1

Academy, the pride of the Portico, the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.1

Where the great prophets expressed the divine character in divers ways, Jesus was the "image" of the Redeeming God (Heb. 1:1-3; cf. I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 4:4). He was the embodiment, or "incarnation," of the God of the Bible. In him was condensed the entire process of spiritual evolution represented by the Old Testament. While men have differed about the "incarnation" as a matter of theology, or metaphysics, it has worked steadily onward in human history, whether it has been understood or not. Jesus did something new-something peculiar to himself. Before his time, the Bible idea of God was not a living reality in the world at large. Heathenism was practically supreme. The gentiles were ignorant of Bible religion; and that religion was kept alive among the Jews chiefly by the momentum of their " groupinterests." We know, of course, that much genuine faith and piety existed among the Jews; but this faith was not calculated to be the rallying-point for a triumphant religious campaign throughout the earth. Modern people have a tendency to imagine that God seemed the same before the Christian era that he does now, and that the world "before Christ" looked the same as it looks now; but this is a mistake. For just as the world assumes a new character in the eyes of the lover; just as life appears different when viewed from the standpoint of some great success; in the same way, God and the world look different in Christian civilization than they did in preChristian times. The spiritual atmosphere of Christendom is created by Jesus.2

Christianity will always be hard for the rationalist to define because it is primarily "personal."-If we approach Christianity in search of some distinctive theology, or philosophy, we 'Macaulay, Essay on Milton, par. 38. Italics ours.

2 The name "Jesus" is a Hellenized form of the Hebrew Joshua, meaning “Yahweh is salvation." This was a well-known Hebrew name.

miss its meaning as a fresh, original fact in social evolution. The difficulty of explaining it from the rational standpoint, as a collection of doctrines, has prompted the somewhat misleading statement that, after all, Christianity is not a doctrine but a "life." As a fact in the history of the world, it is neither a "life" nor a "doctrine": It is partnership with God, through Jesus, in the redemption of the world. It is Jesus making the God of the Bible a reality to mankind. Christianity, then, is first of all a "personal" experience; and it is hard to define just because it has this inner, subjective, psychological, character. It means the projection into gentile society of the spiritual evolution that went on among the Hebrews. means the appropriation of the Redeeming God of Israel by the non-Jewish world. Christianity, of course, has its doctrinal, theological aspect; but this is not Christianity as a dynamic fact of history. Sociology, therefore, is concerned with Christianity, not from the doctrinal point of view, but as a movement linking the history of Israel to the history of the world.

It

Jesus identified "knowledge of God" with doing the divine will.-In the New Testament, the word for "knowledge" is not used merely in the sense of rational, or intellectual, apprehension. It has also the Old Testament, prophetic sense of "conduct." The prophet Jeremiah, for instance, asks, “Did not thy father . . . . do mishpat and righteousness?-Was not this to know me? saith Yahweh" (Jer. 22:15-16). Jesus not only criticized conduct, as the prophets did; but he also went about "doing good" (Matt. 4:23; Acts 10:38). He emphasized the "doing" of good (Mark 3:4). He showed forth "good works" from God (John 10:32). So Paul agonizes to "do" good, and is only able to do it "through Jesus" (Rom. 7:15-25). And so the author of the First Epistle of John writes, "Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments" (I John 2:3).

a

Thus, the old Hebrew Bible and the New Testament ring true to the same fundamental theme. The more ancient Scripture says, "Let the wicked forsake his way [i.e., his doings], and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon" (Isa. 55:7). The central thought of this passage is taken up into the New Testament, and worked into the immortal parable of the Prodigal. The erring son goes into a far country and leads a bad life. But finally the wicked forsakes his evil doings and resolves to do better. So he returns to his father and is forgiven. There is no suggestion in the Bible religion that acceptance at the hands of God is conditioned upon some abstruse belief about matters that are unprovable in the nature of the case. Neither in the Old Testament nor the New is there any call made upon men to profess a theological system in order to find peace with God. On the contrary, in every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him (Acts 10:35).*

