Assured that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person, we may now consider briefly the religious significance of this fact. In the first place, can he justly be called the founder of Christianity?
Our answer to this question will depend upon what is understood by "Christianity" in this connection. If it is defined simply as "religion," then Jesus cannot be called its founder, for the world already possessed a variety of religions before he and his apostles appeared upon the scene. The Jews for centuries had believed themselves to be in possession of a peculiar religious heritage, and the gentiles were, in their own way, also highly religious. Nor is Christianity unlikely to have had many things in common with other faiths. This would be made necessary by the very circumstances of the time. Christianity's advocates had to solve the same general problems as other religious teachers, and in the main they had to employ for this purpose the common
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stock of religious phraseology and thinking. Especially is it difficult to isolate the new religion from its very definite Jewish setting. The members of the primitive community were Jews by birth, and even as Christians they continued to honor the ancestral faith. They inherited their Bible and many of their theological ideas from Jewish sources, and instead of endeavoring to establish an entirely new religion they aimed to bring to completion what they believed to be the true Judaism. Jesus cannot be called the founder of Christianity in the sense of supplying all its phases de novo.
It is equally impossible to suppose that Christianity was a finished product in Jesus' day, or that it came into being full-fledged at some particular moment in history. On the contrary, it is a growth. We may assume that its basal elements are to be found in the teaching and work of Jesus, still these historical data had to be supplemented by the disciples' experience and interpretation before the new religion could claim an existence in any formal sense. Even in the most primitive period of its life it is not a fixed unit which one may isolate and call "original Christianity." For instance, it is doubtful whether there was ever
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a time when all members of the community agreed absolutely on all questions of belief and practice. At any rate we know there were differences of opinion and even disputes and dissensions at a very early date.[1] Christianity is not a static thing; it is a movement, to whose origin and development many factors contribute. Nor can it be called the work of one individual. Many persons contributed toward its making; it embodied the social experiences of several successive generations.
Except in a very academic sense, all religions are complex products, effected by an evolutionary process extending over a more or less lengthy period. Yet we speak of the "founders" of religionnot meaning that various individuals and different ideas have not been instrumental in the creation of most historic faiths, but indicating that some one person reacted so significantly upon contemporary life and thinking that he so revitalized existing forces, or introduced new ones, as to bring about a movement sufficiently distinctive to be termed a new religion. Thus to say that any individual "founded" a religion can only mean that he furnished the initial impetus without
[1] Acts 6:1; 15:1, 39; Gal. 2:11; I Cor. 1:10.
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which, historically speaking, the new movement would not have come into being. Is Jesus to be credited with having done this for Christianity? And, if so, what constituted his distinctive work as a "founder"?
It used to be supposed that he had personally provided the new religion with certain fundamentals of organization. He had spoken of a "church" of which Peter was to be the corner-stone,[1] he had explicitly authenticated the rite of baptism,[2] and had enjoined upon believers the perpetuation of the Lord's Supper.[3] But "liberal" critics now tell us that these items in the tradition are uncertain historically. They may be only the primitive community's formulations to meet its own needs, stated in the light of its developing life and under the conviction that the real intention of Jesus was thus coming to fulfilment. On this understanding of the situation Jesus cannot be called the founder of that organization, with its rites and customs, which the new movement adopted in the effort to make itself effective.
[1] Matt. 16:18.
[2] Matt. 28:19.
[3] Mark 14:22-24; Matt. 26:26-28; Luke 22:19 f.; I Cor. 11:23-26. The specific command "do this in remembrance of me" appears only in Luke and Paul.
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Is he not more certainly sponsor for the content of the new faith? Did he not found Christianity by becoming the center of early dogma and the object of believers' reverence? Of course it was not "Jesus," but rather the heavenly Christ, who first attracted the theologians' attention and formed the objective of their worship. The earthly Jesus therefore can hardly be called the real founder of the new apologetic, unless it is evident that his career upon earth was an essential factor in preparing the way for and engendering the christological speculation which elevated him, after his death, to a place beside God. But did Jesus by his teaching attempt to school his disciples to think of him in this way? Even in the latest parts of synoptic tradition he is not represented as demanding worship from his followers, while in the earliest narrative his claims for himself are quite obscured by the hearing he would win for his message, in which God only is set forward as the object of man's supreme regard. Much less can it be affirmed that his teaching supplied the whole framework of primitive christological speculation.
