Chapter Ix — What Or Whom?
CHAPTER IX
WHAT OR WHOM?
THIS Christian spirit scattered here and there in many hearts in India must express itself in some kind of corporate relationships. Some kind of a church will be the final outcome. We will put our Western corporate experience at the disposal of the forming church in India and we will say to her, “Take as much as you may find useful for your purposes, but be first-hand and creative and express Christ through your own genius.”
We know that this has its dangers. It might be easier to block them off as they do in orphan asylums and turn them out on a standard pattern—easier and more deadly. The German missionaries in their thoroughness have done this in their missions. In the theological seminaries the students are pumped full of truth. They go out to take charge of churches where they grind out that truth. In each church in the whole of the mission the pastors preach on the same texts, read the same lessons, and preach the same sermons. They go round the circle of truth once in three years. Then they begin over again. It was all “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.”
Jesus did not do that. He gave himself to them. When they got the life they created suitable raiment in which to clothe it. Life was more than raiment.
While we cannot tell what may be the final outcome of this expression of the Christ of the Indian Road on the part of his followers in India, we can see at this distance certain things that will be avoided and certain things gained if they center everything upon Christ.
If India keeps this vision clear, she will be saved from many of the petty divisions that have paralyzed us in great measure. For at the central place of our experience of Jesus we are one. It is Christ who unites us; it is doctrines that divide . As someone has suggested, if you ask a congregation of Christians, “What do you believe?” there will be a chorus of conflicting beliefs, for no two persons believe exactly alike. But if the question is asked, “ Whom do you trust?” then we are together. If the emphasis in our approach to Christianity is “What?” then it is divisive, but if the emphasis is “Whom?” then we are drawn together at the place of this Central Magnet. One has the tendency of the centrifugal and the other the tendency of the centripetal. He is the hub that holds together in himself the divided spokes.
The church in China has been rent by controversy. I can see reasons why this has happened. While there I was struck with the fact that Christianity was, on the whole, presented to the Chinese as good teaching, good doctrine, good national policy. It seemed to me to lack just this Christo-centric emphasis to which we have been driven in India. It needed the warm touch of the personal Christ to make it tingle with life and radiance. At the Central Fire suspicious groups could have warmed themselves and would have felt the glow of comradeship as they did so.
Christianity with a what -emphasis is bound to be divisive, but this tendency is lessened with a Whom -emphasis. Note the things that have created denominations in the West: baptism, human freedom, rites, ceremonies, church government, dress, orders—the points of division have been nearly all “whats.” The church divided once over the “Whom,” namely, in the Unitarian issue. Here it had a right to divide, for the question of who Jesus is is vital and decisive. Everything is bound up with that question.
This question of who Jesus is was thrown into the very center of the church in India in recent years. One keen Indian minister’s discovery of the modern method rather went to his head and landed him in a Unitarian position. He threw the whole matter into the Indian church for airing. Some of us held our breath as we watched the controversy rage back and forth in one of the papers for several years. The missionaries practically stood out of it and let the growing church come to its own conclusions as to who her Lord is. In the beginning the brother of Unitarian views had the center and held it. But gradually a change came, and when the battle was over, our brother and his views had been pushed to the margin and a divine Christ occupied the center. By the sheer force of his own Person he had shone into the situation and had clarified it. The Indian church has fought her first battle—she knows who her Lord is, not merely through what the missionaries had said, but because she had thought it through for herself. It was a living victory. At the close she knelt at his feet with a joy unknown before, saying, “My Lord and my God.” This victory came not by dogmatic assertion, but by pains-taking methods of careful and prayerful research.
Now, the significant thing was this, that at the end of the battle men of liberal and conservative minds had been drawn together at Him. He held them both. The problem of unity will be well on the way to solution if the Indian church makes Christ central and all else marginal.
Some of the other problems that are now vexing the mind of the West will not vex us if we keep this Christocentric emphasis. Christianity cannot be really understood with a what -emphasis, but it can be understood with a Whom -emphasis. Take the whole question of the supernaturalness of Christianity. It claims to be a supernatural system. Now, as men’s minds have discovered a universe of law this idea of a supernaturally imposed system seemed less and less credible until the attempt has been made to rationalize the whole system, explain away the miracles and reduce the whole thing to natural law. But in Christianity we are not discussing miracles in the light of natural law but in the light of the personality of Jesus, and that makes a difference—a very great one. The question is, Would miracles happen around such a personality as Jesus?
