Obstacles to Believing the Deity of Christ ³

By John H. Strong, D. D.

WHY are men blind to Christ? What type of mind is it that fails to give Christ his glory? And what are the hindrances?

Many reasons may be given, and the reasons given may not be the real reasons. Un-illuminated men do not understand themselves, their failures of action, their failures of knowledge. A man not a Christian told a clergyman that if once he could be persuaded that Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, all his difficulties would be swept away and he would become a Christian. A while later this clergyman preached on the resurrection of Lazarus, and the doubter professed himself to be fully satisfied. But he did not become a Christian. One difficulty had been removed, but another difficulty remained below consciousness, and that was the real difficulty preventing him from taking Christ as his Saviour.

A Christian worker observed in an evangelistic meeting a man evidently in distress of mind. Approaching him, he asked whether he was a Christian, and received this surprising answer: "I do not believe in hell, and I do not believe there is a devil." The other replied that those were matters aside from his question, but received a second time the same reply. "But," the Christian repeated, "that is not our first concern, is it? That is not the Gospel. We are nowhere told to believe in hell or believe in the devil and we shall be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." And he pictured to the man the love and mercy of God as revealed in the face, the out stretched hands, the words and work of the Saviour. And the light came. It flashed on the man like a wonderful sunrise, and then and there he came into the full peace of salvation. As he left, the other man, prompted by curiosity, asked, "But what now about hell and the devil?" This answer came back:

"If there is not a hell, there ought to be for such a wretch as I have been; and as for a devil, it is a question whether there is a better explanation of the power of evil in the world than that hypothesis."

The Real Obstacle Here

There was a man who gave reasons for not being a Christian which were not the reasons that operated. When the real reason was discovered, it was simply this: that he had never really attended to and heeded the Saviour. And even in the case of the other two dark facts, it was not inherent difficulties in them that kept them from being believed, for those difficulties were never removed, but a deeper obstacle which was only revealed when he had accepted Christ as his Saviour.

It may sound startling, but it is solemnly true, that the moment a man departs from God by unbelief or disobedience, his mind becomes undependable. And under these circumstances what importance attaches to the reasons he assigns for not accepting Christ's deity? They are not the real reasons. The real reasons he cannot fathom until he becomes an illuminated Christian.

How do men discern the deity of Christ? That is a more profitable question. And perhaps the true way may reveal the false ways, and the real hindrances may come to light which prevent men from recognizing and acknowledging the glorious nature of our Master.

Here a fact comes to light which we may well ponder, — namely, that the firmness and certitude with which Christ's deity is held stands in no relation to intellectual ability, or to the thoroughness and skill with which the material has been mastered upon which a belief in Christ's deity is ordinarily sup posed to rest.

What Her Words Meant

I recall in one of my first parishes a young woman whom I saw bowed in prayer with a group of little children gathered round her. It was at a time when I myself was passing through a period of questioning as to our Lord's deity, and I shall never so long as I live forget the immeasurable and heavenly assurance with which that young woman, leading the circle of children in prayer, uttered the words, "Lord Jesus." She was no theologian. She knew nothing of the lore of the schools. The formal argument upon which belief in Christ's divine nature is commonly reared had never been heard by her. Yet she knelt there profoundly assured, blessedly illuminated, her mind flooded with light from the glory of Christ and filled with a faith such as many a trained man would have given worlds to come into possession of.

It is said that Dr. John R. Mott came into an understanding of the deity of Christ while dealing with convicts in prisons. If that be true, what was there in the experience to produce the result? The experience hardly seems to contain the material out of which a formal argument for Christ's deity could be constructed. Is this faith, this belief, this per suasion, a "construction"? Is it not something very different?

Before me I see a beautiful house of marble, imposing in its proportions. A velvet carpet of green surrounds it, and an allee of ancient trees leads up to the door. Having never been within, I set myself to guess its interior. What furniture fills it? What decoration adorns it? I set myself to recall all the beautiful interiors I have seen, and the wonderful works of art which from the beginning men have used to adorn the palaces they have built; and bearing in mind the scale on which the house before me is built, and the costliness of its materials, I say, "I think inside this house will be found such and such furniture, and such a style of decoration." I have come to my conclusion. Is it at best more than a clever bit of guess-work? Suppose while I am reasoning thus the owner approaches and swings open the doors and ushers us in. I should then see and realize what I at first only imperfectly inferred and dreamed. I should then know, because the thing itself had dawned on me. And no process of reasoning could ever deprive me of that knowledge, for no process of reasoning had conferred it.

The truth which the church so needs to discern is the truth clearly stated in the New Testament, and so often repeated in the experience of Christians, that the deity of Christ is a revelation. It is not the capstone of an argument, or a correct inference from a multitude of facts about our Lord which the mind perceives and judges, but a revelation, an immediate disclosure flashed by God's Spirit on a soul, just as Christ's glory was flashed on Saul as he rode breathing out threatenings and slaughter on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus.