Sometimes it is said that Jesus founded Christianity by his death and resurrection.
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These manifestly are important items in the genesis of the new faith. Without his tragic death the way would not have been prepared for that item in his saving work of which Paul makes so much, nor could belief in his heavenly lordship have arisen except through the conviction that he had been transferred from the abode of the dead to a position beside God in heaven. But there must have been more than the mere fact of his death behind the early doctrine of atonement, for other heroes had died without being so regarded. Not the mere fact of death but the type of person who had died seems to have been the determining factor in the situation. Still it is doubtful whether Jesus' death would have been interpreted messianically prior to belief in his resurrection, and this leads us to question whether the life of the earthly Jesus has any fundamental connection with the genesis of the resurrection faith.
If the first disciples had been asked this question they would not improbably have answered it negatively. Tradition is almost uniform in representing that their faith did not grow out of Jesus' affirmations of messiahship, nor did it spring from predictions of his death and resurrection. It was only after they came
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to believe that he had risen that these items of tradition took on distinctiveness and real meaning. We cannot here examine at length the first Christians' resurrection faith,[1] but evidently they traced its origin to visions of the risen and glorified Jesus. For them it was no mere problem of logical inference from historical data; it was an overmastering ecstatic experience. Yet experience must have its background and its constituent elements, and in the disciples' case the memory of the earthly Jesus was probably a very important factor in the situation. Even if we should accept without questionas probably the disciples didthe objective reality of their vision, we should still have to ask why they connected the heavenly apparition with the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. This was not the only conceivable course open to them. They might have abandoned Jesus entirely, saying that he had disappointed their expectations, that his claims had been discredited by death, and that God had now shown to them in a vision the true heavenly Messiah for whom they were to wait. This however was not the course they pursued.
[1] Reference may here be made to the present writer's "The Resurrection Faith of the First Disciples" in the American Journal of Theology, XIII (1909), 169-92.
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They were confident that it was Jesus whom they had seen, and everything depended upon the recognition of this fact. The fundamental surety of their faith was the conviction that JesusJesus of Nazareth, with whom they had associated in the daily walks of life, he who had inspired their discipleship and whose personal influence had left its indelible mark upon themhad survived the obliterating stroke of death. Memory of him is inseparably linked with the primitive resurrection faith. The individual whom they saw was the one whom they longed to seea fact which, according to our modern understanding of vision experiences, enables us to appreciate the important part which memory of Jesus' life and personality played in the genesis of the new faith.
The result of connecting thus closely the messianic hope with a historical individual was to give special prominence to the personal element in religious life, for which memory of Jesus' own religious personality supplied inspiration and ideals. To be sure, this fact is not set in the foreground of gospel tradition. Here, as would be expected, stress falls upon more formal phases of early theology; yet it is not difficult to perceive, beneath the interpretative
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apologetic of the disciples, the vital substratum of their personal experience with the great teacher. The abiding influence of his life was such that they found it possible to ascribe to him the most exalted ideas which the theological thinking of their age could create. Furthermore they acknowledged that during his lifetime they had not been powerfully impressed by his official dignity. They did not recognize his messiahship until near the close of his ministry, they failed utterly to comprehend his references to his death and resurrection, they forsook him at his trial, and disbanded without hope after his crucifixion. Previously they may have hoped he would declare himself to be Israel's deliverer, and some bolder spirits such as Peter may have openly expressed the conviction that he would, but still their messianic hope can hardly have been more than a vague expectation conditioned upon some further demonstration of God's favor for Jesus. Once convinced that the divine favor was removedand Jesus' death was at first taken to mean thistheir messianic faith was quickly shaken. The message they heard from the cross was not one of victory but one of defeat: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
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The memory of personal association with Jesus could not be so easily dismissed. As their faith in his official significance during his lifetime was only secondary to their response to his message about God and to their consciousness that he touched many a sensitive chord in their own religious lives, so after his death they probably suffered more keenly the loss of daily fellowship with him than the abandonment of their faltering messianic faith. Hence the supremely significant item in their vision experiences was not a belief that they had seen the heavenly Messiah, but a conviction that they had seen "Jesus." Though their new activity was much concerned with interpretative items of thinking, in their common daily walk the earthly Jesus came to life again in their memory. They ate together in loving recollection of their former fellowship with him, they recalled his life of unselfish loyalty to the will of God, and they felt a new power and meaning in the words he had spoken. The impress his personality left upon them contained an element of vitality, interpreted by them in terms of resurrection faith, which was more enduring than all their former messianic expectations, and in turn became the basis
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of a new messianic hope. Thus the secret of Jesus' influence upon the disciples must ultimately be sought in the content of his own religious life during the period of his association with them. In the last analysis it was his power as a religious individual that made possible the early faith; the personal religion of Jesus was the foundation of the disciples' religion about Jesus.
