Philip Schaff et al. · 3 of 8

The Christ of the Gospels. · Part 1

By Rev. Professor Schaff.

THE life and character of Jesus Christ is truly the Holy of Holies in the history of the world. Eighteen hundred years have passed away since he, in the fullness of time, appeared on this earth to redeem a fallen race from sin and death, and to open a never-ceasing fountain of righteousness and life. The ages before him anxiously awaited his coming as “the Desire of all nations;” the ages after him proclaim his glory, and ever extend his dominion. The noblest and best of men under every clime hold him not only in the purest affection and the profoundest gratitude, but in divine adoration and worship. His name is above every name that can be named in heaven or on earth, The Christ of the Gospels. and the only one whereby the sinner can be saved. He is Immanuel, God with us; the eternal Word become flesh, very God and very man in one undivided person; the Author of the new creation; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Prophet, Priest, and King of regenerate humanity; the Saviour of the world. Thus he stands out to the faith of the entire Christian Church, Greek, Latin, and Evangelical, in every civilized country on the globe. His power is now greater, his kingdom larger, than ever, and will continue to spread until all nations shall bow before him, and kiss his scepter of righteousness and peace.

Blessed is he who, from the heart, can believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the fountain of salvation. True faith is, indeed, no work of nature, but an act of God wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, who reveals Christ to us in his true character, as Christ revealed the Father. Faith, with its justifying, sanctifying, and saving power, is independent of science and learning, and may be kindled even in the heart of a little child or an illiterate slave. It is the peculiar glory of the Redeemer and his religion to be coextensive with humanity itself, without distinction of sex, age, condition, nation, and race. His saving grace flows and overflows to all, and for all, on the simple condition of repentance and faith.

This fact, however, does not supersede the necessity of thought and argument. Revelation, although above nature and above reason, is by no means against nature and against reason. On the contrary, nature and the supernatural, as has been well said by a distinguished New England divine, (Bushnell,) “constitute together the one system of God.” Christianity satisfies the deepest intellectual as well as moral and religious wants of man, who is created in the image, and for the glory of God. It is the revelation of truth as well as of life. Faith and knowledge are not antagonistic, but complementary forces; not enemies, but inseparable twin sisters. Faith, indeed, precedes knowledge, but it just as necessarily leads to knowledge; while true knowledge, on the other hand, is always rooted and grounded in faith, and tends to confirm and strengthen it. Thus we find the two combined in the famous confession of Peter, when he says in the name of all the other apostles, “We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ.”

As living faith in Christ is the soul and center of all sound practical Christianity and piety, so the true doctrine of Christ is the soul and center of all sound Christian theology. St. John makes the denial of the incarnation of the Son of God the criterion of Antichrist, and consequently the belief in this central truth the test of Christianity. The incarnation, and the Divine glory shining through the vail of Christ’s humanity, is the grand theme of his Gospel, which he wrote, as with the pen of an angel, from the very heart of Christ, as his favorite disciple and bosom friend. The Apostles’ Creed, starting as it does from the confession by Peter, makes the article on Christ most prominent, and assigns to it the central position between the preceding article of God the Father and the succeeding article on the Holy Ghost. The development of ancient catholic theology commenced and culminated with the triumphant defense of the true Divinity and true humanity of Christ against the opposite heresies of Judaizing Ebionism which denied the former, and paganizing Gnosticism which resolved the latter into a shadowy phantom. The evangelical Protestant theology is essentially Christological, or controlled throughout by the proper idea of Christ as the God-man and Saviour. This is emphatically “the article of the standing or falling Church.” In this, the two most prominent ideas of the Reformation, the doctrine of the supremacy of the Scriptures, and the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, meet and are vitally united. Christ’s word, the only unerring and sufficient guide of truth; Christ’s work, the only unfailing and sufficient source of peace; Christ all in all—this is the principle of genuine Protestantism.

In the construction of the true doctrine of Christ’s person, we may, with St. John in the prologue to his Gospel, begin from above with his eternal Godhead, and proceed through the creation and the preparatory revelation of the Old Testament dispensation, till we reach the incarnation and his truly human life for the redemption of the race. Or, with the other Evangelists, we may begin from below, with his birth from the Virgin Mary, and rise up through the successive stages of his earthly life, his discourses and miracles, to his assumption into that Divine glory which he had before the foundation of the world. The result reached in both cases is the same, that Christ unites in his person the whole fullness of the Godhead and the whole fullness of sinless manhood.

