The Kernel and the Husk/Christian Illusions

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

 

XVII

My dear ——,

Once more I am compelled to digress: and, this time, it is in order to meet what you must let me call a preconception of yours. You say that it appears to you "impossible that Christ, if really divine, should have been permitted by God to be worshipped as a worker of miracles for eighteen centuries, although in reality he had no power to work them."

Is this much more than a repetition of your former objection that my views amount to "a new religion," and that illusion, although it may abound in the history of the thoughts of mankind, can never have been permitted to connect itself with a really divine revelation? I have already in part answered these prejudices—for they are nothing more—by shewing that illusion permeates what is called "natural religion," and by subsequently shewing that the inspired books of the Old Testament exhibit illusions in every page; not only the illusions of the chosen people, but illusions also on the part of the authors of the several books, who misinterpreted tradition so as to convert a non-miraculous into a miraculous history. But now let us deal more particularly with Christian illusions. Here I will try to shew you, first, how natural and (humanly speaking) how inevitable it was that illusions should gather round the earliest Christian traditions, and how easily there might have sprung up miraculous accounts in connection with them. Then, and not till then, having done my best to dispel your natural prejudice, I will take in detail the six or seven principal miracles attributed to Christ by all the three Synoptic Evangelists, and will endeavour to shew you that these accounts did actually spring up in a natural and inevitable way, after the manner of illusions, without any attempt to deceive on the part of the compilers of the Gospels. It will appear, I think, that the life and doctrine of Christ are independent of these miracles and can easily be separated from them.

For the present then I am to speak of the naturalness or inevitability of illusions gathering about Christ's acts and words in the minds of His disciples. Does any student of the Fourth Gospel need to be convinced of this? Perhaps the author of that work discerned the illusions of the early Church even too clearly, so that he slightly overshot the mark in the frequency of the false inferences and misunderstandings with which he delights to encompass the words and deeds of Jesus. Perhaps the composer of "the Spiritual Gospel" has been led even too far by his profound and true perception that this Incarnate Word—this Being from another sphere who was and is in the bosom of the Father—could not move on the earth, among earthly creatures, without being perpetually misunderstood by them. But is there not manifest truth in his conception of Jesus as of One having different thoughts from those of common men, different ways of regarding all things small or great, a spiritual dialect of His own, not at once to be comprehended by ordinary beings? Certain it is that, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ's discourses are one string of metaphors which are literally and falsely interpreted by those to whom they are addressed. "Flesh," "blood," "water," "sleep," "birth," "death," "life," "temple," "bread," "meat," "light," "night," "way,"—these and I know not how many more simple words present themselves, as we rapidly turn over the pages of that Gospel, always metaphorically used, and always misunderstood. Nor can it be said that they were misunderstood by enemies and unbelievers alone; His disciples constantly misunderstood them. The life of Christ in the Fourth Gospel is one continuous misunderstanding. I will not say that this represents the exact fact; but I doubt not that the inspired insight of the author, be he who he may, took in the full meaning of all the hints that are given by the Synoptists as to the misunderstanding of the disciples about their Master, and led him to the deliberate conclusion that the life of Christ in the flesh was one perpetual source of illusions to the Twelve—illusions through which, by the guidance of the Spirit, they were to be led to the truth: "What I do ye know not now, but ye shall know hereafter." I believe he went even further and perceived that Christ's life was in danger of becoming a total delusion to the earliest Christians through their tendency to the materialistic and the miraculous, and that the best means of preserving the Church from such a danger was to accustom the faithful to attach value to the words and deeds of Christ only so far as they could interpret them spiritually, trusting to the Spirit for continual guidance into new truth.