Therefore, to understand Jesus' position as the historical founder of Christianity we must comprehend more fully than is often done the character of his own religious individuality. His personal religious life has not always received the consideration it deserves. Attention has been centered on other, and perhaps less significant, phases of his career. His miracle-working power, the theological implications of his teachings, metaphysical speculation about his unique personality, these things have sometimes been made the chief items of interest, while his significance as a religious individual has been overlooked. Believers have been wont to regard him so exclusively as the object of their own religious reverence, and consequently have sometimes removed him so far from the normal relations of a historical
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person, that they have been in danger of missing the inspiration to be derived from spiritual sympathy with him in his own deep religious experience.
In accordance with our previous conclusions, we shall expect to find the actual religion of Jesus represented most truly in the words and deeds reported in connection with his ordinary daily life. Those phases of tradition which appear to be in the main uninfluenced by special doctrinal interests form a safer guide for our study. It is necessary, too, to remember that Jesus' personal religion is concrete, in contrast with formal and abstract theories about his person. He was connected with a past which played its part in the process of his development, he was surrounded by definite historical circumstances, and he was equipped with his own personal inclinations, his own emotional characteristics, his own intellectual life, and his own spiritual experience. At this late date it is, in the nature of the case, impossible to know everything we should like to know about the historical Jesus, but we may hope to learn something of the main characteristics of his daily life which most impressed his associates.
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In attempting to grasp the main content of Jesus' religion, one may seek, (1) those items that belong primarily in the realm of experience, (2) the interpretation which was placed upon experience, and (3) the practical application of religion to life. The first topic pertains more particularly to the source elements in Jesus' religion, the second directs attention to the doctrinal content of his faith; while the third is concerned with social and ethical aspects of his thinking. We are not to imagine that Jesus' religion can be literally divided into distinct and unrelated compartments; our analysis is adopted solely for the purpose of convenience in handling the data.
The sources of Jesus' religion must have been manifold. He inherited richly from the past. For centuries the Jews had inculcated in their children reverence for God and loyalty to his cause, and from this atmosphere Jesus had doubtless absorbed many things that were determinative for his career. His contact with the professional religionists of his time may not have been intimate, but he probably suffered no great disadvantage on this account. The cultivation of the pious life through the consciousness of God's nearness to his people
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was quite as possible in remote Nazareth as in the Holy City; indeed those who were free from the constant demands of external ceremony were, on that very account, more likely to preserve a deeper spiritual vitality. Heart purity, pious conduct, sincere motives, and humility before God were less stimulated by attendance upon the temple services than by the study of the great religious teachers of the past; for instance, the words of Micah:
Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?
The Jewish Scriptures in general must have exerted a strong influence upon Jesus. In the course of his teaching he shows much familiarity with this literature. He frequently quotes it, sometimes in criticism but oftener with approval, and he gives ample evidence of having absorbed its spirit. As would be expected from his early training, his sympathy with
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the prophets was especially close. His career seemed in many respects a repetition of theirs, his preaching resembled theirs in that he stood for the moral issues in contrast with ceremonialism, and he anticipated for himself a fate like theirs in the sacred city which had stoned the prophets.[1] He also drew from the lawgivers and the sages. The law which required love for God with all one's heart and the love of neighbor as oneself was accepted by Jesus as fundamental. Likewise the sage's emphasis upon practical precepts and individual right living found a large place in his teaching, but behind all these lay the prophet's consciousness of an immediate relationship between man and God.
