’ were to use the language of the Son of Mary, he would not be speedily judged by the moral sense of mankind to be neither humble nor veracious? And, if everything is to be eliminated | from the Gospels which is necessary in order to accommodate them to the very prosaic level assigned to its Christ by the ‘scientific’ criticism, how much of the Gospels will be left?
It must be the force of early associations rather than any seriously rational judgment which leads the latest advocate of the ‘New Reformation’ to denounce, as ‘merely wasteful and impatient,’ the ‘modern European who persists in ignoring the practical value of the exquisite Christian inheritance’ which is still offered him by the destructive critics. The ‘modern European’ may surely ask what there is to ‘waste.’ He asks, but in vain, whether anything is known as certain about the origin and the purpose of this life, about the life after death, about a remedy and pardon for sin, about the Awful Being Whom Christendom has hitherto named Gop, but for whom the ‘ New Reformation’ can find no namef, He asks, in despair, upon what, amid the revolt against miracle in which the ‘ New Refor- mation’ is chiefly employed, he may hope to fall back as upon that which may illuminate his understanding and invigorate his will. And he is told of a ‘vast heritage of feeling which goes back after all, through all the overgrowths of dream and speculation, to that strongest of all the forces of human life, the love of man for man, the trust of the lower soul in the higher, the hope and the faith which the leader and the hero kindles amid the masses 8.’
If this is all that the ‘exquisite Christian inheritance’ of the ‘New Reformation’ has to offer, the majority of men will say
* Nineteenth Century, ii. p. 479. 8 Ibid. 480.
xxiv Preface to the Thirteenth Edition.
that they could dispense with it, or that they could discover all that is worth having in it for themselves elsewhere. When there.is no longer any relic of a claim to bridge over the awful chasm which sin has opened between earth and heaven, or to satisfy any one of the deeper needs of the human soul, it is better, in the interests of the honest use of language, to drop the phraseology of Christian faith. Other names had better be assigned to a ‘ Reformation’ which reforms Christianity out of existence, and to an ‘exquisite Christian heritage’ which consists only of such ‘ feeling’ as exists in rich abundance beyond the frontiers of Christendom. Meanwhile the destructive criticism, though against its will, does Christian Faith a service. It clears away the brushwood which in many well-meaning but confused souls, obscures the interval between an infidel premiss and its real conclusion: and it exhibits the naked truth that between the Adoration of our Lord Jesus Christ as Gon, and the rejection of Him altogether, there is no reasonable standing- ground. When this alternative is once presented to a religious and well-ordered mind, there are profound moral instincts—not to speak of a higher assistance which comes from heaven—that may be trusted to solve the problem, ‘Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy Countenance upon us,’
3 Amen Court, St. Pavt’s, Easter το, 1889.
PREFACE
TO THE FOURTEENTH EDITION.
THE publication of Dr, James Martineau’s work on the ‘Seat of Authority in Religion,’? is not without significance in its bearing on the strongest grounds for maintaining the solemn Truth which is the subject of these lectures. Dr. Martineau occupies, it is needless to say, a unique position among those who, while still clinging to the Christian name, reject the very heart of the Christian Creed. -His great and varied accom- plishments, his high character, and his advanced age, combine to command the attention of many among his countrymen who are wholly unable to sympathize with the negative side of his religious position. His Z'ypes of Ethical Theory, and his Study of Religion, although undesignedly illustrating the fact that no portion of truth, whether of Nature or Revelation, can be abandoned without more or less impairing the presentation of such truth as is still retained, do undoubtedly, as a whole, place those who have the interests of morality and religion at heart under real obligations to the gifted writer. To read him, is — inevitably and often to wish that cum talis sit, noster esset.
Dr. Martineau’s work on the ‘Seat of Authority in Religion’ is here referred to only with reference to a single feature of it, namely, his way of dealing with the New Testament. The last teacher in the Unitarian body who by his character and general eminence at all suggests comparison with Dr. Martineau is Channing. Channing took the Gospel narrative as it stands
1 London, Longmans, 1890.
xxvi Preface to the Fourteenth Edition.
as simply as any churchman. He had no doubt that the Gospels were received in the Apostolic age as the works of the writers whose names they bear. He repudiates the theory that St. Paul or any other Apostle substituted for the religion taught by Jesus Christ a new and essentially distinct religion. He has no quarrel with the miracles of the New Testament; he has not a shadow of a doubt as to the truth of our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead. He rejects, as a matter of course, the teaching of the Church on the subject of our Lord’s Divinity ; but then he takes the traditional Socinian interpre- tations of the New Testament, generally, for granted, and holds that the Church has missed the true sense of the great passages to which she appeals as warrants of the Nicene doctrine, either by straining their sense or overlaying them with glosses derived from later and external sources.
