found in the later Jewish apocalypses, but not in the Old Testament:
1. The coming of the Son of Man as judge of men and angels at the last
day, which is always thought to be near at hand. 2. The reign on earth
of Messiah and his saints, the living and the risen dead, for a
certain period, during which they will overcome all the powers of
evil. 3. The immortality of the spirit, the transformation of the
righteous into angelic natures, fitting them to be companions of
heavenly beings in the final consummation. For our understanding of
these hopes and for our decision as to their truth and value it is
necessary to look at them as they arise in Jewish writings and not
only in their appearance in the New Testament.
The Son of Man appears first in Daniel, but there he is not an
individual, but the symbol of a nation, "the people of the saints of
the Most High"; and the vision pictures Israel as coming on a cloud,
not from heaven, but to God, to receive from him authority to rule
over the world. It is first in a part of the Book of Enoch, the
"Parables," chapters 37-71, dating probably from the reign of Herod,
that Daniel's "Son of Man" becomes an individual. It is important to
understand the religion of this writer in order to appreciate the
significance of this heavenly Messiah. His religion consists in faith
in the reality of a spiritual world which is destined to displace the
present world and to be the blessed abode of the righteous. God is
"the Lord of Spirits," and the voice of Isaiah's seraphim becomes,
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Spirits: he filleth the earth with
spirits." The sin of the kings and mighty of the earth is that they
deny the Lord of Spirits and the hidden dwelling places of the
righteous. This is a religion of faith in heaven and its God and its
angelic inhabitants, and in the destiny of the righteous soon to share
its beauty and blessedness. Among those whom Enoch sees there, one is
above all significant for man. He has the appearance of a man, with a
face of graciousness and beauty, like an angel's. He is described as
the Son of Man to whom righteousness and wisdom belong. He has existed
from before the creation, and has been revealed to the righteous.
Faith in him and hope for his coming have sustained the righteous in
times of trouble, and by faith in him and in the Lord of Spirits and
the heavenly dwelling places, they "have hated and despised the world
of unrighteousness and have hated all its works and ways." Here is a
religion of pure other-worldliness. The calling of this heavenly Son
of Man is to be the judge of the world at the last day. He will then
"sit on the throne of his glory," will "choose the righteous and holy"
from among the risen dead, will condemn and send away to destruction
the kings and mighty of the earth, who because of their unbelief in
the unseen world have been proud and worldly and unjust. The righteous
will dwell in the new heaven and earth, with the Lord of Spirits over
them and the Son of Man as their companion, having been clothed with
garments of glory and immortal life. The likeness between this
religion and the apocalyptic type of New Testament Christianity is
striking. But it is not Christian because it is without Jesus himself.
This Son of Man has not already come and lived among men. The
righteous have not learned of him that God is in this world as well as
in the other, that he is a God of human beings, even the lowliest, and
of birds and grass, of rain and growth. They have not learned that
good is already stronger than evil; least of all do they know the
greatest thing, that love is supreme, and that not by hating the world
and its ways but by the ministry of love is the new world to be
brought in. The religion of Enoch presents in pure and simple form, in
pre-Christian Judaism, just that religion of dualism and pessimism, of
despair of the present and the renunciation of effort to better the
world, of strained expectation of divine intervention, which
sometimes, and even now in some quarters, claims to be the only true
Christianity. It is, in fact, Christianity with Christ left out.
The second element which the apocalypses add to the hope of the Old
Testament and which the New Testament Apocalypse adopts, is the
conception of a millennial earthly kingdom. This appears in probably
an earlier part of Enoch, chapters 91-104. In a short Apocalypse of
Weeks, after seven weeks of world-history up to the writer's present,
an eighth week is predicted, in which the righteous shall wield the
sword against their oppressors and establish the Messianic kingdom;
then a ninth week in which the preaching of judgment to come will
convert all men to righteousness; finally, a tenth week of final
judgment against all angelic powers of evil, ending with a new heaven
and an eternity of blessedness.
It is not only the fact that here and elsewhere these two hopes are
proved to be Jewish, not Christian, in origin, that influences our
judgment on them when they reappear in the New Testament; it is also
the understanding of them which their Jewish form makes possible. They
are two forms of adjusting the old national and earthly hope of Israel
to a new, more universal and transcendent form of faith and hope. In
the religion of the "Parables" of Enoch the transcendent practically
transforms and displaces the earthly. In the millennial scheme, the
heavenly follows the earthly in time. Resurrection enables some of the
dead to have part in the earthly, while translation into angel-like,
immortal natures fits men for the final heavenly life. The
understanding of the origin and purpose of these hopes makes it
unnatural and irrational to regard them as literal disclosures of the
unseen world and of future events.
