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Show Treatise on the Divinity of Christ Antecedent Difficulties Existing in the Unitarian Mind-Takes Mind-Takes Refuge in the Fact that Christ, in the Gospel, Is Represented as Alan. (Written for Intermountain Catholic.) Christianity, as a divine institution, rests all its claims on the resurrection of Christ from the grave. On this fact St. Paul based his faith. "If Christ be not risen, then is our faith vain." But arguments derived from external authority, au-thority, be they the scriptures or prescription, pre-scription, are not effective with minds that lack simplicity of faith, which is "a gift of God." The arguments from the scriptures regarding the divinity of , Christ, though conclusive, the Unitarian Uni-tarian rejects, because of antecedent difficulties which exist in his mind. To admit these scriptural arguments would be to deny other things which appear to his mind clear and certain. To him all Christian mysteries are intrinsically intrinsi-cally incredible, and before accepting them on the authority of the sacred scriptures, he prefers to discredit the gospel narrative, which he terms "a legend or poetic imagination." We have no disposition to misrepresent the Unitarian Uni-tarian creed, which is not all false. Like all systems, however erroneous, it has its good and true side; otherwise other-wise the human mind, which can be satisfied only with truth, could not and would not embrace it. When, then, they reject certain portions of the scriptures, they do so on the ground that they contradict reason. Supposing their preconceived views of the Christian Chris-tian Trinity to be what they suppose it is "one is three and three are one" they would be perfectly reasonable in rejecting it, also in maintaining that God has not revealed that mystery, which, in their interpretation, would be a contradiction of reason. But this is digressing from the sub-1 sub-1 ject to be here treated, namely, the Divinity of Christ. The claim that Jesus was the Son of God was first put forth by himself not that he was a god, but God. "I and the Father are one. He that seeth me seeth 'the Father." The claim was-no was-no sooner made . than it was denied. During his entire public life, Christ was met at every step by these denials, sometimes asked to give proofs for his extraordinary claims. "If thou be the Son of God, etc., do so and so." The more vehement were the denials the stronger was he in asserting his claims. "For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. The charge brought by his accusers ac-cusers when before Pilot was the same. The doctrine of the divinity, which he proclaimed, sanctioned and exacted, was the faith of his apostles and immediate imme-diate followers. The apostles represent him as the Messiah, the true and only begotten Son of God. The names, given him by the angel, bespeak his divinity. He would be called "the Most High, the Son of God, Emmanuel," which, being interpreted, is God with us. Before he is born, Elizabeth salutes his virgin mother as "the mother of my Lord." His own claim that he was God, for which he suffered and died on the cross, survived his death and was proclaimed pro-claimed in the great centers of Roman and Grecian civilization simultaneously that is, in Alexandria, Antioch, Athens. Ath-ens. Corinth, Ephesus and Rome. Does not this fact of the denial of Christ's divinity it beine; the great debated de-bated question for twenty centuries, defended and denied alike by the most learned and profound thinkers and scholars in every age furnish one of the strongest proofs in favor of the divinity, especially when we see the intimate relationship existing between the claim so high and the ignomy of the cross, and at the same time the wonderful growth of that belief in spite of all opposition? The Unitarian takes refuge in the fact that he is represented in the gospel gos-pel as man.; No one denies this. But was he only" man? Considering man's limited knowledge and his inability to grasp the supernatural, or extend his vision beyond this world, it may be difficult to satisfactorily prove man to be God, especially when the arguments from external authority, namely, the scriptures, are rejected, but it ought to be very easy to prove that man is man and only man. We read nowhere that enlightened people ever tried to disprove that Apollo, Bacchus or Mercury were true gods. Their claim was so far beneath enlightened people that it went by default. de-fault. Alexander called himself the son of Jupiter, but all Greece smiled at the impostor. No learned dissertation was ever written to prove or disprove his. preposterous claim. Mahomet's