M. Grotz, pastor at Nismes, was once under the influence of A. Monod, but owing to the withdrawal of Scherer from orthodoxy, he joined the Rationalists. He holds that revelation is not peculiar to the Scriptures. There are many kinds of revelation, and we find them continually in history. Every manifestation of God is a revelation. We must always examine freely and critically; nowhere does Christ enjoin the contrary. We need to use our intellectual faculties and conscience. The greatest revelation is Christ,—not his doctrines, but himself. We should always keep prophecy and miracles in the background, for they are minor questions and should occupy an humble position.[112]
Of all the members of the Critical School, Renan is the best known to the English and American public. He has written a number of works on various topics,[113] but it is by his Life of Jesus that he has gained greatest celebrity. God, Providence, and immortality are, with him, dull words about which philosophy has long played and finally interpreted in the most refined sense.
There is no reason why a pappoose should be immortal. Religion is a part of man's nature, and, in return, he is benefited and elevated by it. God's revelation is in man's innate consciousness. There is no necessity for miracles; all that we need in this life is the mere result of the operation of natural forces. The present age is one in which we should freely criticise whatever comes up for acceptance; but it is wrong to assume the propagandist. Let men have their own views; we have no right to force others upon them. Man is very much attached to the theories contained in the world's first religion. He has given it symbolical expression, for it is thus that religion will always embody itself. Man wants some way by which to tell how and what he thinks of God.[114]
The Gospels were all written, Renan contends, in the first century. The Jews were anticipating somebody who would prove a means of their improvement. Christ fitted the ideal, and the way was smoothed for his success by their visions, dreams, and hopes. The beautiful scenery of lake, valley, mountain, and river developed his poetic temperament. Then the Old Testament made a deep impression on him, for he imagined it was full of voices pointing him out as the great future reformer. He was unacquainted with Hellenic culture, and hence it was his misfortune not to know that miracles had been wisely rejected by the schools which had received the Greek wisdom. In course of time a period of intoxication came upon him. He imagined that he was to bring about a new church which he everywhere calls the Kingdom of God. His views were Utopian; he lived in a dream life, and his idealism elevated him above all other agitators. He founded a sect, and his disciples became intoxicated with his own dreams. But he did not sanction all their excesses: for instance, he did not believe the inexact and contradictory genealogies which we find in his historians.
Yet he was a thorough thaumaturgist and sometimes indulged a gloomy feeling of resentment. His miracles are greatly exaggerated. He probably did some things which, to ignorant minds, appeared prodigies, but they were very few in number. He never rose from the dead; he had never raised Lazarus. By and by, the love of his disciples created him into a divinity, clothed him with wonderful powers, made him greater than he had ever pretended to be. Hence Christianity arose. It was love like that of Mary Magdalene, "a hallucinated woman, whose passion gave to the world a resurrected God."[115] Renan's position will explain all that he says of Christ. He looks at him from the stand-point of naturalism. Christ is no mediator. As an American writer has well said: "From this life of Christ no one would ever infer that there was sin in the world and that Christ came to save sinners."
The reception of the Life of Jesus was most hearty throughout France. Criticism from every side was employed upon it. Over a hundred thousand copies were soon sold, and translations were made into all the European tongues. Its greatest success was in Roman Catholic countries. In France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, and Spain it has found a warm reception, but in the north of Europe, Protestant Germany, and England, it has had less success. As to the ultimate effect of the work, we have every reason to value the opinion of M. de Pressensé, who has surveyed the whole ground, and also written the best criticism upon Renan that has appeared in any country. He says: "I am persuaded that the results accomplished by it will be, in the main, good; that it will not shake the faith of any true believer; that it will produce, with many of those who were wavering, a good reaction, which will bring them back to a positive faith; and that the common sense of the people will not fail to see that it is not thus that history is written, and that the problem of the origin of Christianity still remains unexplained in its grandeur." It is likely that an advantage will accrue to Renan from the recent action of the Government. He occupied the chair of Oriental Languages in the College of France, but was deposed by the Minister of Public Instruction. Boasting that he would still retain his title, he continued to teach in his private house. He lost his salary, but claimed the martyr-crown. When last heard from, he was traveling in the countries described in the New Testament as the scene of the labors of the apostles. His avowed purpose is to publish an attack upon the apostolic history.
Athanase Coquerel, jr., editor of the Lien, and a celebrated preacher, justly takes rank among the leaders of the Critical School. He has recently been the subject of an excitement of little less absorbing interest than the sensation occasioned by Renan. Fourteen years ago, Martin Paschoud, one of the Rationalistic Reformed pastors of Paris, selected him as his suffragan or assistant. The Consistory ratified the appointment.
In the Reformed church the assistant pastors do not hold their office by the same title as the titular or regular pastors. The continuance of the former is subject to renewal every two or three years by the Presbyterial Council. But the regular pastors, when first nominated by the Consistory, are afterwards confirmed by the Government. They cannot be removed except by the action of the state. This is the reason why so many Rationalistic pastors are now in full possession of prominent Protestant pulpits in France. No synod, consistory, or presbytery has power to try them for heresy. In fact, there is no standard of doctrine by which heresy can be tested. There being no General Assembly, with power either to establish new standards of doctrine or to give vitality to the old ones, the pulpits of the Reformed church are open to every form of teaching that may profess to be Christian.[116]
Coquerel's last renewal expired about the end of 1863, when his re-appointment became necessary. But his decline into Rationalism had been so rapid that the Presbyterial Council refused to renew the mandate, and he lost his position as suffragan by a vote of twelve against three. He subsequently published a confession of his faith, addressed to his former catechumens, in which the only point of real defense which he substantiates is the charge of Pantheism. He strongly affirms his belief in the personality of God. From M. Coquerel's essays we can derive a correct view of his Rationalistic principles. He affirms that his opinions on the trinity, original sin, the atonement, inspiration of the Scriptures, and other doctrines, called fundamental, are not a little, but altogether different from the orthodox views. He does not consider the Bible inspired, and has therefore written a work in defense of Renan, his "dear and learned friend." As for the Gospels, he finds in them the sublimest of all histories on the one hand, and traces of legends on the other; doctrines and precepts of eternal validity in one place, and stains of the errors of the age in which the books were written, in another. Reason has the right of judging all the truths of revelation. The Confession of Faith of the sixteenth century is a very good monument of the faith of our fathers, but should not now be imposed. The Apostles and Evangelists never made any claim to infallibility. There are two groups of views concerning Christ in the New Testament: First, that contained in Paul's epistles, especially in Hebrews. Paul did not identify Christ with God, nor did he misconceive the humanity of Christ, and attribute preëxistence to him. Second. All the second group, consisting of the epistles of James and Peter, the Acts, and the Apocalypse, rest on a purely historical view. To the writers of the latter, Jesus seemed the Messiah; hence we have from them all that is extraordinary in his history. Christ meant in Matt. xi. 27, that he had received his knowledge from God. He did not refer to his own essence. Literal interpretation of Scripture does not bring us to a knowledge of Christ. His humanity, being all that is valuable in his character, contains the mystery that belongs more or less to every individual. His commission from God does not differ from that of other men. That which distinguishes him from his species was his knowledge of humanity and of the future. He had not omniscience, nor infallibility; nothing but superior knowledge. He had his gross defects; for example, his belief in the power of evil spirits. Yet Christ was not a real sinner, and he represented and realized progress without any arrest. Thus he is the ideal and model of humanity.