T'HSEO NO F GOD BYK ARLA DAM TRANSLATBEYD P HILIP HEREFORD NEW YORK SHEE&D W ARD 1934 FIRSPTU BLISHMEADY,,1 934 BYS HEEADN DW ARD FROM6 3F IFTAHV ENUE NEWY ORKC ITY PRINTIENDT HEU .S .A . BYT HEP OLYGRAPCHOIMCP ANOYF A MERICA NEW YORKC ITY NIHIOLB STAATR:T HUJR. S CANLAN, S.T.D. CENSOLRI BRORUM IMPRIMAT�U RP:A TRICCAKR DINHAALY ES ARCHBISHNOEPW, Y ORK NEW YORKA,P RI2L2 ,1 934 Copyrgihti nt hUe. S .A . CONTENTS CHAP. P.\GE I.CHRIASNTD T HEM ANO FT O-DAY • II.T HEW AYO FF AITH 22 lllT.H ES OURCFEOSRT HEL IFOEF J ESUS 49 IV.THEM ENTASLT ATUORFEJ ESUS V. THEI NTERLIIOFROE F J ESUS . 134 VI.THES ELF-REVEOLFAJ TEISOUNS • 571 VIIT.HER ESURRECO'J'FIC OHNR IST • 207 • 263 vm. THEA TONEME•N T CHRIST AND THE MAN OF TO-DAY Dostoevsky, in the draft for his novel The Possessed, makes hishero declare that the mostpressing questionin " the problem of faith is whether a man, as a civilised being, as a European, can believe at all, believe that is in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests, strictly speaking, the whole faith." To Dostoevsky, therefore, theproblem offaith is essentially the problem of the Godhead of Christ, and the racking question of the present time is whether the man of to-day can venture such a belief. Dostoevsky's question is in great part that which we shall have to consider in these pages, though it is certainly not the whole question. For the mystery of Christ does not lie in the fact that he is God, but that he is God-man. The great wonder, the incredible thing, is not only that the majesty of God shone in . Christ's countenance, but that God became true man, that he, the God, appeared in human form. The Christian gospel announces primarily not an ascent of humanity to the heights of the divine in a transfigura- tion, an apotheosis, a deification of human nature, but a descent of the Godhead, of the divine Word, to the state of bondage of the purely human. This is the " kernel of the primitive Christian message. The THE SON OF GOD 2 " Word was made flesh and dwelt among us he ; " emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and in habit found as a " man (Phil. ii. 7). Hence it is just as important to establish that Christ is full and complete man, that for all the hypostatic union with the Godhead, he possessed not only a human body but also a purely human soul, a purely human will, a purely human consciousness, a purely human emotional life, that in the full and true sense he became as one of us, as it is to establish the other proposition, namely, that this manis God. Indeed, the doctrine ofthe divinity of Christ first acquires from the other doctrine Christ is full and perfect man its specifically Christianimprintandits specifically Christian form; its essential difference from all pagan apotheoses and saviour gods. The belief in a divine Logos operative throughout creation was not foreign to enlightened pagandom. Moreover, the belief that the Godhead could manifest itselfin human form is not infrequently a constituent of pagan mythologies. But in all these pagan incarnations the purely human loses its individual significance, its individual value. It becomes an empty husk, a phantom of the divine. Docetism runs in the blood ofall those mythologies. Of quite another kind is the Christian mystery of die Incarnation. The humanity of Christ is here not an illusion ; its purpose is not merely to make the divine visible ; itis not simply the perceptible form in which the Godhead presents itself to us, the perceptible point at which the divine flames forth. On CHRIST AND THE MAN OF TO-DAY 3 the contrary, the humanity of Christ has its own dis- tinctive form, its own distinctive function. It is pre- cisely in virtue of its human quality that it is the way, the means, the sacrament by which God draws near to us and redeems us. In the whole range of religious history we can find no analogue to this fundamental Christian doctrine of the redemptive significance of Christ's humanity. The redeemership of Christ rests on the fact that he who previously was " with God " had now become perfect and complete man and in this humanityand byvirtue ofitis the source ofall blessings. Not one of the apostles has seen this more clearly or stressed it more emphatically than St. Paul. Since God's own Son took to himselfhuman nature, he entered, sin always excepted, into the association, into the solidarity of the human race. By becoming man he became our brother, indeed the first-born ofthe brothers, not merely a man like us, but the man, the new man, the second Adam. All that this new man thinks and wills, suffers and does, he thinks and wills and suffers and does in solidarity with us, really sharing in every way our destiny in life, in death, and in resurrection. Funda- mentally regarded his thoughts, actions, suffering, and resurrection are ours also. And our redemption con- sists in this, that by the mysterious process of baptism we are linked in the very essence of our being there- fore not merely in our thoughts, intentions, acts, but in what we are with this incarnate God, through the whole range ofhis historical reality from the crib to the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension. THE SON OF GOD 4 Thisiswhatitmeanstoberedeemed,tobeaChristian ; to be taken up into mutual participation in his life, passion, and resurrection; with the first-born of our brothers, with the Head of the body, with the totality ofhisredemptiveactivity; tobecomearealunity,anew community, a single body, his fulness and completeness. The Redeemer is that Man who by virtue of the mys- terious relation ofhis being with the Godhead, through the oneness of his person with the Eternal Word, assumes and bears within himselfthe whole ofhumanity with its need ofredemption. He is the living unity of the redeemed, that ultimate supreme principle on which the body of the redeemed is founded and in which it is united. ThisiswhytheIncarnation oftheEternal Word stands at the very centre of Christianity. In this world era, Christian interest, properly speaking, is focussed not in the sphere of the Godhead, nor in that of the pre-existent Word purely as such, but in this Man Jesus, who through the union of his being with the Godhead has become by his death and resurrection our Mediator, our Redeemer, and our Saviour. St. Paul gets to the heart of Christianity when he solemnly declares : " There is one God, and one mediator ofGod and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a " redemption for all (i Tim. ii. 5 sq.