Christianized Rationalism and the Higher Criticism

Ne of the most striking features of religious thought to-day is the honour paid to the Founder of Christianity by those who reject His claims to divine homage. With the cultured Jew the once execrated Nazarene is now held in respect as one of the great Rabbis of the past. With the cultured infidel the coarse hatred of Voltaire has given place to the exquisite admiration of Renan. The change is most grateful to the Christian. But it is not without its perils. There is a real danger lest the gulf should be ignored which lies between a generous appreciation of the greatest of religious teachers and the spiritual worship of our Divine Saviour and Lord. And this danger is intensified when the homage comes from one who claims a place within the camp of faith, and when it is clothed in the very words of Scripture — words which to Christian ears seem to carry with them the acknowledgment that He is divine.

These thoughts are suggested by the study of Professor Harnack’s What is Christianity ?* In striking contrast with the dreary periods of Strauss’s New Life of Jesus, these pages glow with life and sympathy; and the reader is carried along by charms of style and diction, which even the ordeal of translation into English has failed to destroy. And more than this, the use of New Testament terminology seems to assure us that we are in touch with the great facts and truths of Christianity. For here we read of “the kingdom of God,” “the Messiah,” “the Son of God,” “the God-man,” “the expiatory death” of Him who “was proclaimed as ‘the Lord,’ not only because He had died for sinners, but because He was the risen and the living One,” the Bearer of “the glad message assuring us of eternal life.”

This is well fitted to deceive the superficial.

* What is Christianity? Sixteen lectures delivered in the University of Berlin. Translated into HEnglish by Thos. Bailey Saunders. (Williams & Norgate, London.)

But the careful reader recognizes that it is but the husk from which all that is vital in Christian truth has disappeared. To give a new reading to an old text, we might say that “the voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” For the phraseology represents not the divinely accredited realities on which the Christian’s faith is founded, but merely ideas suggested to the minds of the disciples by the public facts of their Master’s ministry and death. ‘“Reconciler” has become a term of reproach. But in a new sense Dr. Harnack is a champion reconciler. We knew that Christianity — so indestructible is its vital force — could survive the pressure of a weight of Rationalism; his aim has been to prove that Rationalism can adopt the whole apparatus of the Christian creed. The corruption of Christianity by Rationalism is no new thing; but he hasshown..us...that..Rationalism..pure..and simple can disguise.itself in a.Christian dress.

But though his lectures are apt to deceive the many, he himself is chargeable with no sinister intention. For his scheme is disclosed in his opening words. His purpose is “to remind mankind” “that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once stood in their midst.”* To the devout Jew and to the intelligent Christian the meaning of “Jesus Christ” is “Jesus the Messiah” — a divine title of supreme solemnity and honour. But to the world in general it has no such significance. It merely designates the “historic Jesus” who lived and died nineteen centuries ago; and if reverent thoughts or religious emotions are aroused at the mention of the name, it is because the mind turns back to a remote past, not upward to the throne where the Lord of life and glory sits on the right hand of God.

And so here the question, “What is Christianity?” does not find answer in the divine revelation of which the Lord Jesus Christ is the sum and substance, but resolves itself into “the purely historical theme: What is the Christian religion?”+ The spiritual Christian has learned to distinguish between Christianity and “the Christian religion,” but Prof. Harnack makes no such distinction. For not even “the historic Jesus” himself will afford

p. 1. tpp. 6, 9.

“the materials” for his inquiry; “he must include the first generation of His disciples as well.”* Nor will even this suffice. For, he tells us, “Jesus Christ and His disciples were situated in their day just as we are situated in ours; that is to say, their feelings, their thoughts, their judgments, and their efforts were bounded by the horizon and the framework in which their own nation was set, and by its condition at the time.”+ This being so, our “materials” must not be limited even to the life and teaching of “Jesus Christ and His disciples:” to ascertain aright what is Christianity “we must include all the later products of its spirit.”

But, of course, “Jesus Christ” and His “message” are of principal importance. What, then, are “our authorities” here? The answer is, in words, “the first three gospels.”§ “In words,” I say; for let no one suppose that he may accept any one of the three as trustworthy. If the Rationalist would leave us even a single book of the New Testament, the foundations of our faith, however narrowed, would at least be secure. But before the wor- p. 10. tp. 12. tp. 10. §p. 19.

shipper can betake himself to the sanctuary he must repair to the professor’s classroom to learn how much or how little of all on which his faith rests has escaped in the general wreck,

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