+Jesus and Deity.+—This brings us to the further question of the Deity of Jesus. As a matter of fact, as I have already indicated, this question, too, has long been settled in practice. If by the Deity of Jesus is meant that He possessed the all-controlling consciousness of the universe, then assuredly He was not the Deity for He did not possess that consciousness. He prayed to His Father, sometimes with agony and dread; He wondered, suffered, wept, and grew weary. He confessed His ignorance of some things and declared Himself to have no concern with others; it is even doubtful how far He was prepared to receive the homage of those about Him. If there be one thing which becomes indisputable from the reading of the gospel narratives it is that Jesus possessed a true human consciousness, limited like our own, and, like our own, subject to the ordinary ills of life. Once again everybody knows this after a fashion. The most determined of so-called orthodox controversialists would hardly try to maintain that the consciousness of Jesus was at once limited and unlimited. To do so would be an impossible feat; if Jesus was the Deity, He certainly was not the whole of the Deity during His residence on earth, whatever He may be now. But, it may be objected, in His earthly life He was the Deity self-limited: "He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant," etc. Quite so, but see where this statement leads. The New Theology can consistently make it, but it is difficult to see how that newer theology which calls itself orthodoxy manages to do so. Does the self-limitation of Jesus mean that the Deity was lessened in any way during the incarnation? Why, of course not, we should all say; the Deity continued with infinite fulness unimpaired above and beyond the consciousness of Jesus. Then are we to understand that this self-limitation of Jesus meant that the eternal Son, or second person in the Trinity, the Word by whom the worlds were made, quitted the throne of His glory and lived for thirty-three years as a Jewish peasant? I think the dogmatic theologian would have some hesitation in giving an unqualified affirmative to this question, for the difficulties implied in it are practically insurmountable. Was the full consciousness of the eternal Word present in the babe of Bethlehem, for instance? If not, where was it? Questions like these cannot be answered on the lines of the conventional Christology. The plain and simple answer to all of them is to admit that the Jesus of history did not possess the consciousness of Deity during His life on earth. His consciousness was as purely human as our own. Any special insight which He possessed into the true relations of God and man was due to the moral perfection of His nature and not to His metaphysical status. He was God manifest in the flesh because His life was a consistent expression of divine love and not otherwise. But He was not God manifest in the flesh in any way which would cut Him off from the rest of human kind. According to the received theology, Jesus and Jesus only, out of all the beings who have ever trodden the road which humanity has to travel, existed before all ages. We live our threescore years and ten and then pass on into eternity; He was eternal to begin with. He comes to earth with a hoary antiquity behind Him, a timeless life to look back upon; we have just fluttered into existence. Surely any ordinary intelligence can see that this kind of theologising puts an impassable gulf at once between Jesus and every other person who has ever been born of an earthly mother. Certainly it does, the theologian may declare, and rightly so, for that gulf exists; He assumed human nature, but He was eternally divine before He did so, and we are not. I do not need to refute this argument; the trend of modern thought is already doing so most effectually. It is a gratuitous assumption without a shred of evidence to support it. Besides, unfortunately for this kind of statement, the scientific investigation of Christian origins, and the application of the scientific method to the history of Christian doctrine have shown us how the dogma of the Deity of Jesus grew up. It was a comparatively late development in Christianity, and its practical implications never have been accepted, although at one time there was a danger that the winsome figure of Jesus would be removed altogether from the field of human interest and regard. The Jesus of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" is a terrifying figure without a trace of the lowly Nazarene about Him, and yet this was the Jesus of the conventional Christianity of the time. It was through this dehumanising of Jesus in Christian thought and experience that Mariolatry arose in the Roman church. Could anything be more grotesque than the suggestion that the mother of Jesus should need to plead with her son to be merciful with frail humanity? And yet this is what it came to; the figure of Mary was introduced in order to preserve a real humanity in our relations with the Godhead. All honour to those who have called us back to the real Jesus, the Jesus of Galilee and Jerusalem, the Jesus with the prophet's fire, the Jesus who was so gentle with little children and erring women, and yet before whom canting hypocrites and truculent ecclesiastics slunk away abashed. Upon this recovered Jesus the world has now fixed its adoring gaze, and it will not readily let Him go again.