The older theologians, both Catholic and Evangelical, proved the divinity of the Saviour in a direct way from the miracles performed by him, and the prophecies fulfilled in him, from the Divine names which he bears, from the Divine attributes which are predicted of him, from the Divine works which he performed, and from the Divine honors which he claimed, and which were freely accorded to him by his Apostles and the whole Christian Church to this day.

But it may also be proved by the opposite process—the contemplation of the singular perfection of his humanity, which rises, by the almost universal consent even of unbelievers, so far above every human greatness known before or since, that it can only be rationally explained on the ground of such an essential union with the Godhead as he claimed himself, and as his inspired Apostles ascribed to him. The more deeply we penetrate through the vail of his flesh, the more clearly we behold the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father shining through it full of grace and of truth.

Modern evangelical theology owes this new homage to the Saviour. The powerful attacks of the latest phase of infidelity upon the credibility of the Gospel history call for it, and have already led, by way of reaction, to new triumphs of the old faith of the Church in her Divine Head. Our humanitarian, philanthropic, and yet skeptical age, is more susceptible of this argument than of the old dogmatic method of demonstration. With Thomas, the representative of honest and earnest skepticism among the Apostles, it refuses to believe in the divinity of the Lord unless supported by the testimony of its senses; it desires to put the finger into the print of the nails, and to thrust the hand into his side, before it exclaims in humble adoration, “’ My Lord and my God.”

It is from this point of view that we will endeavor, in as popular and concise a manner as the difficulty of the subject permits, to analyze and exhibit the human character of Christ. We propose to take up the man Jesus of Nazareth as he appears on the simple, unsophisticated record of the plain and honest fishermen of Galilee, and as he lives in the faith of all Christendom; and we shall find him in all the stages of his life, both as a private individual and as a public character, so far elevated above the reach of successful rivalry, and so singularly perfect, that this very perfection in the midst of an imperfect and sinful world constitutes an irresistible proof of his Divinity.

A full discussion of the subject would require us to consider Christ in his official as well as personal character, and to describe him as a teacher, a reformer, a worker of miracles, and the founder of a spiritual kingdom, universal in extent and perpetual in time. From every point of view we should be irresistibly driven to the same result. But our present purpose confines us to the consideration of his personal character; and this alone, we think, is sufficient for the conclusion.

Christ passed through all the stages of human life, from infancy to manhood, and represented each in its ideal form, that he might redeem and sanctify them all, and be a perpetual model for imitation. He was the model infant, the model boy, the model youth, and the model man. But the weakness, decline, and decrepitude of old age would be incompatible with his character and mission. He died and rose in the full bloom of early manhood, and lives in the hearts of his people in unfading freshness and unbroken vigor for ever.

Let us first glance at the infancy and boyhood of the Saviour. The history of the race commences with the beauty of innocent youth in the garden of Eden, “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” in beholding Adam and Eve created in the image of their Maker, the crowning glory of all his wonderful works. So the second Adam, the Redeemer of the fallen race, the Restorer and Perfecter of man, comes first before us in the accounts of the Gospels as a child born, not in paradise, it is true, but among the dreary ruins of sin and death, from a humble virgin, in a lowly manger, yet pure and innocent, the subject of the praise of angels and the object of the adoration of men. Heaven and earth, the shepherds of Bethlehem, in the name of Israel, longing after salvation, and the wise men from the East, as the representatives of heathenism in its dark groping after the “unknown God,” unite in the worship of the new-born King and Saviour. Here we meet, at the very threshold of the earthly history of Christ, that singular combination of humility and grandeur, of simplicity and sublimity, of the human and Divine, which characterizes it throughout, and distinguishes it from every other history. He is not represented as an unnatural prodigy, anticipating the maturity of a later age, but as a truly human child, silently lying and smiling on the bosom of his virgin mother, “growing” in body and “waxing strong in spirit,” and therefore subject to the law of regular development, yet differing from all other children by his supernatural conception and perfect freedom from hereditary sin and guilt. He appears in the celestial beauty of unspotted innocence, a veritable flower of paradise. He was “that holy thing,” according to the announcement of the angel Gabriel, admired and loved by all who approached him in child-like spirit, but exciting the dark suspicion of the tyrant king, who represented his future enemies and persecutors. Who can measure the ennobling, purifying, and cheering influence which proceeds from the contemplation of the Christ-child at each returning Christmas season upon the hearts of young and old in every land and nation! The loss of the first estate is richly compensated by the undying innocence of paradise regained.

