THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
It is a much discussed question as to how far Jesus realized the
profound gulf between his own religious position and that of his
contemporaries. Probably, since tradition meant more to them, they
were quicker to see declension from orthodox Judaism than a mind more
open and experimental; and when they contrived his death, it was with a
clear sense of acting in defence of God's Law and God's Covenant with
Israel. From their own point of view they were right, for the triumph
of the ideas of Jesus was the abolition of tribal religions and their
supersession by a new mind or spirit with nothing local or racial about
it.
The death of Jesus meant to the little community, which he left behind
him, a final cleavage with the system of their fathers, under which
they had been born, and with which was associated every religious idea
they had known before their great intimacy began. It was a moment of
boundless import in the history of mankind. Slowly and reluctantly
they moved out into the great unknown,--pilgrim fathers, unconscious of
the great issues they carried, but obedient to an impulse, the truth of
which history has long since established. Once again it was their
opponents who were the quickest to realize what was involved, for
affection blinded their own eyes.
The career of Paul raised the whole question between Judaism and
Christianity. He was the first to speak decisively of going to the
Gentiles. The author of the _Acts_ cites precedents for his action;
and, as no great movement in man's affairs comes unheralded, it is easy
to believe that even before Paul "the word" reached Gentile ears. None
the less the leader in the movement was Paul; and whatever we may
imagine might have been the history of Christianity without him, it
remains that he declared, decisively and for all time, the church's
independence of the synagogue. It is {168} not unlikely that, even
before his conversion, he had grasped the fact that church and
synagogue were not to be reconciled, and that, when "it pleased God to
reveal his Son in him," he knew at once that he was in "a new creation"
and that he was to be a prophet of a new dispensation.
[Sidenote: The Jewish heritage]
There is no doubt that the hostile Jews very quickly realised Paul's
significance, but the Christians were not so quick. Paul was a
newcomer and very much the ablest man among them--they were "not many
wise, not many learned," and Paul, though he does not mention it, was
both. He was moreover proposing to take them into regions far beyond
their range; he had not personally known "the Lord" and they had; and
there was no clear word of Jesus on the Gentile question. There was a
conference. What took place, Paul tries in the Galatians to tell; but
he is far too quick a thinker to be a master of mere narrative; the
question of Christian freedom was too hot in his heart to leave him
free for reminiscence, and the matter is not very clear. The author of
the Acts was not at the council, and, whatever his authorities may have
been, there is a constant suggestion in his writing that he has a
purpose in view--a purpose of peace between parties. Whether they
liked the result or not, the Christian community seem loyally to have
submitted themselves to "the Spirit of Jesus." "It seemed good to the
holy spirit and to us" tells the story of their deliberations, whether
they put the phrase at the top of a resolution or did not. Paul came
to the personal followers of Jesus with a new and strange conception of
the religion of their Master. They laid it alongside of their memories
of their Master, and they heard him say "Go ye into all the world"; and
they went.
The natural outcome of this forward step at once became evident. Paul
did not go among the Gentiles to "preach circumcision," and there
quickly came into being, throughout Asia Minor and in the Balkan
provinces, many groups of Christians of a new type--Gentile in mind and
tradition, and in Christian life no less Gentile. They remained
uncircumcised, they did not observe the Sabbath nor any other
distinctive usage of Judaism--they were a new people, a "third race."
Their very existence put Judaism on the defensive; for, if their
position was justified, it was hard to see {169} what right Judaism had
to be. It was not yet quite clear what exactly the new religion was,
nor into what it might develope; but if, as the Gentile Christians and
their Apostle claimed, they stood in a new relation to God, a higher
and a more tender than the greatest and best spirits in Israel had
known, and this without the seal of God's covenant with Israel and
independently of his law, then it was evident that the unique
privileges of Israel were void, and that, as Paul put it, "there is
neither Jew nor Greek."
That part of the Jewish race, and it was the larger part, which did not
accept the new religion, was in no mind to admit either Paul's
premisses or his conclusions. They stood for God's covenant with
Israel. Nor did they stand alone, for it took time to convince even
Christian Jews that the old dispensation had yielded to a new one, and
that the day of Moses was past. To the one class the rise of the
Christian community was a menace, to the other a problem. The one left
no means untried to check it. By argument, by appeals to the past, by
working on his superstitions, they sought to make the Christian convert
into a Jew; and, when they failed, they had other methods in reserve.
Themselves everywhere despised and hated, as they are still, for their
ability and their foreign air, they stirred up their heathen neighbours
against the new race. Again and again, in the _Acts_ and in later
documents, we read of the Jews being the authors of pagan
persecution.[1] The "unbelieving Jew" was a spiritual and a social
danger to the Christian in every city of the East. The converted Jew
was, in his way, almost as great a difficulty within the community.
It is not hard to understand the feeling of the Jews within or without
the Church. Other races had their ancient histories, and the Jew had
his--a history long and peculiar. From the day of Abraham, the friend
of God, the chosen race had been the special care of Jehovah. Jehovah
had watched over them; he had saved them from their enemies; he had
visited them for their iniquities; he had sent them prophets; he had
given them his law. In a long series of beautiful images, which move
us yet, Jehovah had spoken, through holy men of old, of his love for
Israel. To Israel belonged the oracles of God {170} and his promises.
For here again the national consciousness of Israel differed from that
of every other race. It was something that in the past God had spoken
to no human family except the seed of Abraham; it was more that to
them, and to them alone, he had assured the future. Deeply as Israel
felt the trials of the present, the Roman would yet follow the Persian
and the Greek, and the day of Israel would dawn. The Messiah was to
come and restore all things.
"He shall destroy the ungodly nations with the word of his mouth, so
that at his rebuke the nations may flee before him, and he shall
convict the sinners in the thoughts of their hearts.
"And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall lead in
righteousness; and shall judge the tribes of his people that hath been
sanctified by the Lord his God.
"And he shall not suffer iniquity to lodge in their midst, and none
that knoweth wickedness shall dwell with them....
"And he shall possess the nations of the heathen to serve him beneath
his yoke; and he shall glorify the Lord in a place to be seen of the
whole earth;
"And he shall purge Jerusalem and make it holy, even as it was in the
days of old.
"So that the nations may come from the ends of the earth to see his
glory, bringing as gifts her sons that had fainted,
"And may see the glory of the Lord, wherewith God hath glorified her."
So runs one of the _Psalms of Solomon_ written between 70 and 40
B.C.[2] Parallel passages might be multiplied, but one may suffice,
written perhaps in the lifetime of Jesus.