Now, we used to go at it something like this: Jesus was born in a supernatural way, he did supernatural things, he arose in a supernatural manner, therefore he was a supernatural Person. The miracles carried Jesus—the what carried the Whom . This is obviously weak. It sends the minds of men to the whats , where they wrangle over them and only incidentally get to the Whom . If we were wiser, we would ask men to lay aside the question of birth and miracle for a moment, until they get under the sway of this Person. Let them catch the force of this Mind and Soul into which no impurity had ever entered, no sin had ever marred, let them feel the touch of him upon them, and then let them turn from the standpoint of this Person to the question of miracles and they become credible in the light of what he is. In the light of natural law miracle seems absurd, but in the light of this person of Jesus it becomes the most natural of things.
I once asked Professor Dreisch, the great German philosopher and exponent of “Vitalism,” this question: “Whenever you get a higher type of life do you not expect that around that life there will be a higher type of manifestation?” He assented to this, and I asked him further, “If Jesus represents a higher type of being, would you not have to make room in your thinking that around that life would be a higher type of doing which to us on a lower plane might be considered miracle?” He replied: “Yes, if Jesus represents a higher type of being, I would have to make room in my thinking that around that life would be the possibility of what might seem to us on a lower plane miracle. But it would have to be examined scientifically.” Precisely!
We are willing to rest everything on the question of whether or not Jesus represented a higher type of being. There is only one way to settle it: Stand before Jesus in inward moral surrender and obedience and see if you can feel that what you stand before is mere human nature. If he is human nature, then we are not—we are subhuman, for he stands above saint as well as sinner. Professor Hogg, who has companioned with this Christ of the Indian Road for many years and knows him well, puts the matter in these burning words: “When, as detached bystanders, we look upon his features, as it were, in profile, considering them singly and in repose, we seem to find none that is not human, none at least that does not belong to the nature which God designed for man. But let us move in front and catch his glance, so that the personality which lived by means of these human endowments may pierce our consciousness with a look in which its eager passion and its tender pity, its searching purity and its gracious comprehendingness, its assurance of a world-redeeming vocation and its unaffected neighborliness, its kingly demands and its selfless devotion, make simultaneous impact on our souls, and we shall then lose all intent to measure or to classify; we shall know ourselves in the presence of the utterly unique—One who exacts worship instead of submitting to appraisal. Merely look at Jesus, and you behold a Man. But meet him face to face in the inwardness of comradeship and obedience, of faltering need and kingly succor, and you know yourself to be meeting the very Person, the very Self of God. I do not explain this; I simply testify” ( Redemption From This World , Hogg, pp. 65, 66). And who that has tried it has not felt what Professor Hogg so graphically expressed?
Here is the central miracle of Christianity: Christ. The central miracle is not the resurrection or the virgin birth or any of the other miracles; the central miracle is just this Person, for he rises in sinless grandeur above life. He is life’s Sinless Exception, therefore a miracle. Now, turn from that Central Miracle toward these lesser miracles and they become credible in the light of his Person. Being what he was, it would be amazing if he did not touch blind eyes and make the lame to walk. These miracles fit in with the central miracle of his Person. “Being a miracle, it would be a miracle if he did not perform miracles.” The miracles do not carry Jesus—he carries them. The “whom” carries the “what,” the Person carries the manifestation. But say miracle apart from him and it is confusing.
From this standpoint let us approach the vexed question of the virgin birth. Discuss “virgin birth” apart from Jesus and it seems incredible and absurd, but connect it with him and it fits in with the whole and becomes credible. Let it be said at once that I do not base his divinity on how he was born. If it had been said that he was born in an ordinary way and I still saw in him what I now see in him, I would still believe in him as divine. Not how he came into the world, but what he was after he got here is the most important thing. But in the light of his Person I see no difficulty whatever in believing in the virgin birth. Since he rose above life in sinless grandeur, it becomes possible to believe that he arose above the ordinary processes of birth. “The virgin life of Jesus makes it possible to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.” An Arya Samajist asked me if I could produce in human history another example of the virgin birth. I replied that I could not, for I could not produce another Jesus Christ. He was the Unique, and therefore did the unique.
