An analysis of religious beliefAmberley, John Russell, viscount
Religion
An analysis of religious belief
Amberley, John Russell, viscount
Religions
Either, then, we must assume that the language
of Jesus has been misreported, or we must admit that he never for a
moment pretended to be co-equal, co-eternal, or con-substantial with
God.
Throughout his public life he spoke of himself as one who was sent
by God for a certain purpose. What was that purpose? Was it, as
the Gentile Christians so readily assumed, to abolish the laws and
customs of the Jews, and to substitute others in their stead? Did
he, for example, propose to supplant circumcision by baptism? the
Sabbath by the Sunday? the synagogue by the church? the ceremonial
observances of the law of Moses by observances of another kind? If so,
let the evidence be produced. For unless we find among his recorded
instructions some specific injunction to his disciples that they were
no longer to be Jews, but Christians, we cannot assume that he intended
any such revolution. Now, not only can no such injunction be produced,
but the whole course of his life negatives the supposition that any was
given. For while teaching much on many subjects, he never at any time
alludes to the Mosaic dispensation as a temporary arrangement, destined
to yield to a higher law. Yet it would surely have been strange if he
had left his disciples to guess at his intentions on this all-important
subject. Moreover, it came directly in his way when he censured the
Pharisees. He frequently accuses them of overlaying the law with a
multitude of unnecessary and troublesome rules; but while objecting to
these, he never for a moment hints that the very law itself was now
to become a thing of the past. Quite the reverse. The Pharisees were
very scrupulous about paying tithes and disregarded weightier matters;
these, he says, they ought to have done, and not to have left the
other undone. If those tithes were no longer to be paid (at least not
for the same objects), why does he not say so? Again, he charges them
with transgressing the commandment of God by their tradition; where
it is the accretions round the law, and not the law itself, which he
attacks. In one case he even directly imposes an observance of the
legal requirements on a man over whom he has influence (Mk. i. 44).
Moreover, he himself evidently continued to perform the obligations of
his Jewish religion until the very end of his life, for one of his last
acts was to eat the passover with his disciples. The only institution
which he apparently desires to alter at all is the Sabbath, and there
it is plain that he aims at an amendment in the mode of its observance,
not at its entire abolition. Indeed, he justifies his disciples by
invoking the example of David, an orthodox Hebrew; and very happily
remarks, that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath—one
of his best and most epigrammatic sayings. But an institution made for
man was indeed one to be rationally observed, but by no means one to be
lightly tampered with. Jesus, in fact, was altogether a Jew, and though
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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