"Then thou, O Israel, wilt be happy, and thou wilt mount upon the neck
of the eagle, and [the days of thy mourning] will be ended,
"And God will exalt thee, and he will cause thee to approach to the
heaven of the stars, and he will establish thy habitation among them,
"And thou wilt look from on high, and wilt see thine {171} enemies in
Ge[henna], and thou wilt recognize them and rejoice, and wilt give
thanks and confess thy Creator."[3]
No people in the Mediterranean world had such a past behind them, and
none a future so sure and so glorious before them--none indeed seems to
have had any great hope of the future at all; their Golden Ages were
all in the past, or far away in mythical islands of the Eastern seas or
beyond the Rhine. And if the Christian doctrine was true, that great
past was as dead as Babylon, and the Messianic Kingdom was a
mockery--Israel was "feeding on the east wind," and the nation was not
Jehovah's chosen. At one stroke Israel was abolished, and every
national memory and every national instinct, rooted in a past of
suffering and revelation, and watered with tears in a present of pain,
were to wither like the gardens of Adonis. No man with a human heart
but must face the alternative of surrendering national for Christian
ideals, or hating and exterminating the enemy of his race.
So much for the nation, and what Christianity meant for it, but much
beside was at stake. There was the seal of circumcision, the
hereditary token of God's covenant with Abraham, a sacrament passed on
from father to son and associated with generations of faith and piety.
Week by week the Sabbath came with its transforming memories--the
"Princess Sabbath," for Heine was not the first to feel the magic that
at sunset on Friday restores the Jew to the "halls of his royal father,
the tents of Jacob." Every one of their religious usages spoke
irresistibly of childhood. "When your children shall say unto you
'What mean ye by this service,' ye shall say...," so ran the old law,
binding every Jew to his father by the dearest and strongest of all
bonds. To become a Christian was thus to be alienated from the
commonwealth of Israel, to renounce a father's faith and his home. If
the pagan had to suffer for his conversion, the Jew's heritage was
nobler and holier, and the harder to forego. Even the friendly Jew
pleads, "Cannot a man be saved who trusts in Christ and also keeps the
law--keeps it so far as he {172} can under the conditions of the
dispersion,--the Sabbath, circumcision, the months, and certain
washings?"[4]
[Sidenote: The Jewish attack on Jesus]
But this was not all. Israel had stood for monotheism and that not the
monotheism of Greek philosophy, a dogma of the schools consistent with
the cults of Egypt and Phrygia, with hierodules and a deified Antinous.
The whole nation had been consecrated to the worship of One God, a
personal God, who had, at least where Israel was concerned, no hint of
philosophic Apathy. The Jew was now asked by the Christian to admit a
second God--a God beside the Creator (_allos theos para ton poieten ton
holon_[5])--and such a God! The Jews knew all about Jesus of
Nazareth--it was absurd to try to pass him off even as the Messiah.
"Sir," said Trypho, "these scriptures compel us to expect one glorious
and great, who receives from 'the Ancient of Days' the 'eternal
Kingdom' as 'Son of Man'; but this man of yours--your so-called
Christ--was unhonoured and inglorious, so that he actually fell under
the extreme curse that is in the law of God; for he was crucified."[6]
The whole thing was a paradox, incapable of proof.[7] "It is an
incredible thing, and almost impossible that you are trying to
prove--that God endured to be begotten and to become a man."[8]
The Jews had a propaganda of their own about Jesus. They sent
emissaries from Palestine to supply their countrymen and pagans with
the truth.[9] Celsus imagines a Jew disputing with a Christian,--a
more life-like Jew, according to Harnack, than Christian apologists
draw,--and the arguments he uses came from Jewish sources. Jesus was
born, they said, in a village, the bastard child of a peasant woman, a
poor person who worked with her hands, divorced by her husband (who was
a carpenter) for adultery.[10] The father was a soldier called
Panthera. As to the Christian story, what could have attracted the
attention of God to her? Was she pretty? The carpenter at all events
hated her and cast her out.[11] {173} ("I do not think I need trouble
about this argument," is all Origen says.) Who saw the dove, or heard
the voice from heaven, at the baptism? Jesus suffered death in
Palestine for the guilt he had committed (_plemmelesanta_). He
convinced no one while he lived; even his disciples betrayed him--a
thing even brigands would not have done by their chief--so far was he
from improving them, and so little ground is there for saying that he
foretold to them what he should surfer. He even complained of thirst
on the cross. As for the resurrection, that rests on the evidence of a
mad woman (_paroistros_)--or some other such person among the same set
of deceivers, dreaming, or deluded, or "wishing to startle the rest
with the miracle, and by a lie of that kind to give other impostors a
lead." Does the resurrection of Jesus at all differ from those of
Pythagoras or Zamolxis or Orpheus or Herakles--"or do you think that
the tales of other men both are and seem myths, but that the
catastrophe of your play is a well-managed and plausible piece of
invention--the cry upon the gibbet, when he died, and the earthquake
and the darkness?"[12] The Christians systematically edited and
altered the Gospels to meet the needs of the moment;[13] but Jesus did
not fulfil the prophecies of the Messiah--"the prophets say he shall be
great, a dynast, lord of all the earth and all its nations and
armies."[14] There are ten thousand other men to whom the prophecies
are more applicable than to Jesus,[15] and as many who in frenzy claim
to "come from God."[16] In short the whole story of the Christians
rests on no evidence that will stand investigation.
Even men who would refrain from the hot-tempered method of controversy,
which these quotations reflect, might well feel the contrast between
the historic Jesus and the expected Messiah--between the proved failure
of the cross and the world-empire of a purified and glorious Israel.
And when it was suggested further that Jesus was God, an effluence
coming from God, as light is lit by light--even if this were true, it
would seem that the Jew was asked to give up the worship of the One
God, which he had learnt of his fathers, and to turn to a being not
unlike the pagan gods around him in every land, who also, their
apologists said, came from the {174} Supreme, and were his emanations
and ministers and might therefore be worshipped.
