1. Causes of the 7H0vement. — What are the causes that have contributed to restore the figure of Jesus to its place in the centre of religious thought ? We shall mention three as the chief.
(a) The first is the application of historical criticism to the Gospel narrative. In 1835, D. F. Strauss published his Lebcn Jesit, and this book proved the starting-point of a critical movement the end of which is not yet in sight. The results of Strauss' criticism were almost purely negative :
the Gospel story was resolved into a tissue of myths. There are still writers who find in that storj- only the most meagre basis of fact ; but their conclusions are far from representing the general results of the movement, which are much more positive than negative in their character, much more constructive than destructive. If doubt has been east on some of the facts related about Jesus, and if the influence of subsequent ideas has been detected here and there in the presentation of His life and teaching, the substantial truth of the Gospel narrative has been amply vindicated. Moreover, the critical study of the NT has done for Christ what that of the OT has done for the prophets. It has reconstructed the contemporary background, given us a better understanding of His teaching, and enabled us to see the Man and His work in their human envu-onment. To this enlarged historical knowledge and new feeling for the historical, we owe the recognition of the fact that the Christ of history is one thing and the con- ception of His Person that sprang up on the soil of the Church's faith another. As early as the Fourth Gospel the two images had been blended into one. Still further, criticism has contributed to the return to Christ by the mere fact that it has brought the problem of His historical reality and significance into the centre of attention and interest. Up to the appearance of the Leben Jesu the problems that occupied the theological field were almost purely speculative : when Christ was considered, it was as the vehicle or symbol of certain speculative idea,s. The retirement of the specu- lative behind the historical is one of the signs of the times.
(b) A second and even more important factor in the movement ' back to Christ ' is the widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional statements of Christianity. Since the rationalistic movement of the 18th cent, the history of dogma has been in the main a history of dismtegration. Those who seek to go behind the creeds, back to the source of our religion, proceed on the ground that the creeds do not represent, with any sufficient correct- ness or adequacy, either the conceptions that Jesus taught or the significance that His Person has for faith. All we can do here is to indicate the main lines which the criticism of dogma has followed.
When we examine the formulas of Nica-a and Chalcedon, in which the Being of God and the Person of Christ are determined, we find one basal conception underlying them all. It is the con- ception of Substance. God is conceived primarily as the Absolute Substance; that is to say, as the indeterminate, unchanging and permanent ground of the knowable world of variety, change, and transience. Christ is true God because He shares in the Divine Substance ; and because He has taken up human nature or substance into union with His Divine substance. He is also true man. The inner relations of the Godhead— Fatherhood, Sonship, the Procession of the Holy Spirit— are all expressed in terms of this category. It is true that the Church had other things to say about God and Christ than those of its formulas ; still the formulas were regarded as conveying the deepest and most vital truths, and their acceptance was made the criterion of orthodoxy and the condition of salvation. If the ethical was recog- nized, it occupied only a subordinate position in comparison with the metaphysical. Now, what is this idea of Substance which i)lays so great a role in the creeds? It was not derived from Christ or the New Testament. It was borrowed from Hellenistic philosophy ; and « liat it originally answered was not iiny reli,:.'iuii^s need, but the purely intellectual dfniaiul that all the manifold- ness of this time-world shall be reducible to the
BACK TO CHRIST
BACK TO CHRIST
unity of a single principle. Even from a philo- sophical point of view the idea of Substance is open to fatal objections as a principle by which to explain personal or, indeed, any relations. To modern thought Substance is not a concrete reality ; it is nothing more than the most abstract of all ideas. To hypostatize abstractions, equip them with causal power, and employ them as principles of explanation, was a peculiarity of Greek thought, and one that it is hopeless to revive. The use which the creeds make of this idea is even more objectionable when considered from the standpoint of religion. Absolute Sub- stance has nothing in common with the holy, personal Will of the prophets, or with the gracious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One cannot, on such a foundation, build up a Christian conception of God. And to say that Christ is Divine in virtue of His participation in the Divine Sub- stance, is not to present Him in any character that makes Him the object of our trust. What gives Christ His significance for faith is the fact that in His Person and ministry faith recognizes the revelation of God's gracious will towards sinful men. To substitute a divinity of Substance for a divinity of Revelation is to remove Christ trom the realm of faith into that of speculation ; and, further, since the category of substance is at bottom a physical category, it is to rank the physical above the personal and ethical.