The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 3/Chapter 3

by Theodore Parker

CHAPTER III.

THE RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES OF JESUS.

It is quite plain to all impartial students, that Jesus of Nazareth did not teach that complicated system of theological doctrines now called “Christianity:” that is the growth of the ages after him. But yet it is not easy, nor perhaps possible, to determine what doctrines he taught on all important matters. For when we turn away from the sects of the Christian Church, we find it difficult to obtain the exact words of Jesus himself.

There are two collections of ancient documents which relate to his life and teachings,—the Canonical, and the Apocryphal Gospels. The two agree in their common reverence for Jesus, and their mythological treatment of his life, differing only in degree, not kind. Neither collection consists of simple historical documents. The Apocryphal Gospels are of small value for our present purpose, though highly important monuments of the age when such weeds grew out of the soil deeply ploughed by Revolution: they wild growth of fancy and Religious zeal, yet bear doubtless some historic flowers.^[1]

Of the Canonical Gospels, after impartial study, we must reject the fourth, as of scarcely any historical value. It appears to be written more than a hundred years after the birth of Jesus, by an unknown author, who had a controversial and dogmatic purpose in view, not writing to report facts as they were; so he invents actions and doctrines to suit his aim, and ascribes them to Jesus with no authority for so doing. Yet this Gospel, ascribed to John, one of the Sons of Thunder who appears in actual history, is full of deep religious feeling and thought,—in this its value consists, not at all in its report of matters-of-fact.

We come to the Synoptics; it is by no means clear when they were written, by whom, or with what documentary materials of history: most conflicting results are rested in by different scholars. Fact and fiction are mingled together in all these three Gospels as in the Apocryphal. Calling them by the names of their alleged Authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, the first seems to be the oldest of all; Luke appeals to come next in order; while Mark mediates between the two. But some critics place Mark before Luke in time

These three follow the same general tradition respecting the life, actions, and doctrines of Jesus, wherein they differ widely and irreconcilably from John. But the individual differences between the accounts of Matthew and Luke are equally remarkable and irreconcilable. In Matthew Jesus forbids his disciples to visit the Gentiles or the Samaritans, while in Luke he does miracles in Samaria; and the model of Christian excellence was found in that despised land. Luke relates the story of the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son,—both probably founded on facts well known at the time,—which Matthew fails to report, and which Mark also neglects to copy into his compromising Gospel. If these two grand lessons of Religion came from Jesus, as there seems no reason to doubt, then what can be said for the historic fairness, or the competence, of the two biographers who omit such important facts? Either that they were grossly ignorant of his doctrines, or else culpably unjust. If Luke invented these noble passages, then the blame rests on him for violating the truth of history by putting their beauty and sublimity upon one who had no claim thereto.

These facts show the difficulty of reconstructing the doctrines of Jesus; for if one Gospel be taken as the historic standard, then much of the others must be thrown away. The results attained will depend on the subjective peculiarities of the inquirer, and so have the uncertainty of mere opinion, not the stability of historic knowledge. Even Matthew presents us with passages so inconsistent that the fragmentary character of this old Gospel becomes clear to the careful scholar.^[2]

Jesus, a young man full of genius for Religion, seems to have begun his public career with the narrow aim of reforming Judaism. He would put all human Piety and Morality into the venerable forms of Jewish tradition. He came not to destroy but to fulfil the Mosaic Law; that was eternal;—his followers were to observe and teach all the customs of the Scribes and Pharisees; the sick man on recovery must offer the Levitical sacrifice. Like John the Baptist, he preaches the coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven. He would not labour for Mankind, but only for the children of Israel—for it is not meet to give the dogs the children's bread. But as he went on he found his new wine of Piety and Humanity burst the old wine-skins of Judaism; the old garments which Scribes and Pharisees had inherited from dead prophets could not be patched with new Philanthropy, and the nation be thereby clothed withal. He gradually breaks with Judaism, neglects the ceremonial fast, violates the Sabbath, speaks evil of the clerical dignities—they are covered pits in the highway, whereinto men fall and perish. He claims himself to be the Messiah; John the Baptist was the Elias who was to come and make ready. He had political plans that lie there indistinctly seen through the mythic cloud which wraps the whole. He reaches beyond Judea to Samaria at least, perhaps to other nations, and developes his religious scheme more freely than at first.