The third hope which Judaism added to what its sacred scriptures
contained was the hope for immortality of the spirit. It happens that
this also appears earliest in Judaism in the Book of Enoch (especially
chapters 102-104). Enoch solemnly assures his readers that he has seen
it written in heavenly books that joy and glory are prepared for the
spirits of those who have died in righteousness. This is not a
resurrection of the body to enable one to have a share in the earthly
kingdom, but a transformation which fits men for the realm of spirits.
When we turn in the light of the older hopes to the New Testament and
ask what are the hopes that belong properly to Christianity, and how
are they related to the present hopes of the world, we meet the
problem presented by the importance of properly apocalyptical
expectations in the first Christian community. The case is something
like that which meets us in the Old Testament, and we have here no
less than there to distinguish and to choose. The hope of the early
Christian community was no doubt first of all for the physical coming
of Christ and the establishment of his kingdom; but there developed
also within the New Testament period two movements away from this, one
in an ethical and spiritual direction, and the other toward emphasis
on the individual life after death. The first of these is more
characteristic of the New Testament religion than the other. It is the
tendency of Paul to emphasize the present inward experience of Christ,
and the transforming power of his spirit more than the hope of his
coming, though he receives this from primitive Christianity and does
not doubt its literal and early fulfilment. It is, I believe, beyond
question that Paul's Christian hope is chiefly, as Royce has argued,
the hope for a new humanity created by the spirit of Christ, which is
the spirit of love. This is in a measure already experienced. Christ
dwells in the Christian and makes him a center and source of love. His
spirit breaks down barriers and ends divisions. Unity and peace are
its effects. Through this one, present spirit of Christ each man
becomes a distinct but essential member of the new body; and Paul's
greatest hope is for the completion of this unification of man in
mutual helpfulness and brotherhood. Paul attests also the other
tendency away from the outward future coming of Christ to the hope for
a life with Christ and like Christ's after death. This eternal life
with Christ is also experienced by Paul as in some real sense present.
The indwelling spirit of Christ is already transforming the Christian
into his own immortal nature. In the Johannine writings these two
tendencies of hope away from the apocalyptic toward the spiritual go
still further. The Christ in whom the Christian now abides creates a
distinctive unity among his disciples, a love one to another which the
world has not known; and at the same time the experience of this
present Christ is already the possession of eternal life. According to
this which we might call the prophetic in distinction from the
apocalyptic hope of the New Testament the new world of human unity in
love and cooperation is to be brought about not only by the present
spirit of Christ, but also by the moral choice and endeavor of man. It
is through human love that the divine love works, and the rule of God
is present so far as men overcome evil and create good. And even the
immortal life is not solely a hope in God, but is to be attained by
each soul here and now through its choice of the will of God and in
the degree of its moral oneness with God.
That which most concerns us is no doubt the question which of these
hopes, the eschatological or the ethical and inward, was held and
taught by Christ. My own conviction is that the new and distinct hope,
the spiritual, belongs to him and proceeds from him, and not the
familiar Jewish apocalyptic. Two opinions stand in the way of this
judgment; two opposite types of literalism in Biblical interpretation.
Dogmatic literalism accepts scripture throughout, and refuses to
distinguish between higher and lower, between truth and error, in what
is written. In regard to hope, this view leads to great stress on
prediction and fulfilment. The assumption is that the Biblical
predictions that have not been fulfilled will come to pass in the
future. This is precisely a fundamental assumption of the apocalypse.
It is solely upon this conception of scripture that many devout
Christians rest their expectations of the outward coming of Christ and
his thousand-year reign on earth, just as the same idea of Biblical
predictions leads orthodox Jews to expect that Jerusalem will be the
capital and Israel the ruling nation of the world. This literalism
stands in the way of the world's present acceptance of Christianity as
the religion of its highest hopes.
But there is a like danger in the opposite literalism of the
historian. We have already seen how the history of Jewish hopes makes
the literal acceptance of similar New Testament hopes unnatural if not
impossible. The literalism of the historian is, of course, to us true
and immediately helpful in liberating us from bondage to the letter of
an ancient book. It leaves us free to apply our own reason and
conscience and experience to the interpretation of our own life and
times. It turns us back upon our own souls, upon our faith, our
desire, our will, to unveil and shape the future. But the historian is
in danger of doing less than justice to the ethical and spiritual
contents of the hopes of the Bible because of his very love of truth
and willingness to sacrifice his wishes to it. The unpardonable sin to
him is the modernizing of an ancient writing because of reverence for
it, and the effort to find in it what he likes rather than things
outgrown and unwelcome. This conscientious fear, I cannot but believe,
has resulted in a one-sided interpretation of the New Testament,
especially the teachings of Jesus and of Paul, as essentially
apocalyptic in contents and spirit, and a hesitation to recognize the
essentially inward, rational and ethical quality, the prophetic
character of the New Testament as a whole, and to make due allowance
for the ease and naturalness with which the current apocalyptic ideas
of early Jewish Christians could persist and be applied to Jesus and
attributed to him.