+Divine manhood and Unitarianism.+—But then, someone will protest, this is sheer Unitarianism after all; you do not believe in the Jesus who is the object of the faith of Christendom, but in one who was only a man among men; you do not think of Him as very God of very God. Not so fast; we are busy with names again. Most of us have a tendency to think that if we can get a doctrine labelled and pigeonholed, we know all about it, but we are generally mistaken. This is not Unitarianism, and I do believe that Jesus was very God, as I have already shown. We have to get rid of the dualism which will insist on putting humanity and Deity into two separate categories. I say it is not Unitarianism, for historic Unitarianism has been just as prone to this dualism as the extremest Trinitarianism has ever been. Like Trinitarianism it has often tended to regard humanity as on one side of a gulf and Deity as on the other; it has emphasised too much the transcendence of God. The sentence quoted above from an orthodox Trinitarian divine about "God's eternal eminence and His descent on a created world" might just as well have been employed by an out-and-out Unitarian. Modern Unitarianism is in part the descendant of eighteenth-century Deism which insisted upon the transcendence of God almost to the exclusion of His immanence; it thought of God as away somewhere above the universe, watching it but leaving the machine pretty much to itself. Unitarianism in the course of its history from the first century downward has passed through a good many phases. Present-day Unitarianism is preaching with fervour and clearness the foundation truth of the New Theology, the fundamental unity of God and man. But it does not belong to it exclusively, and I decline to be labelled Unitarian because I preach it too. The New Theology is not a victory for Unitarianism. If ever the English-speaking communities of the world should come to be united under a single flag, would it be just and wise to call them all Americans? No doubt some of our American cousins would like to think so, but there is enough of virility and solid worth on the British side of the question to make that description impossible. The title would be a misnomer, and in fact an absurdity. The case in regard to the connection of the New Theology with Unitarianism is not dissimilar. It is only sectarian Unitarians who would try to claim it for their own denomination; the best and most outstanding exponents of Unitarianism would not wish to do anything of the kind, for they know well enough that historically speaking they have not consistently stood for it any more than any other denomination. The New Theology does not belong to any one church but to all. For my own part I would not even take the trouble to try to turn a Roman Catholic into a Protestant. Let every man stay in the church whose spiritual atmosphere and modes of worship best accord with his temperament, but let him recognise the deeper unity that lies below the formal creeds. The old issue between Unitarianism and Trinitarianism vanishes in the New Theology; the bottom is knocked out of the controversy. Unitarianism used to declare that Jesus was man not God; Trinitarianism maintained that He was God and man; the oldest Christian thought, as well as the youngest, regards Him as God in man—God manifest in the flesh. But here emerges a great point of difference between the New Theology on the one hand and traditional orthodoxy on the other. The latter would restrict the description "God manifest in the flesh" to Jesus alone; the New Theology would extend it in a lesser degree to all humanity, and would maintain that in the end it will be as true of every individual soul as ever it was of Jesus. Indeed, it is this belief that gives value and significance to the earthly mission of Jesus; He came to show us what we potentially are. This is a great and important issue, which requires to be treated in a separate chapter.
