But Was Not “Jesus” the Messiah and Son of God

It may be demanded, for example, “Was

not Jesus the Messiah? Was it not He who

preached the kingdom? Was He not the Son

* p. 179.

of God? Did He not die for men? Was it not He who brought the message of the Gospel?” Now all this may prove to be no more than an appeal to the prejudices created by traditional beliefs. Let us examine it in the clear light of the “latest scholarship” and “modern thought.”

“Jesus” was the Messiah. Yes, but what

does this imply? We are told that thedisnel a we cannot tell — when He had “settled accounts with Himself.” It was the solution of “a surging chaos of disparate feeling as well as of contradictory theory.”* This “theory,” moreover, was connected with “the kingdom;” and this again “Jesus took from the religious traditions of His nation.”+ “The idea of the two kingdoms, of God and of the devil... was an idea which Jesus simply shared with his contemporaries. He did not start it, but He grew up in it and He retained it.”t No, He did not start it. It was John the Baptist who not only started it, but gave it definite form. Not that this matters much, for the whole conception springs from Jewish tradition and ignor-

p, 135. +p. 52. tp. 54.

ance: “Ultimately the kingdom is nothing but the treasure which the soul possesses in the eternal and merciful God.”*

Well, but “Jesus” was the Son of God. Yes, but let us not forget what we have already learned. This is merely an “idea,” not a fact. As a matter of fact, He was the son of J oseph of Nazareth. In this connection “the name of Son, rightly understood, means nothing but the knowledge of God.... Jesus is convinced that He knows God in a way in which no one ever knew Him before.”+ Hence His claim to be the Son of God. But this is not “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” — we have drifted very far from such a conception as that — but merely “the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father, and who is also our Father.”t It is not that He has raised us to a higher level, but that He stands beside us on the level of our common humanity. He knew God better than other men, that is all.

S5piawdte Tp. 128, tp. 301.