The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 11

215: "The Epistles of John," p. 75.

In his emphasis upon the incarnation and atonement, Royce has shown a profound appreciation of what is vital in Christianity, but his discussion shows also that these doctrines themselves, in being removed from their historic setting and adapted to the requirements of a philosophical theory, may easily lose what is for religion their most vital elements.

Each of our four philosophers has performed an important service for religious thought. Bergson has made an effective protest against materialism. Eucken has a.s.serted the reality of the spiritual world.

Ward has strengthened the philosophical foundations of belief in G.o.d and immortality. Royce has found in the distinctive ideas of Christianity the crown of religious philosophy.

The deeper thought of our age, judged by its leading exponents, has been working towards Christianity and not in the opposite direction. It has broken away from materialism with its denial of a spiritual world. It has broken away from an idealism which denies personality in G.o.d and man. It has been strongly attracted to Christianity, and influenced in its intellectual constructions by the teaching of Christ and of the Apostles. It is at one with Christianity in its ethical standpoint and emphasis. The Cross is no longer foolishness to the Greek, when leaders of philosophic thought find in Christianity their brightest glimpse into the homeland of the spirit, the source of their deepest insights into truth, the inspiration of their most fruitful activity and the key to the solution of their profoundest problems.

V

The Christian Faith and Other Religions

Four universals were contained in the last commands of the Risen Christ: "All authority has been given unto me. Go, disciple all the nations, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you all the days." If the marching orders of the Church were to be obeyed, the Christian Faith must be brought into contact and into conflict not only with Judaism but with all the ethnic faiths. If its program is to be carried out successfully, Christianity must supersede all other religions. In this lecture we must consider the relation of Christianity to ancient religions, or those prevalent in the Roman Empire at the time of its founding, and then its relation to modern religions.

I. CHRISTIANITY AND ANCIENT RELIGIONS

That the religion of the cross, which started in a despised and persecuted sect among a people without intellectual or military prestige, should in three centuries become the state religion of the Roman Empire, is often spoken of as the miracle of history. The early missionary could not appeal to military force or to an obviously superior type of civilization, and the wonder is not that Christianity conquered the Roman world but that it ever secured a foothold at all.

The familiar argument has been: "We can account for the progress of Christianity, against obstacles and without outward aids, only upon the a.s.sumption that a divine power was working within."

Since the rise of the "religious-historical school" in Germany some dozen years ago, the question of Christianity's relation to contemporary religions has come up in a new form, and has been brought into the foreground of theological discussion. The victory of early Christianity, it is a.s.serted, is due to the fact that Paul not merely presented it to the Romans in a juridical form, but that he preached the myth or mystery of a dying and rising Saviour to the myth loving Greeks; and it is even said that the New Testament portrait of Christ, whatever historical reality lies behind it, is in fact a sort of glorified composite photograph made out of the elements of a Jewish Messiah, a Greek Apollo or Adonis and an Egyptian Osiris. The claim is made by the more extreme members of the "religious-historical school" that every feature of Christianity that was supposed to be original, and indeed practically the whole Gospel narrative, can be parallelled closely or remotely in Persian, Hindu, Syrian, Egyptian or Greek religious literature, or in the Old Testament and the teaching of the philosophers.

The reasons for Christianity's triumph over other religions may be still to seek, but its claim to supernatural authority is called in question by the recent movement in scholarship which has taken as its motto, The study of the Christian Faith in the light of the history of religions.

"It would be strange indeed," a writer has remarked, "if such parallels did not raise new questionings in the place of old certainties. If the accounts of miraculous births and resurrections are plainly fabulous when we meet with them in other faiths, are they necessarily historical when they occur in the Christian Scriptures? At any rate we feel that stringent evidence will be required to prove them so."[216]

216: J. Warschauer: _American Journal of Theology_, July, 1912, p. 336.

