The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

There is another difficulty of belief in the divinity of Christ, which it is all the more essential to bring into prominence because it usually receives but scant notice from the pulpit. I refer to the “ignorance” of Jesus Christ. In a review of Le Réalisme Chrétien et l’Idéalisme Grec, par L. Laberthonnière, the Church Times praises the Abbé’s conception of Christian realism, and then goes on to say: “Here is found the key to the mystery of the ignorance of Jesus Christ, and of the other limitations attributed to Him in the Gospels. There are two untenable theories—the one that He deliberately kept things back from His disciples; the other that He was Himself ignorant of His own true nature, which afterwards became known to the Church. The truth is that He had to reveal Himself by living among men, and not by giving them an abstract doctrine about Himself—a doctrine which must have been either inadequate because adjusted to their comprehension, or else incomprehensible because adjusted to a reality which was beyond them.” The plain question, however, is—Had He, or had He not, the attribute of Omniscience? Did He, or did He not, know what we now know? Are we to suppose that He pretended to be ignorant? Was He God or was He man? The usual answer is that, as Very Man, He had only the knowledge of His age (or, should we not say, of the very restricted environment selected by Himself for His activities upon earth?), but that as Very God he performed miracles, taught spiritually, as never man taught, and was sinless.

This answer, however, would not be accepted by the Venerable W. M. Sinclair, Archdeacon of London, who conjectures that “when our Lord said, ‘Greater works than these shall ye do,’ He was perhaps thinking of the marvellous discoveries of surgeons and physicians in times of advanced science” [!].35 Nor would it be accepted by the Rev. David Smith, who holds that Jesus accommodated Himself to the popular idea, and “after His wont fell in with the delusion” [!].36

Surely an Omniscient God must have known that grave doubts would arise in the future from the real or apparent ignorance of His Son, and, vice versa, that any prescience shown by Him would be hailed with delight as a proof of His divinity. If it be urged that such trials of faith are useful, why should it be the thoughtful of future generations who are chiefly to be so tried? If Christ had chosen His disciples from among the “wise men of the East” (or West), instead of from among men of the lowest order of intelligence and education, there would then have been no necessity for the doctrine to “have been either inadequate because adjusted to their comprehension, or else incomprehensible because adjusted to a reality which was beyond them.” Only a very small and remote corner of the world was favoured by the presence of God when revealing Himself in human form for the benefit of mankind. Only the most ignorant, for the most part, heard His personal teaching. Had He revealed Himself to all, or to a far greater number of persons then living, and satisfied the ardent longings of the wise men and philosophers of those times, would this not have conduced to the rapid recognition of Christianity and to its firm establishment over the whole world for all ages?

The tiny Sea of Galilee, the birthplace of the Gospel, is only about twelve miles long and seven miles in its widest part, and Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum were all situated close together at the northern end. Here Jesus made his permanent home after His fellow-townsmen at Nazareth had rejected Him; here He preached, and here He performed many mighty works. Not till I had visited the spot did I fully realise the insignificance of the area to which the Saviour of mankind confined His ministry. Round the lake stood such important cities as Tiberias and Taricheæ. They were studiously avoided by Jesus. (This would account, perhaps, for their great men hearing nothing of the new teaching, though hardly for their hearing nothing of stupendous miracles performed at their very door.) The cities of the Decapolis were also flourishing in this neighbourhood at the time of Christ’s ministry, and were the centre of great literary activity. Gadara produced Philodemus the Epicurean, a contemporary of Cicero; Meleager the epigrammatist; Menippus the satirist; Theodorus the rhetorician, the tutor of Tiberius; and others. Gerasa, also, was a mother of great teachers.

In the words of George Adam Smith: “Philodemus, Meleager, Menippus, Theodorus, were names of which one end of the Lake of Galilee was proud, when Matthew, Peter, James, and John were working at the other end.”37 If it be argued that for some inscrutable reason God sent His Son only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and intended His preaching to reach the Gentiles through the medium of His chosen people, why was such a learned and pious Jew as Philo left out in the cold?

Apologists do not explain at all convincingly why the Almighty could not, or preferred not to, make Himself understood. If He could say “Let there be light,” He could also have said “Let there be knowledge.” Besides, after all, what is there in the broad facts of modern science which could not be explained to an intelligent savage to-day? The shape and movements of the earth are explained in the most elementary geography books, and the theory of Evolution can be made quite clear to comparative children (I speak from personal experience). Recent discoveries have revealed to us that ancient nations must have reached an extraordinarily high state of civilisation. Six thousand years ago, in the valley of the Nile, there existed a standard of civilisation incomparably higher than that of the Jews at the time when God is alleged to have selected them as His chosen people. “The Old Testament,” says Canon C. H.

Robinson, “is the history of a people insignificant in number, occupying a country about the same size as the county of Yorkshire; remarkable neither for their superior learning, civilisation, nor military power; remarkable, if for anything, for their obstinate, grasping, usurious character; who, nevertheless, were chosen out of all the nations of the ancient world to be the recipients of peculiar blessings and favours.”38 This incomprehensible selection of ignorant Jews to be the special recipients of Revelation only emphasises the contention that we have no right to assume that learned men of two thousand years ago could not have understood plain facts, or that it was necessary for them to believe in purely imaginary explanations of the cosmos, in a flat, stationary earth, in a blue-basin sky, in an “Adam and Eve” origin, in devil-possession, in absurd miracles, etc. Their ignorance, which was natural enough considering their opportunities, could easily have been dispelled when God graciously condescended to come and live among them. What a proof would that not have been of His Divinity!

In any case, we are to understand that the Apostles were inspired by the Holy Ghost, so that they might be able to work miracles and be witnesses unto Christ, even to the utmost parts of the earth. Surely, then, they could and should have been enlightened for their mission work up to the level, say, of some of our twentieth-century theologians? The miracle of an intelligence and knowledge equal to that of the average modern apologist is not, after all, so very inconceivable, and it would, at least, have been more useful than miracle-working in a miracle-believing age. Christians, who glibly admit that Jesus had only the knowledge of His age, cannot, I think, fully realise the force of such an admission. One reason for this may be that their own knowledge is not completely up to date. That Jesus had no knowledge of nature’s inviolable laws and shared many of the gross superstitions prevalent around Him; that He accepted the Scriptures as literally true, and not in the sense now attributed to them by the Higher Critics; that He believed that He would come again “in the clouds of heaven with power and great might,” and that the generation in which He lived would not pass away till this had been fulfilled—of all this they may be dimly conscious; but what remain still to be studied by them are the startling disclosures of Comparative Mythology, and of the now fully-established theory of Evolution, and their bearing upon the Christian Faith. The matter is one of the utmost importance, as will be seen by a perusal of the following chapters.