MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY THE
REV. CHARLES ROW, M.A.,
OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD.
[MYTHICAL THEORIES OF CHRISTIANITY.]
It is hardly possible to over-estimate the importance of the issues to which it will be my duty to address myself in this lecture. They involve the central position of Christianity; viz., the all-important question whether Jesus Christ was an historical person, or a creation of the imagination. Is the Church which is erected on Him founded on an historic fact, which had an objective existence; or is the Jesus of the Evangelists a subjective creation which existed only in the minds of its originators?
Many of the attacks which have been made on Revelation are directed against its outworks merely; this is one directed against the very key of the Christian position. If it can be carried by our opponents, the whole line of our defences becomes untenable. Let us not deceive ourselves. If the Gospels are not in their main outlines historically true, Christianity is no more divine than Shakespeare. It may be the highest development of man; but it can have no pretence to be esteemed a revelation from God.
The objections of this school have done more to undermine the belief of the educated classes in Christianity as a divine revelation than any one single cause. They have largely created the so-called rationalism of the Continent. They are widely diffused in America. In our own country, a numerous class of writers who obtain ready access to our periodical literature are not only imbued with similar views, but write with the quiet assumption that the historical foundation of Christianity cannot be defended.
As my subject is a wide one, I must address myself to it without any preliminary observations. The question before us is simply this, Are the Gospels credible histories, in the sense that other writings of the same description are? or are the larger portion of their contents fictitious?