This problem over which New Testament scholars are divided into two
groups or tendencies is of course much too complicated to discuss
here. But it is necessary at least to point out that there is a danger
in the historian's anxiety to be without prejudice, and to view the
past as past. The greatness of great men and great books is to be
found in the eternal meaning, not in the mere form, of what they say.
Historians no less than other men have the right and duty to ask in
what direction an ancient teacher is looking, toward what goal the
movement of his mind is tending, what final effects he produced, what
therefore he would think and say if he lived in our time. We are told
that it is unhistorical to seek in the New Testament for "the modern
liberal Christ"; but it is not unhistorical to look for the human
beneath the Jewish, the eternal and universal within the temporary and
limited. The mind of Christ, his manner and mood, his quality, his
spirit, is not less a historical reality than his literal words. This
is of course true also of Paul, and, in his measure, of every man.
There can be no doubt that like the great prophets before him Jesus
was chiefly a critic and corrector of the hopes of his time. He did
not approve the national hopes that had been kindled by the Maccabean
kingdom and were soon to issue in the suicidal revolt against Rome.
Whether Jesus expected the speedy coming of the Son of Man and the end
of the world, and whether he identified himself with this transcendent
Messiah-Judge, are questions made difficult, not by our wishes, but by
the nature of the evidence. My own inclination is, at this point, to
attribute more to the influence of Jewish expectations on the gospel
traditions than to Jesus' own words. What seems to me certain is that
the bearing of the teaching of Jesus was in the direction of the
spiritual hopes of Paul and John rather than the apocalyptic hopes
which they still held in common with the first disciples.
It is the fundamental principle of the apocalyptic hope that God made
not one world but two (II Esdras 7:50). This world must end and
the other world must come if evil is to end and good prevail. But
Jesus believed that this world is already God's world, and that in it
good is already stronger than evil. The Kingdom of God is indeed still
to come, but it is already within. It is already upon us when by the
spirit of God evil is cast out. It has been said that it was the
Greeks who believed in one world in contrast to the Jews who believed
in two; and that Poseidonius, the Platonic Stoic, an oriental, of the
century before Christ, wrote to make men at home in the universe. But
it is surely not a mistake to say that Jesus felt at home in the world
and meant to make others at home. This is precisely the meaning of the
word Father, of which Paul testifies that Jesus' use was to a Jew new,
and that it meant freedom from mental bondage and fear. Poseidonius
made men feel at home in the universe by denying the existence of
evil, which is of course one way of making one world out of two; Jesus
by affirming the reality of a goodness in God and in man capable of
conquering evil. That God is Father, the Father of all men, even, and
especially, of sinners, is not the basis of an apocalyptic hope. Jesus
did not chiefly foretell the end of the world through the catastrophic
intervention of God or of the Son of Man. He did chiefly teach that
the power not ourselves is fatherly, that it is human, that we can
trust our own souls at their best to teach us the nature of God, that
our highest human values are the ultimate realities of the universe.
Jesus found that the chief fears and hopes of men were concerned with
bodily welfare and possessions and with power over others. Mammon and
dominion were the false gods men worshipped. Wealth and power seem now
the objects of the hope and the religious devotion of the Central
Powers. Jesus declared that it is the heathen who are anxious about
food and raiment. It is the heathen who lord it over their fellow men.
Not so was it to be among his disciples. Since the Father knows our
needs and wills to give good things, since the outer world belongs to
him and since the things of the soul are of the greater value, we men
are free to put first things first, to seek God's Kingdom and
righteousness. And since God's rule consists in love and in doing
good, without reserve or regard for deserts or for returns, the only
real rulership among men also must be the renunciation of rulership
for the sake of ministry. Not to be masters over others, not to be
strong by making others weak, but to serve and to give is the divine
plan, the real nature of things. This is not what the war lords learn
from physical and animal nature as to the way to success and primacy,
but it is true to that human nature to which they do violence. The
Christian hope is therefore not for material possessions nor for
authority and power; it is that spiritual realities shall vindicate
and make effectual their preeminence, and shall master matter and all
outward things for their own ends; and that unselfish love shall
measure greatness among men and shall destroy hatred and fear and
create a human family.
