Why Reason Requires the Deity of Christ ²

By Robert E. Speer

THE question of the deity of Christ is the question of the truth or falsehood of Christianity. Either Jesus was divine, God and man in one historic personality, or he was merely a man. The thought of other days may have been able to conceive of a third possibility, the character of a demi-God, less than God and more than man. But we can entertain no such conception. We have but the two choices. One of these choices carries with it the affirmation of the truth of Christianity. The other involves its denial. For Christianity as under stood by its first interpreters rested upon one rock, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and life from God in Him. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life" (1 John 5:10-12).

Christianity was not and is not the teaching or the example or the spirit of Jesus. I» was the gift by a supernatural Person of the life of God in himself to man. The essential difference of the two views was brought out some years ago by two answers to the same question, namely, "What is the greatest gift Jesus gave to the world?" To this ex-Secretary of the Navy Long replied, "The Sermon on the Mount." Governor Guild, of Massachusetts, answered, "Himself."

Who Could Have Invented Jesus?

The faith of the Christian Church in the deity of Christ rests on a wide range of evidence. And the Church is not disturbed in its confidence by any unbelief, any more than a man who saw the sunlight would be troubled by the skepticism of blind men. The deity of Christ is not a problem for the church. But it is a problem for unbelief. For Jesus Christ is a fact of history, and the faith in his deity is a fact in human thought, and these facts must be accounted for by men. The fact of faith may be brushed aside as delusion provided the unbeliever is sure enough of himself to dismiss the long list of the wise and great who have believed. But the fact of history remains; and Jesus is there as a person and a power to be accounted for and given a value to. Was he what the records represent and what he himself claimed? To what is his influence and the tenacity of his memory due? Can the ordinary categories of human religious genius contain him? "It is no use," says John Stuart Mill, "to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the traditions of his followers." It is no use because, as Mill goes on to ask, who among his disciples, and we may boldly add, who among all unbelievers, was "capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus or of imagining the life and character recorded in the Gospels"? We cannot ignore the place Jesus has filled in the history of the world, or that he fills in it to-day. The question is, how is all this to be estimated? Is the problem of Jesus rationally and sufficiently answered by calling him only a man, as great and good as you please, but only a man?

It is right and necessary that the problem should be faced squarely and on reasonable grounds by every man. The believer in Christ's deity can only believe on grounds of reason, and he must be prepared to state the basis of his conviction in rational terms. Those by whom Jesus has not been accepted as the incarnate God must face the historical and moral issues which are involved, and either meet them on the ground of their estimate of Jesus' character or be confronted with the moral obligation to change their personal attitude toward him.

1. The first and most obvious element of the problem of Jesus when we look at him sincerely is his CHARACTER. No Critical questions as to the Gospels dissipate this problem of the ethical personality of our Lord. The clear picture of the moral manhood of Jesus must be accounted for. What we see when we look at him is a character of complete sincerity, simple, humble, unselfish, dignified, loving, forgiving, steadfast, considerate yet absolutely independent.

The theory may be at once dismised that this picture of Jesus is the result of our idealization of his actual historic character. The contrary fact is true, namely, that our ideals have their origin in the Gospel picture of his character. The problem that is at once raised is this: Was this character merely human? Bushnell holds that it was not, in his classic chapter entitled, "The Character of Jesus Forbids His Possible Classification Among Men." If we are rot prepared to acknowledge this, if on the other hand we hold Jesus to have been a purely human phenomenon, then a penetrating moral responsibility confronts us. We are bound to repeat Jesus' moral qualities. If they are purely human we cannot excuse ourselves. This achievement lays a stringent compulsion on us. For character is not an irresponsible endowment. It is a responsible attainment. And the progress of twenty centuries and the resources and advantages of our life suggest our surpassing the accomplishments of an unlettered Galilean peasant. If Jesus was only a man, why am I not a better man?

