By Bishop Nuelsen, D.D., M.E. Church, Omaha, Nebraska.
- Copyright by Jennings & Graham, and published by permission.
Every Old Testament problem becomes in course of time a New Testament question. Every Biblical question places us after a while face to face with Him who is the center of the whole Bible, with Jesus Christ. In the present discussion over the person and Gospel of Jesus Christ, I shall confine myself to pointing out briefly some of title most interesting and important features of this subject.
WAS JESUS A REAL, HISTORICAL PERSON
In the closing years of the eighteenth century the thought was advanced by a number of rationalistic theologians that the doctrines held by the Church and formulated in her creeds were the joint product of New Testament religion and Greek philosophy. This thought was taken up by Professor Harnack of Berlin, and in his great work, “History of the Christian Doctrine;” he disclosed the complicated process by which the Church in developing her doctrines became Hellenized; thus it was made incumbent upon the student of Church history to extricate, by a process of careful analysis and comparison, the genuinely Christian elements from the meshes of foreign thought. Harnack, it is true, applied this principle only to post-apostolic times, but since the appearance of his book investigation has proceeded along the same lines and is now covering the Biblical writings as well.
Old Testament scholars and Semitists - as Gunkel, Meyer, Meinhold, Gressmann, Winckler, Simmern, Jensen - followed the traces of Babylonian influences down through the period of later Judaism to New Testament times; New Testament scholars - as Schurer, Baldensperger, Bousset, Pfleiderer, Schmiedel, Holtzman, Weinel, Wernle, Wrede - studied Greek and Jewish thought in its influence upon the early Christian writings. They deemed it necessary to eliminate first the whole of Johannine theology as a foreign substance; then they threw overboard the Apostle Paul as the great perverter of the simple teachings of Christ; next they cleared the Synoptical Gospels of all Babylonian, Egyptian, Phrygian, Jewish, Greek and other foreign matter. They have just about finished this arduous work of purifying and simplifying the Gospels by this double process of “religionsgeschichtliche” analysis and comparison, in order to discover the real, historical Christ; they meet at the feet of this Christ, to see Him as He really is; but behold, He is no more! Not a trace of Him is left. Trait after trait, feature after feature, has been analyzed and compared, until neither manger nor cross nor grave, not even His garments, are left. A few years ago we had, by the grace of the most advanced scholarship, at least a plain Galilean peasant with a very good heart. Even if His mind was rather too simple, we were allowed to believe in a kind-hearted carpenter’s son, who went about doing good, and to whom at least eight rather inoffensive sayings could be historically traced; as, for example, the saying; “It is more blessed to give than to receive;” but even this peasant has evaporated, or rather, the great Babylonian flood which the mighty Bel caused to drown all mankind has completely swallowed up the little that was left of Jesus of Nazareth.
I beg pardon for this tone of levity. The whole matter would be very serious if it were not so utterly absurd. But the fact is that German theology is just now confronted with the question, was Jesus Christ a real, historical person, or is He nothing but a literary hero?
From two very different quarters the question as to the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth has been raised. At first blush we may think it is ridiculous to raise the question at all. And so it is. But the very fact that scholars do raise the question and mean to be taken seriously, is the necessary result of tendencies in theology which have been fostered until they have reached this culmination point. This fact will, I trust, open the eyes of many in Germany, and in America as well, who are in the habit of intrusting themselves to the guidance of brilliant and charming leaders without realizing at the start whither they were going.
WAS CHRIST A PRODUCT OF BABYLONIAN MYTHOLOGY?
The first avenue which led to the negation of the historicity of Jesus Christ is the “religionsgeschichtliche” comparison. The religionsgeschichtliche study of the New Testament aims, as Professor Bousett puts it, “to understand the origin and development of Christianity by means of an investigation of the whole environment of primitive Christianity.” Applying this principle to the person and work of Christ, Professor Pfleiderer of Berlin, in his “Early Conceptions of Christ,” finds that the Christ of the Church has been formed out of those myths and legends which are the common property of religion all over the world.