A more specific factor in influencing Jesus, and one more directly connected with his appearance as a public teacher, was his contact with John the Baptist. Just what his experience was in this connection began to trouble interpreters at an early date. That he came to John's baptism of repentance might seem incompatible with his consciousness of purity, and indeed his baptism furnished a distinct
[1] Matt. 23:37. Jesus' anticipation of stoning at the hands of the mob points to the genuineness of the passage.
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doctrinal difficulty when his sinlessness became an item of dogma. Various suggestions were made to obviate the difficulty. The uncanonical Gospel according to the Hebrews explains the event as follows: "Behold the Lord's mother and brothers said to him, John the Baptist is baptizing for remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But he said to them, What sin have I done that I should go and be baptized by him; unless perhaps what I have now said is ignorance?" This has sometimes been treated as a genuine saying, but it probably is a later development of tradition. It attaches a sacramental significance to baptism, making the ordinance efficacious for a sin of ignorance; and the whole story seems to have arisen by projecting into Jesus' pre-public career the same misunderstanding of his true character which, according to Mark, his relatives shared during his ministry. The Gospel of Matthew offers another explanation. John's objection is overruled by the words: "Suffer it now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." When baptism became a recognized church ordinance Jesus' action seemed best explained as an example for his followers. For the Fourth Evangelist the
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baptism of Jesus and the descent of the Spirit were chiefly for the benefit of John. Thus he was enabled to recognize the Messiah and to point him out to his own followers.
No one of these explanations is sufficiently well attested to justify its use in determining the experience of Jesus. At the time there was no occasion for any explanatory comments; the procedure was a perfectly natural one on Jesus' part. John indeed preached repentance and coming judgment, but he also put stress upon the positive qualities of a holy life"bring forth fruit worthy of repentance."[1] Personal purity of life was a prerequisite for membership in John's community, just the type of life after which the pious people of the land were daily striving. Others must repent and forsake their sins, but it would be unsafe to suppose that only persons of this class came to be baptizedas absurd as to conclude that everyone in modern times who joins a movement for social betterment must previously have been a social
[1] Josephus says of John's baptism: "It signified the purification of the body, supposing that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness" (Ant., XVIII, v, 2). According to Matt. 21:32 Jesus said: "John came unto you in the way of righteousness." This is often called a characteristic addition of the First Evangelist; but it agrees with Mark's account of John, the righteous and holy man whom Herod feared.
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outcast. All that may be inferred from Jesus' action in coming to John's baptism is that it marked a decisive step in his active life. It was the response of his own pious life to the religious ideals for which John stood.
As a result of this action Jesus' religious experience would naturally be quickened and deepened. According to early tradition he received at this time an official declaration of his messiahship; but the baptismal incident is told so briefly, and in a form that lies so close to the peculiar interests of the early theologians, that it does not clearly reveal the actual content of Jesus' experience. This picturesque descriptionthe rending of heaven, the descending dove, and the audible utterance of Godshows the primitive Christians' fondness for vivid imagery, while the prominence given to the ecstatic element in their own lives easily led them to interpret Jesus' experience in terms of ecstasy. It is a question whether the primal item in his experience at this time was not his sense of new consecration to God as a spiritual father rather than a recognition of God's choice of him as a messianic son. The account of his temptation which tradition has placed in close connection with his baptism may have been
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framed to furnish scriptural authentication for Jesus' failure to display at once messianic prerogatives, yet it testifies to the fact that he did not, as the early Christians well knew, at the beginning of his ministry present himself as Messiahat least not as the type of Messiah currently expected. And if he entertained the idea at all, he possessed some deeper experience which impelled him to reinterpret this as well as other ideas of the time. The messianic thought did not master him; he was its conqueror not its victim, and he attained this position by placing more stress upon his choice of God than upon God's choice of him.[1] His
[1] Evidence that Jesus' consciousness of sonship was primarily a spiritual experience, based upon his own choice of God as Father, may still be seen in Luke's account of the baptism. In Luke 3:21 both the baptism of the people and that of Jesus are mentioned as simple events (expressed by aorists) falling in the same general period of past time, while Jesus' special experience comes to him during a season of prayer following his baptism (see Biblical World, XXXI [1908], 300-302). These have usually been considered secondary traits in Luke, but the opinion is open to doubt. The non-Markan source, "Q," probably mentioned the baptism (so Wellhausen, Einl., p. 74 and Harnack, Sprüche und Reden Jesu, pp. 136, 218 f.), and the variant reading in Luke 3:22, "Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee," seems originally to have been taken from "Q" by the Third Evangelist himself. "Q" also may have supplied the note about Jesus' prayer. This source remembered that he continued to address the "Father" in prayer (Matt. 11:25; Luke 10:21), and taught his followers to do the same (Matt. 6:9 ff.; 5:44 f.; Luke 11:2-4; 6:28). According to this branch of tradition, which being Palestinian in origin attached less initial significance to baptism, at the very beginning of Jesus' public career he showed the same devotional attitude that characterized his ministry to the end. After his baptism he sought with renewed determination to know the Father's will, and in answer to his cry "[my] Father," there came the response "[my] Son." Thus his renewed choice of God as Father was fundamental to his new sense of sonship, and the relation was primarily ethical and spiritual rather than external and official.
