The Jesus of HistoryGlover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Religion
The Jesus of History
Glover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity
The centre in all the thoughts of Jesus, as we have to remind
ourselves again and again, is God. If, as Dr. D. S. Cairns puts it,
"Jesus Christ is the great believer in man," it is--if we are
reading him aright at all--because God believes in man. Let us
remind ourselves often of that. "Thou hast made us for Thyself,"
said Augustine in the famous sentence, of which we are apt to
emphasize the latter half, "and our heart knows no rest till it
rests in Thee" (Confessions, i. 1). Jesus would have us emphasize
the former clause as well, and believe it. The keynote of his whole
story is God's love; the Father is a real father--strange that one
should have to write the small f to get the meaning! All that Jesus
has taught us of God, we must bring to bear on man. For it is hard
to believe in man--"What is man that thou shouldest magnify him? and
that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him?" quotes the author of
"Job" in a great ironical passage (Job 7:17; from Psalm 8:4). The
elements and the stars come over us, as they came over George Fox in
the Vale of Beavor; what is man? Can one out of fifteen hundred
millions of human beings living on one planet matter to God, when
there are so many planets and stars, and there have been so many
generations? Can he matter? It all depends on how we conceive of
God. Here it is essential to give all the meaning to the term "God"
that Jesus gave to it, to believe in God as Jesus believed in God,
if we are to understand the fullness of Jesus' "good news." It all
depends on God--on whether Jesus was right about God; and after all
on Jesus himself. "A thing of price is man," wrote Synesius about
410 A.D., "because for him Christ died." The two things go
together--Jesus' death and Jesus' Theocentric thought of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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