This then is my first proposition, that Christ was sure to be misunderstood by those around Him, owing to His manner of using the language of metaphor. You must know very well that this conjecture is confirmed by fact. Sometimes the Synoptists note the fact, as when He spoke of "leaven" and the Twelve misunderstood Him literally; and several other instances are on record. But it is of course possible that on many other occasions the misunderstanding may have existed, but may not have been noted by the Evangelists. Take one instance. In the discourse of Jesus to the Seventy Disciples (Luke x. 19) Jesus makes the following statement: "I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in any wise hurt (ἀδικήσει) you." How are we to understand this "treading upon serpents and scorpions"? Literally or metaphorically? Surely the text itself makes it evident that Jesus used the words metaphorically to refer to "the power of the Enemy," i.e. "the Serpent," or Satan, probably with a special reference to the casting out of devils. Moreover the passage is introduced by a statement that "the Seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us in thy name. And he said, I beheld Satan fall as lightning from Heaven. Behold I have given you authority to tread upon serpents...... Howbeit in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven." As for the other part of the promise, "nothing shall hurt you," it surely does not seem to you that these words must imply literal "hurt"? If it does, let me direct your attention to a much more striking instance of Christ's extraordinary use of metaphor in a passage where the Disciples are told, almost in a breath, that not a hair of their heads shall perish and yet that some of them shall be "put to death" (Luke xxi. 16-18). I think then that you will agree with me that the "authority to tread upon serpents" mentioned in St. Luke contained not a literal, but a spiritual promise, to tread upon the power of "the Serpent." Nevertheless, that this promise about "serpents" was very early misinterpreted literally can be shewn, not indeed from a genuine passage of the Gospels, but from a very early interpolation in St. Mark's Gospel, xvi. 17, 18: "These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover."

Here then we have a clear instance of misunderstanding (not noted by the Evangelists) arising in very early if not in the very earliest times from the metaphorical language of Jesus. One more instance of probable misunderstanding must suffice for the present. You know how often in the Epistles of St. Paul the word "dead" is used to indicate spiritually "dead" i.e. "dead in sin." A similar use is attributed to Christ in the Fourth Gospel: "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live" (John xi. 25); but here the impending resurrection of Lazarus gives the reader the impression that it is literally used. However it is almost certainly metaphorical in John v. 24, 25, 28, "He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not unto judgment, but is passed from death into life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.... Marvel not at this, for the hour cometh in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth" &c. Here apparently the meaning is that the hour has already come ("now is") when the spiritually dead shall hear the voice, and the hour is on the point of coming when the literally dead ("all that are in the tombs") shall hear it. In any case, the metaphorical meaning is indisputable in the striking saying of Jesus (Luke ix. 60) "Let the dead bury their dead."

Now if Jesus was in the habit of describing those who were lost in sin as being "dead," and of bidding His disciples "raise the dead"—meaning that they were to restore sinners to spiritual life—we can easily see how such language might be misunderstood. It is probable that Jesus Himself had actually restored life to at least one person given over for dead, the daughter of Jairus, though by natural means. Of such revivification you may find an instance described in Onesimus (pp. 77—81) which is taken almost verbatim from the account of his own revivification given by the late Archbishop of Bordeaux to the late Dean Stanley, and sent me by the Dean as being taken down from the Archbishop's lips. If that was so, how natural for some of the Disciples to attach a literal meaning to the precept, "raise the dead"! They would argue thus, "Our Master healed diseases at a word, so can we; He once raised a child from the dead and bade us also raise the dead; some of the Disciples therefore ought to be able to do this." How natural, under the circumstances, such a confusion of the material and the spiritual! Yet I have little doubt that the diseases which were cured by the Twelve were almost always "possession," or paralysis, or nervous diseases. Compare the different accounts given by the Synoptists of the instructions of Jesus to the Twelve when He sent them forth on their first mission:

Mark vi. 7. And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

Matthew x. 1. And he called unto him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.

Luke ix. 1. And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases.

Here you find that the first Gospel (St. Mark's) makes mention only of the "authority over unclean spirits," and this probably represents the fact. The third account is an amplification; and the second altogether exaggerates. Hence, when we read, in the context of the second version of these instructions, "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils; freely ye received freely give" (Matthew x. 8), we cannot fail to see several arguments against the probability of the italicized words being literally intended by Jesus. First, the language of Christ habitually dealt in metaphor, and in metaphor habitually misunderstood by His disciples; secondly, there is no instance in which a single one of the Twelve carried out this precept during the life of their Master, and only one in which one of the Twelve (Peter) is said to have raised a woman from the dead (for St. Paul's incident with Eutychus can hardly be called a case in point); thirdly the precept is recorded by only one Evangelist;^[1] fourthly that same Evangelist records only one case in which our Lord Himself raised any one from the dead, i.e. the revivified daughter of Jairus—and it seems absurd to represent Christ as commanding all the Apostles to do that which most of them probably never did, and He Himself (according to the First Gospel) only did once.

