038. SUMMED UP IN THE HISTORICAL JESUS

SUMMED UP IN THE HISTORICAL JESUS

There is a fifth truth to which the last half-century has attained,—a truth more important than all that have preceded, simply because it includes them all. It is this: The ethical meaning of the universe is summed up in the historical Jesus. It has been sometimes said that Christianity is the crown of the evolution of the whole universe. But this does not express the whole truth. Christianity is nothing but Christ, and Christ is not simply the crown of evolution; he is the animating spirit of it, the inner force that moves all its wheels, the mind and heart and will that expresses itself in all its processes; and when he becomes incarnate, and teaches, suffers, dies, all the rays of previous divine impartation throughout the universe come to their focus. The historical Jesus is not only God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form and manifestation, but he is also the gathering up and disclosure of all the ethical meaning of the creation. In other words, Jesus is the immanent Christ of evolution, coming out like a painter from behind his own picture and interpreting to us his own work. In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is declared that the Mosaic tabernacle and its sacrifices were only the shadows of the heavenly, and that Moses made the earthly after the pattern of those that were shown him in the mount. The whole historical life and work of Jesus were in like manner the temporal and finite shadowing forth of eternal and infinite realities. His own human growth in wisdom and knowledge and in favor with God and men is but the mirror which reflects in miniature the process of evolution by which the universe has come to be what it is, and by which the larger Christ has progressively revealed the transcendent God. But specially is the historical Jesus the moral and spiritual fullness of the Godhead. "He that hath seen me," our Lord can say, "hath seen the Father," —the Father’s righteousness and the Father’s love. His cross is a window into heaven, through which we can discern the purpose of all existence, and we can understand the whole creation that groaneth and travaileth in pain together only when we see the same heart that animates it breaking in agony on Calvary. The cross is the revelation of God’s eternal suffering for sin. To this great conclusion the theology of the last fifty years has been leading us. In the boyhood of some of us, New England theology explained the atonement by the necessities of government. Nathaniel W. Taylor’s system of theology was entitled "Moral Government," and Charles G. Finney’s treatise on moral government was entitled " Systematic Theology." Both of these theologians maintained that Christ suffered to demonstrate God’s regard for his law. But why God should have such regard for his law was not entirely clear, for law was conceived of as something arbitrary and external instead of being the necessary expression of his holiness, an expedient for the happiness of his creatures instead of being the transcript of his own moral nature. The result has been that law, having no proper foundation in God’s being, has lost its significance, and the very conception of government has dropped out of New England theology.