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first interest was not to claim the favors due one who deemed himself to be God's soneven a messianic sonbut to maintain that course of life which one should pursue who had made absolute choice of God. It was Jesus' never ceasing care to learn and to do the divine will, and his unfaltering and permanent choice of the Father is the basis of his unique consciousness of sonship. Not only did he thus attain and maintain his own filial relations with the divine, but he advised others to follow a similar course in order to become sons of God.
The problem of Jesus' messianic self-consciousness is too complicated for extended treatment here, as it would unduly prolong discussion and might divert attention from the immediate subject, his personal religious life. Whatever his thought may have been about his official significance, it does not seem to exert any large influence upon his daily experience;
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and this fact appears even in those narratives which give prominence to his official character on special occasions. Thus when he calls disciples he does not offer them the glories of a messianic kingdom but an opportunity to become "fishers of men"; and later when they question about relative positions in the kingdom he sets before them the ideal of humble service. In his controversy with opponents it is not by virtue of his own dignity but through his deeper spiritual insight that he justifies his contentions; as when he refuses to be bound by current notions about the sabbath, or condemns the "corban," on humanitarian grounds. Again, in the conduct of personal life it is his vital spiritual fellowship with the Father, rather than the thought of official authentication, from which he draws his real help. When weary he retires alone for prayer, and at the last great crisis while in the garden of Gethsemane he ultimately finds assurance not in a renewed conviction of his messiahship but in the consciousness of having submitted himself unreservedly to the Father's will. In all this it is his sense of God's nearness and his determination to choose divine guidance which stand out most distinctly. The fundamental item
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in all Jesus' religious experience appears to be his abiding consciousness of fellowship with the Father.
One of the first problems of interpretation to engage Jesus' attention must have been that of determining the character of his mission. This question confronted him as soon as he decided to take up public work. All Israel was looking for salvation and any teacher seeking a public hearing must be prepared to pronounce upon that subject. God was the ultimate ground of all hope, but various ways were being advocated as the best means of inducing him to act in men's behalf. Some held that the strict observance of ordinances was the only way to win the divine favor, but this was emphatically rejected by Jesus and among its advocates he found his severest opponents. The Zealots proposed another method. They would resort to the sword, trusting that God would interfere in their behalf; but Jesus refused to sanction political revolt and is said to have admitted the propriety of paying tribute to Caesar. Still others placed chief stress upon a righteous life as a means of securing the divine favor. This view was supported by much that the
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older prophets had taught, as well as by the writings of the earlier and later sages. Two centuries before Jesus, "the son (as was supposed) of Joseph," began his work, Jesus the son of Sirach had said:
Ye that fear the Lord, put your trust in him,
And your reward shall not fail.
. . .
The Most High hath no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly,
Neither is he pacified for sins by the multitude of sacrifices.
. . .
To depart from wickedness is a thing pleasing to the Lord;
And to depart from unrighteousness is a propitiation.
. . .
Have mercy upon us, O Lord the God of all, and behold;
And send forth thy fear upon all the nations;
Lift up thy hand against the strange nations;
And let them see thy mighty power.[1]
About a century later a similar assurance that God will ultimately vindicate the righteous appears in the Wisdom of Solomon:
[1] Sir. 2:8; 34:16, 19; 35:3; 36:1-3.
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The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
And no torment shall touch them.
. . .
For even if in the sight of men they be punished,
Their hope is full of immortality.[1]
Again, the wicked, speaking of the righteous man, says,
He professeth to have knowledge of God,
And nameth himself servant of the Lord.