Of the boyhood of Jesus we know only one fact, recorded by Luke, but it is in perfect keeping with the peculiar charm of his childhood, and foreshadows at the same time the glory of his public life, as one uninterrupted service of his heavenly Father. When twelve years old we find him in the temple, in the midst of the Jewish doctors, not teaching and offending them, as in the Apocryphal Gospels, by any immodesty or forwardness, but hearing and asking questions, thus actually learning from them, and yet filling them with astonishment at his understanding and answers. There is nothing premature, forced, or unbecoming his age, and yet a degree of wisdom and an intensity of interest in religion which rises far above a purely human youth. “He increased,” we are told, “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” He was subject to his parents, and practiced all the virtues of an obedient son; and yet he filled them with a sacred awe as they saw him absorbed “in the things of his Father,” and heard him utter words which they were unable to understand at the time, but which Mary treasured up in her heart as a holy secret, convinced that they must have some deep meaning answering to the mystery of his supernatural conception and birth. Such an idea of a harmless and faultless heavenly childhood, of a growing, learning, and yet surprisingly wise boyhood, as meets us in living reality at the portal of the Gospel history, never entered the imagination of biographer, poet, or philosopher before.

The unnatural exaggeration into which the mythical fancy of man, in its endeavor to produce a superhuman childhood and boyhood, will inevitably fall, is strikingly exhibited in the Apocryphal Gospels, which are related to the Canonical Gospels as the counterfeit to the genuine coin, or as a revolting caricature to the inimitable original, but which by the very contrast tend, negatively, to corroborate the truth of the evangelical history. While the Evangelists expressly reserve the performance of miracles to the age of maturity and public life, and observe a significant silence concerning the parents of Jesus, the Pseudo-evangelists fill the infancy and early years of the Saviour and his mother with the strangest prodigies, and make the active intercession of Mary very prominent throughout. According to their representation, even dumb idols, irrational beasts, and senseless trees, bow in adoration before the infant Jesus on his journey to Egypt; and after his return, when yet a boy of five or seven years, he changes balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of his playmates, strikes terror round about him, dries up a stream of water by a mere word, transforms his companions into goats, raises the dead to life, and performs all sorts of miraculous cures, through a magical influence which proceeds from the very water in which he was washed, the towels which he used, and the bed on which he slept. Here we have the falsehood and absurdity of unnatural fiction, while the New Testament presents to us the truth and beauty of a supernatural, yet most real history, which shines out only in brighter colors by the contrast of the mythical shadow.

With the exception of these few but significant hints, the youth of Jesus, and the preparation for his public ministry, are enshrined in mysterious silence. But we know the outward condition and circumstances under which he grew up; and these must be admitted to furnish no explanation for the astounding results, without the admission of the supernatural and Divine element in his life.

He grew up among a people seldom, and only contemptuously, named by the ancient classics, and subjected at the time to the yoke of a foreign oppressor; in a remote and conquered province of the Roman empire; in the darkest district of Palestine; in a little country town of proverbial insignificance; in poverty and manual labor; in the obscurity of a carpenter’s shop; far away from universities, academies, libraries, and literary or polished society; without any help, as far as we know, except the parental care, the book of nature, the Old Testament Scriptures, and the secret intercourse of his soul with the heavenly Father. Hence the question of Nathaniel, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Hence the natural surprise of the Jews, who knew all his human relations and antecedents. “How knoweth this man letters,” they asked, when they heard Jesus teach in the synagogue, “having never learned?” And on another occasion: “Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?” These questions are unavoidable and unanswerable, if Christ be regarded as a mere man. For each effect presupposes a corresponding cause.

