The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical / Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

by C. A. Row

But further: the Gospels mention a certain number of possessions, and their cures effected by our Lord. Here then we are in the very presence of a demonology such as was actually believed in by the followers of Jesus. Here, therefore, is the very condition of mind and outward circumstances where, if they had been a prey to the phantastic and disgusting beliefs about demons above referred to, such beliefs would certainly have made their appearance in their pages. But, as I have shown, the demonology of the Gospels stands in marked contrast to that of the Talmud, of Josephus, and of the [pg 301] Christian Fathers. We have no fumigations of demoniacs with the liver of a fish, we hear nothing of a demon drawn out of a man's nose, and overturning a basin of water, nothing of a demon inhabiting every private closet. On the contrary, their action is described as mental, and, through the mind, affecting the body, with the exception of a few doubtful cases. I am not here arguing whether a belief in the reality of demoniacal possession is a superstition or not. But I affirm that if the writers of the New Testament had been a prey to the superstitions with which they are charged, these are the narratives in which they could not have failed to make their appearance. Again: It has been affirmed that they held a monstrous angelology. I reply that although angels are unquestionably stated to have appeared, and their existence is affirmed by the writers of the New Testament, still their recorded appearances are rare. They are confined to a few very remarkable occasions, viz.: the Annunciation and birth of our Lord, the temptation, the agony in the garden, and the resurrection. Surely this does not look as if the authors of the Gospels thought that they were always interfering with the course of nature or the events of life. In the Acts of the Apostles, they appear at the Ascension; once to liberate St. Peter, and at another time the Apostles, from prison; to direct Philip to preach to the eunuch; twice in a vision to St. Paul; and Herod Agrippa is also said to have been smitten by the ministry of an angel. There were certainly many occasions when, if the writers had believed in the habitual intervention of angels, we should have found them introduced. Thus an angel is not sent to deliver Paul from prison, or to still the tempest, but simply to assure him of his safety. St. Paul enumerates in a passage of some length the various dangers which beset [pg 302] him in his missions, especially mentioning the perils he encountered in travel. But neither he nor St. Luke once refers to an angelic intervention in his favour. In numerous passages he refers to dangers and persecutions which he encountered. But it is our Lord, and not angels, who delivered him. Is this consistent with a belief in their habitual intervention in nature? If he was the visionary which he has been asserted to have been, would he not have been continually seeing visions of angels for his protection?

In St. Paul's writings we are in the presence of documents which are in the highest degree historical. Even those who endeavour to prove that the Gospels and the Acts were not written until the second century, are obliged to allow that at least four of the most important of his letters were written within 30 years after the Crucifixion, and that the evidence that four of the remainder are his, vastly preponderates. Here then we are in the presence of historical documents of the highest order, compared with which such a writing as the book of Enoch is worthless, and the Talmud and the Fathers are modern compositions. What light then do these letters throw on the opinions of St. Paul and the Pauline Churches? Much every way: they let us into the secret of their inner life. They tell us that these Christians thought they possessed certain supernatural gifts; that St. Paul asserted that he wrought miracles; that demons by an invisible agency tempted men to sin, and opposed the progress of the Gospel; but beyond this there is scarcely a trace of angelology or demonology in them. With these epistles in our hands, is it credible that their writer, or those to whom he wrote, held a multitude of monstrous and phantastic beliefs on this subject? Are not these writings characterized by supreme good sense? Do [pg 303] they not in this point of view marvellously contrast even with those of the earliest Fathers? The writer undoubtedly believed that unseen spiritual agencies were capable of acting on the mind of man, and that they were active agents in the production of moral evil; but where is the evidence that he considered that external nature was under their control, or that they made themselves visible to the mortal eye? Although he affirms that he possessed a supernatural illumination on religious subjects, only on two occasions does he refer to visions as actually seen by him; and he directly affirms that he had the power of distinguishing the ecstatic from the ordinary condition of his mind. Even with the aid of the Acts of the Apostles, we can only add a few more to the number. Surely this is not the mental condition of a man who was a prey to unbounded superstition. Contrast the amount of good sense in the epistles of St. Paul with an equal number of consecutive pages from the Fathers and the Talmud, and the difference is enormous. Where are the ineffable puerilities found in these writings even hinted at in those of St. Paul?