Religion is no longer fettered by conventional restraint; it is Love to God, Love to man; on this hang all the Law and the Prophets. There must be no revenge, but continual forgiveness, seventy times seven. In the next stage of life a man's eternal condition depends wholly on his natural morality and humanity in this.^[3] His commands and requisitions related to moral conduct, not belief or liturgical ceremonies; God preferring goodness to sacramental forms.^[4] He puts the substance of religion before its accidents, and utters magnificent beatitudes of Piety and Humanity.

But he does not appear to have been conscious of the Infinite Perfection of God, for though he calls Him our Father, and insists on Absolute Love for God, which certainly seems to imply a Feeling of his Perfection, yet he considers God so imperfect as to damn the majority of men to eternal torment.^[5] Beside God he places a Devil absolutely evil, the adversary of God and enemy of man. Hell is eternal, and the wide road thereto is travelled well.

He claimed to be the Messiah spoken of by the writers of the Old Testament, John the Baptist, preparing the way for him, was equal to the greatest of men, but the least in the Kingdom of Heaven was greater than John. Men must believe that he is the Messiah, and confess him before men, or suffer future torment; in the day of judgment the cities which rejected his claim would fare worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, while men who believed and followed him would have immense power and glory.^[6] A great crisis, or revolution, is soon to take place, and the Son of Man is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven; the time is near but yet still uncertain; he himself knows not the day and hour.^[7] But he is already highly exalted, greater than the Sabbath and the Temple, all things are given to him by the Father, whom he alone knows, and by whom alone he is directly known.^[8]

In this new state of things all temporal and material cares were to cease, so he bids men not lay up treasures on earth, but only in Heaven; to take no thought for life, what they should eat, or drink, or wherewithal be clad; for if they seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness all these things will be added, and they be fed like the wild birds, and clothed as the lilies are. If God care for grass and sparrows so will he much more for them, and give good things to such as ask him.^[9] If brought to trial before magistrates for attempting to establish this Kingdom, they must take no thought for defence, for it will be given them at the moment what they shall say; it is not they but God who speaks, only through them.

Yet spite of these obvious defects in his scheme of doctrine, which ought not to astonish us or to be denied, there is such a deep, fresh, manly piety in his teachings, such love for man under all circumstances, poor, oppressed, despised, and sinful, as we find nowhere else in the whole compass of antiquity. God is a Father even to the Prodigal, goes out after him, falls on his neck with welcoming delight that the lost is found, and the dead come back alive once more. Men are to be brothers, each neighbour to all mankind: the greatest is to serve the least; even enemies must be forgiven seventy times seven, and prayed for spite of their active cursing. According to one biographer, on the cross he prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But this synoptical doctrine alone was felt to be inadequate to the wants of Man; so many other gospels were written, which were variously received and found acceptance with the great writers of the Christian Church till the third and fourth century.^[10] The fourth canonical Gospel contains much which is fair and good but utterly foreign to the other three; yet while free from Jewish limitation other new restrictions are therein put on the free development of Religion: men must believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Logos. No doubt the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptics was thought too external and exclusively practical by some, and the fourth Gospel, with divers others, was written to supply a conscious want. The Epistles of Paul betray the same thing.

To sum up the main points of the matter more briefly; in an age of gross wickedness, among a people arrogant, and proud of their descent from Abraham—a mythological character of some excellence; wedded to the ritual Law, which they professed to have received, by miracle from God, through Moses—another and greater mythological hero—in a nation of Monotheists, haughty yet cunning, morose, jealous, vindictive, loving the little corner of space called Judea above all the rest of the world; fancying themselves the “chosen people” and special favourites of God; in the midst of a nation wedded to their forms, sunk in ignorance, precipitated into sin, and, still more, expecting a Deliverer, who would repel their political foes, reunite the scattered children of Jacob, and restore them to power, conquer all nations, reestablish the formal service of the Temple in all its magnificent pomp, and exalt Jerusalem above all the cities of the earth for ever,—amid all this, and the opposition it raised to a spiritual man, Jesus fell back on the moral and religious Sentiment in Man; uttered manifold Oracles of Humanity, as the Infinite spoke in his noble soul; stirred men to deep emotions; laid down some principles of conduct wide as the Soul of man and true as eternal God; taught a form of Religion,—Piety and Morality,—far before anything known then to the world of men; but yet mistook himself for that miraculous and impossible deliverer of his nation whom the people waited for in vain.