The New Socinianism differs from that of Channing in two respects. It is nearer to the church in its exegesis ; it is much further from her in its general attitude towards the authority of the New Testament. Both results are decidedly traceable to the influence of the Tiibingen criticism on the more highly educated members of the Unitarian body; and the first symptom of it, at least in England, was afforded by the publication, in 1867, of the late Mr. J. J. Tayler’s ‘Attempt to ascertain the Character of the Fourth Gospel’. Mr. Tayler differed from his Unitarian predecessors, alike in what he affirmed and in what he denied. He denied that St. John wrote the Fourth Gospel ; but he affirmed that the Fourth Gospel taught a Divine Incar- nation. If he accepted the Tiibingen arguments against the Apostolic origin of the Gospel, he abandoned as no longer tenable the traditional Socinian interpretation of it. ‘Did we know Him [Our Lord] through the Fourth Gospel alone, we could not doubt that the author of that work regarded Him as something more than human,—an Incarnation of the Eternal Word. This idea is so clearly expressed throughout, that
1 London, Williams and Norgate.
Preface to the Fourteenth Edition, xxvii
nothing but a foregone conclusion and doctrinal prepossession could have blinded any one to the perception of it. That Gospel is regarded,—and rightly by those who admit its authenticity—as a completion, from an Apostolic Source, of the inadequate conceptions of the Person of Christ conveyed by the Synoptic narration. On a point so vital as this, no authority could equal that of the beloved disciple, who leaned on the bosom of the Lord, and was admitted to His inmost privacy of thought.’?
English scholars, and notably the late Bishop of Durham, have taught us what to think about the judgment of the school of Tiibingen respecting the origin of the Gospel of St. John. But their labours became the property of the world at too late a date to be read by Mr. Tayler, and they are not noticed by Dr. Martineau, who apparently still accepts without reserve and in their most unmodified form the Tiibingen theories. When he is discussing the doctrinal import of the Fourth Gospel, Dr. Martineau can write more strongly,—perhaps at times less guardedly,—than Mr. Tayler. Thus, he asserts that ‘in the Johannine view the Revealer is Himself one with the Object revealed, the manifested God, the apprehension of whom fulfils the meaning of the dispensation and is Eternal Life.’? And after summarising the peculiarities, as he appreciates them, of this Gospel, he observes that they ‘converge upon one result, viz. to make the whole Christian revelation consist in lending to the world the Divine Personality of the Son, as an object of faith, and a power of sanctification.’® Again, ‘Take away, he writes, ‘the Godhead of Christ as the entire real meaning of even His Ministry in Palestine, and there is not an incident or a speech in the Fourth Gospel which does not lose its significance.’ * Dr. Martineau, it may be justly urged, is not sufficiently alive to the recognition of Our Lord’s Manhood in
1 Tayler, Attempt to Ascertain, etc., p. 181.
3 Seat of Authority, p. 441, comp. 443. 8 Ibid., p. 439. 4 Thid., p. 426.
xxviii Preface to the Fourteenth Edition.
the Fourth Gospel. But forty years ago such an admission as he makes would have implied an acceptance of the Scriptural, and therefore the sufficient, warrant of the Faith of the Church on the subject of Our Lord’s Divine Person. It does not imply this in the case of Dr. Martineau, because, in his judgment, the Fourth Gospel only represents ‘the point of view of an Alexandrian Christian in the fourth decade of the second century.’ ?
Mr. Tayler had apparently taken it for granted that in view of the exegesis of the School of Tiibingen, the difficulties of Socinianism with respect to the New Testament centred in the Fourth Gospel, and that the first three Gospels might be accepted without prejudice to a Humanitarian Creed. ‘Had we,’ he observes, ‘only the synoptists, though undoubtedly they invest the person of Christ with very extraordinary powers, and place Him in a most intimate relation to God, we should hardly have claimed for Him a nature higher than the human, however wonderfully endowed.’* But Dr. Martineau’s critical and moral instincts could not rest altogether satisfied with this conclusion; and he sees clearly that the first three Gospels represent our Lord as saying too much about Himself to be con- sistent with a purely human ideal of excellence. Besides this, he is scarcely less dissatisfied with the supernatural incidents attaching more especially to our Lord’s Human Nature in the first three Gospels than with the distinct assertion of His Incarnate Godhead in the fourth. Accordingly he sets himself to strip off what he terms the mythological element from the narratives of the three earlier evangelists, ‘It would,’ he re- gretfully observes, ‘be much easier to untwine the mythological attributes from the Person of Jesus, were it not that the process of investing Him with them had begun, long before our New
1 Seat of Authority, p. 435. It should perhaps be added that Dr. Martineau does not conceive the identity of the Logos and God to involve co-equality. His reasoning on pp. 431, 432 is hardly convincing; and the Church is not concerned to deny a subordination κατὰ τάξιν.