Again: if we include in our examination the other writings of the New Testament, they wholly fail to supply us with any evidence of the superstition or credulity of their authors. On the contrary they are characterized by the marks of uniform good sense. It will be doubtless objected that they, as well as St. Paul, were bad logicians, and that their applications of the Old Testament Scriptures are inapt: but this does not affect their trustworthiness as historians. They were undoubtedly men of great religious fervour, yet they are both sparing in the use of miracles, and when they report them, the miraculous action is never represented as extending beyond the necessities of the [pg 304] case. Their miracles consist of simple acts, as for instance the cure of diseases, but all marvellous superadditions are wanting. It has been urged that in comparing the miracles of the Gospels with other miraculous narratives, we have no right to do more than compare the external miracle of the one with the external miracle of the other; as for instance a resurrection with a resurrection, or a cure of blindness recorded in one with a similar case recorded in another; and not to take into account either the external circumstances or the moral aspect of the miracle. I have elsewhere proved that this position is untenable. But for the purpose of the argument let us here assume that all the circumstances may be the invention of the narrator. If it be so, it proves at any rate the soundness of his judgment and the elevation of his ideas, i.e. that it is impossible that he could have been either intensely superstitious or credulous. How is it possible, I ask, for minds which were a prey to such monstrous beliefs as those which we have been considering, to have dramatized miraculous narratives of the elevated type of those contained in the Gospels? Would not all the circumstances with which they invested them be the counter-part of their own degraded conceptions?

But there is one most distinctive phenomenon presented by the Gospels which affords a conclusive proof that neither their authors nor the followers of Jesus could have been a prey to either degrading superstition or credulous fanaticism. I allude to the fact that, whatever theory may be propounded to account for their origin, the Gospels, as a matter of fact, unquestionably contain a delineation of the greatest of all characters, whether actual or ideal, that of Jesus Christ. I shall hereafter draw attention to the portraiture of this character for the purpose of proving that they are [pg 305] veritable historical documents. In this place I refer to it simply for the purpose of proving that their authors and those who invented the alleged fictions of which their contents consist, were possessed of a soundness of judgment which is wholly inconsistent with the truth of the assertion that they were a prey to boundless superstition or credulity.

For the purpose of the argument I must assume that this character is a fictitious one, because to assume that it is a delineation of an actual historical character, would be to take for granted the entire question at issue. If the Jesus of the Evangelists is an historical personage, there can be no doubt respecting the claims of the Gospel to be a divine revelation. But even if we make the assumption above mentioned, it is quite clear that those persons who invented the character, or who put it together out of the number of legendary stories floating about in the Church, must have been possessed of a sound judgment, and the highest appreciation of what was great and noble. The character we have before us, and it is confessedly the noblest which can be found either in history or fiction. The inventors, whoever they were, have succeeded in portraying a great harmonious whole. Such a character could only have been delineated by men possessed of sound discriminating judgment. The more the Gospels are depreciated as histories the more does this depreciation establish the credit of their authors as the successful delineators of an ideal character, to which they have succeeded in imparting a naturalness which men of the most exalted genius have mistaken for an historical reality. They must have been, therefore, consummate masters of the art of ideal delineation. The mental powers adequate to effect such results are those of high genius, to which in this case must have been added a very elevated conception [pg 306] of morality. Such mental qualities are never exhibited by men who are the prey of gross credulity and superstition. The great ideal delineations of poets have been only capable of being produced by the élite of the human race. On the other hand, if we assume that the character is a fictitious one, and its inventors men of the mental calibre which they are affirmed to have been by those against whom I am reasoning, it would have been inevitable that its proportions should be marred by the introduction into it of traits marked by meanness, puerility, and monstrosity.