Thus everything that was distinctive of their race and their
religion--the past of Israel, the Messiah and the glorious future, the
beautiful symbols of family religion, and the One God Himself--all was
to be surrendered by the man who became a Christian. We realize the
extraordinary and compelling force of the new religion, when we
remember that, in spite of all to hold them back, there were those who
made the surrender and "suffered the loss of all things to win Christ
and be found in him." Paul however rested, as he said, on revelation,
and ordinary men, who were not conscious of any such distinction, who
mistrusted themselves and their emotions, and who rested most naturally
upon the cumulative religious experience of their race, might well ask
whether after all they were right in breaking with a sacred
past--whether, apart from subjective grounds, there were any clear
warrant from outside to enable them to go forward. The Jew had of
course oracles of God given by inspiration (_theopneustos_[17]),
written by "holy men of God, moved by the holy spirit." These were his
warrant. Here circumcision, the Sabbath, the Passover, and all his
religious life was definitely and minutely prescribed in what was
almost, like the original two tables, the autograph of the One God.
The law had its own history bound up with that of the race, and the
experience and associations of every new generation made it more deeply
awful and mysterious. Had the Christian any law? had he any oracles,
apart from the unintelligible glossolalies of men possessed
(_enthousiontes_)? When Justin spoke of the gifts of the Spirit,
Trypho interjected, "I should like you to know that you are talking
nonsense."[18]
[Sidenote: The problem]
Not unnaturally then did men say to Ignatius (as we have seen), "If I
do not find it in the ancient documents, I do not believe it in the
gospel." And when Ignatius rejoined, "It is written"; "That is the
problem," said they.[19] It was their problem, though it was not his.
For him Judaism is "a leaven old and sour," and "to use the name of
Jesus Christ and yet observe Jewish customs is absurd (_atopon_)" or
really "to confess we have not received grace."[20] His documents were
{175} Jesus Christ, his cross and death and resurrection, and faith
through him.
"That is the problem"--can it be shown from the infallible Hebrew
Scriptures that the crucified Jesus is the Messiah of prophecy, that he
is a "God beside the Creator," that Sabbath and Circumcision are to be
superseded, that Israel's covenant is temporary, and that the larger
outlook of the Christian is after all the eternal dispensation of which
the Jewish was a copy made for a time? If this could be shown, it
might in some measure stop the mouths of hostile Jews, and calm the
uneasy consciences of Jews and proselytes who had become Christians.
And it might serve another and a distinct purpose. It was one of the
difficulties of the Christian that his religion was a new thing in the
world. Around him were men who gloried in ancient literatures and
historic cults. All the support that men can derive from tradition and
authority, or even from the mere fact of having a past behind them, was
wanting to the new faith, as its opponents pointed out. If, by
establishing his contention against the Jew, the Christian could
achieve another end, and could demonstrate to the Greek that he too had
a history and a literature, that his religion was no mere accident of a
day, but was rooted in the past, that it had been foretold by God
himself, and was part of the divine scheme for the destiny of mankind,
then, resting on the sure ground of Providence made plain, he could
call upon the Greek in his turn to forsake his errors and superstitions
for the first of all religions, which should also be the last--the
faith of Jesus Christ.
The one method thus served two ends. Justin addressed an _Apology_ to
Antoninus Pius, and one-half of his book is occupied with the
demonstration that every major characteristic of Christianity had been
prophesied and was a fulfilment. The thirty chapters show what weight
the sheer miracle of this had with the apologist, though, if the
Emperor actually read the _Apology_, it was probably his first contact
with Jewish scripture. Some difference of treatment was necessary,
according as the method was directed to Jew or Gentile. For the Jew it
was axiomatic that Scripture was the word of God, and, if he did not
grant the Christian's postulate of allegory, he was withholding from an
opponent what had been allowed to Philo. {176} The Greek would
probably allow the allegory, and the first task in his case was to show
by chronological reckoning that the greater prophets, and above all
Moses, antedated the bloom of Greek literature, and then to draw the
inference that it was from Hebrew sources that the best thoughts of
Hellas had been derived. Here the notorious interest of early Greek
thinkers in Egypt helped to establish the necessary, though rather
remote, connexion. When once the priority of the Hebrew prophets had
been proved, and, by means of allegory, a coincidence (age by age more
striking) had been established between prophecy and event, the
demonstration was complete. There could be only one interpretation of
such facts.
A number of these refutations of the Jew survive from early times.
Justin's _Dialogue with Trypho_ is the most famous, as it deserves to
be. It opens in a pleasant Platonic style with a chance meeting one
morning in a colonnade at Ephesus.[21] Trypho accosts the philosopher
Justin--"When I see a man in your garb, I gladly approach him, and that
is why I spoke to you, hoping to hear something profitable from you."
When Trypho says he is a Jew, Justin asks in what he expects to be more
helped by philosophy than by his own prophets and law-giver. Is not
all the philosophers' talk about God? Trypho asks. Justin then tells
him of his own wanderings in philosophy,--how he went from school to
school, and at last was directed by an old man to read the Jewish
prophets, and how "a fire was kindled in my soul, and a passion seized
me for the prophets and those men who are Christ's friends; and so,
discussing their words with myself, I found this philosophy alone to be
safe and helpful. And that is how and why I am a philosopher."[22]
Trypho smiled, but, while approving Justin's ardour in seeking after
God, he added that he would have done better to philosophize with Plato
or one of the others, practising endurance, continence and temperance,
than "to be deceived by lies and to follow men who are worthless."
Then the battle begins, and it is waged in a courteous and kindly
spirit, as befits philosophers, till after two days they part with
prayers and goodwill for each other--Trypho unconvinced. Other writers
have less {177} skill, and the features of dialogue are sadly whittled
away. Others again abandon all pretence of discussion and frankly
group their matter as a scheme of proof-texts. In what follows, Justin
shall be our chief authority.
We may start with the first point that Trypho raises. "If you will
listen to me (for I count you a friend already), first of all be
circumcised, and then keep, in the traditional way, the Sabbath and the
feasts and new moons of God, and, in a word, do all that is written in
the law, and then perhaps God will have mercy upon you. As for Christ,
if indeed he has been born and already exists, he is unknown--nay! he
does not even know himself yet, nor has he any power, till Elijah come
and anoint him and make him manifest to all men. You people have
accepted an empty tale, and are imagining a Christ for yourselves, and
for the sake of him you are perishing quite aimlessly."[23]
Salvation, according to the Jew, was inconceivable outside the pale of
Judaism. "Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot be saved," men had said
in Paul's time. Paul's repudiation of this assertion is to be read in
his Epistle to the _Galatians_--in his whole life and mind. But genius
such as Paul's was not to be found in the early church, and men looked
outside of themselves for arguments to prove what he had seen and known
of his own experience and insight.