In an age full of vengeance he makes love the pivotal Principle which all things must turn upon. Take one example as it stands in the Synoptics. A man asks what he shall do to fulfil the idea of Man, and have “eternal life?” He bids him keep the moral law, written eternally in the nature of man; specifies some of its plainest prohibitions, and adds, Love your neighbour as yourself. When asked the greatest commandment of the Law, he thus sums up all the Law and the Prophets also: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Here is the sum of religious doctrine. He gives the highest aim for man: Be perfect as God. He declares the blessedness, present and eternal, of such as do the Will of God. The Spirit of God shall be in them, revealing Truth; the Kingdom of God shall be theirs.

He gives no extended form of his views in Theology, Anthropology, Politics, or Philosophy. But the great truth of God's goodness, and man's spiritual nature, are implied in all his teachings. He says little of the Immortality of the Soul; much less than some “Heathens” before him; but it is everywhere implied. As the doctrine was familiar, he dwells little upon it.

It is vain to deny, or attempt to conceal, the errors in his doctrine,—a revengeful God, a Devil absolutely evil, an eternal Hell, a speedy end of the world; but the actual superiority of the mode of Religion he taught, its sublime faith in God, its profound Humanity, seem also as clear as the noonday sun.

Such, then, is the religious doctrine of Jesus. It was always taught with direct application to life; not as Science, but as daily Duty. Love of God was no abstraction. It implied love of Wisdom, Justice, Purity, Goodness, Holiness, Charity. To love these is to love God; to love them is to live them. It implies abhorrence of evil for its own sake; a desire and effort to be perfect as God, to tolerate no wrong action, wrong thought, or wrong feeling; to make the heart right, the head right, the hand right; to serve God, not with the lips alone, but the life, not only in Jerusalem and Gerizim, but everywhere; not by tithing mint, anise, and cumin, but by judgment, mercy, and faith; not by saying “Lord, Lord,” “Save us, good Lord,” but by doing the Father's will. It implies a Faith that is stronger than Fear, prevails over every sorrow, grief, disappointment, and asks only this—Thy will be done; a Love which is strongest in times of trouble, which never fails when mere human affection goes stooping and feeble, weeping its tears of blood; a Love which annihilates temptation, and in the hour of mortal agony brings as it were an angel from the sky; an absolute Trust in God, a brave unconcern for the morrow, so long as the day's duties are faithfully done. It is a love of Goodness and Religion for their own sake, not for the bribe of Heaven, or the dread of Hell. It implies a reunion of Man and God, till we think God's thought, and will God's will, and so have. God abiding in us, and become one with Him.

The other doctrine, Love of Man, is Love of all as yourself, not because they have no faults, but in spite thereof. To feel no enmity towards enemies; to labour for them with love; pray for them with pitying affection, remembering the less they deserve, the more they need; this was the doctrine of Love. It demands that the rich, the wise, the holy, help the poor, the foolish, the sinful; that the strong bear the burdens of the weak, not bind them on anew. It tells a man that his excellence and ability are not for himself alone, but for all mankind, of which he is but one, beginning first with the nearest of the needy. It makes the strong the guardians, not the tyrants, of the weak. It said: Go to the publicans and sinners, and call them to repentance; go to men trodden down by the hoof of the oppressor, rebuke him lovingly, but snatch the spoil from his bloody teeth; go to men sick with desolation, covered all over with the leprosy of sin, bowed together and squalid with their inveterate disease, bid them live and sin no more. It despairs of no man; sees the soul of goodness in things evil; knows the soul in its intimate recess never consents to sin, nor loves the Hateful. It would improve men's circumstances to mend their heart; their heart to mend their circumstances. It does not say alone, with piteous whine—God save the wicked and the weak, but puts its own shoulder to the work; divides its raiment and shares its loaf.

To say all, in brief, these two cardinal doctrines demanded a divine life, where every action of the hand, the head, the heart, is in obedience to the Law of the Soul; in harmony with the All-perfect. This was Christ's notion of worship. It asked for nothing ritual, formal; laid no stress on special days, forms, rites, creeds. Its rite, its creed, its substance, and its form, are all contained in that one command, love man as yourself; God above all. None can say, or need suppose, that Jesus consciously intended all the consequences which we see resulting from these principles, or that he even foresaw the effects thereof, more than Monk Schwarz expected the results of his invention.