We pass now to another cause that may have originated miraculous narratives in the Gospels. Try to extricate yourself from our Western, cold-blooded, analytical, and critical way of looking at things. Sit down in the reign of Vespasian or Domitian in the midst of a congregation of Jewish and Græco-Oriental brethren, assembled for a sacred service, "singing a hymn" (as Pliny says, describing them a few years afterwards) "to Christ as to a God." What effect on the traditions of Christ's life and works would be produced by these "hymns and spiritual songs" which St. Paul's testimony (as well as Pliny's) shews to have been a common part of the earliest Christian ritual? Would they not inevitably tend, by poetic hyperbole and metaphor, to build up fresh traditions which, when literally interpreted, would—like the songs and psalms of the Chosen People—give rise to miraculous narratives? Part of the service indeed would not consist of hymns but of the reading of the "Scriptures" i.e. the Old Testament; but this also would tend in the same direction. For there you would hear, read out to the congregation, marvellous prophecies how, in the day of the Lord the Redeemer, the eyes of the blind should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame should leap as a hart; and the sole thought possessing you and every man in the congregation would be, "How far did all these things find fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ?" You would hear from the "Scriptures" narratives of marvellous miracles, how Moses gave water from the rock to Israel in the wilderness and fed them with food from heaven, how Elijah raised the widow's child from death, and how Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; and the sole thought possessing you would be, "How far were like wonders wrought by Christ?" Then would arise the hymn describing, in imagery borrowed from the Old Testament, how Christ had done all these things, and more besides, for the spiritual Israel; how He had spread a table for His people in the wilderness, and given to thousands to partake of His body and His blood; how Moses had merely given water to the people, but Jesus had changed the water of the Jews (i.e. the Law) into the wine which flowed from His side; how Jesus had fulfilled the predictions of the prophets by curing the halt, the maimed, the blind, the leper, the deaf; how He had even raised the dead and bidden His disciples to raise the dead; how He, like Jonah, had spent three days in the darkness of the grave. If you look at the earliest Christian paintings you will find that they represent Christ as the Fish (the emblem of food); others depict the Mosaic miracles of the manna and the water from the rock. These shew what a hold the notion of the miraculous food had taken on the mind of the earliest believers. How easy it would be to amplify a metaphor derived from the Eucharistic feeding on the Bread of Life and perhaps on the "honey-sweet fish" (as Christ is actually called in a poem written about the middle of the second century) into a miraculous account of the feeding of many thousands upon material bread and material fish! It is greatly to be regretted that we have not one left out of the many hymns and psalms of which St. Paul and Pliny make mention. The only vestige of one that I know is found in a verse of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. It is at all events printed by Westcott and Hort as poetry, and it is thought by many commentators to be an extract from some well-known hymn (Eph. v. 14):

"Wherefore (he) saith,
⁠Awake thou that sleepest
⁠And arise from the dead
⁠⁠And Christ shall shine upon thee."

This perhaps is our only specimen of the earliest Christian hymnals. Surely then it is noticeable that in three lines of this unique specimen there are three metaphors, and in the second line a metaphorical use of the word "dead" which—as I have pointed out above—has probably elsewhere resulted in serious misunderstanding.

After the hymn would come the sermon. The preacher would stand up like Apollos to "prove from the Scriptures," that is, from the Old Testament, that Jesus is the Christ. If you wish to know how some of the Christian Preachers would probably discharge their task you should look at the Dialogue with Trypho written (about a hundred years after Apollos) by Justin Martyr—who, I take it, was very much superior in judgment, learning, and ability, to the great mass of Christian Preachers in the first and second centuries. There—among many other instances of the adaptation of history to preconception—you will find Justin declaring that Jesus was born in a cave, and that the ass on which He rode into Jerusalem was tied to a vine, simply because certain prophecies of Isaiah mention a cave and a vine, and because he is determined to find fulfilments of them in the life of Christ. But in the early times of Apollos, and during the next twenty or thirty years, before the Gospels had been committed to writing, there must have been a far stronger gravitation towards the Old Testament and a far more powerful tendency to find something in the life of Christ to fulfil every prediction about the Messiah and to correspond to every miracle wrought by Moses and the prophets. Judged in the light of these considerations, our present record of Christ's life ought to surprise us not by the number, but by the paucity, of the fulfilments of prophecy and the miracles contained in them.