The difficulty here presented can by no means be solved by a reference to the fact that many, perhaps the majority of great men, especially in the Church, have risen by their own industry and perseverance from the lower walks of life, and from a severe contest with poverty and obstacles of every kind. The fact itself is readily conceded; -but in every one of these cases, schools, or books, or patrons and friends, or peculiar events and influences, can be pointed out as auxiliary aids in the development of intellectual or moral greatness. There is always some human or natural cause, or combination of causes, which accounts for the final result.

Luther, for instance, was indeed the son of poor peasants, and had a very hard youth; but yet he went to the schools of Mansfield, Magdeburg, and Eisenach, to the University of Erfurt, passed through the ascetic discipline of convent life, lived in a university surrounded by professors, students, and libraries, and was innocently, as it were, made a reformer by extraordinary events, and the irresistible current of his age.

In the case of Christ, no such natural explanation can be given. All the attempts to bring him into some contact with Egyptian wisdom, or with the Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are without a shadow of proof, and explain nothing after all. For, unlike all other great men, even the Prophets and the Apostles, he was absolutely original and independent. He taught the world as one who had learned from it, and was under no obligation to it. “His character and life were originated and sustained in spite of circumstances with which no earthly force could have contended, and therefore must have had their real foundation in a force which was preternatural and divine.” At the same time, it is easy to see, from the admission of Christ’s Divinity, that by this condescension he has raised humble origin, poverty, manual labor, and the lower orders of society, to a dignity and sacredness never known before, and has revolutionized the false standard of judging the value of men and things from their outward appearance, and of associating moral worth with social elevation, and moral degradation with low rank.

We now approach the public life of Jesus. In his thirtieth year, after the Messianic inauguration through the baptism by John, as his immediate forerunner and personal representative of the Old Testament, both in its legal and prophetic, or evangelical aspect, and after the Messianic probation by the temptation in the wilderness—the counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in paradise—he entered upon his great work.

His public life lasted only three years, and before he had reached the age of ordinary maturity he died in the full beauty and vigor of early manhood, without tasting the infirmities of declining years, which would inevitably mar the picture of the Regenerator of the race, and the Prince of life. And yet, unlike all other men of his years, he combined with the freshness, energy, and originating power of youth that wisdom, moderation, and experience which belong only to mature age. The short triennium of his public ministry contains more, even from a purely historical point of observation, than the longest life of the greatest and best of men. It is pregnant with the deepest meaning respecting the counsel of God and the destiny of the race. It is the ripe fruit of all preceding ages, the fulfillment of the hopes and desires of the Jewish and heathen mind, and the fruitful germ of succeeding generations, containing the impulse to the purest thoughts and noblest actions down to the end of time. It is “the end of a boundless past, the center of a boundless present, and the beginning of a boundless future.”

How remarkable, how wonderful this contrast between the short duration and the immeasurable significance of Christ’s ministry! The Saviour of the world a youth!

Other men require a long succession of years to mature their mind and character, and to make a lasting impression upon the world. There are rare exceptions, we admit.. Alexander the Great, the last and most brilliant efflorescence of the ancient Greek nationality, died a young man of thirty-three, after having conquered the East to the borders of the Indus. But who would think of comparing an ambitious warrior, conquered by his own lust and dying a victim of his passion, with the spotless Friend of sinners; a few bloody victories of the one with the peaceful triumphs of the other; and a huge military empire of force, which crumbled to pieces as soon as it was erected, with the spiritual kingdom of truth and love which stands to this day, and will last forever? Nor should it be forgotten, that the true significance and only value of Alexander’s conquests lay beyond the horizon of his ambition and intention, and that, by carrying the language and civilization of Greece to Asia, and bringing together the oriental and occidental world, it prepared the way for the introduction of the universal religion of Christ.