pretensions did not extend further than merely claiming to be an agent of the Deity, and in this claim his only support w;is the sword. No able writer has honored him by discussing discuss-ing his claims. How is it that the claims of Jesus, alone have been contested for twenty centuries by the most profound scholars? schol-ars? From Celsus, in the first century, down to Spinoza the father of modern mod-ern infidelity in the seventeenth century, cen-tury, it has been the great controverted contro-verted question. Spinoza was followed in quick succession by Voltaire. Rousseau, Rous-seau, Hume. Kant. Gibbon, Goethe. Hegel. Tyndall. Huxley and Ilackel, in whose company Unitarians find congenial con-genial companionship. Over and against this array of infidel writers we have equally learned scholars, scientists and philosophers professing their faith in the divinity of Christ. Beginning with Dante, in the thirteenth century, we have in order intellectual giarlts like Chaucer. Erasmus, Aristo, Sir Thomas More, Copernicus, Tasso, Tycho Braho Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Milton. Pascal, Locke, Newton, Lieb-nitz. Lieb-nitz. Swift, Johnson, Burke. Napoleo.i Cuvier and Pasteur in the last decade of the past century. In this list are included only the names of laymen, who compare in science and literary attainments attain-ments with the list of infidels, agnostics agnos-tics and atheists enumerated. Side by side with the former the Untarian stands. His profession of- certain Christian Chris-tian truths and praise of the founder of Christianity do not exclude him from the company he has chosen by his denial de-nial of the INCARNATION, the TRINITY TRIN-ITY and the Divinity of Christ. Renan made no profession of Christianity, Chris-tianity, but openly assailed it with all , the bitter hostility which he had cherished cher-ished in his soul. Yet in his "Life of Jesus" he describes the mora! beauty and ferandeur of his character as being be-ing "incomparable and absolute." He represents him as one "who surpasses the conditions of human nature, possessing pos-sessing qualities and qualifications which belong to God alone." There- ' fore, he makes him God. The book was condemned by the Rationalists of France, because he adopted a system which they termed "of false and hypocritical hypo-critical praise." One French writer a skeptic wrote of Renan's "Life of Je- sus": "I cannot understand how such a man as the author describes Jesus to be can be so far divine, and yet not be God, at least to a certain extent." To deny his divinity.it is necessary to deny his supernatural acts by which he manifests his Godhead. Hence the historical records of the evangelist are questioned, and their plain, simple and artless narratives are styled "legends or poetic imaginations." Why? Because Be-cause it is on this condition alone the Unitarian can do away with the miracles mira-cles of Christ, those wonderful works to which he himself appealed as the groundwork of man's faith in his divinity. di-vinity. "If you believe not me, believe my works." Only then on condition of denying the gospel narrative, without with-out any proof for such denial and against all proofs that go to show that as historical records they are true, can the Unitarian deny the divinity of Christ. The denial of the divinity, of Christ is an implicit denial of God's existence. "The Father is in me and I am in the Father; the Father and I are one." Both Jesus and God have been so inseparably in-separably united in the human mind and in truth that error cannot attack 1 the one to the exclusion of the other. "The Father and I are one." A denial de-nial of Jesus as God is a denial of God. Learned writers, though in error, but professing to be consistent, admit this. The testimony of Proudhon, who was both a scholar and a philosopher, will verify this assertion. As an avowed atheist he wrote: "If you acknowledge a Supreme Being, then kneel before the crucified." In the same work he also .wrote: "Do you believe in God? If you do, then you are a Christian and a Catholic; if you do not. dare to avow it, for then it will not only be to the church that you declare war, but to the faith of the whole human race. Be- ' tween these two alternatives there is room for nothing except ignorance and , insincerity. I here solemnly ; vow that if the church succeeds in overthrowing the system of argument anti-atheistical which I oppose to her, I will abjure my philosophy and die in her bosom." Acknowledge God and you proclaim the divinity of Jesus Christ, proclaimed proclaim-ed by himself, taught by his apostles, the foundation of St. Paul's faith and the whole subject of St. John's gospel. |