. . .
The latter end of the righteous he calleth happy;
And he vaunteth that God is his Father.
Let us see if his words be true,
And let us try what shall befall in the ending of his life.
For if the righteous man is God's son, he will uphold him,
And he will deliver him out of the hand of his adversaries.[2]
To some extent Jesus shared these views. He demanded a life of righteousness for the individual, he did not identify trial and suffering with defeat, he taught that God freely forgave the sins of the repentant, that he sustained men in affliction, that he cared for the lowly, that he gave assurance of immortality, that he revealed himself to the righteous, that the righteous man had God for a father and
[1] Wisdom Sol. 3:1, 4.
[2] Wisdom Sol. 2:13, 16b-18.
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was God's son. But in one important respect Jesus deviates from all these teachings: he does not make the hope of favoritism from the divine the principal aim of righteous living. The highest privileges of sonship are not to be identified with temporal blessings, but lie in the opportunity to live the Godlike life in which love, mercy, and self-giving service are dominant to the end.
When Jesus determined that the preaching of this truth was to be his chief mission, he went quite beyond the religious outlook of his contemporaries. Possibly we may have here the key to his interpretation of the current messianic hope. As that doctrine was popularly held, it rested mainly upon the idea of favoritism. This was read into the early history, as seen in Moses' words to Pharaoh: "Thus saith Jehovah, Israel is my son, my first-born; and I have said unto thee, Let my son go: behold I will slay thy son, thy first-born." Here is God's favoritism for his chosen people expressing itself in vengeance on their enemies. Even in Jesus' day this was the essential content of Jewish messianic thought, but it was so at variance with Jesus' fundamental thought that he can hardly have avoided criticizing
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it along with other ideas that were lacking in ethical efficiency. Moreover, the prophets had criticized it and John had partially condemned it when he warned the Jews not to trust in Abrahamic descent for future safety.
Jesus went still farther in his criticism. Like John, he did appeal to men to live a righteous life, not however with the ultimate motive of winning God's favor in the day of judgment but in order to attain genuine sonship in the present. This was the way of true salvation, the present realization of the messianic hope, and as the minister of this truth Jesus may have thought his work to be "messianic." On one occasion John is reported to have sent messengers asking Jesus if he is this final minister of salvation. In substance he replies affirmatively, but the proof of his claim was not to be looked for in the establishment of a miraculous judgment of sifting and purging as John had preached. Rather his godlike life of service for mankind was his testimonial. Of course he does not deny the reality of divine favor, and in fact he makes it displace the narrower conception of the divine favoritism: God's blessings abound toward all men, the wealth of his love is unlimited, he desires all
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to share in his goodness by making absolute choice of him.
Jesus' doctrine of salvation is determined by this thought of God's activity among men. He is regnant here and now. The nature of his rule is fatherly, he discards all narrow favoritism, he gives himself unreservedly to the interests of humanity, and the ideal for humanity is the realization, on its part, of the godlike life. Jesus prescribes no other doctrinal program for the attainment of salvation: become sons of God in childlike, trustful fellowship, and under the inspiration of this fellowship live the life of unselfish service. It is the urgent desire of God that all men should enter into the full realization of this new life, he is ever encouraging them to do so, and Jesus' work is all directed toward this end. But it is for man to say whether or not he will enter into this new relation. There is no barrier between him and God save that which his own will has erected.
This is the soteriology of Jesus, and its simplicity has almost been its undoing. It lacks the Pauline dialectic, it is free from the theological intricacies of later times, it attaches no vital importance to any form of organization,
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and it presupposes no theory of infallible mediators whether in the form of books or persons. It centers attention on two things: on the one hand is God, immediate, loving, inviting; on the other is man with a free spirit holding his destiny in his own hand. Will he commit his way unto God, and walking in harmony with the divine spirit realize the highest ends of life? Or will he refuse, living for self and the world, and so suffer the unspeakable calamity of shutting God out of his life? But how shall men get rid of the debt which past sins have laid upon them? Must they not by some means placate an angry God whose mandates have been disobeyed and whose dignity has been insulted by rebellious humanity? Jesus knew no such angry deity. His father would gladly receive every penitent who came; forgiveness for the past was procured by the very desire to forsake it and to live the new life. The real problem was not how to escape the anger of God, but how to break the power of sin which hindered the attainment of the higher life; and Jesus has a remedy for this evil. His contemporaries talked of judgment from which only those would escape who had succeeded in getting rid of sin before
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God came, while Jesus preached that God is now present delivering men from their bondage. Personal alliance with the Father is the secret of escape from the present power of evil. Getting rid of sin, instead of being a prerequisite to the divine coming is an integral factor in its realization. Man's receptivity for the divine, rather than his perfect attainment of holiness, conditions the coming of God, and without his presence in life the hope of any worthy attainment is meager. Here is one of the most distinctive features of Jesus' religious thinking: God's presence means salvation, and Jesus, proclaiming this truth in his own career, is the minister of salvation.