[Sidenote: The letter to Diognetus]
Some apologists merely laughed at the Jew. Thus the brilliant and
winsome writer known only by his _Epistle to Diognetus_ has a short and
ready way of dealing with Jewish usages, which is not conciliatory.
"In the next place I think you wish to hear why Christians do not
worship in the same way as the Jews. Now the Jews do well in
abstaining from the mode of service I have described [paganism], in
that they claim to reverence One God of the universe and count Him
their master; but, in offering this worship to Him in the same way as
those I have mentioned, they go far astray. For the Greeks offer those
things to senseless and deaf images and so give an exhibition of folly,
while the Jews--considering they are presenting them to God as if He
had need of them--ought in all reason to count it foolery and not
piety. For He that made the heaven and the earth and all {178} that is
in them, and gives freely to every one of us what we need, could not
Himself need any of the things which He Himself actually gives to those
who imagine they are giving them to Him....
"But again of their nervousness (_psophodees_) about meats, and their
superstition about the Sabbath, and the quackery (_aladoneia_) of
circumcision, and the pretence (_eironeia_) of fasts and new
moons--ridiculous and worthless as it all is, I do not suppose you wish
me to tell you. For to accept some of the things which God has made
for man's need as well created, and to reject others as useless and
superfluous, is it not rebellion (_athemiston_)? To lie against God as
if He forbade us to do good on the Sabbath day, is not that impiety?
To brag that the mutilation of the flesh is a proof of election--as if
God specially loved them for it--ridiculous! And that they should keep
a look-out on the stars and the moon and so observe months and days and
distinguish the ordinances of God and the changes of the seasons, as
their impulses prompt them to make some into feasts and some into times
of mourning--who would count this a mark of piety towards God and not
much rather of folly?
"That Christians are right to keep aloof from the general silliness and
deceit of the Jews, their fussiness and quackery, I think you are well
enough instructed. The mystery of their own piety towards God you must
not expect to be able to learn from man."[24]
This was to deal with the distinctive usages of Judaism on general
principles and from a standpoint outside it. It would doubtless be
convincing enough to men who did not need to be convinced, but of
little weight with those to whom the Scriptures meant everything.
Accordingly the Apologists went to the Scriptures and arrayed their
evidence with spirit and system.
We may begin, as the writer to Diognetus begins, with sacrifices. Here
the Apologists could appeal to the Prophets, who had spoken of
sacrifice in no sparing terms. Tertullian's fifth chapter in his book
_Against the Jews_ presents the evidence shortly and clearly. I will
give the passages cited in a tabular form:--
{179}
_Malachi_ 1, 10: I will not receive sacrifice from your hands, since
from the rising sun to the setting my name is glorified among the
Gentiles, saith the Lord Almighty, and in every place they offer pure
sacrifices to my name.
_Psalm_ 96, 7: Offer to God glory and honour, offer to God the
sacrifices of his name; away with victims (tollite) and enter into his
court.
_Psalm_ 51, 17: A heart contrite and humbled is a sacrifice for God.
_Psalm_ 50, 14: Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of praise and render thy
vows to the Most High.
_Isaiah_ 1, 11: Wherefore to me the multitude of your sacrifices? ....
Whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the fat of goats and the
blood of bulls I will not ... Who has sought these from your hands?
Justin has other passages as decisive. Does not God say by Amos (5,
21) "I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not smell [your
offerings] in your assemblies. When ye offer me your whole burnt
offerings and your sacrifices, I will not receive them," and so forth,
in a long passage quoted at length. And again
_Jeremiah_ 7, 21-22: Gather your flesh and your sacrifices and eat, for
neither concerning sacrifices nor drink offerings did I command your
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of
Egypt.[25]
Next as to circumcision and the Sabbath. "You need a second
circumcision," says Justin, "and yet you glory in the flesh; the new
law bids you keep a perpetual Sabbath, while you idle for one day and
suppose you are pious in so doing; you do not understand why it was
enjoined upon you. And, if you eat unleavened bread, you say you have
fulfilled the will of God."[26] Even by Moses, who gave the law, God
cried "You shall circumcise the hardness of your hearts and stiffen
your necks no more";[27] and Jeremiah long afterwards said the same
more than once.[28] On the Sabbath question, Tertullian and the others
distinguished two Sabbaths, an eternal and a temporal,[29] citing:--
{180}
_Isaiah_ 1, 14: My soul hates your sabbaths.
_Ezekiel_ 22, 8: Ye have profaned my sabbath.
The Jew is referred back to the righteous men of early days--Was Adam
circumcised, or did he keep the Sabbath? or Abel, or Noah, or Enoch, or
Melchizedek? Did Abraham keep the Sabbath, or any of the patriarchs
down to Moses?[30] "But," rejoins the Jew, "was not Abraham
circumcised? Would not the son of Moses have been strangled, had not
his mother circumcised him?"[31]
[Sidenote: Old law or new covenant]
To this the Christian had several replies. Circumcision was merely
given for a sign, as is shown by the fact that a woman cannot receive
it, "for God has made women as well able as men to do what is just and
right." There is no righteousness in being of one sex rather than of
the other.[32] Circumcision then was imposed upon the Jews "to mark you
off from the rest of the nations and from us, that you alone might
suffer what now you are suffering, and so deservedly suffering--that
your lands should be desolate and your cities burnt with fire, that
strangers should eat your fruits before your faces, and none of you set
his foot in Jerusalem. For in nothing are you known from other men
apart from the circumcision of your flesh. None of you, I suppose,
will venture to say that God did not foresee what should come to pass.
And it is all deserved; for you slew the Righteous one and his prophets
before him; and now you reject and dishonour--so far as you can--those
who set their hopes on him and on the Almighty God, maker of all
things, who sent him; and in your synagogues you curse those who
believe on Christ."[33] The Sabbath was given to remind the Jews of
God; and restrictions were laid on certain foods because of the Jewish
proclivity to forsake the knowledge of God.[34] In general, all these
commands were called for by the sins of Israel,[35] they were signs of
judgment.
On the other hand the so-called Barnabas maintains that the Jews never
had understood their law at all. Fasts, feasts {181} and sacrifices
were prescribed, not literally, but in a spiritual sense which the Jews
had missed. The taboos on meats were not prohibitions of the flesh of
weasels, hares and hyaenas and so forth, but were allegoric warnings
against fleshly lusts, to which ancient zoologists and modern Arabs
have supposed these animals to be prone.[36] Circumcision was meant,
as the prophets showed, to be that of the heart; evil daemons had misled
the Jews into practising it upon the flesh.[37] The whole Jewish
dispensation was a riddle, and of no value, unless it is understood as
signifying Christianity.