When we study the relation between early Christianity and the religions of the time it is clear that some established principles are needed to control the comparison. When it is discovered, for instance, that Confucius had seventy-two disciples and an inner circle of ten "select ones," and that he spoke the Golden Rule in a negative form, does it follow that the Gospel accounts of the choice of the twelve and of the seventy were borrowed from Confucius? Clemen's formulation of the principles that must govern the comparison will be generally accepted:

(1) "A religious-historical explanation is impossible if it leads to untenable consequences or proceeds from untenable presuppositions. (2) The sense of the New Testament pa.s.sage, as well as the contents of the non-Jewish idea, must first be fully ascertained. (3) We ought never to a.s.sume that ideas of an advanced religion have been altogether borrowed, until we have done our best to discover any germs of them in the native religious literature. (4) The non-Jewish idea that is brought in as an explanation must really in some degree correspond to the Christian one.

(5) This element must have been already in existence: an idea that is subsequent in its emergence cannot, of course, have given rise to one previously existent. (6) It must be shown in regard to any foreign idea that it was really in a position to influence Christianity, or Judaism before it, and how."[217] To these might be added that the possibility of coincidence must not be overlooked.

217: "Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources," 1913, pp. 17, 18. Principle (3) is quoted from Cheyne.

With these principles, most of them self-evident, in our minds, let us glance at the topics of immediate interest in our present field: (1) The Virgin Birth and its parallels; (2) the worship of Christ and the Emperor-cult; and (3) Christianity and the Mystery Religions.

1. In its relation to the stories of current mythology, the Virgin Birth was a subject of active discussion in the time of the fathers. The patristic apologists make two points in referring to the mythological parallels. On the one hand, the similarity of the Gospel story in its supernatural element to the stories prevalent at the time is appealed to in order to commend it to the acceptance of the Greeks. Thus Justin says: "We propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter."[218] Similarly Origen says: "There is no absurdity in employing Grecian histories to answer Greeks with a view to showing that we are not the only persons who have recourse to miraculous narratives of this kind."[219] On the other hand, the difference between the Christian and the heathen stories is appealed to as proof of the moral and historical superiority of the Gospel narratives. Justin says that the Virgin conceived "not by intercourse but by power;"[220] and Origen, referring to a tradition about the birth of Plato, says that such stories are "veritable fables."[221]

218: "Apol.," I, 21.

219: "Contra Cels.," I, 37.

220: "Apol.," I, 33.

221: "Contra Cels.," I, 37.

The notion is popular to-day that stories of the birth of a G.o.d or a hero from a virgin are common in non-Christian religions, and the remark is heard that the Virgin Birth of Jesus would be credible were it not for these parallels. A closer examination shows, however, that while supernatural births were the common property of most ancient religions, the Virgin Birth was a distinctive and spontaneous feature of Christianity. Thus Clemen remarks that "what we find in Indian thought (at any rate in earlier times) is not a Virgin Birth in the proper sense of that term, but only a miraculous birth, and one of quite a different type from the birth of Jesus."[222] Alluding to the fact that Buddhism was so entirely outside the western range of vision as to be noticed very meagrely in the Greek and Roman literature, Clemen says that "if there are similarities that cannot be accidental between this later Buddhistic literature and the New Testament, the question would arise whether the former could not be dependent upon the latter,"[223] since Christianity penetrated early to India.

222: "Primitive Christianity," pp. 294, 295. Clemen would himself trace the idea of the Virgin Birth to a pa.s.sage in Philo ("De.

Cher." 13 f.) in which the wives of the Patriarchs represent virtues (p. 297).

223: _Ibid._, p. 37.

Clemen quotes Franckh to the effect that "none of these personages that play the part of a mother-G.o.ddess is thought of as a virgin. It is only in the course of time that Ishtar is everywhere put in the place of the earlier mother-G.o.ddesses.... As mother-G.o.ddess, Ishtar has no male G.o.d who permanently corresponds to her. This is the reason why she is vaguely spoken of as the 'virgin' Ishtar. But it must be emphatically a.s.serted that here the idea of virginity undergoes a vague deflection."[224]

224: "Primitive Christianity," p. 292.

