When we did geometry at school,
the most satisfying proof of all
was that which took the form of showing
that anything else than what was stated in the proposition was absurd.
It is rather like this with the Gospels.
We can argue this way and that,
but the real question is whether we can explain the Gospels at all except
on the basis that they are true.
The first remarkable fact about the Gospels is
THE FACT THAT THEY EXIST.
There is nothing remotely resembling them in any other literature,
whether of that time or of any other time.
Most people will agree that Jesus did live, and
that he was a great teacher.
They will accept the Gospels as a true record in so far as they deal with
his teaching on matters of conduct.
They do not claim that the Gospels are works of fiction,
and that one or more authors contrived to invent the personality and teaching
of Jesus.
But many people consider that the miraculous parts of the Gospels are later
inventions,
tacked on to the original true story by the affectionate imagination of the
early Christians.
This, they say, is quite a natural thing to happen.
But is it?
Socrates was a great teacher,
but no one suggests that he rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven.
Julius Caesar and Augustus were worshipped as gods after their deaths,
but no one adorned their memory with tales about their making the lame to
walk and the blind to see.
It is true that after the death of Christ all sorts of miraculous
stories were attached to various saints;
but (granting the stories to be legendary) this is clearly due to the fact
that,
because of the Gospels,
the performance of miracles had come to be associated with Christian sanctity.
Except for a limited number of incidents in the Old Testament, there is no
evidence that the idea of a connection between sanctity and miracles was
current before the time of Christ.
The most natural inference is that the miracle stories were attached to him
for the simple reason that they were substantially true.
Anyone who reads the Gospels without prejudice
must admit that,
for all their differences of detail and outlook,
they do quite clearly present a consistent picture of
THE CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY OF JESUS.
They obviously refer, though from different angles, to
the same person,
and the differences of presentation and emphasis are no
greater than those which anyone would expect to find in biographies by different
authors of, say, Oliver Cromwell or Mr. Gladstone.
Much is sometimes made of some discrepancies over matters of fact or the
order of events.
But these are, if anything, a proof of the sincerity of the writers.
If there had been no discrepancies we should have been justified in suspecting
a fake.
If there had been wide discrepancies -
if, for instance, one of the Gospels
had contained no miracles at all, we should have been justified in accepting
the account which best squared with our experience and rejecting the less
probable accounts.
But as it is, the whole thing has
THE STAMP OF GENUINENESS.
Talking of discrepancies, I mentioned a little way back the
story of King Harold being shot in the eye at the battle of Hastings.
This story has the backing of highly respectable historians.
Others, however, do not hesitate to describe it as a 'myth', and quote eyewitness
accounts to show that armed knights beat him down.
But no one denies that one way or another Harold was killed at the battle
of Hastings, or claims that the whole story is discredited because of discrepancies
in the details of different accounts.
To be quite honest, we must recognize
that few of THOSE WHO REJECT OR BYPASS THE GOSPELS
do so because of scholars' doubts about the genuineness of the accounts or
the reliability of the authors.
They do so BECAUSE OF THE UNUSUAL CHARACTER OF THE EVENTS DESCRIBED.
Such events have not taken place in our own experience,
or, as far as we know,
in the experience of anyone else.
They do not fit in with our experience of what really happens.
We have, after all, quite a considerable knowledge of the laws of nature
and the events of history.
As practical people, we feel entitled to conclude that these utterly abnormal
happenings could not have taken place as described, and that they must, therefore,
have been invented.
The difficulty about this view, however,
is that, however improbable the Gospel stories may appear,
the assumption that they are untrue involves far more improbabilities
than the assumption that they are true.
We are not far from having to apply
SHERLOCK HOLMES'S MAXIM:
'WHEN YOU HAVE EXCLUDED THE IMPOSSIBLE,
WHATEVER REMAINS,
HOWEVER IMPROBABLE,
MUST BE THE TRUTH.'
But still there are many people who will say:
'I agree that Jesus was the finest character that ever lived:
that his moral teaching was unsurpassed;
that he had powers that were beyond anything known to us.
But these so-called miracles were, after all, very largely matters of faith
healing,
of which we have some experience,
and most of the Gospels can be satisfactorily explained on the basis that
he was a very great and good man.