The interesting problem of the relation between the "man Jesus" and the official Christ of the church is one that falls within the scope of history proper. The conclusions drawn in the text are independent of the consideration that the official Christ may be in part the creation of Paul and other interpreters. Also, the discussion whether Jesus was or was not the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament has only a minor sociological interest. The empirical fact is, that the religion of the Bible spreads abroad in the world "through Jesus" in the form of "Christianity," and that it is propagated in no other way. Science reckons only with facts and relations between facts. From the practical standpoint, Jesus is the only "Messiah" that the world can ever know, because the work done by him, and in his name by his followers, cannot now be done by anybody else. Through the messianic idea, Jesus was connected with his own times and his own people; but his claim to be the Messiah does not rank with his claim to be "one" with God. The latter idea has been taken up instinctively by the New Testament writers and by the universal church, and stated as the doctrine of the incarnation; while messianism remains in the background of Christian thought. The emphasis of the church upon the doctrine of the incarnation testifies to the significance of Jesus as the factor about which the religion of the Bible takes a new start. The messianic idea stands for the local and the temporary in Jesus; while the incarnation idea stands for the universal and the timeless.

CHAPTER XXVI

CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM

The Christian movement was not a campaign for "social reform" in the modern, scientific sense. We have already seen that the Old Testament prophets were not socialists, and that the modern movements of radicalism can claim no sanction from the Hebrew Scriptures (supra, pp. 160-64). Precisely the same truth holds with reference to the New Testament. Scientific study of the Gospels, the Epistles and other parts of the New Testament brings out the affinity of Jesus and his followers with the Hebrew prophets, and shows that the Christian movement was not a campaign for social reform in the modern sense of the term. It is not as a revolutionary and radical movement that Christianity comes before the sociologist. It is perfectly true that Jesus and his followers labored in the presence of the social problem. So did the Hebrew prophets. This is clear to the sociological investigator of the problem. But it is equally clear that the New Testament has no "social" outlook in the scientific sense of the term. It is an appeal to the individual; and it proceeds upon the assumption that when all individuals do right, the world will be reformed. No other standpoint would have been possible in that age. Only in modern times, through much pain and labor, has it begun to be possible for men to learn that redemption is both subjective, or individual, and objective, or institutional. This insight was not open to the minds through which the religion of the Bible came into being; and it would have been of little use in ancient times. Christianity is not a program of political and economic reform, but an inspiration to personal and social righteousness.

Christianity attracted the lower classes at first more than the upper classes.-Christianity arose in the midst of a civilization in which the social problem was pressing hard for solution. All social classes, upper and lower, felt the need for salvation in one way or another. But in the Roman empire, as everywhere, the conditions of life pressed more heavily upon the humble classes than upon their masters; and the peculiar nature of Christianity was such as to attract the lower and middle classes at first in larger proportion than the upper class.

No straining of words, no figurative interpretation, can change the evidence of the Gospels in regard to the attitude of Jesus toward rich and poor (Luke 6:20, 24, 25; Luke 18:24, 25). He opposed the wealthy scribes and Pharisees in the spirit of Hebrew prophecy, declaring that they were the successors of those that slew the prophets (Matt. 23:13-38; Luke 20:46, 47). Our concern here is not with his "teaching about wealth," but with his attitude toward the upper and lower classes. His disciples were mostly humble folk. It appears that the "common people," or the "multitude," heard Jesus gladly (Mark 12:37). It is reported that certain of the Pharisees asked whether any of the "rulers" had believed on him, intimating at the same time that he was followed only by the multitude (John 7:48, 49). The chief priests and scribes and leading citizens were for a time held back from destroying him by fear of the "people" (Luke 19:47, 48; cf. Luke 20:19). While he found a few sympathizers among the well-to-do, the upper class on the whole was hostile to him. When Christianity began to spread abroad in the gentile world, as a consequence of Paul's preaching, the same class distribution is to be observed at first. Writing to his converts at the city of Corinth, Paul reminds them that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble were to be found among them (I Cor. 1:26; 7:21). As McGiffert observes,