If this, according to Christ, is the Christian hope, then Christianity
is certainly the religion for the present hope of the world. The hope
of a league of free nations, of a federated world in which democracy
is safe, is clearly seen by those who see best what it involves and
what obstacles stand in its way to be first of all the hope for a new
spirit among men, a new inward temper, a new will; it is also seen to
be something universal in its range. Not again one league against
another, but a league that at least aims at being inclusive of
humanity. Spirituality and universality, inwardness and good-will,
belong to the hope that is now inspiring the nations; and these are
just the marks of the religion of Christ; they are what Matthew Arnold
called the method of inwardness and the secret of self-renouncement,
controlled by the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ;
reverence for the soul, meaning both the preeminent worth of every
individual and the primacy in each of the things of the soul; and
among these the chief greatness and God-likeness of love. However one
attempts to sum up the religion of Jesus it is sure to mean in the end
the same two things which the world now sees to be its great needs and
the ground and heart of its hope.
It would be tragic indeed if Christianity should lose its supreme
opportunity by failing to lead and inspire this newly emerging and
Christ-like hope of men. It can fail if it confuses itself in the
details of Biblical predictions, if it becomes involved in apocalyptic
fancies. It can fail if in reaction against these and under the
influence of an equally literalistic criticism men turn from the Bible
altogether as a book of the past.
The men of our time are shaping the hope of a united and friendly
human family of free peoples, united not only against war but for all
kinds of mutual help and cooperative progress; and the Bible, the
prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus and Paul in the New, are the
chief creative sources of just such hopes. These hopes must have
religion beneath them if they are to endure and be realized in spite
of their powerful foes, the fears and hatreds which materialism and
selfishness create. And Christianity is the only religion which has
the quality and the right to meet this need.
The Christian hope is also the hope of immortality; and just now the
reality and power of this hope are put to the test. Paul, who knew how
far Judaism had gone toward faith in the eternal life of the spirit,
testifies that it was only as a Christian and because of Christ that
this hope had become to him a certainty, almost a present experience.
The nature of God as Christ knew him, and the nature of man's sonship
to God, carry immortality with them as an inward and immediate
assurance. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Here
again the Christian religion has an opportunity and an obligation in
times of war. Men are seeking assurance of life to come for those who
have given their lives for human right and liberty. It is not to be
desired that this pressing religious need of our day should turn to
physical evidences, to messages from the dead through abnormal
experiences and dubious agencies. The Christian faith in immortality
is to be experienced as faith in the God who loves as a father, and
who gives as love must give his best to his children. If God is love,
then our love does not deceive us. If God is spirit, then our spirits
are from God and will return to him. If the soul, the person, is of
supreme worth and reality, then it will not be involved in the body's
destruction, nor lost as a drop in the ocean or as a breath in the
wind, either in the divine being from whom it came, or in the human
race, "the beloved community," to which its service is given.
It is perhaps in the relation to each other of the hope for a new
human brotherhood and the hope for the life of the soul with God, that
the distinction and preeminence of the religion of Jesus come most
clearly to light. He feels no need of sacrificing one to the other,
but holds his hope for this world and the oneness of men in love side
by side with the hope for the other world. He does call upon
individuals to give their lives in ministry to others, but in the
losing of life he declares that life is gained. Paradoxes express his
faith and insight, and the nature of love in God and in man brings
with it the key to the solution of the paradox.
The Christian hopes for a new human brotherhood on earth and for the
immortality of the individual are involved, and their principles
given, in the simple and profound sayings of Jesus, and no other
testimony as to their nature and certainty can be compared with his.
To no other words is the response of our own spirits so instant and
sure. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure
in heart: theirs is the kingdom of heaven; they shall see God. Love
your enemies, that ye may be sons of your Father. Ye shall be perfect
as your heavenly Father is perfect. Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Be not anxious
for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for
your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food and the
body than raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven ... Are not ye of
much more value than they? Your Father knoweth that ye have need of
all these things. But seek ye his kingdom and righteousness. Be not
afraid of them that kill the body. The very hairs of your head are all
numbered. Fear not therefore. If ye being evil know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father give good
things to them that ask him. All things whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them. Not every one that
saith unto me, Lord ... but he that doeth the will of my Father.
Freely ye have received, freely give. It is more blessed to give than
to receive. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth
his life for my sake shall find it. I thank thee, Father ... that thou
hast hid these things from the wise ... and revealed them unto babes.
Except ye turn and become as little children ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven. Forbid them not ... for to such belongeth
the kingdom of heaven. What shall a man be profited if he shall gain
the whole world and forfeit his life? It is hard for the rich man to
enter into the kingdom of God. Keep yourselves from all covetousness:
for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which
he possesseth. The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, ... but
whosoever would be great among you shall be your minister; and
whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant. Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are
God's. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my
brethren ye did it unto me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou
wilt. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.