CHAPTER III

THE INCARNATION AND THE NEWER

ΤΗ

CRITICISM

HERE is at present a somewhat panicky attitude with regard to the supposed hostility of the newer criticism to the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is natural that when anything new is introduced it should be watched with much suspicion, and it is certain that in theological circles this will always be the case. Doctors and lawyers and scientists look with more or less distrust on all new theories, because the new involves the removal of a part at least of the old and the upsetting of ideas and practices and customs. Theology is much more conservative than even medicine, or law, or science, because the theologian feels that he is dealing with things infinitely more important than astronomy, or geology, or botany, or medicine, or law. Now, whenever a new theory is presented with regard to anything, it is difficult at first to determine exactly what its ultimate effects will be, and consequently the most singular mistakes are often made in dealing with new theories, those who should be their natural friends sometimes becoming, through misunderstanding, their deadliest foes, and vice versa. In point of fact, the newer criticism lays its special emphasis on the Incarnation; you might almost say that it is a protest against a prevalent but ancient disbelief in the Incarnation.

Men of that school or tendency of thought, often called the Newer Criticism, or the Higher Criticism, if they were to define their position as over against the position of the traditionalists, might well take as their text our Lord's declara

tion of the method of God's revelation of Himself to man in answer to the temptations in the wilderness. The common human conception of God is of something awful and miraculous, bursting out in lightning and thunder, manifesting itself in startling breaches of the law of nature. God should show Himself as God by turning the stones into bread, by casting Himself down from a pinnacle in the temple, and floating into the gaping crowd beneath in glory, surrounded by hosts of angels. That is the common human conception of the incarnation of God. To this Jesus opposes the conception of the Son of Man. The Son of God is equally the Son of Man-perfect Man.) He lives the life of ordinary men; He eats and drinks as they do; He suffers as they do; He is subject to the natural human desires and passions; He is made in all respects such as we are, the only exception being that He does not fail to live up to the standard of His being. He realises the full possibilities of His Manhood, and is without sin. Now, this conception of a revelation of God was opposed to the commonly received ideas among the Jews at that time, and opposed to the common ideas of men in general. The Jews regarded Sinai as the representative of the highest revelation of God to man. God is hidden away in clouds and darkness; the thunder and lightning reveal His presence; the mountain on which His glory rests is so holy that if one do but touch it he shall die. So awful is God that the sight of Him, or even the near approach to His presence, must produce death. The Pharisees demanded of our Lord some sign, some manifestation of miraculous power as an evidence of His Divinity. He always and invariably refused to give such a sign. It is a temptation of the devil. is not the true and highest revelation of God to man. highest revelation of God to man must be made in man himself, developed to the perfection of his manhood, sinless and holy.

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The same problem which perplexed the Pharisees with. regard to this Man who claimed to be divine perplexed the Christians of a later day. In the docetic Gospel of St. Peter,

a partial text of which was so strangely recovered from an Egyptian tomb not long since, we find these ideas expressing themselves in an anti-human representation of Christ. His human form was a mere appearance, the divine was the reality; and the divine is so opposed to and so different from the human, that it must be the case that it manifested itself in wonderful and startling phenomena. This was the line of reasoning which produced the docetic Gospel of St. Peter, and many other writings of a far more extravagant character.

There was no intention of telling that which is untrue, there was a most sincere desire to tell the truth; but doctrine, preconceived notions, colour everything that such writers tell about our Lord. They start with a fundamental doctrine of divinity as something anti-human, and whenever they come to anything in the narrative of our Lord's life which represents Him simply as a man, they modify it in accordance with that doctrine which they believe to be true.

The same general conception of Divinity lies at the bottom of the gnostic heresies. The idea of Divinity which found expression in the Indian cosmogonies represents God as something infinitely removed from man and the world, and even from all action. Creation itself is a process which cannot proceed directly from the Almighty, because He has no needs, no wants, and exercises no activities; and the effort of such systems is to account for creation and the world with as little contradiction of this fundamental and fundamentally false conception of God as possible. As the next best thing to denying absolutely all connexion between God and creation, they separate the two by unending æons, and remove Him from direct contact with the world by the supposition of emanation upon emanation. This Indian theory is also, in so far, the gnostic theory. Almighty God is infinitely removed from the world and all concern in the activities of man. The direct manifestation of Himself to man in human form is inconceivable. Divinity is manifested, it is true, but this Divinity is infinitely removed from the Eternal All.

Although these docetic and gnostic views were pronounced

heretical by the Church, yet because they contained a conception of Divinity which is, one might say, common to the race, therefore we find the condemned heresies exercising a very great modifying influence upon the thought of the Christian Church. Unconsciously, popular theology first, and afterwards the theology of theologians, adopted into itself a certain portion of that docetic conception which, theologically interpreted, denies the complete Humanity of our Lord. The Bible itself states that He was born of a pure virgin, conceived of the Holy Ghost and not of man. Not content with this statement of the division of our Lord's nature, by which He was equally God and Man, born of both alike, a tendency soon manifested itself to exalt and magnify the mother of Jesus into Divinity, thus denying in fact, if not in formal doctrine, the perfect Humanity of the nature of our Lord.

The various heathen worships which were absorbed into Christianity at one place or another tended to help forward the deification of the Virgin. Everywhere there had been an inclination, especially everywhere in the East, to worship the Divinity in a bi-sexual way; where there was a god, there was also a goddess. The half-converted heathen who entered the Christian Church found in the worship of the Virgin that worship of the female half of Divinity to which they were used in their own religions. This, as I have said, had its effect, and a very great effect, upon the theology of the Christian Church, until at last you find in the dark and middle ages, in popular theology at least, the Virgin Mary exalted into heaven itself. Jesus is no longer the Son of the pure Virgin of Nazareth, but the Son of the great goddess, queen of heaven. The final theological assertion of this doctrine on the part of the Roman Catholic Church did not take place, it is true, until the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the Pope promulgated as a doctrine of the Church the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, thus removing our Lord's connexion with humanity one step back; in gnostic language placing another æon or

emanation between God and man. But in promulgating this doctrine the Pope only put into theological form the actual popular belief of the Church of the Middle Ages, which is in most particulars the belief of the Church of Rome of to-day.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century resisted this Romish doctrine of the divinity of the Virgin Mary; nevertheless, a large element of the docetic conception which lay behind the deification of the Virgin embodied itself in the ordinarily received Protestant theology. This showed itself particularly in the treatment of the Bible. It has been exceedingly difficult for the theologians to grasp the full significance of the revelation of God's Word in Jesus of Nazareth. There is no doubt in their minds of His Divinity, the doubt is about the human side of His nature; and if they have not fully realised this, much less have they realised the human side in the written and imperfect word, which in their theology has been put in the place of the incarnate Word of God.

To turn back to our Lord's temptations, to which I have referred before, we find that He asserts that that idea of the manifestation of the Divinity, which is represented in the Old Testament by the story of the theophany at Sinai, where the Law was given in the midst of clouds and darkness and dread, is not the highest, perhaps I should rather say is not the correct idea of the manifestation of God. He who is very God shall not be manifested by casting Himself from the pinnacle of the temple upborne by clouds of angels; neither shall all kingdoms of the earth see in Him a temporal master before whom they shall bow themselves in submission; neither shall His touch turn the stones about Him into bread; but He, the very God, shall be manifested in very man, and the evidence of His Divinity, the outshining of His glory, shall be the perfection of the divine attributes in man, the attributes of love and truth. According to our Lord's teaching, and as the necessary outcome of His example in the revelation of Himself to man, we are forced to the conclusion of the