This line of attack was open to the criticism that it robbed the
religious history of Israel of all value whatever, and the stronger
Apologists do not take it. They will allow the Jews to have been so
far right in observing their law, but they insist that it had a higher
sense also, which had been overlooked except by the great prophets.
The law was a series of types and shadows, precious till the substance
came, which the shadows foretold. That they were mere shadows is shown
by the fact that Enoch walked with God and Abraham was the friend of
God. For this could not have been, if the Jewish contention were true
that without Sabbath and circumcision man cannot please God.
Otherwise, either the God of Enoch was not the God of Moses--which was
absurd; or else God had changed his mind as to right and wrong--which
was equally absurd.[38] No, the legislation of Moses was for a people
and for a time; it was not for mankind and eternity. It was a prophecy
of a new legislator, who should repeal the carnal code and enact one
that should be spiritual, final and eternal.[39] Here, following the
writer to the Hebrews, the Apologists quote a great passage of
Jeremiah, with the advantage (not always possible) of using it in the
true sense in which it was written. "Behold! the days come, saith the
Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah; not that which I made with their fathers in the day
when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt; which my
covenant they brake, although I was an {182} husband unto them, saith
the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel: After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in
their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and I will be their
God and they shall be my people."[40]
With the law, the privilege of Israel passes away and the day of the
Gentiles comes. It was foretold that Israel would not accept
Christ--"their ears they have closed";[41] "they have not known nor
understood";[42] "who is blind but my servants?"[43] "all these words
shall be unto you as words of a book that is sealed."[44] "By Isaiah
the prophet, God, knowing beforehand what you would do, cursed you
thus";[45] and Justin cites Isaiah 3, 9-15, and 5, 18-25. Leah is the
type of the synagogue and of the Jewish people and Rachel of "our
church"; the eyes of Leah were weak, and so are the eyes of your
soul--very weak.[46] No less was it prophesied that the Gentiles
should believe on Christ--"in thee shall all tribes of the earth be
blest"; "Behold! I have manifested him as a witness to the nations, a
prince and a ruler to the races. Races which knew thee not shall call
upon thee and peoples who were ignorant of thee shall take refuge with
thee."[47]
"By David He said 'A people I knew not has served me, and hearkened to
me with the hearing of the ear.' Let us, the Gentiles gathered
together, glorify God," says Justin, "because he has visited us ... for
he is well pleased with the Gentiles, and receives our sacrifices with
more pleasure than yours. What have I to do with circumcision, who
have the testimony of God? What need of that baptism to me, baptized
with the holy spirit? These things, I think, will persuade even the
slow of understanding. For these are not arguments devised by me, nor
tricked out by human skill,--nay! this was the theme of David's lyre,
this the glad news Isaiah brought, that Zechariah proclaimed and Moses
wrote. Do you recognize them, Trypho? They are in your books--no! not
yours, but ours--for we believe them--and you, when you {183} read, do
not understand the mind that is in them."[48] And with that Justin
passes on to discuss whether Jesus is the Messiah. Such a passage
raises the question as to how far he is reporting an actual
conversation. In his 80th chapter he says to Trypho that he will make
a book (_syntaxis_) of their conversation--of the whole of it--to the
best of his ability, faithfully recording all that he concedes to
Trypho. Probably he takes Plato's liberty to develop what was
said--unless indeed the dialogue is from beginning to end merely a
literary form imposed upon a thesis. In that case, it must be owned
that Justin manages to give a considerable suggestion of life to
Trypho's words.
[Sidenote: Jesus the Messiah]
But, even if the law be temporary, and the Sabbath spiritual, if Israel
is to be rejected and the Gentiles chosen, we are still far from being
assured on the warrant of the Old Testament that Jesus is the Messiah,
who shall accomplish this great change. Why he rather than any of the
"ten thousand others" who might much more plausibly be called the
Messiah?[49]
To prove the Messiahship of Jesus, a great system of Old Testament
citations was developed, the origins of which are lost to us. Paul
certainly applied Scripture to Jesus in a free way of his own, though
he is not more fanciful in quotation than his contemporaries. But he
never sought to base the Christian faith on a scheme of texts.
Lactantius, writing about 300 A.D., implies that Jesus is the author of
the system. "He abode forty days with them and interpreted the
Scriptures, which up to that time had been obscure and involved."[50]
Something of the kind is suggested by Luke (24, 27). But it is obvious
that the whole method is quite alien to the mind and style of Jesus, in
spite of quotations in the vein of the apologists which the evangelists
here and there have attributed to him.
We may discover two great canons in the operations of the Apologists.
In the first place, they seek to show that all things prophesied of the
Messiah were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth; and, secondly, that
everything which befel Jesus was prophesied of the Messiah. These
canons need only to be stated to show the sheer impossibility of the
enterprise to {184} anyone who attaches meaning to words. But in the
early centuries of our era there was little disposition with Jew or
Greek to do this where those books were concerned, whose age and beauty
gave them a peculiar hold upon the mind. In each case the
preconception had grown up, as about the myths of Isis, for example,
that such books were in some way sacred and inspired. The theory gave
men an external authority, but it presented some difficulties; for,
both in Homer and in _Genesis_ as in the Egyptian myths, there were
stories repugnant to every idea of the divine nature which a
philosophic mind could entertain. They were explained away by the
allegoric method. Plutarch shows how the grossest features of the Isis
legend have subtle and spiritual meanings and were never meant to be
taken literally--that the myths are _logoi_ in fact; and Philo
vindicates the Old Testament in the same way.[51] The whole procedure
was haphazard and unscientific; it closely resembled the principles
used by Artemidorus for the interpretation of dreams--a painful
analogy. But, in the absence of any kind of historic sense, it was
perhaps the only way in which the continuity of religious thought could
then be maintained. It is not surprising in view of the prevalence of
allegory that the Christians used it--they could hardly do anything
else. Thus with the fatal aid of allegory, the double thesis of the
Apologists became easier and easier to maintain.
The most accessible illustration of this line of apology is to be found
in the second chapter of _Matthew_. We may set out in parallel columns
the events in the life of Jesus and the prophecies which they fulfil.
(a) The Virgin-Birth. _Isaiah_ 7, 14: Behold a virgin
shall conceive.
(b) Bethlehem. _Micah_ 5,2: And thou, Bethlehem,
etc.