CHAPTER VI
THE ETERNAL CHRIST
In the course of Christian history a good deal of time has been occupied in the discussion of the metaphysical question of the complex unity of the divine nature; and the result has been the doctrine of the Trinity, a conception which, it has been claimed, at once satisfies and transcends the operations of the human intellect. Most non-theological modern minds are, however, somewhat suspicious of the doctrine of the Trinity; it seems rather too speculative and too remote from ordinary ways of thinking to possess much real value. But this is quite a mistake. We cannot dispense with the doctrine of the Trinity, for it, or something like it, is implied in the very structure of the mind. It belongs to philosophy even more than to religion, and to the sphere of ethics not less. I daresay even the man in the street knows, quite as certainly as the man in the schools, that a metaphysical proposition underlies the doing of every moral act, even though it may never be expressed. All thinking starts with an assumption of some kind, and without an assumption thought is impossible. This is just as true of the strictest scientific processes as it is of deductive reasoning, and indeed it is interesting to watch the way in which within recent years idealistic philosophy and empirical science have joined hands. Does physical science, then, imply the doctrine of the Trinity? Yes, unquestionably it does, after a fashion, for it starts with an assumption which takes it for granted. Perhaps this would be news to Professor Ray Lankester, and such as he, but I think I could convince them that I am right if I had them face to face. To use the mind at all we have to assume this doctrine even though we may not actually formulate it. Christianity did not invent it; it clarified and defined it, but in principle it is as old as the exercise of human reason.
+The basal assumption of thought.+—After making a comprehensive assertion of this kind I suppose I am bound to justify it, and I do not shrink from the task. I say that all thinking starts with an assumption of some kind, and exact thought requires that that assumption shall be the simplest possible, the irreducible minimum beneath which we cannot get. Now when we start thinking about existence as a whole and ourselves in particular, we are compelled to assume the infinite, the finite, and the activity of the former within the latter. In other words we have to postulate God, the universe, and God's operation within the universe. Look at these three conceptions for a moment and it will be seen that every one of them implies the rest; they are a Trinity in unity. The primordial being must be infinite, for there cannot be a finite without something still beyond it. We know, too, that to our experience the universe is finite; we can measure, weigh, and analyse it—an impossible thing to do with an infinite substance. And yet if we think of infinite and finite as two entirely distinct and unrelated modes of existence, we find ourselves in an impossible position, for the infinite must be that outside of which nothing exists or can exist; so of course we are compelled to think of the infinite as ever active within the finite, the source of change and motion, the exhaustless power which makes possible the very idea of development from simplicity to complexity. If the universe were complete in itself, change would not occur, and a cosmic process, evolutionary or otherwise, would be inconceivable. Here, then, we have the basal factors of any true theology, philosophy, or science. Readers of Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe" will note that that eminent materialist, who professes to do away with the very idea of God, takes these factors for granted; and yet I suppose he would object to being told that he believes in the doctrine of the Trinity. But he does, for he begins by assuming infinite space filled to the farthest with matter ponderable and imponderable, and forthwith proceeds to weigh, measure, and divide the latter as though it were finite! Here are two terms of the doctrine of the Trinity at once. We get the third as soon as Professor Haeckel sets to work to explain the cosmic process, for as he does so he is all the while taking for granted that the infinite is pressing in and up through the finite, evolving beauty and order, light and life.
+The moral basis of the doctrine.+—But it may be contended that these bare bones of the doctrine of the Trinity are not the doctrine as it enters into spiritual experience. I admit the fact while asserting strongly that but for this framework of intellectual necessity the doctrine would be unknown to faith and morals. It is sometimes stated that the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in order to account for Jesus, but that is only incidentally true. Its framers took the materials for it over from Greek thought, and even Greek thought probably inherited it from an older civilisation still, if indeed there were any necessity to inherit it. I contend that if we had never heard of the doctrine in connection with Jesus, we should have to invent it now in order to account for ourselves and the wondrous universe in which we live.
Unquestionably, however, it is from the point of view of religion and morals that the doctrine has most significance, and therefore has become indissolubly associated with the personality of Jesus; and it is easy to see how this has come about. Thinkers have always been compelled to construe the universe in terms of the highest known to man, namely, his own moral nature. It was natural, therefore, that while they thought of the universe as an expression of God, they should think of it as the expression of that side of His being which can only be described as the ideal or archetypal manhood. The infinite being of God is utterly incomprehensible to a finite mind, and in regard to it the most devout saint is as much an agnostic as the most convinced materialist. But we are justified in holding that whatever else He may be God is essentially man, that is, He is the fount of humanity. There must be one side, so to speak, of the infinitely complex being of God in which humanity is eternally contained and which finds expression in the finite universe. Humanity is not a vague term; we have already seen something of what it is. We ought not to interpret it in terms of the primeval savage, or even of average human nature to-day, but in terms of what we have come to feel is its highest expression, and that is Jesus. If we think therefore of the archetypal eternal divine Man, the source and sustenance of the universe, and yet transcending the universe, we cannot do better than think of Him in terms of Jesus; Jesus is the fullest expression of that eternal divine Man on the field of human history. Here, then, we have the first and second factors in the doctrine of the Trinity morally and spiritually construed.