What I cannot stomach is all this stuff about Incarnation, Virgin Birth,
and Resurrection.
If the Church would drop this and concentrate on the moral teaching, there
would be some sense in it, and many of us who are now put off would be only
too glad to join in.'
The first thing to observe in answer to this very sensible
criticism is that, on all the evidence we have, the immediate effect produced
by Christ on those who came into contact with him was not that of a moral
teacher.
In the letters of Saint Paul, which, as we have seen, are the earliest evidence,
there is plenty of moral teaching, but he puts it forward on his own authority
and scarcely ever on the authority of Jesus.
He does not say that if you behave in a certain way you will be a Christian,
but that if you are a Christian you will behave in a certain way, which is
a very different thing.
As we have already noted, he stakes everything not on moral teaching at all,
but on THE RESURRECTION.
The same thing is true of the sermons of Saint Peter and the other Apostles
as recorded in THE ACTS.
Whatever we may think of the reliability of these accounts as historical
records,
we must at least admit that,
if Jesus had impressed those with whom he came into contact principally as
a moral teacher,
we should expect to find this brought out in the Epistles and Acts quite
as much as in the Gospels.
The second point is that, however admirable and powerful
the moral teaching of Jesus may have been, it is scarcely conceivable that,
if it had stood by itself, it could have survived at all.
Jesus published
no books, nor is there the slightest evidence that he took any steps to have
his teaching put on record.
The obvious comparison is with Socrates, who was also a moral teacher who
taught by word of mouth.
But Socrates taught in a highly cultivated and literary community.
We owe most of our knowledge of his teaching to the fact that one of his
pupils, Plato, was himself a first-class philosophical and literary genius
who published his books in the form of dialogues between Socrates and his
friends.
How much of the dialogues is genuine Socrates, and how much is Plato may
be disputed.
The point is that if it had not been for Plato, we should hardly have heard
of Socrates or his teaching;
and that Plato in his way was at least as distinguished a philosopher as
his master.
There is absolutely no evidence to support the notion that the teaching
of Jesus, delivered as it was very largely to ignorant people in an uncultured
atmosphere, was worked up or invented by any person who stood to him as Plato
to Socrates.
To assume that such a person existed instead of accepting the far simpler
explanation that Jesus did in fact deliver substantially the teaching recorded
in the Gospels, is simply flying in the face of all the rules of probability.
To suppose that there was more than one such person would, of course, be
more ridiculous still.
How, then, did it come about that this teaching was so carefully
remembered until the time came for it to be written down?
The Church answers:
because on the strength of their personal experience of Jesus,
and especially because of their knowledge of his Resurrection,
the first disciples were convinced of his divinity,
and therefore they preserved and handed on his teaching, as having divine
authority.
This makes sense;
but the alternative theory,
that the teaching was so impressive in itself that it not only led the disciples
to believe in his divinity but caused them to invent all sorts of incredible
stories about him so as to bolster up that belief,
makes something not far from nonsense.
In actual fact, it may be observed with all due reverence
that the moral teaching of Jesus was neither so original nor so obviously
calculated to make a popular appeal that it is at all probable that, if
he had done no more than give this teaching, it would have had any permanent
effect or even have been put on record.
Many people suppose, for instance, that Jesus was the first to say that one
should LOVE ONE'S NEIGHBOUR AS ONESELF. In fact,
of course, this precept is to be found in the BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
It is true that he gave the word 'neighbour' a wider mean?ing than past teachers;
but let anyone cut out of the Gospels everything except the moral teaching
of Jesus, and then ask himself honestly:
If this had been all,
what survival value could it have had, once the actual presence of the teacher
had been removed?
On the basis of all our experience of human nature and of the way things
happen,
the only honest answer can be,
none at all.
This is not to say that there was nothing original or striking
in the teaching of Jesus.
There was a great deal.
But the original and striking features of his teaching were not the moral
precepts
but precisely those parts that the modern man finds it so difficult to swallow.
(Does the modern man think that the first century AD man found them easy?)