(c) The Flight into Egypt. _Hosea_ 11, 1: Out of Egypt
have I called my son.
(d) The Murder of the children. _Jerem._ 31, 15: Rachel weeping.
(e) Nazareth. _Judges_ 13, 5: A Nazarene.
{185} It is hardly unfair to say that the man who cited these passages
in these connexions had no idea whatever of their original meaning,
even where he quotes them correctly.
Here is a fuller scheme taken from the _Apology_ which Justin addressed
to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. (The numbers on the left refer to the
chapter in the first _Apology_.)
32. Jesus Christ foretold by _Gen._ 49, 10 f: (the blessing
Judah). of Moses.
_Numbers_ 24, 17: There shall
dawn a star, etc.
Jesus Christ foretold by _Isaiah_ 11, i: the rod of Jesse,
Isaiah. etc.
33. Jesus Christ to be born _Is._ 7, 14: (the sign to
of a virgin. Ahaz).
34. Jesus Christ to be born at _Micah_ 5, 2: Thou, Bethlehem,
Bethlehem. etc.
35. The triumphal entry into _Zech._ 9, 9: Thy king cometh
Jerusalem. riding on an ass, etc.
The Crucifixion: the Cross. _Is._ 9,6: The government upon
his shoulders.
_Is._ 65, 2: I have stretched out
my hands, etc.
The Crucifixion: the _Is._ 58, 2: They ask me for
mockery. judgment, etc.
The Crucifixion: the nails _Psalm_ 22, 16, 18: They
and the casting of lots. pierced my feet and my
hands; they cast lots upon
my raiment.
38. The Crucifixion: the _Is._ 50, 6-8: I gave my back
scourging. to the lashes and my cheeks
to blows, etc.
The Crucifixion: the _Ps._ 22, 7: they wagged the
mocking. head, saying, etc.
The Crucifixion: the _Ps._ 3, 5: I slept and slumbered
resurrection. and I rose up (_anesten_)
because the Lord laid hold of
me.
{186}
39. The sending of the twelve _Is._ 2, 3 f.: Out of Sion shall
Apostles. go forth the law.
40. The proclamation of the _Ps._ 19, 2-5: Day unto day,
Gospel. etc.
Christ, Pilate, the Jews _Psalms_ 1 and 2: cited _in
and Herod. extenso_.
41. Christ to reign after the 1 _Chron._ 16, 23, 25-31: (a
Crucifixion. psalm). Cf. _Ps._ 96, i, 2,
4-11, with ending: "The
Lord hath reigned from the
tree."
45. The Ascension. _Ps._ 110, 1-3: Sit thou at my
right hand, etc.
47. The desolation of Jerusalem. _Is._ 64, 10-12: Sion has become
desert, etc.
_Is._ 1, 7, and _Jer._ 50, 3:
Their land is desert.
48. The miracles of Christ. _Is._ 35, 5, 6: The lame shall
leap ... the dead shall rise
and walk, etc.
Christ's death. _Is._ 57, 1 f.: Behold, how the
Just Man has perished, etc.
49. The Gentiles to find Christ _Is._ 65, 1-3: I was visible to
but not the Jews. them that asked not for me
... I spread out my hands
to a disobedient people.
50. Christ's humiliation and _Is._ 53, 12: For that they gave
the glorious second his soul to death ... he
advent. shall be exalted.
_Is._ 52, 13-53, 8: ... he was
wounded, etc.
51. His sufferings, origin, _Is._ 53, 8-12.
reign and ascension.
His second coming. "Jeremiah" = _Daniel_ 7, 13, as
it were a son of man cometh
upon the clouds and his
angels with him.
{187}
52. The final resurrection. _Ezek._ 37, 7-8: Bone shall be
joined to bone.
_Is._ 45, 23: Every knee shall
bow to the Lord.
_Is._ 66, 24: The worm shall
not sleep nor the fire be
quenched.
Also a composite quotation
with phrases mingled from
Isaiah and Zechariah,
attributed to the latter.
53. More Gentiles than Jews _Is._ 54, 1: Rejoice, O barren,
will believe. etc.
"Isaiah" = _Jerem._ 9, 26:
Israel uncircumcised in
heart.
60. The Cross foretold in the _Num._ 21, 8: If ye look at this
brazen serpent. type(_typo_) I believe ye shall
be saved in it (_en auto_).
61. Baptism. _Is._ 1, 16: Wash you ... I
will whiten as wool.
[Sidenote: The God beside the Creator]
What in the _Apology_ is a bare outline, is developed at great length
and with amazing ingenuity in the dialogue with Trypho. We may begin
with the question of a "God beside the Creator."
When Moses wrote in _Genesis_ (1, 26) "And God said, 'Let us make man
in our image after our likeness,'" and again (3, 22) "And the Lord God
said, 'Behold the man is become as one of us,'"[52] why did he use the
plural, unless there is a God beside God? Again, when Sodom is
destroyed why does the holy text say "The Lord rained upon Sodom and
Gomorrha sulphur and fire from the Lord from heaven"?[53] And again in
the _Psalms_ (110) what is meant by "The Lord said unto my Lord"?[54]
and by "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever ... therefore God, thy
God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows?"[55]
The Old Testament abounds in theophanies, which are {188} brought up in
turn. Justin cites the three men who appeared to Abraham--"they were
angels," says Trypho, and a long argument follows to show from the
passage that one of them is not to be explained as an angel,[56] nor of
course as the Creator of all things. Trypho owns this. Justin pauses
at his suggestion to discuss the meal which Abraham had served, but is
soon caught up with the words: "Now, come, show us that this God who
appeared to Abraham and is the servant of God, the Maker of all, was
born of a virgin, and became, as you said, a man of like passions with
all men." But Justin has more evidence to unfold before he reaches
that stage. Without following the discussion as it sways from point to
point, we may take the passage in which he recapitulates this line of
argument. "I think I have said enough, so that, when my God says 'God
went up from Abraham,' or 'The Lord spoke to Moses,' or 'The Lord
descended to see the tower which the sons of men had built,' or 'The
Lord shut the ark of Noah from without,' you will not suppose the
unbegotten God Himself went down or went up. For the ineffable Father
and Lord of all neither comes anywhere, nor 'walks' [as in the garden
of Eden], nor sleeps, nor rises, but abides in his own region wherever
it is, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, but not with eyes or ears, but
by power unspeakable; and he surveys all things and knows all things,
and none of us escapes his notice; nor does he move, nor can space
contain him, no, nor the whole universe, him, who was before the
universe was made."[57]
[Sidenote: The virgin-birth]
Who then was it who walked in the garden, who wrestled with Jacob, who
appeared in arms to Joshua, who spoke with Moses and with Abraham, who
shut Noah into the ark, who was the fourth figure in the fiery furnace?