2. A second element of the problem of Jesus is his TEACHING. Those who deny his deity often take admiring delight in calling him Teacher. He is to them the Great Teacher. But can he be that without being more than that? Consider the originality of his teaching. "I cannot discover in these essential characteristics of the Christian religion any filiation, any human origin," says Guizot. And Lecky declares: "Nothing can, as I conceive, be more erroneous or superficial than the reasonings of those who maintain that the moral element in Christianity has in it nothing distinctive or peculiar. It is quite certain that the Christian type differs not only in degree, but in kind, from the pagan one."

From whom could Jesus have learned his doctrine or borrowed his project? Not from foreigners. His isolation as a young man is a pledge of this. Not from Jews. His contemporaries regarded his teaching as revolutionary. Schleiermacher points out that "of all the sects in vogue, none ever claimed Jesus as representing it; none branded him with the reproach of apostasy from its tenets." Moreover, there was no one from whom Jesus could have plagiarized his project. "The idea of changing the moral aspect of the whole earth, of recovering nations to the pure and inward worship of the one God, and to a spirit of divine and fraternal love, was one of which we find not a trace in philosopher and legislator before him," says Channing.

Who But God Could Have so Taught?

Consider the audacity of his teachings. As Liddon says:

"Here is, as it seems, a Galilean peasant, surrounded by a few followers taken like Himself from the lowest orders of society; yet He deliberately proposes to rule all human thought, to make himself the center of all human affections, to be the Law-giver of humanity, and the Object of man's adoration. He founds a spiritual society, the thought and heart and activity of which are to converge upon His Person, and He tells His followers that this society which He is forming is the real explanation of the highest visions of seers and prophets, that it will embrace all races and extend throughout all time. He places Himself before the world as the true goal of its expectations, and He points to His proposed work as the one hope for its future. There was to be a universal religion, and He would found it."

As a teacher the conception of Jesus as more than man is necessary to meet the very terms of the problem. Great genius would suffice to account for the inimitable form of his teaching. No one has ever been able to duplicate one of his parables, but that would not set him off in any qualitative war from man It is the substance and spirit of his teaching which are not explicable on any humanistic hypothesis. His revelation of values gives him the value of God.

And the giver of such a divine donation must himself have been a Divine Knower and Possessor. What the fourth Gospel reports him to have said is the most rational explanation of his message, "I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me I speak these things."

3. But the problem of Jesus presents a third and deeper difficulty to unbelief. All men admit that Jesus was a holy and humble man, that he wrought good among men, and lived a blameless life and died nobly. But how can this representation be reconciled with the facts that he openly proclaimed HIS OWN MORAL EXCELLENCE: that he put himself forward as a messenger from God in such a sense that the record alleges that the Jews declared that he identified himself with God, made himself God's equal and called himself God's own Son; that he asked God's forgiveness in behalf of others but never but never in his own belief; that he asserted his own sinless ness and maintained a pious life without penitence; that he made himself the center and object of faith and loyalty to men? These facts cannot all be excluded from the record without excluding the fact of Christ. They are part of the problem. Can a humanitarian solution cover these facts?

Piety without one dash of repentance, one ingenuous confession of wrong, one tear, one look of contrition, one request to heaven for pardon — let any one of mankind try this kind of piety," says Bushnell, "and see how long it will be ere his righteousness will prove itself to be the most impudent conceit! how long before his passions, sober ed by no contrition, his pride, kept down by no repentance, will tempt him into absurdities that will turn his pretences to mockery!"

And how could a humble man have made such claims as these for himself? Or how could a self-deceived man have lived so normal and rich and fruitful a life? We cannot escape from the harsh dilemma, that if Jesus' claims were not true then he was either a fanatic or a hypocrite. In the former case he was self-deceived, with inferior moral discernment, and though a sinner was ignorant of the fact. But such a supposition is contradicted utterly by his character, by its perfect balance, by the testimony of his sinlessness and holiness of those who knew him and followed him. If we accept the other alternative, then we must believe that he was conscious of transgressing the divine law constantly and wretchedly, and yet expressly denied it. "But who is there," asks Ullmann, "that would be ready to undertake the defense of such a position, and to maintain that he, who in all the circumstances of his life acted from the purest conscientiousness and who at last died for the truth upon the cross, was after all nothing but an abject hypocrite? How could it be that he, of whom even the least susceptible must confess that there breathed around him an atmosphere of purity and faith, should have fallen into an antagonism with himself so deep and so deadly?" It simply cannot have been. Such a solution of the problem of the innocent self-consciousness of Jesus as the Son of the Father and the revealer of God lays more of a strain on the reason than is required by faith in his deity.

