Kanamori's life-story

by Paul M. Kanamori

But men are not a whit nearer to God by their own greatness and goodness, so you see that though New Theology may exalt Christ as high as it can, yet it cannot raise him to God himself. Their Christ must stand always among men on this earth. According to its teachings, the Christ of God is gone, and only a human Jesus remains, the greatest, highest, noblest, and holiest man among men. As such he is brought down to the same level as Confucius, Shakamuni, Mohammed, Socrates, and multitudes of the holy men of the world. Can Christianity stand on such a human Christ as this as its sure and unshakable foundation? Is this human Christ the rock of ages on which we can build the structure of the whole Christian religion?

A religion which has been founded by man can by no means be the absolute religion of the world. If it is human in its origin it must be human all the way through, and it must share the fate of all other human religions.

But here comes another exhortation from the camp of New Theology. “Don’t trouble yourself too much about the nature of Christ,—whether he is God or man. Some think that Christ is God, and others think that he is man. Some think that Christ was born miraculously of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Ghost; others think he was the real son of Mary and Joseph, born in the same way as their other sons and daughters. Some say he rose from the dead after three days, and others say that he did not rise, and that what the Bible states as the resurrection of Christ was a mere vision, seen by his devout but ignorant and superstitious disciples, as a result of their own imagination. Thus we have all kinds of views about the nature and the person of Christ, each preferring his own view. In the olden time Christians laid great stress on these beliefs, but nowadays we pass over those things and don’t make much fuss about them. We don’t care much which way the people think about the nature and person of Christ, whether he is God or man, if we only love him and obey him with our whole heart. The supreme love and absolute allegiance to our Lord are the only essentials which we should always hold up as the life of our Christian faith. If we hold fast to these truths then we can safely let go such non-essentials as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection.”

Thus we are exhorted by New Theology to love Jesus supremely and obey him absolutely, regardless of our belief about the person and nature of Christ. These exhortations sound very plausible, and seem to make the new doctrine more spiritual and practical than the old-fashioned orthodox belief, which made so much of the nature and person of Christ. At the present day we hear such statements even from the pulpits which are called evangelical. And many people are deceived by the very plausibleness of this position, because they seem to be laying more stress upon the practical side of Christianity than upon the intellectual definition of the terms of the Christian doctrine. I was one of those who were deceived by this teaching, and was finally led away from the path of the truth.

Let me show how such unsound teaching of the essentials of Christian doctrine as denying the deity of Christ will exert its baneful influence upon the mind of the believer, especially upon the mind of the newly converted Christian in a heathen land. Be sure that the belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is not one of the non-essentials of the Christian doctrine, as those New Theologians try to make us believe, but it is the very life and essence of Christianity. If you take away this belief from the Christian faith it will die.

In the first place, to speak plainly, do you think that we can love Jesus Christ supremely if he is not God, but man? What is supreme love? Is it not a true, living, personal love? But if Jesus Christ was a mere man, born of Mary and Joseph, just as all other men were born, then he must have been dead for nineteen centuries. And if he is not risen from the dead, can we love supremely such a dead man? We sometimes say that we love such and such great men of history, such as Washington and Lincoln, but in this case we mean we love their memory, not the persons themselves. But we cannot love them as we love our fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands, who are really living among us now. We cannot have the warm, living, personal love for those historical personages that we have for those who are living right among us. What is that supreme love which true Christians cherish toward their Saviour? Is it a loving memory, or true personal, living love? To the true Christian is not Jesus the ever-living and ever-present personal Saviour? Do we not love him more than father or mother, wife or husband? Surely we love him as a person, and not as a beautiful character who once lived upon this earth, and who is pictured for us by his biographers.

I once listened to an eloquent preacher of New Theology who pictured the character of Jesus before his audience as a perfect model in all respects—holy, righteous, kind, loving, gentle, meek, humble, patient, strong, brave, and so on. It was a most exquisite portraiture of human character. But all the while I was listening I felt as though I was standing before a marble statue, beautiful to look at, but cold and lifeless. He was not introducing a living Saviour to his audience, but only showing them that there was such a good man who once lived upon this earth, and who had this beautiful character. That was all. This Jesus may have had such deep love for his disciples who were contemporary with him, but he could not have loved you and me, because he could not have known us at such a distant time. He was a man of nineteen centuries ago. This preacher was praising the character of Jesus just as the novelist praises his heroes. By listening to such a painting of the character of the human Jesus how can we feel true personal love toward him? True and supreme love comes from the living and direct touch of heart with heart, as a fire flashes by the friction of steel and flint.

When I lost my faith in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ as my ever-living, personal Saviour, I lost my supreme love for him also. Henceforth I regarded and honored him as a historical personage, perhaps the holiest and greatest and best of all men who ever lived on this earth. But that warmth and joy of the living, personal love to the living, personal Saviour were all gone, and my Christian faith became dead and cold, or rather it should be said that it became simply an intellectual appreciation of the beautiful character of an old sage.

As to allegiance to Christ, do you think you can require of any man such absolute allegiance to a mere man, though he may have been the greatest and best that the world has ever produced? My orthodox faith taught me that I should obey Jesus because he is my Creator as well as my Saviour. In the first place, as God he created me, and then as Saviour he came down from heaven and died upon the cross to save me, but he rose again from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of his Father, making intercession for me, and he will come again to rule the whole world. Since Jesus is my living and personal Saviour, I must obey him absolutely and unreservedly. I must love him more than father or mother, son or daughter, or even my own life itself. I must sacrifice my life for him. But if he is not such a Saviour, but a mere teacher who gave us wise precepts and doctrines, who led a beautiful life long years ago, and who died at last upon the cross at the hand of his enemies, what right have you to ask absolute allegiance from me who have no relation at all to him? There have been many great and good men in this world. Confucius, Socrates, Shakamuni, and all other founders of the world religions were more or less great, and we are indebted to them for their teachings and precepts and inspired by their fine examples. But no one thinks of demanding from us absolute allegiance to these great men, or asks us to sacrifice our lives for them. Thus, with the downfall of the belief in the deity of Christ, the authority of Jesus Christ as a divine Master must go also.

One of the glories of Christianity is that we have had such a multitude of martyrs for the cause of Christ during the nineteen centuries of its existence. Do you think that a man would face unflinchingly the blazing fire of persecution simply on the strength of his belief in Jesus as a great moral teacher? Would frail women have calmly faced those roaring lions approaching slowly but surely to tear them to pieces with their cruel claws, merely on the strength of the belief that by Christ’s humane teaching womanhood was lifted up to the same level with manhood? It was only in the strength of a belief that the living Saviour was right at their side with his outstretched arms to catch and carry them straight into the bosom of our heavenly Father that the martyrs braved the fire and sword. If such unsound doctrine as the liberals are now teaching had prevailed at the beginning of the introduction of Christianity into the world, there would have been no martyrdom for the Christian faith, and Christianity must have ceased to exist long ago.