Of the parallels adduced, only two are clearly cases of birth from a virgin: Simon Magus (_Clem. Recog._ II, 14) and a certain Terebinthus (_Acta Archelai et Manetis_, c. 52), both of whom claimed to be born from a virgin; but, as Grutzmacher remarks, these stories arose under Christian influences and are found in post-Christian writings so that they are not the root but the product of the Gospel narratives;[225] and E. Petersen admits that in these cases there may be a simple taking over of the supernatural birth of Jesus.[226]

225: "Die Jungfrauengeburt," 1906, p. 31.

226: "Die wunderbare Geburt des Heilandes," 1909, p. 41.

In the Graeco-Roman myths there is always some fleshly or sensible medium. Both the essential difference in the Gospel narratives, and the lack of any proved avenue of influence leading to these narratives, with their strongly Jewish colouring, from heathen sources, makes the theory of derivation from these sources most improbable.

2. The famous Priene inscription, dated about the year 9 B. C., has shown that the t.i.tles given to the Emperor Augustus were strikingly similar to those addressed by Christians to Christ. The day of the Emperor's birth was of great significance for the human race; he is called Saviour of men, he is to abolish war and bring general happiness; and the inscription declares that "the birthday of the G.o.d was for the world the beginning of tidings of joy on his account."[227] Both religions again, the worship of Christ and the Emperor-cult, were universal religions, the essential difference being that the former excluded, while the latter tolerated, other forms of worship. Did the Christian Church derive its worship of Christ as Lord, or even such t.i.tles as "Saviour" and "Lord," from the Emperor-worship of the time?

227: See Deissmann: "Light from the Ancient East," p. 371.

The deification of a king was by no means an unfamiliar thing in the ancient and especially in the oriental world. The kings of Egypt are said to have worshipped themselves. To the offer of Alexander the Great to rebuild the burnt temple of Diana at Ephesus, the shrewd reply of the priests, not wishing to offend either Persia or Greece, was that it was not fitting for one deity to build the temple of another. The ascription of divine honours to the Emperor was a victory of eastern influences over Roman thought. Emperor worship was (1) a compliment to the ruler; (2) a kind of personification of the genius of the Empire, as perhaps in the case of the Mikado to-day; and (3) a convenient neutral religion, since no existing cult could be universal, binding all peoples together in a necessary religious bond. While not taken very seriously by the astute rulers themselves, it may also have been to many minds "an actual breaking out of religious longing," such as seems to be expressed in Vergil's "Fourth Eclogue," for a heaven-sent deliverer and saviour.

To Jews and Christians alike, however, the idea of the worship of the Emperor was in the highest degree abhorrent. This is shown by the fierce opposition to the setting up of the statue of Caligula in the Temple, by the refusal of the early Christians to worship the genius of the Caesars under pain of death, and by the parallel accounts in the Acts and Josephus of the death of Herod, both Jewish and Christian authors describing his sudden death as a judgment upon his impiety in accepting divine honours. With Paul the "setting himself forth as G.o.d" was a mark of the man of sin (2 Thess. ii. 3, 4). It is then improbable in the highest degree that an idea so repellent alike to Jewish and Christian thought could have been in any way responsible for the worship of Christ as divine.

But was it not possible that such t.i.tles as "Lord" and "Saviour" should on Gentile soil have been unconsciously taken over by the Christians, suggested to them by the growing use of these terms as addressed to the Emperor and their free ascription to heathen deities? This position has been defended by Bousset, who says that "it was in the air that the first h.e.l.lenistic Christian community should give to its cult-hero the t.i.tle Kyrios (Lord)."[228] Even this theory of an unconscious verbal influence exerted on Gentile soil is full of difficulty. To maintain that the t.i.tle "Lord" originated in the Gentile-Christian church it is necessary, of course, to discard the evidence of all the doc.u.ments, the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles. It must be denied that Jesus called Himself Lord, or that the t.i.tle was given Him in the Jerusalem church.