4. We have to account also in our solution of the problem of Jesus for the extent and quality of HIS INFLUENCE IN HISTORY AND LIFE. How has it come about that the whole civilized world and a good part of the non-Christian world dates its chronology from the birth of Jesus? This is not a merely accidental and arbitrary arrangement. As a matter of indisputable fact Jesus stands at the center of human history. All that went before leads up to him and all that came after flows out from him. He and his influence hold the center in human thought. That thought may accept or reject him, but it finds its classification in a scheme of which he is the determining principle. He and his ideas and the religion which worships him as God have been the deepest influence in the life of the world and are so to-day These are not hasty claims. Each one of them can be verified. The three short years of Jesus' life says Lecky, have "done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists."

Could Man Atone for Men?

"In all my study of the ancient times," said Johann von Muller, skeptical historian, "I have always felt the want of something, and it was not until I knew our Lord that all was clear to me; with Him there is nothing that I am not able to solve "

But the supreme work and service of Jesus Christ was his atonement for human sin and the gift of his power in the salvation of men. Did he do these things ? Millions of men can testify that he did them for them. How could a mere man have done them? I hey were achievements which man could not do for himself. Only God could do them for man Must not he who did them, and does them still, be God?

5. The early Christian Church believed also that while Jesus had died like other men he had not died like other men. He had RISEN FROM THE DEAD And this unique end had confirmed their faith in his unique character. Indeed, it was all that did confirm It. For their expectations and extraordinary conception of character-value in the case of Jesus had collapsed with his death. They confessed sorrowfully that they had cherished hopes regarding him which had broken down with his crucifixion What re-created them and re-established their confidence? The cause must have been adequate to the effect. Christianity died with Christ. Then sudden ly it arose again. How? Because Christ had risen This was the explanation of the first Christians. And It was the impregnable conviction of Paul So sure of It was he that though he would still have had all the other arguments for the deity of Christ of which we have spoken he declared that there was nothing in it for him if the resurrection was not a fact If Christ did not rise we have to account for the phenomenon of Paul's faith and influence, and for the very existence of Christianity which had died with Christ. If he did rise the humanitarian solution of his Person collapses.

But the modern mind has one firm objection to such a summary style of argument. The resurrection would not be to it an evidence of the deity of Christ because there could not be a resurrection. Christ couldn't be divine because there cannot be any such thing as a God-man. But that is to beg the whole question, and to do it by shutting up the mind against what to the open and unprejudiced view is the most reasonable solution of the problem. And what right has any man or person to exclude such a solution ? Virchow could not do so. Sir Alexander Simpson says he asked him, "the man who had made so many hundreds of operations, if he had any difficulty in believing in the Resurrection." "No," replied Virchow, "why should I?"

Why should he indeed, or any of us, when the matter can be tested simply and surely in our own lives? Whether the divine Christ is alive or not can be tried in any man's own experience. Let a man who needs to be saved from his sin, from lust, from drunkenness, from impurity, from selfishness, from cowardice, and to be made strong to do his duty, to be veracious in small things, to sacrifice himself for others, to love his enemies, to be pure and holy, commit himself to Socrates or Moses or Paul or Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Petrarch, or any other dead sage or hero and see what comes of it. But let him commit himself to Christ in the surrender of his soul on the hazard of the truth of Christ's offer and claim, and he will find, as millions are ready to testify, the presence and power of a living Saviour. The Christian Church has her historic and rational evidence for believing in the deity of Christ. It is the one reasonable and satisfying solution of a problem otherwise insoluble. But she does not rest on such evidence alone. "Try it for yourself," she says, "you can test the solution in your own life. Make experiment of his deity and see whether it is true or not. If you truly try him, you will find him to be truly God."

[2] This article appeared in a special "Deity of Christ" Number of The Sunday School Times.