Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
Hence, it appears that, if Justin's opinion, which was probably that
of the Church generally in the middle of the second century, was
correct, James and Peter and John and their followers could not be
saved; neither could Paul, if he carried into practice his views as to
the indifference of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the
matter another way, the centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is at
the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth century, was at the
extreme left just before the middle of the first century, when the
"sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the whole church founded by Jesus
and the apostles; while, in the time of Justin, it lay mid-way between
the two. It is therefore a profound mistake to imagine that the
Judæo-Christians (Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were
heretical outgrowths from a primitive universalist "Christianity." On
the contrary, the universalist "Christianity" is an outgrowth from the
primitive, purely Jewish, Nazarenism; which, gradually eliminating all
the ceremonial and dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside
its parent, and all the intermediate stages of its development, into
the position of damnable heresies.
Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judgment of
the limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have
been confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us believe that the
words which are given at the end of the first Gospel, "Go ye,
therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," are part
of the last commands of Jesus, issued at the moment of his parting
with the eleven. If so, Peter and John must have heard these words;
they are too plain to be misunderstood; and the occasion is too solemn
for them ever to be forgotten. Yet the "Acts" tells us that Peter
needed a vision to enable him so much as to baptize Cornelius; and
Paul, in the Galatians, knows nothing of words which would have
completely borne him out as against those who, though they heard, must
be supposed to have either forgotten, or ignored them. On the other
hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to have heard the "Sermon on
the Mount," know nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to
destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of the Law must be
fulfilled, which surely would have been pretty good evidence for their
view of the question.
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