+The divine Man.+—The idea of a divine Man, the emanation of the infinite, the soul of the universe, the source and goal of all humanity, is ages older than Christian theology. It can be traced in Babylonian religious literature, for instance, at a period older even than the Old Testament. It played a not unimportant part in Greek thought, and Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, works it out in some detail in his religio-philosophic system, which aimed to combine the wide outlook of Greek culture with the high seriousness of Hebrew religion. It is a true, indeed an inevitable, conception, if we hold anything like a consistent view of the immanence of God in His universe. With what God have we to do except the God who is eternally man? This aspect of the nature of God has been variously described in the course of its history. It has been called the Word, the Son, and, as we have seen, the second person in the Trinity. For various reasons I prefer to call it—or rather Him—the eternal Christ. I do this because, for one thing, the word "Christ" is a living word with a clearly marked ethical content and a great religious value. Originally, of course, it was but the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, and meant the "anointed one," the person chosen for a special divine work. But in the New Testament, especially the writings of St. Paul, as well as all Christian history through, it is associated on the one hand with the personality of Jesus, and, on the other, with the fontal or ideal Man who contains and is expressed in all human kind. According to the New Testament writers, Jesus was and is the Christ, but in His earthly life His consciousness of the fact was limited. But, as we have come forth from this fontal manhood, we too must be to some extent expressions of this eternal Christ; and it is in virtue of that fact that we stand related to Jesus, and that the personality of Jesus has anything to do with us. Here is where the value of our belief in the interaction of the higher and the lower self comes in. Fundamentally our being is already one with that of the eternal Christ, and faith in Jesus is faith in Him. Jesus is not one being and the Christ another; the two are one, and Jesus seems to have known it during His earthly ministry. He lived His life in such a way as to reveal the very essence of the Christ nature. He is therefore central for us, and we are complete in Him. Here is the goal of all moral effort—Christ. Here, too, is the highest reach of the religious ideal—Christ. "For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."
+The Christ of St. Paul.+—I am persuaded that we have here the key to the Christology of that great thinker and preacher, the apostle Paul. It is this ideal or eternal Christ who is the object of his faith and devotion. He even goes so far as to warn his readers not to dwell too much upon the limited earthly Jesus, but upon His true being in the eternal reality: "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." He does not say, "To me to live is Jesus," but, "To me to live is Christ." If ever there was a Christian who really loved Jesus with passionate and whole-hearted devotion, it was the apostle Paul, but he says almost nothing about the earthly ministry of his Lord. He seems to have had a vivid impression as to what the character of Jesus was really like, and he gave himself up to the worship of this with all his heart; but he does not draw for us any of the beautiful gospel pictures of the Jesus in the peasant's dress who taught on the hillsides of Galilee, went about doing good, was a welcome guest in the home at Bethany, lived a true human life, and died a shameful death. Paul always thought of Him, and truly, as the Lord who came down from heaven, but he does not draw a sharp line of distinction between Him and the rest of humanity. He calls Jesus "the first-born among many brethren." He speaks of the summing up of all things in Christ, and of the final consummation when God shall be all in all. Here is the New Theology with a vengeance. Paul requires to be rescued from the inadequate and distorting interpretations his thought has received in the course of its history. He brought this conception of the eternal Christ into Christianity from pre-Christian thought, saw it ideally revealed in Jesus, and then bade mankind respond to it and realise it to be the true explanation of our own being. Sometimes he appears to deviate from this view, and to say things inconsistent with it, but that we need not mind; he saw it, and that is enough. It forms the foundation of his gospel.