Against these arguments for the antecedent probability that miracles would be baselessly imputed to Jesus (to be followed presently by a few instances to shew that they have been so imputed) I know nothing that has been recently urged except a consideration drawn from the life of John the Baptist: "To the Baptist no miracle has been imputed by the Gospels; to Christ miracles have been imputed; why not to both? What is the reason for this distinction except that the former did not perform miracles, while the latter did?" Two reasons can be given. In the first place Christ worked "mighty works," while John did not; and since many of these "mighty works" could not in the first century be distinguished from "miracles," they served as a nucleus round which a miraculous narrative might gather; in the history of the Baptist there would be no such nucleus. The second and perhaps more important reason is, that, as a counterpoise to the natural exaggerative tendency which might have led men to attribute miracles to the Baptist, there would be also a tendency to heighten the contrast between the Servant and the Master. This tendency appears to me to increase in the later Gospels till at last in the Fourth we come to the express statement, "John worked no miracle" (John x. 41). But whether I am right or not in this conjecture, it is quite certain that the attitude of the Christians towards the mere forerunner of the Messiah—about whom the Prophets had simply predicted that he would "turn the hearts of the children to the fathers"— would not be such as to render likely any imputations of miracles to him. At Ephesus, in the days of St. Paul, there were some quasi-Christians who had received none but "John's Baptism," and had "not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Ghost." That gives us a much stronger impression of the Prophet's influence, and a much weaker impression of the prevalence of the doctrine about the Holy Spirit in the earliest Christian teaching, than we should have inferred from what we read in the Fourth Gospel: was it likely, when the Baptist's influence seemed to the contemporaries of St. Paul still so powerful (perhaps too powerful) that they would be tempted unconsciously to magnify it by casting round him that halo of miraculous action which naturally gathered around the life of Christ?

Does it seem to you very hard, and almost cruelly unnatural, that the life of the Baptist—in whom the world takes comparatively little interest—should be handed down with historical accuracy (at least so far as miracles are concerned) while the life of Christ, the centre of the hopes and fears of the civilized world, has been permitted by Providence to become a nucleus for illusion and superstition as well as for the righteous faith and love of mankind? It is hard; it is not unnatural.

"When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

What does Shakespeare mean by this except to exemplify the universal, and natural, but illusive belief, that whatever affects the greatest man must also affect material nature? Therefore in proportion to the greatness of any man we must expect that the illusions about him will be great in the minds of posterity. How indeed could it be otherwise? Reflect for a moment. Jesus came into the world to be a spiritual Saviour, a spiritual Judge; but how few there were in those days who could fully appreciate even the meaning of these titles! Do you yourself, even at this date, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, grasp firmly this notion of spiritual judgment? Reverence can hardly restrain you from smiling at the Apostles for their unspiritual dreams of a "carnal" empire with twelve tangible thrones to be set up for their twelve selves in Palestine; but you yourself, have you never, at all events in younger days, dreamed sometimes of a visible white throne on material clouds, of a visible and perhaps tangible trumpet, of an audible verdict of "Guilty" or "Not guilty" externally pronounced on each soul? perhaps also of palpable palm branches, and of I know not what more sensuous apparatus, without which you can scarcely realize the notion of the Day of Judgment? And yet all these are adventitious and accidental accompaniments of the real and essential "judgment"—which is in Greek the "sifting" or "division" i.e. the division between good and evil in the heart of each one of us. But I doubt even now whether you understand the meaning of this spiritual "division" or judgment. Let me try to explain it. Have you not at any time suddenly, in a flash, been brought face to face with some revelation of goodness—some good person, or action, or book, or word, or thought—which in a moment, before you were aware, has lighted up all the black caverns of your nature and made your mind's eye realize them, and your conscience abhor them, setting your higher nature against your lower nature, so that, without your knowing it, this angelic visitant has taken hold of you, carried away the better part of you along with itself into higher regions of purer thought than yours, from whence your better nature is forced to look down upon, and condemn, your lower and grosser self? This "division" is the operation of the two-edged sword of the Spirit; and when a man's cheeks flush with shame, or his heart feels crushed with remorse, under this "dividing" power, and he feels the verdict "I am guilty," then he is being judged far more effectually than any earthly law court could judge him. Now it is this kind of judgment that Jesus had in mind when He spoke of the judgment of the world by the Son of Man. In this sense He has been judging, is judging, and will judge, till the Great Judgment consummates the story of such things as are to be judged. But how little has the world realized this!

Probably some would have realized less of the spiritual if they had imagined less of the material. You know how the English judges of our times still insist on much of the old pomp and ceremony which in the days of our forefathers was thought necessary in order to make justice venerable. The trumpets, and the javelin-men, and the sheriffs in the procession, the wig and gown and bands in court —they all seem a little ridiculous to most of us now; yet possibly the judges are right in retaining them. Possibly our brutal English nature will need for some decades longer these antique and now meaningless trappings before they will be able to respect the just judge for the sake of justice itself. And in the same way, from the days of Clovis to those of Napoleon, many a man who would have found it impossible to realize the righteous Judge as the invisible wielder of the two-edged sword of the Spirit, has felt a fear, which perhaps did more good than harm, at the thought of the opening graves, the unclothed trembling dead, the thunder-pealing verdict and the flames of a material hell. Who also can deny that the illusion which has represented Jesus as having possessed and exerted the power to cure every imaginable disease of the body, has led many to realize Him as the Healer of something more than material disease, in a manner otherwise impossible for masses of men living under an oppression which often scarcely left them the consciousness that they possessed anything but bodies wherewith to serve their masters?

