The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive ChristianityFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Religion
The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Christianity -- Controversial literature
The Logos becomes a man; "is made flesh;" appears as an incarnation; in
order that the God whom "no man has seen at any time," may be
manifested. He has no parentage; is not born, even supernaturally; he
passes through no childish passages; receives no nurture in a home; has
no experience of growth or development. The incident of his baptism by
John in the sacred river is carefully excluded, that whole episode, so
important in the earliest narratives, being dismissed in the phrase,
"Upon whom thou shalt see the spirit descending, and remaining on him,
the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." John says of him:
"This is he that, coming after me, is preferred before me, for he
existed before me." "I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a
dove, and it abode upon him." "I knew him not, but came, baptizing with
water, that he might be made manifest to Israel." "I am a voice crying
in the desert." Every word negatives the notion that the Logos received
consecration at the hands of a prophet of the old dispensation. He is
pre-existent; he comes from heaven; he is full of grace and truth; of
his fulness all have received, grace upon grace.
The temptation is omitted for the same reason. The divine word cannot,
even in form, undergo the experience of moral discipline. The bare
suggestion of evil taint is foreign to him. He must not come near enough
to evil to repel it. A dramatic scene in Matthew represents the conflict
between the Messiah and the Prince of the World; a conflict
inconceivable in the case of a divine being who is, by nature, Lord of
the entire spiritual universe,--whose mere appearance dispels the night.
Even the story of the transfiguration, which in some respects would seem
admirably illustrative of the logos theory, is omitted, probably for the
reason that Moses and Elias are the prominent personages in it.
As a thing of course, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane is
unmentioned. A suggestion of it occurs in a previous chapter, (XII. 27),
but in another connection, and for an opposite purpose, namely, to
extort a tribute to the glory of the Logos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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