The original and striking parts of the teaching were those that dealt with
the
nature of God,
the relationship of Jesus himself to God,
the mission of Jesus to redeem the world from sin,
and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
These teachings are inextricably mixed up with the moral teaching and form
its foundation.
Attractive as it might be to pick out from the rest the parts that can easily
be swallowed,
this cannot be done on any principles of scholarship or criticism,
and the results will vary according to the swallowing capacity of each individual.
If we are obliged to have resort to such expedients in order to discredit
the genuineness of the Gospels,
must we not honestly admit that in fact their credit stands pretty high?
Leaving now the consideration of the Gospels as records of
the teaching of Jesus,
let us look at the test case,
the question of THE RESURRECTION.
The four accounts vary to some extent, but they are all agreed on two points:
first, that THE DISCIPLES FOUND THE TOMB EMPTY ON EASTER
DAY;
secondly, that BETWEEN EASTER DAY AND THE ASCENSION JESUS
REPEATEDLY APPEARED TO AND SPOKE WITH HIS DISCIPLES.
These accounts are reinforced,
as we have already seen,
by the testimony of the LETTERS OF SAINT PAUL,
which show that this was THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH AT
LEAST AS EARLY AS AD 55.
Now the appearances of Jesus were not public.
They were only made to those who had been intimate with him before his death.
BUT THE EMPTY TOMB WAS A PUBLIC AND INDEED AN OFFICIAL
MATTER.
There have been plenty of attempts to explain it away,
but the possibilities can be summarized as follows:
1. |
Jesus was not really dead. |
2. |
The disciples went to the wrong tomb. |
3. |
The disciples hid the body. |
4. |
The authorities hid the body. |
The last-mentioned theory can be ruled out at once.
Such action on the part of the authorities would have been utterly pointless,
and directly contrary to their own interests.
The third explanation, according to SAINT MATTHEW?S GOSPEL,
was that favoured by public opinion of the time,
which shows that public opinion did not, at any rate, challenge either the
fact of Jesus's death
or the fact of the tomb having been empty.
All that can be said about this explanation, as well as of the first two
in the list,
is that there is not a shred of positive evidence to support them.
They are merely guesses on the part of the people who begin by assuming that
the Resurrection could not have taken place, and therefore conclude that
something else must have happened.
The weakness of these guesses is that they do not in the least account for
what undoubtedly did take place, namely the foundation and development of
the Christian Church.
That would indeed be a remarkable miracle if we were to suppose that the
original preachers were going upon nothing more than an elementary mistake.
It would be even more remarkable if, as the third theory demands, they were
carrying out a conscious deception.
For, after all, the Gospels are very frank.
They represent the disciples as unwilling and unable to take in the hints
that Jesus gave them in his lifetime regarding his approaching death and
rising again.
The disciples are shown as clinging to the hope that he would in the end
reveal his powers publicly and proclaim himself as a king.
When in fact he allowed himself tamely to be arrested they forsook him and
fled.
Saint Peter denied even having known him.
When he died on the Cross,
they con?cluded that all was over.
When they found the empty tomb they were puzzled.
It was not until Jesus himself came to them that they were with difficulty
convinced.
But they were convinced,
their faith became certainty,
their panic and weakness disap?peared.
From that time on there is no doubt whatever
that they preached boldly
and were ready to endure persecution and martyrdom for the sake of their
convictions.
If the Resurrection took place, all this hangs together and
makes sense.
But the alternative theories do not make sense.
Once more we return to SHERLOCK HOLMES:
'EXCLUDE THE IMPOSSIBLE,
AND WHATEVER REMAINS,
HOWEVER IMPROBABLE,
MUST BE THE TRUTH.'
Lastly,
THE CHAIN OF CONSEQUENCES,
like that of any other historical event,
runs through to our own day.
INNUMERABLE PEOPLE HAVE TRUSTED IN THIS FAITH
AND HAVE FOUND THAT IT WORKS.
The Church is still very much alive and is proclaiming the same faith.
The Christian Church is, in fact, the only institution in the world that
has preserved its identity and character through all the changes and chances
of the last nineteen hundred years.
THE AMAZING SURVIVAL OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND CREED
IS A FACT THAT CANNOT BE DISREGARDED
in considering the evidence.
Page^