Apart, then, from explanations which have been shown untenable, what is the impression left on our minds of an event, the record of which is admitted to be authentic? The heathen Centurion is a real historical personage. He was captain of the troop quartered in Capernaum, and in the service of Herod Antipas. We know that such troops were chiefly recruited from Samaritans and Gentiles of Cæsarea. [2596] Nor is there the slightest evidence that this Centurion was a proselyte of righteousness.' The accounts both in St. Matthew and in St. Luke are incompatible with this idea. A proselyte of righteousness' could have had no reason for not approaching Christ directly, nor would he have spoken of himself as unfit' that Christ should come under his roof. But such language quite accorded with Jewish notions of a Gentile, since the houses of Gentiles were considered as defiled, and as defiling those who entered them. [2597] On the other hand, the proselytes of righteousness' were in all respects equal to Jews, so that the words of Christ concerning Jews and Gentiles, as reported by St. Matthew, would not have been applicable to them. The Centurion was simply one who had learned to love Israel and to reverence Israel's God; one who, not only in his official position, but from love and reverence, had built that Synagogue, of which, strangely enough, now after eighteen centuries, the remains, [2598] in their rich and elaborate carvings of cornices and entablatures, of capitals and niches, show with what liberal hand he had dealt his votive offerings.
We know too little of the history of the man, to judge what earlier impulses had led him to such reverence for Israel's God. There might have been something to incline him towards it in his early upbringing, perhaps in Cæsarea; or in his family relationships; perhaps in that very servant (possibly a Jew) whose implicit obedience to his master seems in part to have led him up to faith in analogous submission of all things to the behests of Christ. [2599] The circumstances, the times, the place, the very position of the man, make such suppositions rational, event suggested them. In that case, his whole bearing would be consistent with itself, and with what we know of the views and feelings of the time. In the place where the son of his fellow official at the Court of Herod had been healed by the Word of Jesus, spoken at a distance, [2600] in the Capernaum which was the home of Jesus and the scene of so many miracles, it was only what we might expect, that in such case he should turn to Jesus and ask His help. Quiet consistent with his character is the straightforwardness of his expectancy, characteristically illustrated by his military experience - what Bengel designates as the wisdom of his faith beautifully shining out in the bluffness of the soldier. When he had learned to own Israel's God, and to believe in the absolute unlimited power of Jesus, no such difficulties would come to him, nor, assuredly, such cavils rise, as in the minds of the Scribes, or even of the Jewish laity. Nor is it even necessary to suppose that, in his unlimited faith in Jesus, the Centurion had distinct apprehension of His essential Divinity. In general, it holds true, that, throughout the Evangelic history, belief in the Divinity of our Lord was the outcome of experience of His Person and Work, not the condition and postulate of it, as is the case since the Pentecostal descent of the Holy Ghost and His indwelling in the Church.
In view of these facts, the question with the Centurion would be: not, Could Jesus heal his servant, but, Would He do so? And again, this other specifically: Since, so far as he knew, no application from any in Israel, be it even publican or sinner, had been doomed to disappointment, would he, as a Gentile, be barred from share in this blessing? was he unworthy,' or, rather, unfit' for it? Thus this history presents a crucial question, not only as regarded the character of Christ's work, but the relation to it of the Gentile world. Quiet consist with this - nay, its necessary outcome - were the scruples of the Centurion to make direct, personal application to Jesus. In measure as he reverenced Jesus, would these scruples, from his own standpoint, increase. As the houses of Gentiles were unclean,' [2601] entrance into them, and still more familiar fellowship, would defile.' The Centurion must have known this; and the higher he placed Jesus on the pinnacle of Judaism, the more natural was it for him to communicate with Christ through the elders of the Jews, and not to expect the Personal Presence of the Master, even if the application to him were attended with success. And here it is important (for the criticism of this history) to mark that, alike in the view of the Centurion, and even in that of the Jewish elders who under-took his commission, Jesus as yet occupied the purely Jewish stand-point.