2 Attempt to Ascertain, etc., p. 181.
Preface to the Fourteenth Edition. xxix
Testament books assumed their form.’? He holds indeed that the ‘ whole theory of Christ’s pefson ; that He was the Messiah; what was the meaning of His death; what the range of His kingdom ; and when would be the time of His return to take it up was a posthumous and retrospective product worked out by disciples.’ 2
Indeed the most original, and it may be added the boldest, of Dr. Martineau’s negations is the opinion that ‘the Messianic theory of the Person of Jesus was made for Him, and palmed upon Him by His followers, and was not His own.’* In this he is conscious of fairly distancing some of the least scrupulous of recent critics; who are alive to the fact that if on such a subject the three first Gospels are not trustworthy, it is difficult to assign to them, on reasonable grounds, any historical value whatever. There is of course no pretence that the state of the text warrants any doubt as to the great Messianic passages : indeed Dr. Martineau admits that the authors of these Gospels, or of the materials of which they were composed, ‘had long convinced themselves not only that Jesus was the appointed Messiah, but that He knew Himself to be so, and gave sufficient signs of His authority as such.’* How they could all have arrived at such a conviction, if it had no basis whatever in our Lord’s language and action ; how they could have agreed to invent so gigantic and sustained a fiction, penetrating their entire narratives through and through, Dr. Martineau ‘does not at all satisfactorily explain. But that so acute and accomplished an author should have committed himself to such a paradox is in fact more noteworthy than the considerations by which he attempts to support it. For it shows that he feels how much was really involved in a claim which Socinian writers had
1 Seat of Authority, p. 360. 3 Tbid.
5 Thid., p. 331. It is difficult to understand how any one who believes that Jesus of Nazareth did not even claim to be the Messiah, should still cling to the name of Christian, Whatever he may believe about Jesus, he
does not believe that Jesus is the Christ, Would he not be more exactly described as a ‘ Nazarene’? * Ibid., p. 332.
xxx Preface to the Fourteenth Edition.
heretofore treated as consistent with the theory of a merely human Christ; how the outworks, so to speak, of the great doctrine of Christ’s Divinity are traceable in the language and action which is appropriate to our Lord’s Self-proclamation as the Messiah; how the prophecies which thus belong to Him, how the language which He utters, how the temper and bearing which befit Him in this capacity really point to a higher truth beyond. ‘The Messianic claim was indeed the first step towards the announcement of our Lord’s Divinity; or, in Dr. Mar- tineau’s phrase, ‘the identification of Jesus with the Messianic figure’ is ‘the first act of Christian mythology.’?
There is no necessity to attempt to measure the number or extent of the excisions from the text of the first three gospels, which would be necessary in order to satisfy the theory that our Lord never claimed to be the Messiah. In point of fact when these excisions had been duly made, very little indeed would remain. And this can hardly surprise us, since Dr. Martineau himself reflects that ‘the theory of a gradual disclosure and advance of Messianic pretension’ on the part of Jesus ‘was the very theory of the Evangelists themselves.” But then the Evangelists are taken to have known less of the truth of the subject on which they wrote than does their modern re- viewer, who believes himself to be in possession of a ‘critical chemistry which is not without resources for recovering at least some fragments of the first faithful record.’* At the bidding of this ‘chemistry,’ we must it seems, bid adieu not only to the Nativity and the Resurrection; to the promise to Peter, and the prediction of the last judgment; but even to such moral and spiritual treasures as the invitation, ‘Come unto Me all ye weary, and I will give you rest’; since it is truly felt that the unspeakable tenderness of this invitation is associated with an attitude on the part of the Speaker which places Him by impli- cation outside and above the circle of our common humanity *.
1 Seat of Authority, p. 355. 3 Thid., p. 346. 3 Tbid., p. 332. 4 Ibid., p. 383.
Preface to the Fourteenth Edition. xxxi
God employs many methods for making His way plain before the face of man: and among these methods are the demon- strations which He affords or permits from time to time of what is involved in rejecting it. The sincere and able writer before us unintentionally illustrates the real connection be- tween the New Testament and the doctrine of Our Lord’s Divinity, when in order to get rid of the approaches to as well as the statements of that doctrine, he finds himself obliged to tear the writings of the Evangelists to shreds. He thus teaches us that if we would read the gospels as they stand and with our eyes open, we cannot but read in their pages the truth which was reasserted for all time by the Catholic Church at Nicea, because it was inextricably bound up with the first and only trustworthy record of Him who is the Object as well as the Author of our faith.
Curist CHURCH, St. Peter’s Day, 1890.
γῇ ae
ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES.
LECTURE 1.
THE QUESTION BEFORE US.
St. Matt. xvi. 13. PAGE
The Question before us in these Lectures is proposed by our Lord Himself, and is a strictly theological one . 3
Its import 1. as affirming that Christ is the Son of Man 6 2. as enquiring what He is besides . a9