Another new feature in Luke's story is that it begins in a world in
which everyone is expecting the advent of the Christ. In Matthew and
Mark, Jesus comes into a normal Philistine world like our own of today.
Not until the Baptist foretells that one greater than himself shall come
after him does the old Jewish hope of a Messiah begin to stir again; and
as Jesus begins as a disciple of John, and is baptized by him, nobody
connects him with that hope until Peter has the sudden inspiration which
produces so startling an effect on Jesus. But in Luke's gospel men's
minds, and especially women's minds, are full of eager expectation of a
Christ not only before the birth of Jesus, but before the birth of John
the Baptist, the event with which Luke begins his story. Whilst Jesus
and John are still in their mothers' wombs, John leaps at the approach
of Jesus when the two mothers visit one another. At the circumcision of
Jesus pious men and women hail the infant as the Christ.
The Baptist himself is not convinced; for at quite a late period in
his former disciple's career he sends two young men to ask Jesus is he
really the Christ. This is noteworthy because Jesus immediately gives
them a deliberate exhibition of miracles, and bids them tell John what
they have seen, and ask him what he thinks now: This is in complete
contradiction to what I have called the Rousseau view of miracles as
inferred from Matthew. Luke shows all a romancer's thoughtlessness about
miracles; he regards them as "signs": that is, as proofs of the divinity
of the person performing them, and not merely of thaumaturgic powers. He
revels in miracles just as he revels in parables: they make such capital
stories. He cannot allow the calling of Peter, James, and John from
their boats to pass without a comic miraculous overdraft of fishes, with
the net sinking the boats and provoking Peter to exclaim, "Depart from
me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord," which should probably be translated,
"I want no more of your miracles: natural fishing is good enough for my
boats."
There are some other novelties in Luke's version. Pilate sends Jesus
to Herod, who happens to be in Jerusalem just then, because Herod
had expressed some curiosity about him; but nothing comes of it:
the prisoner will not speak to him. When Jesus is ill received in a
Samaritan village James and John propose to call down fire from heaven
and destroy it; and Jesus replies that he is come not to destroy lives
but to save them. The bias of Jesus against lawyers is emphasized, and
also his resolution not to admit that he is more bound to his relatives
than to strangers. He snubs a woman who blesses his mother. As this is
contrary to the traditions of sentimental romance, Luke would presumably
have avoided it had he not become persuaded that the brotherhood of
Man and the Fatherhood of God are superior even to sentimental
considerations. The story of the lawyer asking what are the two chief
commandments is changed by making Jesus put the question to the lawyer
instead of answering it.
As to doctrine, Luke is only clear when his feelings are touched. His
logic is weak; for some of the sayings of Jesus are pieced together
wrongly, as anyone who has read them in the right order and context
in Matthew will discover at once. He does not make anything new out of
Christ's mission, and, like the other evangelists, thinks that the whole
point of it is that Jesus was the long expected Christ, and that he will
presently come back to earth and establish his kingdom, having duly died
and risen again after three days. Yet Luke not only records the teaching
as to communism and the discarding of hate, which have, of course,
nothing to do with the Second Coming, but quotes one very remarkable
saying which is not compatible with it, which is, that people must not
go about asking where the kingdom of heaven is, and saying "Lo, here!"
and "Lo, there!" because the kingdom of heaven is within them. But Luke
has no sense that this belongs to a quite different order of thought to
his Christianity, and retains undisturbed his view of the kingdom as a
locality as definite as Jerusalem or Madagascar.