Scripture gives us a key. Can the Jew say, who it is whom Ezekiel
calls the "angel of great counsel;" and the "man"; whom Daniel
describes "as the Son of man"; whom Isaiah called "child," and David
"Christ" and "God adored"; whom Moses called "Joseph" and "Jacob" and
"the star"; whom Zechariah called "the daystar"; whom {189} Isaiah
again called the "sufferer" (_pathetos_), "Jacob" and "Israel"; whom
others have named "the Rod," "the Flower," "the Chief Corner-stone" and
"the Son of God"?[58] The answer is more clearly given by Solomon in
the eighth chapter of _Proverbs_--it is the Divine Wisdom, to whom all
these names apply. When it is said "Let _us_ make man," it is to be
understood that the Ineffable communicated his design to his Wisdom,
his Logos or Son, and the Son made man. The Son rained upon Sodom the
fire and brimstone from the Father. It was the Son who appeared to men
in all the many passages cited--the Son, Christ the Lord, God and Son
of God--inseparable and unseverable from the Father, His Wisdom and His
Word and His Might (_dynamis_).[59]
But, while all this might be accepted by a Jew, it still seemed to
Trypho that it was "paradoxical, and foolish, too," to say that Christ
could be God before all the ages, and then tolerate to be born a man,
and yet "not a man of men." The offence of the Cross also remained.
The Apologist began by explaining the mysteries of the two comings of
Christ, first in humiliation, and afterwards in glory, as Jacob
prophesied in his last words.[60] For the First Coming Tertullian
quotes Isaiah--"he is led as a sheep to the slaughter"; and the
_Psalms_--"made a little lower than the angels," "a worm and not a
man"; while the Second Coming is to be read of in Daniel and the
forty-fifth _Psalm_, and in the more awful passage of Zechariah "and
then they shall know him whom they pierced."[61] The paschal lamb is a
type of the First Coming--especially as it was to be roasted whole and
trussed like a cross; and the two goats of _Leviticus_ (16) are types
of the two Comings.[62]
"And now," says Justin, "I took up the argument again to show that he
was born of a virgin, and that it had been prophesied by Isaiah that he
should be born of a virgin; and I again recited the prophecy itself.
This is it: 'And the Lord said moreover unto Ahaz, saying: 'Ask for
thyself a sign from the Lord thy God in the depth or in the height.
And Ahaz {190} said: I will not ask nor tempt the Lord. And Isaiah
said: Hear ye then, O house of David! Is it a little thing with you to
strive with men? and how will ye strive with the Lord? Therefore shall
the Lord himself give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and
honey shall he eat. Before he shall either have knowledge or choose
evil, he shall choose good; because, before the child knows evil or
good, he refuses evil to choose good. Because, before the child knows
to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the
spoils of Samaria before the King of the Assyrians. And the land shall
be taken, which thou shalt bear hardly from before the face of two
kings. But God will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon the
house of thy father, days which have never come, from the day when
Ephraim removed from Judah the King of the Assyrians.' And I added,
'That, in the family of Abraham according to the flesh, none has ever
yet been born of a virgin, or spoken of as so born, except our Christ,
is manifest to all.'" It may be noted that the passage is not only
misquoted, but is a combination of clauses from two distinct
chapters.[63] The explanation is perhaps that Justin found it so in a
manual of proof-texts and did not consult the original. Similar
misquotations in other authors have suggested the same explanation.
"Trypho rejoined: 'The scripture has not: Behold the virgin shall
conceive and bear a son; but: Behold the young woman shall conceive and
bear a son: and the rest as you said. The whole prophecy was spoken of
Hezekiah and was fulfilled of him. In the myths of the Greeks it is
said that Perseus was born of Danae, when she was a virgin--after their
so-called Zeus had come upon her in the form of gold. You ought to be
ashamed to tell the same story as they do. You would do better to say
this Jesus was born a man of men, and--if you show from the Scriptures
that he is the Christ--say that it was by his lawful and perfect life
that he was counted worthy of being chosen as Christ. Don't talk
miracles of that kind, or you will be proved to talk folly beyond even
that of the Greeks."'[64]
Trypho has the Hebrew text behind him, which says {191} nothing about a
virgin, though the Septuagint has the word. The sign given to Ahaz has
a close parallel in a prophecy of Muhammad. Before he became known, an
old man foretold that a great prophet should come, and on being
challenged for a sign he pointed to a boy lying in rugs by the
camp-fire--"That boy should _see_ the prophet"; and he did. Isaiah's
sign is much the same; a young woman shall conceive and have a son, and
before that son is two or three years old, Damascus and Syria will fall
before the King of Assyria.
But Justin and the Apologists are not to be diverted. As for Danae,
the Devil (_diabolos_) has there anticipated the fulfilment of God's
prophecy, as in many other instances, _e.g._:--Dionysus rode an ass, he
rose from the dead and ascended to heaven; Herakles is a parody of the
verse in _Psalm_ xix--the strong man rejoicing to run a race, a
Messianic text; AEsculapius raised the dead; and the cave of Mithras is
Daniel's "stone cut without hands from the great mountains." "I do not
believe your teachers; they will not admit that the seventy elders of
Ptolemy, King of Egypt, translated well, but they try to translate for
themselves. And I should like you to know that they have cut many
passages out of the versions made by Ptolemy's elders which prove
expressly that this man, who was crucified, was prophesied of as God
and man, crucified and slain. I know that all your race deny this; so,
in discussions of this kind I do not quote those passages, but I have
recourse to such as come from what you still acknowledge."[65] The
objection to the rendering "young woman" is that it completely
nullifies the sign given to Ahaz, for children are born of young women
every day--"what would really be a sign and would give confidence to
mankind,--to wit, that the firstborn of all creations should take flesh
and really be born a child of a virgin womb--that was what he
proclaimed beforehand by the prophetic spirit."[66]
The whole story is parable. It would be absurd to suppose that an
infant could be a warrior and reduce great states. The spoils are
really the gifts of the Magi, as is indicated by passages in Zechariah
("he shall gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and
silver," 14, 14) and the seventy second _Psalm_ ("Kings of the Arabs
and of Saba shall bring {192} gifts to him; and to him shall be given
gold from the East"). Samaria again is a common synonym with the
prophets for idolatry. Damascus means the revolt of the Magi from the
evil daemon who misdirected their arts to evil. The King of Assyria
stands, says Justin, for King Herod, and so says Tertullian, writing
against Marcion, though in the tract _Against the Jews_ (if it is
Tertullian's) he says the devil is intended.[67] The usual passages
from Micah and Jeremiah are cited to add Bethlehem and the Murder of
the infants to the prophetic story.
