AoC-6-Chapter VI

Chapter VI
Two-Fold Sense Of The Cry: "Back To Christ."

IT is perhaps vain to hope to redeem a cry which has been so much abused, and all we wish to do now is to point out that the cry, though it has often been used to denote one of the most destructive tendencies in the religious thought of our day, is yet capable of describing the very best.

I need hardly say that by the destructive tendency, reference is intended to the view that we must treat Christ’s own words as having a value and a truth not to be expected, and not actually found in the teachings of His Apostles. The meaning of the cry in this sense is, Go past the Apostles to Christ; they and He differ; He is right and they are wrong. A recent most excellent work, entitled "The Relation of the Apostolic Teaching to the Teaching of Christ," has taken up this question, and dealt with it in a manner that does not need repetition. In a host of particulars the teaching of the Apostles and that of Christ are shown to be in living, subtle, admirable, and, on the supposition of merely human origin, unexplainable harmony. Into that kind of treatment we cannot here enter, but have pleasure in recommending this work, which is the Kerr Lectures for 1900, by Prof. Robert J. Drummond. But we should like to bring home what is involved in the attempt to separate between the Teaching of Christ and that of His Apostles. At first sight it might seem that it would be an easy matter to take the Gospels and say, Now this is Christ’s Own, and, this is another’s. But when you get started, it is not so easy as it looks. Suppose you say, Well, we can take the Gospels as a reliable history. We do not need to think of the writers as inspired, but we shall accept them as reliable history, and hear from them what Christ taught. Do so, and what is the result? In this pamphlet we have taken from the gospels some portion only of what Christ, according to them, said to and concerning His Apostles. But enough has been taken to show that the strongest things are said as to their authority and their being guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit. I submit, if the gospels are taken as reliable, the old view as to the authority and infallibility of the Apostles is the only one possible.

Now refuse to accept the portions of the Gospels which describe Christ training and commissioning the Apostles and promising to them the endowment and guidance of the Holy Spirit, then you throw a doubt over all that is said about Christ in the Gospels. The mind will be uneasy. You will reason: "Christ wrote nothing. These records of what he said and did were written by others. If they have incorporated so much about the Apostles which is not to be accepted, may they not have misrepresented Him in their reports?" No reliance could be placed on what they said until it had been subjected to very careful sifting and editing. We know by experience what that would end in. Thus in passing the Apostles to get back to Christ, you lose all certainty as to what Christ Himself did, or said, or was. At the bottom we are dependent upon the Apostles for all we know of the Work, Doctrine and Personality of Jesus Christ. This sense of "Back to Christ" is arbitrary and destructive in the highest sense. But the words may be used to mean, "Let us leave all teaching and every practice for which Christ is not responsible." In this sense Back to Christ would include going back to the Apostles. It would be recognized, of course, that in personal character and dignity there is an infinite distance between Him and His Apostles. They are our fellow-servants and fellow-worshippers of Jesus Christ our Lord. Their authority is not their own; it is His. Hence going back to what they taught and commanded in His name is going back to Christ.

We see than that there is really no choice between reducing Christianity to that condition in which the natural world once was, without form and void, and accepting the authority and instruction of the Apostles as set forth in the New Testament. Our Lord has Himself so committed Himself to the Apostles that you cannot have Him and reject them. Christ, as we saw, always anticipated that the knowledge of Himself would reach mankind through the Apostles. He trained them and endowed them to communicate His will, and if we treat the teachings of these men as of comparatively little importance we ignore the guiding and will of Christ whom we profess to be anxious to go right back to. But take the authority of the Apostles as we have seen it exhibited and enforced in the New Testament, and how complete a Guide-book we possess; enabling us all to attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. By the Spirit’s aid we have a four-fold record of what Christ did and said and suffered for us. But we note in these Gospels that there were some things Christ could not teach outside the circle of His Apostles, and that even by them some aspects of His teaching were not understood and appreciated. The Resurrection and Ascension take place. The Spirit is given and the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ are more and more unfolded. The Apostles teach them all things Christ had taught them. The Faith is once for all delivered, and now is embodied in the writings of the Apostles and Prophets preserved for us in the New Testament. There we may learn the Will of Christ concerning Salvation, and the Life in Him and the organization of that Church which he loved and for which he gave Himself. No difference is made between the authority of Christ’s teaching and that of His apostles. It is all His teaching. Our obedience to it is not compelled. But our love and reverence for Him is expected to lead us to cheerful continuance in obedience to it all; and we are responsible for obedience, not to the Apostles, but to Him who sent them, the One Lord, their Lord and ours.