Doubt must be thrown upon the whole record of the apostolic days in the Acts; and the evidence, in Paul's allusion to "James, the Lord's brother" (Gal. i. 19), of the use of the t.i.tle in the Jerusalem church must be ignored.

228: "Kyrios Christos," 1913, p. 119.

Bousset's theory is that Paul did not originate the t.i.tle but found it already in use by the Gentile church. But there is no evidence that at the time of Paul's conversion there was any church on Gentile soil that was not composed, in the main, of former Jews and of Jews who had come from Jerusalem. When it is said that "between Paul and the primitive church of Palestine stand the h.e.l.lenistic churches in Antioch, Damascus, Tarsus,"[229] it must be remembered that the church at Damascus was composed primarily of Jerusalem Christians who were persecuted to foreign cities; that the church at Antioch was founded by those from Judea, and grew under the leadership of Barnabas, a priest and leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts xi. 19 f.; Gal. ii. 1, 12); and that there is no evidence that there were any Christians at Tarsus until the time of Paul's visit (Acts ix. 30; Gal. i. 21). It is hard to see how there can be any question of an entirely new t.i.tle spontaneously arising from the heathen environment, and free from the influence of the church at Jerusalem.

229: "Kyrios Christos," p. 92.

If it be asked how Jews could dare to apply the name Kyrios, "the holy cult-name of the Old Testament Jahwe," to Jesus, the answer is suggested by Bousset himself when he says: "Therein lay a piece of monotheistic feeling: G.o.d alone should be prayed to and worshipped. This powerful religious feeling, free from all reflection, has once and again in the history of Christological dogma a.s.serted itself."[230] The essence of the matter is that Christian converts both Jewish and Gentile called upon the name of the Lord, and worshipped Him; but it is evident that Jesus was first worshipped on Jewish soil as King of Israel, and Lord in the sense made familiar in the Old Testament (Rom. x. 9-13; Acts ii. 17, 21), before He was worshipped on Gentile soil as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

230: "Kyrios Christos," p. 302.

Aside from all else it is highly improbable that in the time of Paul's conversion the use of the t.i.tle Lord (Kyrios, Dominus) as applied to the Emperor was so wide-spread as to have exercised any appreciable influence upon Christianity. "It would after all," Bousset himself acknowledges, "in spite of all a.n.a.logies in substance and words, be an erroneous and over-hasty inference, were we to bring the Christian Kyrios-cult and its origin into immediate connection with the cult of the Caesars. In the time and in the regions in which the Kyrios-Jesus cult arose, the worship of the ruler scarcely as yet had possessed so dominating a role that the worship of Jesus as Lord must be regarded as having arisen in conscious opposition to it."[231]

231: "Kyrios Christos," p. 113.

The conscious opposition no doubt came later, as Deissmann has suggested, when the cult of the Christ went forth into the Roman world and endeavoured to reserve for itself words which had just been transferred to the deified emperors, or had been invented for that worship. "Thus there arises," he says, "a polemical parallelism between the cult of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes itself felt where ancient words derived by Christianity from the treasury of the Septuagint and the Gospels happen to coincide with solemn concepts of the Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar."[232] It was inevitable that, as Paul preached Jesus Christ as Lord, the contrast between the Christian worship and the worship of the Caesars should suggest itself, together with their irreconcilable antagonism. This "polemical parallelism" is probably expressed in such t.i.tles as "our only Master and Lord" (Jude 4), "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. ii. 11), and "King of Kings and Lord of Lords"

(Rev. xix. 16).

232: "Light from the Ancient East," p. 346.