"At this Trypho, with some hint of annoyance, but overawed by the
Scriptures, as his face showed, said to me: 'God's words are holy, but
your expositions [or translations] are artificial--or blasphemous, I
should say.'"[68]
To complete the proof, it is shown that the very name of Jesus was
foretold. When Moses changed the name of his successor from _Auses_ to
_Jesus_, it was a prophecy, as Scripture shows. "The Lord said unto
Moses: Say to this people, Behold I send my angel before thy face that
he may guard thee in the way, that he may lead thee into the land that
I have prepared for thee. Give heed unto him ... for he will not let
thee go, for my name is in him."[69] This is confirmed by Zechariah's
account of the High Priest Joshua. Furthermore, the chronology of the
book of Daniel, when carefully worked out, proves to have contained the
prediction of the precise date at which Christ should come, and at that
precise date Christ came.
Barnabas discovers another prophecy of Jesus in an unlikely place.
"Learn, children of love," he says," that Abraham, who first gave
circumcision, looked forward in spirit unto Jesus, when he circumcised,
for he received dogmata in three letters. For it saith: And Abraham
circumcised of his house men 18 and 300. What then was the knowledge
given unto him? Mark that it says 18 first, and then after a pause
300. 18 [IH in Greek notation] there thou hast Jesus. And because the
cross in T [= 300 in Greek notation] was to have grace, it {193} saith
300 as well. It shows Jesus in the two letters, and in the one the
cross."[70]
We now reach the prophecies of the cross, and, as the method is plain,
a few references may suffice, taken this time from Tertullian (_c._
10):--
_Genesis_ 22, 6: Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice of himself.
_Genesis_ 37, 28: Joseph sold by his brethren.
_Deuteronomy_ 33,17: Moses' blessing of Joseph. (The unicorn's horns,
with some arrangement, form a cross: cf. _Psalm_ 22).
_Exodus_ 17, 11: Moses with his arms spread wide.
_Numbers_ 21, 9: The brazen serpent.
_Psalm_ 96, 10: The Lord hath reigned _from the tree, e ligno_ (though
the Jews have cut out the last words).
_Isaiah_ 9, 6: The government upon his shoulder.
_Jeremiah_ 11, 19: Let us cast wood (_lignum_) into his bread.
_Isaiah_ 53, 8, 9: For the transgression of my people is he stricken
... and his sepulture is taken from the midst (_i.e._ the resurrection).
_Amos_ 8, 9: I will cause the sun to go down at noon.
For a long time before Justin was done with his exposition, Trypho was
silent--the better part, perhaps, in all controversy. At last, writes
Justin, "I finished. Trypho said nothing for a while, and then he
said, 'You see, we came to the controversy unprepared. Still, I own, I
am greatly pleased to have met you, and I think my friends have the
same feeling. For we have found more than we expected,--or anyone
could have expected. If we could do it at more length, we might be
better profited by looking into the passages themselves. But, since
you are on the point of sailing and expect to embark every day now,--be
sure you think of us as friends, if you go.'"[71] So, with kindly
feelings, Trypho went away unconvinced. And there were others, as
clear of mind, who were as little convinced,--Marcion, for instance,
and Celsus. "The more reasonable among Jews and Christians," says
Celsus, "try to allegorize them [the Scriptures], but they are beyond
being {194} allegorized and are nothing but sheer mythology of the
silliest type. The supposed allegories that have been made are more
disgraceful than the myths and more absurd, in their endeavour to
string together what never can in any way be harmonized--it is folly
positively wonderful for its utter want of perception."[72] The modern
reader may not be so ready as Origen was to suggest that Celsus
probably had Philo in mind.[73]
[Sidenote: Results]
It is clear that, in the endeavour to give Christianity a historical
background and a prophetic warrant, the Apologists lost all
perspective.[74] The compelling personality of Jesus receded behind
the vague figure of the Christ of prophecy; and, in their
pre-occupation with what they themselves called "types and shadows,"
men stepped out of the sunlight into the shade and hardly noticed the
change. Yet there is still among the best of them the note of love of
Jesus--"do not speak evil of the crucified," pleads Justin, "nor mock
at his stripes, whereby all may be healed, as _we_ have been
healed."[75] And after all it was an instinct for the truth and
universal significance of Jesus that carried them away. He must be
eternal; and they, like the men of their day, thought much of the
beginning and the end of creation, and perhaps found it easier than we
do,--certainly more natural,--to frame schemes under which the Eternal
Mind might manifest itself. Eschatology, purpose, foreknowledge,
pervade their religious thought, and they speak with a confidence which
the centuries since the Renaissance have made more and more impossible
for us, who find it hard enough to be sure of the fact without
adventuring ourselves in the possibilities that lie around it. None
the less the centre of interest was the same for them as for us--what
_is_ the significance of Jesus of Nazareth? For them the facts of his
life and of his mind had often less value than the fancy that they
fulfilled prophecy; Celsus said outright that the Christians altered
them, and there is some evidence that, in the accommodation of prophecy
and history, {195} the latter was sometimes over-developed. For us,
the danger is the opposite; we risk losing sight of the eternal
significance in our need of seeing clearly the historic lineaments.
In the conflict of religions, Christianity had first to face Judaism,
and, though the encounter left its record upon the conquering faith, it
secured its freedom from the yoke of the past. It gained background
and the broadening of the historic imagination. It made the prophets
and psalmists of Israel a permanent and integral part of Christian
literature--and in all these ways it became more fit to be the faith of
mankind, as it deepened its hold upon the universal religious
experience. Yet it did so at the cost of a false method which has
hampered it for centuries, and of a departure (for too long a time)
from the simplicity and candour of the mind of Jesus. In seeking to
recover that mind to-day we commit ourselves to the belief that it is
sufficient, and that, when we have rid ourselves of all that in the
course of ages has obscured the great personality, in proportion as we
regain his point of view, we shall find once more (in the words of a
far distant age) that his spirit will guide us into all truth.