Finally, while the teaching of Jesus places the centre of gravity in the will, the Church transfers it to the intellect. ' This do and thou shalt live ' (Lk 10°*) is the command of Jesus : what the Church requires is belief rather than conduct.
The gospel of Jesus represents the crown of religion ; it is the highest and, in its innermost nature, the final stage of religious development. No other historical religion can endure a moment's comparison with it. And the religions manu- factured out of a few philosophical prmciples have still less claim to serious consideration, since they are wholly lacking in everytliing that gives a religion vitality. It can be said with literal truth that, for any civilized community, the choice is not between Christianity and m.ihc Dtlicr reli;,'ion, but between Christianity and no r, liui^n :ii all.
While the religion of Jesus i- n -.ndiil .-is the one faith capable of meeting the lueil of this and of every age, it is not meant that it can be re- produced in every detail. We must distinguish between central and peripheral elements, and between the enduring spirit and the passing form of manifestation. We cannot, for example, revive the primitive expectation of the world's speedy end, or the ideas about angels, Satan, unclean spirits as the agents in disease, which Jesus shared with His contemporaries. The gospel must be translated into the language of to-day, and its spirit applied to the relations of our modern life.
How is Jesus Himself regarded by those who represent this type of thought? All speculative Christology, whether Biblical or ecclesiastical, is rejected, and it is asserted that such Christology has no basis in the language which Jesus useil about Himself. Further, it is held that not Jesus, but the God whom Jesus revealed, is the imme- diate object of oiir faith. At the .same time, the unique significance of Jesus, not only in the history of religion but also for the individual, is earnestly recognized. We quote the confession of liousset : ' Thou art our leader, to whom there is none like, the leader in the highest things, the leader of our soul to Crod, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' ** The figure of Jesus is the grandest and most per- fect that God has bestowed on humanity through- out the long course of its upward journev. Bousset can even adopt the confession of St. Paul, ' God ' Eoussct, Das Wesen da- Religion, p. 2C7.
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BACK TO CHRIST
BACK TO CHRIST
was in Christ ' (2 Co 5'"). Harnack goes a step further. 'Jesus,' he says, 'is the way to the Father, and He is also the judge ordained by the Father. Not as a constituent does He belong to the Gospel, but He has been its personal realiza- tion and power, and will always be felt as such.'* But in thus insisting on the dependence of the gospel on the Person behind it for its power in awakening faith, Harnack is to be regarded as representing tlie type of thought to be described in the next section rather than that described here.
(3) The last type of theological thought which has to be considered, as bearing upon it the impress of the modern feeling for tlie historical Christ, is the most imjjortant of all. It is that represented by the great name of Ritschl. For Ritschlianisni, even more than for traditional orthodoxy, Christ is the sum and substance of Christianity. In Him the living God reveals Himself to men ; He is the fact in history in which God meets us, to awaken our faith and lead us into the blessedness of His fellowship. What is it in Christ that gives Him His so momentous significance ? The answer which Ritschlianisni gives to this question involves a new interpretation of the great ChrLstian ideas, — Revelation, Gospel, Doctrine, Faith, — only it is claimed that this interpretation is nothing more than a carrying out of the fundamental principles of the Reformation.
In Catholic, and not less in traditional Pro- testant, theology the significance of Christ is con- centrated in the doctrines in which His Person and work have received their interpretation. Christianity is summed up in the great speculative ideas of the eternal Sonship, the Incarnation, and the atoning Death. These ideas are regarded as constituting the content of Revelation and the object of faith ; into them the meaning and power of Jesus' life are gathered, and to believe them is to believe the gospel. Doctrine, Gospel, Revela- tion are treated as one and the same thing. For Ritschlianisni, on the other hand, it is not the doctrinal interpretation that is the vital thing, but the Person and work interpreted. Doctrine has its own importance, but it must not be identi- fied with Revelation or with the Gospel ; and con- sequently it is not the object of faith. The im- portance of doctrine lies in this, that it brings to expression what faith has found in Christ. The appropriation of the Revelation of God in Christ results in a new knowledge of God and of human life, and it is the task of dogmatics to exhibit this knowledge in its purity, free from any admixture of phUosopliical speculation, and in its connexion with the inner life. Doctrine is the explicitly formulated knowledge of faith. But the doctrine's in which another's faith has expressed itself cannot be received by us as the ground of our faith. It is not by appropriating St. Paul's thoughts about Christ — that He was a propitiatory offering, a pre- existent heavenly Being, etc. — that we become Christians, but only by trusting Christ as St. Paul trusted Him. When there is this direct contact with Christ, St. Paul's thoughts will be reproduced as the fruit of our own experience, and only then will they have real meaning for us. To substitute for Christ as the object of faith a doctrine of His Person and work is to remove faith from its genetic ground. For the creative thing in Christianity is not the doctrines which, with more or less truth and fulness, describe Christ's significance ; it is the personal life in its inexhaustible wealth of mean- ing and power, and as it manifests itself to us in word and deed. Doctrine is a product of faith, not its causal ground. Moreover, the substitution of doctrine for Christ has this further result, tluit it carries with it a false view of faith. Faith is then * Harnack, Das Weun dee Christenlums, p. 91.