There is another striking distinction, of a general character, between Christ and the heroes of history, which we must mention here. We should naturally suppose that such an uncommon personage, setting up the most astounding claims and proposing the most extraordinary work, would surround himself with extraordinary circumstances, and maintain a position far above the vulgar and degraded multitude around him. We should expect something uncommon and striking in his look, his dress, his manner, his mode of speech, his outward life, and the train of his attendants. But the very reverse is the case. His greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest, and quiet; and far from repelling the beholder, it attracts and invites him to familiar approach. His public life never moved on the imposing arena of secular heroism, but within the humble circle of every-day life, and the simple relations of a son, a brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a friend. He had no army to command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station to fill, no worldly favors and rewards to dispense. He was a humble individual, without friends and patrons in the Sanhedrim or at the court of Herod. He never mingled in familiar intercourse with the religious or social leaders of the nation, whom he had startled, in his twelfth year, by his questions and answers. He selected his disciples from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and promised them no reward in this world but a part in the bitter cup of his suffering. He dined with publicans and sinners, and mingled with the common people, without ever condescending to their low manners and habits. He was so poor that he had no place on which to rest his head. He depended for the supply of his modest wants on the voluntary contributions of a few pious followers, and the purse was in the hands of a thief and a traitor. Nor had he learning, art, or eloquence, in the usual sense of the term, nor any other kind of power by which great men arrest the attention and secure the admiration of the world. The writers of Greece and Rome were ignorant even of his existence until, several years after the crucifixion, the effects of his mission in the steady growth of the sect of his followers forced from them some contemptuous notice, and then roused them to opposition.

And yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, he spoke words of life such as never were spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he has set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified as a malefactor, he now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual empire which embraces one third of the inhabitants of the globe. There never was in this world a life so unpretending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and classes of men. The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astounding success in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary, and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to success for a mere man. Christ stands also, in this respect, solitary and alone among all the heroes of history, and presents to us an insolvable problem, unless we admit him to be the eternal Son of God.

We will now attempt to describe his personal, or moral and religious character, as it appears on the record of his public life, and then examine his own testimony of himself as giving us the only rational solution of this mighty problem.

The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus is, that of its perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful world. He, and he alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood untarnished through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove are his appropriate symbols.

He was, indeed, tempted as we are, but he never yielded to temptation. His sinlessness was at first only the relative sinlessness of Adam before the fall, which implies the necessity of trial and temptation. But here is the fundamental difference between the first and the second Adam: the first Adam lost his innocence by the abuse of his freedom, and fell by his own act of disobedience into the dire evils of sin; while the second Adam was innocent in the midst of sinners, and maintained his innocence against all and every temptation.

In vain we look through the entire biography of Christ for a single stain, or the slightest shadow, on his moral character. There never lived a more harmless being on earth. He injured no one, he took advantage of no one. He never spoke a wrong word, he never committed a wrong action. He never repented, never asked God for pardon and forgiveness. He stood in no need of regeneration and conversion, nor even of reform, but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral power. He exhibited a uniform elevation above the objects, opinions, pleasures, and passions of this world, and disregard to riches, display, fame, and favor of men. The apparent outbreak of passion in the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple, is the only instance in the record of his history which might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of humanity. But the very effect which it produced shows that, far from being the outburst of passion, the expulsion was a judicial act of a religious reformer, vindicating, in just and holy zeal, the honor of the Lord of the temple, and that with a dignity and majesty which at once silenced the offenders, though superior in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their well-deserved punishment without a murmur, and in awe of the presence of a superhuman power. The cursing of the unfruitful fig-tree can still less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical act foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem.

The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based, not only negatively on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary, and his absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but positively also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the Apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded veneration, and declared him “just,” “holy,” and “without sin.” It is admitted, moreover, by his enemies, the heathen judge Pilate and his wife, representing as it were the Roman law and justice, when they shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion confessing under the cross, in the name of the executioners, that “truly this was the Son of God;” and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public and private life, exclaiming in despair, “I have betrayed the innocent blood.” Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the beclouded heavens above, and the shaking earth beneath, united in paying their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying Lord. It is finally placed beyond all possibility of doubt by his own freedom from any sense of guilt or unworthiness, and by his open and fearless challenge to his bitter enemies, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” In this question he clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In the mouth of any other man this question would at once betray either the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the possibility of successful impeachment or founded suspicion. “If Jesus,” says Bushnell, “was a sinner, he was conscious of sin, as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character; realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in this world.”