Although John, following his practice of showing Jesus's skill as a
debater, makes him play a less passive part at his trial, he still gives
substantially the same account of it as all the rest. And the question
that would occur to any modern reader never occurs to him, any more than
it occurred to Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That question is, Why on earth
did not Jesus defend himself, and make the people rescue him from the
High Priest? He was so popular that they were unable to prevent him
driving the money-changers out of the temple, or to arrest him for it.
When they did arrest him afterwards, they had to do it at night in
a garden. He could have argued with them as he had often done in the
temple, and justified himself both to the Jewish law and to Caesar. And
he had physical force at his command to back up his arguments: all that
was needed was a speech to rally his followers; and he was not gagged.
The reply of the evangelists would have been that all these inquiries
are idle, because if Jesus had wished to escape, he could have saved
himself all that trouble by doing what John describes him as doing: that
is, casting his captors to the earth by an exertion of his miraculous
power. If you asked John why he let them get up again and torment and
execute him, John would have replied that it was part of the destiny of
God to be slain and buried and to rise again, and that to have avoided
this destiny would have been to repudiate his Godhead. And that is the
only apparent explanation. Whether you believe with the evangelists
that Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern
Secularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually,
the fact remains that according to all the narratives he did not do so.
He had to die like a god, not to save himself "like one of the princes."
*
* Jesus himself had refered to that psalm (LXXII) in which
men who have judged unjustly and accepted the persons of the
wicked (including by anticipation practically all the white
inhabitants of the British Isles and the North American
continent, to mention no other places) are condemned in the
words, "I have said, ye are gods; and all of ye are children
of the Most High; but ye shall die like men, and fall like
one of the princes."
The consensus on this point is important, because it proves the absolute
sincerity of Jesus's declaration that he was a god. No impostor would
have accepted such dreadful consequences without an effort to save
himself. No impostor would have been nerved to endure them by the
conviction that he would rise from the grave and live again after three
days. If we accept the story at all, we must believe this, and believe
also that his promise to return in glory and establish his kingdom on
earth within the lifetime of men then living, was one which he believed
that he could, and indeed must fulfil. Two evangelists declare that in
his last agony he despaired, and reproached God for forsaking him. The
other two represent him as dying in unshaken conviction and charity with
the simple remark that the ordeal was finished. But all four testify
that his faith was not deceived, and that he actually rose again after
three days. And I think it unreasonable to doubt that all four wrote
their narratives in full faith that the other promise would be fulfilled
too, and that they themselves might live to witness the Second Coming.