Thus far the application was universal as the doctrine. But he taught something which is ritual. Baptism and the Supper. The first was a common rite at the time, used even by the “heathens.” In a nation dwelling in a warm climate, and so fond of symbols as the Jews, it was a natural expression of the convert's change of life. Sensual men must interpret their Religion to the senses, as the Hollanders have their Bible in Dutch. It seems to have been an accommodation to the wants of the times, as he spoke the popular language. Did he lay any stress on this watery dispensation; count it valuable of itself? Then we must drop a tear for the weakness; for no outward act can change the heart, and God is not to be mocked, pleased, or served with a form. Is there any reason to suppose he ever designed it to be permanent? It is indeed said that he bade the disciples teach all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”^[11] But since the Apostles never mention the command, nor the form, since it is opposite to the general spirit of his precepts, it must be put with the many other things which are to be examined with much care before they are referred to him. But if it came from him, we can only say, There is no perfect Guide but the Father.

The second form,—was it of more account than the first? Who shall tell us the “Lord's Supper” was designed to be permanent more than washing the feet, if that be a fact, which the Pope likewise imitates? Did he place any value on the dispensation of wine; design it to extend beyond the company then present? If we may trust the account, he asks his friends, at supper, to remember him, when they break bread. It was simple, natural, affectionate, beautiful. Was this a foundation of a form; to last for ever; a form valuable in itself; essential to man's spiritual welfare; a form pleasing to Him who is All in All? To say Jesus laid any stress on it as a valuable and perpetual rite is, to go beyond what is written. It needs no reply. The thing may be useful, beautiful, comforting to a million souls; truly it has been so. In Christianity there is milk for babes and meat for men, that the truth may be given as they can receive it. Let each be fed with the Father's bounty.^[12]

1. See them in the collections of Fabricius, Codex Apocryphus, N. T. 3 vols. 8vo, Hamb. 1719; Thilo, Codex Apoc. N. T. Vol. I., Lips. 1832; Tiscbendorf, De Evang. Apoc. Origine et Usu, Hag. Com. 1851; Evang. Apoc., Lips. 1853; Acta Apostol. Apoc., ib. 1851. See also Hoffman, Das Leben Jesu nach den Apocryphen, Leip. 1851. And see who will, Gesch. des Rabbi Jeschus Ben Josef hanootsri, Altona, 1853. See Fabricius, Codex Pseudepig. V. T. 2 vols. 8vo, Hamb. 1724.
2. Hilgenfeld tries to make out two main documents which form the bulk of this Gospel, p. 106, et seq.
3. Matt. xxii. 34—40, xxv. 14—30, 34—46, et al. and parallels.
4. Matt ix. 13, xxiii. 23, et passim.
5. Matt. xxv. 46, vii. 13, 14, xiii. 37—42, 49, 50, et al.
6. Matt. x. 32—35, 37—39, xi, 20—24, xvi. 14—20, 24—28, xix. 27—30, et al. parallels.
7. Matt x. 5—15, 23—34, xxiv. et al.
8. Matt xii 1—8, xi. 25—27, et al. parallels.
9. Matt vi. 19—21, 24—34, vii. 7—11, xviii. 18, 19, xix. 21—24.
10. See how they were used by Tatian, whose Diatessaron was a Diapente, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, the Clements of Rome and Alexandria, Origen, &c. The lost work of Papias would doubtless settle many curious questions. See Credner's Beiträge, and Ewald in his Jahrbücher, B. V. p. 62, et seq.
11. Math. xxviii. 19, and the parallels.
12. In the first edition I inserted here these lines:—

    “Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
    “Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
    “Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
    “A little louder, but as empty quite.”

    The thought I wished to express was this: The two ordinances, in comparison with a religious life and character, are no more than the rattles and straws of a child, compared with the attainments of an accomplished man; it is a beautiful feature of God's Providence, that things in themselves of no value, can yet serve so important a purpose as the intellectual, moral, and religious development of a man. The words were understood in a very different sense—sometimes even by my Friends. I omitted them in the English edition—for the publisher at first designed to have no notes in that, and I did not wish to reprint, without explanation, what had been so much misunderstood before.