Who ever came to an understanding of what Christ was by reasoning on data? Who, by any formal process of argument,— by saying. He did this, he said that, therefore he must be divine"? Even where a logical process has taken place, something else has put the reality into the process that has made it an unshakable certainty and not a more or less likely hypothesis. The assurance which we come to have regarding Christ's higher being and nature partakes of the nature of intuition and vision. Processes may help, but at last we see it. The soul has eyes. That is the meaning of the crisis m Peter's life when, elicited by Jesus' question, the truth burst on Peter's mind at Caesarea Philippi, and two confessions followed,— Peter's, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"; and Christ's, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."

That is the way we come to know Christ's deity. Inferring it from Christ's words, deeds, character, influence in the world, or from the convictions and teachings of his apostles concerning him, is very like trying to make up my mind from the exterior of that house and from my knowledge of other houses as to what it was probably like within. I need to be led by the hand by the Holy Spirit unto the inner secret of Christ, and begin to live in Christ and have Christ live in me, before I really know Him. Jesus said to his disciples, as John reports in his fourteenth chapter: "Can't you see the Father in me? If you cannot, then take my words and my works and begin to argue from them. That is better than nothing. But the time is coming when you will not have to do that. The time is coming when you will know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. For I am going to manifest myself to you."

A Christian was walking on a hillside, one evening in the moonlight, when suddenly Christ took on the aspect of a glorious being with whom he was in fellowship. He saw no glory. He only became aware in a way unintelligible to himself, and entirely impossible of description, of Christ's glorious reality. His mind had for years dwelt on Christ's perfections. He had again and again, as he saw Christ in the Gospel story in environments calling for wisdom, compassion, poise, nobility, exclaimed as the disciples did after the storm, "What manner of man is this?" A secret lay there,— Christ's divinity, or deity, he well knew. He thought he knew Christ's deity; but he never really knew it until that night when it was revealed.

"No man can say, Jesus is Lord, save by the Holy Spirit." How clear it is, then, that if the deity of Christ is a revelation, the reason why many do not discern Christ's deity is that something hinders the revelation.

"Yet a little while and the world beholdeth me no more," Jesus told his disciples, "but ye behold me; because I live, ye shall live also." There is a great difference between "the world" and the disciple. Not intellectual mainly, but moral and spiritual reasons, lie back of this beholding and not beholding. We know that sin hides God's face; and for sin there must be atonement and the purification of the sinner. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

Some "Stock" Objections

We know also that disobedience may destroy a knowledge of God already possessed. A young man possesses a radiant knowledge of Christ as his Master and companion. He is called to the missionary field. He refuses the call. The knowledge fades. Such tragedies put solemnity into the words of the Lord to his disciples, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him."

Such, then, are the reasons why some discern and acknowledge the deity of Christ and some do not. To some, God is able to make the revelation ; and to others he is not. What a flood of light these simple facts throw on the reasons which men themselves assign for not accepting our Lord's deity. Here are a few gathered from many:

1. "I do not accept the deity of Christ because it is connected with the outgrown dogma of the church's authority, — a relic of the days when the church, prodded by Greek influence, developed philosophically its conception of Christ to defend itself against attack and enhance its authority in the world."

2. "I do not accept the deity of Christ because the doctrine is unreasonable, a denial of philosophical simplicity, as is too plainly revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity to which it logically leads."

3. "I do not believe in the deity of Christ because all such inquiries lead away into metaphysical speculation which distracts from the practical and puts a false intellectual emphasis upon the religious life."

4. "I do not believe in the deity of Christ because the divine is the antithesis of the human; and since the Christ history knows lived as human, what is called his deity can only be the unique reach of the human which he was, and not the divine which is incompatible with what he was."

How pitiful these objections to Christ's deity appear in the light of the real reason why men do not discern Christ's glory! How men need a revelation ! There came a young woman to me toward the close of a summer conference, all at sea, and in deep distress, because she possessed no religious certitude whatever. She did not even believe that Jesus Christ had been a historical person. That she might have learned from Tacitus, Suetonius, or Pliny, if not from the Bible; but relentless doubt had stripped even that poor knowledge from her.

Said I, "What you need is a revelation, is it not?"

"I believe I do," she answered.

Then we turned to the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, the twenty-first verse, and read, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him."

"Go and fulfil that condition," I said, "and Christ will fulfil his promise."

Did our all-gracious Lord ever fail? What is his attitude toward the inquirer? Let his words speak once again: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

Professor Robert W. Rogrers, M.A., Ph.D.,
D.D., LL.D., F.R.G.S., Hebrew and Old Testament
Exegesis, Drew Theological Seminary,
Madison, New Jersey.

Nothing has happened amid the learning and sift ing of recent years to diminish in the least degree my belief in the deity of our Lord. No other view of his Person explains what he has been to others and what he is to me. I have no fear that his su preme Authority can be diminished, and I go steadily forward, desiring above all else in life to know him by that same inner experience whereby his saints in all ages have been best assured concerning him.

Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, M.A., LL.D., Editor
of The British Weekly, The Bookman, The
Expositor, London, England; Editor of the
Expositor's Greek Testament, etc.

I fully believe in the deity of Christ as one of the Three Persons in the unity of the eternal and adorable Trinity.

[3] From The Sunday School Times.