Theology and the Social Consciousness: A Study of the Relations of the Social Consciousness to Theology (2nd ed.)King, Henry Churchill
Religion
Theology and the Social Consciousness: A Study of the Relations of the Social Consciousness to Theology (2nd ed.)
King, Henry Churchill
Christian sociology; Theology, Doctrinal -- History -- 20th century
(4) And even that is not all. _Jesus has such a character that we can
transfer it feature by feature to God_, not only with no sense of
blasphemy, not only with no sense of his coming short, but with
complete satisfaction. I do not now ask at all as to any man's
metaphysical theory about Jesus Christ; I only ask that it be noticed
that those who question common theories altogether still get their
ideal of God from Jesus Christ; and that this is the wonderful thing
that has happened on our earth: that there has once lived a man--daily
moving about among men, a concrete circumstantial account of whose
life in many particulars we have--the features of whose character one
can transfer absolutely to God and say, That is what I mean by God.
One simply cannot add anything to the character of God himself in the
highest moments of his imagination, that is not already revealed in
Jesus Christ. I take it that the words of Fairbairn are literally
true: he was "the first being who had realized for men the idea of the
Divine." When, therefore, Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the
Father and it sufficeth us," he could only reply as he might any day
to us, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me,
Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
(5) And one cannot stop here. _Jesus is consciously able to redeem all
men._ With such sense of the meaning of sin and of moral conduct as no
other ever had, understanding, therefore, the sin and need of men as
no other ever did, and having such a vision of what it is perfectly to
share the life of God as no other ever had, still, facing the masses
of men, he could say to himself, "I am able to take these men and lift
them into the very presence of God and present them spotless before
the throne of his glory." Have we taken in what it means, that, in the
consciousness of a man in form like ourselves, there could be, even
for a moment, the actual belief that he was the one that was to take
away the sin of the world, and had power to redeem men absolutely unto
God? In another's words: "Jesus knows no more sacred task than to
point men to his own person." He is himself God's greatest gift,
himself "the way, the truth, the life,"--not only fighting his own
battles, but consciously able to redeem all men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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