Do not suppose, because I am forced by evidence to reject the miracles, that I am blind to the part that they once played in facilitating faith in Christ. A whole essay, a volume of essays might be written on that subject, without fear of exaggeration. The Miraculous Conception, the Miraculous Resurrection and Ascension, the miracles of the feeding of the four thousand and of the five thousand,—it would be quite possible to shew from Christian literature and history, how in times gone by, when laws of nature were unrecognized, these supposed incidents of Christ's life not only found their way into men's minds without hesitation and without a strain upon intellect or conscience, but also conveyed to the human heart, each in its own way, some deep spiritual truth satisfying some deep spiritual need. It is the old lesson once more repeated: the eyes take in, as a picture, what the ears fail to convey to the brain or heart, when expressed in mere words.

But now, there are abundant symptoms that the tempers and minds of men are greatly changed. Men's minds are more open than before to the need of some spiritual bond to keep society together; and the character and spiritual claims of Christ, and the marvellous results that have followed from His life and death, are beginning (I think) to be recognized with more spontaneousness and with less of superstitious formalism. On the other hand, the vast regularity of Nature has so come home to our hearts that some believe in it as if it had a divine sanctity; the thought of praying that the sun or moon may stand still shocks us as a profanity; and boys and girls, as they stand opposite to some picture setting forth a Bible miracle, look puzzled and perplexed, or, if they are a little older, say with a sententious smile that "the age of miracles is past." In a word, that very element of inexplicable wonder which once strengthened the faith, now weakens it, by furnishing weapons to its assailants, and by inducing rash believers to take up and defend against sceptics a position that is indefensible.

In any case, it is the duty of each generation of Christians to put aside, as far as it can, the illusions of the previous generation and to rise higher to the fuller knowledge of Christ: for the outworn and undiscarded illusions of one generation become the hypocrisies of the next. The illusions of the permanence of the Mosaic Law, of the speedy Consummation, of Transubstantiation, of the Infallible Church, of the Infallible Book, have all been in due course put away. A candid and modest Christian ought surely to argue that, where so many illusions have already been discarded—and all without injury to the worship of Christ—some may remain to be discarded still, and equally without injury to the Eternal Truth.

What if miraculous Christianity is to natural Christianity as the Ptolemaic astronomy is to the Newtonian? Both of these astronomical systems were of practical utility; both could predict eclipses; both revealed God as a God of order. But the former imputed to the unmoving sun the terrestrial motion which the latter correctly imputed to the earth; the former explained by a number of arbitrary, non-natural, and quasi-miraculous suppositions—spheres, and spirals, and epicycles, and the like—phenomena which the latter more simply explained by one celestial curve traced out in accordance with one fixed law. I believe that in religion also we have made a similar mistake and are being prepared for a similar correction. We have imputed to Christ some actions which have sprung from the promptings of our own imaginations—imaging forth what our ideal Deliverer would have done—and which have represented, not His motions, but the motions of our own hearts. By what we have euphemistically denominated "latent laws," that is to say by hypotheses as arbitrary and baseless as the old epicycles, unsupported by sufficient evidence and inconsistent with all that we see and hear and feel around us in God's world, we have endeavoured to explain a Redemption which no more needs such explanations than forgiveness needs them—a Redemption which is as natural (that is to say, as much in accordance with the laws of physical nature and the ordinary processes of human nature) as that Law of Love, or Spiritual gravitation, which may be illustrated in the microcosm of every human household. Now we are to learn the new truth: and as the God of Newton is greater (is He not?) than the God of Ptolemy, so let us not doubt that the God revealed in spiritual Christianity will be greater than the God revealed in material and miraculous Christianity. The new heavens will not cease to declare the glory of God; the new firmament will not fail to tell of His handiwork.

1. Of course its omission by the other Evangelists might indicate that the words were not uttered by Jesus; but it might also indicate that the precept, being generally misunderstood, was considered so strange and at variance with facts that it had come to be discredited and considered spurious.