From Bondage to Liberty in Religion: A Spiritual Autobiography

by George T. Ashley

JESUS OF NAZARETH

We have now reached the most interesting, if not the most vital part of this Confession of Faith. Thus far I have said almost nothing about the Man of Nazareth. "What then shall I do unto Jesus, who is called Christ?" The temptation is very great here to elaborate at some length upon my views of this, the most unique character in all history. I would like to give my views in full, with all the arguments, pro and con, as to his personality, character and mission. But this would extend this work to an undue length. Some day I may write it more fully in another book. I must be content now to give as briefly as possible the conclusions I have reached, without going into any very detailed arguments to support them.

What do we know about Jesus anyway? He never wrote a line that we have any record of, except a few words in the sand when the Jews brought a sinful woman before him to accuse her; and we know not what these words were. We have no record that he ever authorized any one else to write anything for, or about him. We have three short biographies of him that were written anywhere from fifty to eighty years after his death, the exact date of neither being known. The authors of two of these—Mark and Luke—it is admitted were not Apostles; and there is no evidence that either of them ever knew Jesus in his lifetime. It is admitted that each of them got all his information from another, and that one of them got his information from a person—Paul—who himself never knew Jesus in the flesh. It is admitted that the other—Matthew—as we now have it, is not the original writing of the Apostle of that name; that the original is entirely lost, and no one knows what additions or eliminations it underwent in its translation and transcription into another language. Years later a fourth biography appeared by an unknown author,—tradition being the only evidence that it was written by the Apostle John—so entirely different in its general make-up and contents, that but for the name of its subject and a very few passages in it, no one would ever take it to be about the same person that formed the subject of the other three.

When these four are taken together, and all repetitions and duplications are eliminated, it would leave us with a small pamphlet of some sixty or seventy pages as our only record of this most remarkable character of all history. None of the epistolary writings throw any light on the life, doings, sayings or personality of Jesus. They only deal with deductions drawn from or based upon it. When we add to this the fact that at least fifty years had elapsed, after the events described had happened, before a line of it—at least in its present form—was written; and that in an age when few people could write and no accurate records were preserved, and when those that did then write, wrote only from memory or tradition; and when we further consider the varying and often very different accounts given by the different writers of the events they describe, differences in both the doings and sayings of Jesus, altho these are mostly only matters of minor detail, yet we become more and more convinced that we have no means of knowing for certain just what Jesus did; nor whether or not he uttered the exact words that the writers put into his mouth. Compare today the memory of any individual as to the exact details of some event, even that he personally witnessed, fifty years ago; especially as to the exact words used on any particular occasion, and we will have more than a fair example of the imperfection of human memory. Add to this the fact that this was in a very superstitious age, when every wonder was translated into a supernatural miracle, and our perplexity only becomes the greater. The doctrine of infallible guidance by divine inspiration is out of the question. If there was no other evidence against such an idea, the internal contents of these books themselves would forever destroy it.

Then, what do we know about Jesus? Very little. I do not accuse these writers of any deliberate misrepresentation, conscious fraud or forgery. They undoubtedly wrote what they honestly and sincerely believed at the time to be the truth. But they wrote simply as fallible men like ourselves. Their means of information in many cases was doubtless very meager and uncertain. They doubtless did the best they could under the circumstances. They wrote the truth as they understood it to be truth, just as any other historian or biographer would do today.

And what they wrote is all we know. It is the only basis we have upon which we can form any judgment as to who or what Jesus of Nazareth was. What Paul may have thought of him, and the system of theology he built thereon, is of but little value. What the Church Fathers may have thought, in the light of the age in which they lived, and their own standard of intellectual attainments, is of less. We have got to fall back upon the four gospels, and interpret them, not in the light of the superstitious age in which they were written; not assuming them to be exact truth; for in view of the fact of their own contradictions of each other on material and vital points this is impossible; but in the full light of this age of science and exact knowledge; of a more highly developed intelligence, and a deeper and more accurate reasoning power. With these records as a basis, or starting point, we must work out the problem for ourselves: Who and what was Jesus?

First, he was a Jew,—born, lived and died a Jew. There is no evidence that he ever rejected, or abrogated the religion of his fathers. That he tried to reform it, inject into it a deeper spiritual life, a more rational and higher ethical standard, will more fully appear as we proceed. He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it,—not by dying on the cross, for the law nowhere says, or even intimates, anything about anybody dying on a cross or anywhere else. He came to fulfill it by living up to its full ethical and spiritual import, and teaching others to do so. "Moses had summed up the law in ten commandments, the Pharisees of the time of Jesus had made of these ten thousand—to be exact, six hundred and thirteen—and Jesus reduced them to two,"—and kept them. This is how he fulfilled the law.

Next, Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary by the same process of natural generation by which all other human beings come into the world. Paul, the earliest and most elaborate writer of the New Testament, nowhere gives us the remotest hint that he had ever heard of any such a thing as the supernatural birth; and it is wholly unthinkable that if such had been the truth he should have been ignorant of it; or that if it sustained such a vital relation to the Christian system of religion to which he devoted his whole life, he should never in the remotest manner refer to it.

Mark's gospel, written to the best of our knowledge about fifty years after the death of Jesus, nowhere refers to it. As we have already seen, we do not know what the Apostle Matthew may have written, as we do not have his original writing at all. The early Ebionite copies of the Greek translation and transcription did not contain the first two chapters, and consequently no reference to the supernatural birth. We are left to fall back on Luke and we will have to examine his story a little in detail. In all of its details, including the genealogy, it is quite different from that in Matthew. Luke alone mentions the visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve years old, and in which he was missed from the company when they started on the return home. When Joseph and Mary found him in the temple, she is quoted as saying, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." Now, if Jesus was not really the son of Joseph, but of the Holy Ghost, his mother certainly knew it; and if so her statement, "thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing," was not only a deliberate untruth; but if Jesus was God, he also knew it was an untruth. Another inconsistency in the story is, that if Jesus was thus the son of the Holy Ghost, and therefore God, and his mother knew it, why should she worry about his being missing from the caravan? Couldn't God take care of himself and find his way back to Nazareth at any time he wished to go? On another occasion, mentioned by all the synoptics, when Jesus was teaching, his mother and brethren are reported as calling for him, evidently for the purpose of restraining him in his work, or persuading him to desist,—and this is the interpretation that has been most generally given to these passages, and the answer which Jesus gave supports it as correct,—such a course is entirely inconsistent with any conception that his mother at the time knew him to be the supernaturally born Son of God.

Turning now to the Fourth Gospel, we have not only an entirely different character, but an entirely different philosophy as to his life and mission. Not a word is said or anywhere hinted about a divine birth. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." To state it in the simplest words I can command, the theory of the Fourth Gospel is that of the old Alexandrian philosophy of the incarnation of the Divine Logos, or Word, or message from God, in human flesh, applied to Jesus of Nazareth. His pure and simple manhood is recognized, into which, in some mystical manner, nowhere explained, the Divine Logos, or Word, or Life, or God Himself, entered into the man Jesus, whereby he became the Son of God and the Messiah,—and not by the process of miraculous generation in the flesh. The old Ebionite doctrine was that this Divine Logos, or Word, or Spirit of God entered Jesus at his baptism, and that he thereby became the Messiah, distinctively "the Son of God" by divine selection, and not by supernatural generation.