}. -In his epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 14 sg.) he enlists liturgical images to help describe this same essential core of Christianity. " Having therefore a great high-priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God ... we have not a high-priest who cannot have compassion on our CHRIST AND THE MAN OF TO-DAY 5 infirmities, but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin." So long as this world endures, the divine majesty of his Godhead will not to Christian piety be the out- " standing feature in the figure ofChrist. I say in the figure of Christ." It is true that the infinitely exalted Godhead, the triune God, he ^hom we men call our Father, Creator ofheaven and earth, is and will ever be the unique and most sublime object of Christian devo- tionand Christianworship. /' Ourprayershouldalways be directed to the Father," is the way St. Augustine formulates this primary law of the Christian liturgy. " The hour now is when the true adorers shall adore the " Father in spirit and in truth (John iv. 23). But the adoration of the Father takes place through Christ our Lord. Of this adoration the incarnate Son is the " " mediator. Through Thy Servant was the primitive Christian formula. St. Paul prayed " in the Name of Jesus," and our liturgy still raises its voice to heaven " through Jesus Christ our Lord." Almost all the liturgical prayers of the Church are addressed not directly to Christ but through Christ to God the Father. And even in places where they supplicate Christ directly they have not in mind the pre-existent divine Word purely as such, but the Mediator, the Word made flesh. Here is the decisive point where the true essence of Christianity is most brilliantly illuminated and where all distortions and perversions of the Christian teaching are at once revealed. Since the essence ofthe Christian faith culminates in the paradox, God's Son is true Man ; THE SON OF GOD 6 since thesublimityand daringoriginality ofthe Christian confession consists precisely in this, that the two anti- thetical components of the Christ figure are embraced in one view and seen as one, a misrepresentation of Christ, and of Christianity, threatens directly one of these components is seen and affirmed by itself; and whenever in the mystery of Christ his human or divine nature is exclusively or falsely stressed, the mystery of the Redemption is misrepresented and therewith the whole of Christian devotion is distorted and misdirected. In the list of such distortions a prominent place is taken by the Jesuanismus1 of liberal theology. It fails to recognize the Divine in the Christ figure. It does not see Christ the God-man, but only Jesus the Man. All testimonies to the Divinity of Christ it sets down as fables imagined by the Christian community or regards as mythical. It has for its explicit aim to snatch from the " shoulders ofthe simple Teacher ofNazareth the heavy " mantle of gold brocade which the veneration of his disciples has woven for him ; that is to say, the glory and splendour of his Divinity. According to Jesu- anismus it is sufficient for true Christian piety to see in the bare humanity ofJesus God's creative love at work. Since Jesus is wholly and completely Man and nothing but Man, his sublime appearance has the effect of a transparency ofthe Divine. Thus he redeems us not by 1 The word Jesuanismus has no precise English equivalent. The meaning is obvious emphasis on the Man Jesus at the expense ofthe Christ. TV. CHRIST AND THE MAN OF TO-DAY 7 virtue of a mystical, incomprehensible act of sacrifice, but by his simple service to God and to men. Jesus is the bringer of a new religious sentiment, of a new morality. He it was who gave to humanity a new heart and a new conscience.' Only in this sense can and may we call him our Redeemer. Plausible and pious as all these statements about Jesus sound, and cleverly as they are assimilated to certain formularies of the Christian faith, they have nothingto do with Christianityanditsdogma. Jesuanis- mus stands outside the orbit of Christian teaching and, as we shall see, outside that ofhistorical reality. IfJesus were merely man and not God-man, then historical Christianity, whichinits fightagainstArianism defended as jealously the identity of the Son with the Father as, against the Monophysites, it did his identity with us, would have been one colossal illusion. And it would have been an idle playing with emptywords still to talk of Redemption. IfJesus were merely man and nothing else, what he could give us would be only human, human with all its limitations and fallibility. No, Jesuanismus is an emptied soulless Christianity, a faith from which the heart has been cut out. Though there is no such deformation ofthe Christian message, there is, nevertheless, a slight but definite distortionofitwhen,eventhoughtheoldgospelofChrist the God-man is believed and preached in its entirety, a wrong stress is placed on the redemptive significance ofthe divine and human elements in Christ, and when the accent is laid exclusively on the divinity and the