In support of this assertion we have no occasion to appeal to theories but to facts. Happily antiquity has preserved to us several delineations of a mythical Jesus on which the inventors have stamped the most unmistakable impress of their own credulity and superstition. I need not say that I allude to the Apocryphal Gospels, the delineations of Jesus which they contain, and above all to their miraculous narratives. Those who reiterate these charges against the authors of the Canonical Gospels, are very slow to draw attention to their bearing on this portion of the argument. In the Apocryphal Gospels we are brought face to face with the legendary spirit exerting itself in the invention of miraculous stories. There can be no doubt that their authors were both extremely credulous and superstitious; and their miraculous narratives give us the precise measure of their credulity. There is every reason to believe that two of these compositions were written as early as the second century. What, I ask, is the general character of the miracles which they have attributed to Jesus? There can be only one answer. They are mean, ridiculous, degraded, burlesque, destitute of all trait of moral grandeur. If the authors of the four Gospels, or the inventors of their [pg 307] miraculous narratives, whoever they may have been, had been a prey to similar credulity and superstition, the marks of them would have been indelibly stamped on their pages.

These documents also contain accounts of miracles wrought by Jesus, some of which, as bare facts, are precisely the same as some recorded in the Canonical Gospels, i.e. they contain accounts of resurrections from the dead, and the cure of diseases. I ask, do their accompanying circumstances and moral aspect stand as nothing in our estimate of the credibility of their authors? Compare the account of the resurrection of Lazarus, or that of our Lord himself, with the resurrections in the Apocryphal Gospels, and mark the difference. Compare likewise the other miracles, which, as bare facts, resemble one another. The one have the stamp of historical probability, and precisely fit in with the lofty character of Jesus; the other of an unbelievable legend, in which the character is degraded to a level with the conceptions of the inventors.

Let not unbelievers, therefore, decline to grapple with the question. Let them cease to pass it over in silence. I propose to them the following questions for solution. If both sets of Gospels originated with minds intensely credulous and superstitious, whence has come the difference between them? Why is the one set of miracles dignified, and the other mean? Whence the entire difference of their moral aspect? Why is the Jesus of the Canonical Gospels the most elevated personage in history, and the Jesus of the Apocryphal ones, one of the most mean and silly? If two of the Apocryphal and the four Canonical Gospels are the production of the superstition and credulity of the same century, whence the marvellous contrast between them? Which of the Fathers of the second [pg 308] or third century was equal to the task of reducing a mass of floating legends, the creations of numbers of superstitious men, into their present form, as they stand in our Canonical Gospels? Would they not certainly have coloured the events with their own absurdities? If, on the other hand, it be allowed that the Canonical Gospels are the production of the first century, and the Apocryphal Gospels of subsequent ones, how came the credulous followers of Jesus to produce fictions dramatized with such admirable taste in the first century, and the same spirit in subsequent centuries to present so striking a contrast? The only possible answer which can be returned to these questions is that the phenomena of the Canonical Gospels are inconsistent with the supposition that their miraculous narratives are the invention of men who were the prey either of credulity or dense superstition; they must have been men well able to distinguish between a genuine miracle and a mythic parody of one.

But it has been urged that the dignified character of Jesus induced the compilers of our present Gospels to select all the miraculous stories of a high type which were current in the hotbed of Christian fanaticism, and to attribute them to Jesus, and to suppress all of a contrary description. If this be the true solution of the facts, then it certainly follows that the compilers of the Gospels must have been free from the superstitions of the times in which they lived. Otherwise, how came they to select all the elevated stories and attribute them to Jesus, and to consign those of a lower type to a well-merited oblivion? Is it not a fact that credulous and superstitious people have often attributed what is contemptible and mean to elevated characters? Let the Apocryphal Gospels bear witness. It follows, [pg 309] therefore, that even on this supposition the question must be decided in favour of the authors of our present Canonical Gospels, that they must have been free from the degraded superstitious to which their fellow-believers were a prey.

But there is yet another problem, even if we assume the above supposition to be true, which urgently demands solution. If, among the mass of legends with which the history of Jesus was incrusted, a certain portion of the miraculous stories were of an elevated type, who among His credulous and superstitious followers were the inventors of them? Were they men of like credulity with the remainder? There are only two alternatives. They were, or they were not. If they were, I ask, how came they to invent elevated stories? If they were not, then it follows that there were persons among His followers who were neither intensely credulous nor superstitious. If the latter be the alternative adopted, then the theory which I have been considering, which attributes to the followers of Jesus such a degree of those qualities as to render their historical testimony valueless, falls to the ground.