In its more external features, the theological thinking of Jesus corresponded in general to the intellectual ideas of that age. The modern outlook upon the world and its history was then unknown, consequently it is vain to look for this in his teaching. He did subject various ideas of the time to criticism and correction, yet not on scientific, but on religious grounds. For example, men then talked of angels and demons in a realistic way and so did Jesus, but in contrast with Jewish transcendentalism, and the attendant development of angelology,
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he brought God back from remote regions and made him walk again with men in true spiritual communion. This was no denial of angels' existence, but they could no longer be thought to serve any important religious function. Also belief in evil spirits was not denied, but their power was practically abolished by faith in the nearness and supremacy of God. Similarly other phases of Jesus' teaching employed current thought and terminology, but their essential content was determined by the new vitality of his personal religion. His whole theological method was controlled by his own deep religious experience.
Jesus' religion had also important ethical and social aspects. The conditions of society and the point of view of that age differed so much from those of modern times that the real import of his teaching has not always been grasped. We cannot assume that he had definitely in mind all the problems of modern society, nor is it fair to give his words and deeds the interpretation which modern conditions might place upon them. Perhaps he would have taught and acted otherwise had he been placed in these modern surroundings. So far as his specific words are concerned, they
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should always be interpreted in the first- and not in a twentieth-century setting; while for the purposes of modern application one must seek the general principles underlying his specific teaching. These are always fairly evident.
Jesus lays down two controlling principles for the guidance of conduct; God is to be loved with full devotion of heart, soul, and mind, and one's neighbor is to be loved as oneself. Each principle carries with it many practical implications. The first means nothing less than a determination to make God's conduct an absolute standard for life, the rule of the divine is the ideal of human action, sons are to live as the Father lives and to be perfect as he is perfect. Therefore genuine sincerity of motive must characterize all life; so men are exhorted to maintain secrecy in almsgiving in order to guard against pride and hypocrisy, to preserve the genuineness of their devotions by praying to be heard of God and not of men, and, if they choose to fast, to make it a season of secret personal discipline. In the life of the true son no place is to be allowed that type of selfishness which seeks such credit from men as a disfigured countenance, a wordy prayer,
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or a public demonstration of generosity might prompt. Jesus seeks to inspire all the motives of life with these fundamentally unselfish qualities.
The character of all action is determined by the ideal relationship between the Father and his sons. They will put his cause first, seeking his kingdom and his righteousness at the cost of all lower ideals; they will be optimistic yet trustfully submissive to the divine will, and they will live the same sort of self-giving life as does he. If he loves all men so must they; if he abhors favoritism they must do likewise; if his interest is to seek and save the lost this must also be theirs; if self-seeking is eliminated from his attitude they must strive to abandon all selfish thoughts; if it is characteristic of him to forgive and forbear they must practice forgiveness and forbearance, in short their entire conduct toward their fellows will be modeled after the perfect standard set by the Father. These were the controlling principles in Jesus' own life. He cast in his lot with the poor and lowly, he despised not the needs of publicans and sinners, he freely gave himself for the sake of others, and when he was smitten he smote not in return but
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forbore and forgave because he believed this also to be the Father's will.
Such, in outline, is the personal religion of Jesus. His serene faith withstood the storms that beat against it because it was founded upon the consciousness of vital communion with God. His whole theological thinking was dominated by this personal experience of a divine father whose presence in the world meant a full salvation and whose contact with men inspired them to live the life of self-giving service. This was the Jesus whose personality, whose teaching, whose activity, made Christianity possible.
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