A converted Jew was talking to an unconverted Jew when the latter asked, “Suppose there were a son born among us and it were claimed that he was born of a virgin, would you believe it?” The converted Jew very thoughtfully replied, “I would if he were such a Son.” That is the point. He makes it possible to believe in it . But the virgin birth does not carry Jesus; he carries it. When the emphasis is on the whom then the how becomes credible. But turn it the other way and it is dark and difficult.
In regard to the resurrection the same thing holds. Jesus rose above life, this makes it perfectly credible that he would rise above death. Two things take us all—sin and death. Jesus conquered the first—our own inward moral consciousness being witness. Will he conquer the second? It would be surprising if he did not. I say it reverently: If Jesus did not rise from the dead, he ought to have done so. The whole thing would come out wrong if the grave had held him captive. When the broken and dispirited disciples, now radiant with a wild hope, whispered to each other, “He is arisen,” they were simply echoing what his whole life had done. Throughout his life he arose. Where we sank, he arose. The resurrection fits in with that fact. There must be an empty tomb where there is such a fullness of Life. Jesus carries the resurrection.
Christianity breaks into meaning when we see Jesus. The incredible becomes the actual; the impossible becomes the patent.
Do not misunderstand me: The whats of Christianity are important, a body of doctrine is bound to grow up around him. We cannot do without doctrine, but I am so anxious for the purity of doctrine that I want it to be held in the white light of his Person and under the constant corrective of his living Mind. The only place where we can hold our doctrines pure is to hold them in the light of his countenance. Here their defects are at once apparent, but only here.
But we must hold in mind that no doctrine, however true, no statement, however correct, no teaching, however pure, can save a man. “We are saved by a Person and only by a Person, and, as far as I know, by only one Person,” said Bishop McDowell. Only Life can lift life. A doctor lay dying—a Christian doctor sat beside him and urged him to surrender to and have faith in Christ. The dying doctor listened in amazement. Light dawned. He joyously said, “All my life I have been bothered with what to believe, and now I see it is whom to trust.” Life lifted life.
But further, we shall soon see that as we draw closer to him we shall be closer to each other in doctrine. Suppose the essence of Christianity is in utter devotion to Jesus, and truly following him is the test of discipleship, will not such doctrine as the new birth take on new meaning? If I am to follow such as he, I must be born again and born different. A new birth is a necessary beginning for this new life. And as for the doctrines of sanctification and the fullness of the Spirit, apart from him, they may become hollow cant, as they, in fact, have often become; but in the business of following Jesus they become, not maximum attainments, but minimum necessities. If I am to follow him, he will demand my all, and I shall not want to offer him less. Holiness has been preached very often until it has become a synonym for hollowness. The word has got loosed from Christ and has lost its meaning. Had it kept close to Christ, we would have preached less holiness and more of a Christ who makes men holy.
Surely, it is not difficult to believe in atonement when we think of Christ. Would such love as that let us go? Would he not go to the limit for us? Put all the content in the word “atonement” you can and it still but faintly tells what Jesus would do for men.
As for the inspiration of the Scriptures, it takes a deepened meaning from him. Discuss the matter of the mechanics of it apart from Jesus and it often becomes a haggle, but discuss it with our gaze upon him and it becomes a necessity. It was inconceivable that such a person as Jesus could have come out of an uninspired or an ordinarily inspired Book. The ideas, the conceptions, the Person is too lofty to have been conceived by human intelligence however lofty it might have been. Just as he, being the miracle that he was, created miracles around him in human nature and the physical universe, so also around him would be created the miracle in human intelligence and insight, until things which “eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,” would be given forth to the world under the sway of that Person.
But the statement made above about Jesus coming out of an uninspired Book must be corrected a bit, for Jesus did not come out of the Book; it came out of him. It did not create him; he created it.
And since, as someone has suggested, literature can never rise higher than life—for life puts content and meaning into the literature—so you cannot get a better Book until you get a better life than the life of Jesus.
The strongest way to hold to the inspiration of the Scriptures is to hold to the Person.
We must call men not to loyalty to a belief but loyalty to a Person. We may be loyal to a belief and be dead spiritually, but we cannot be loyal to this Person and be other than alive spiritually. He creates belief. He is the great Believer himself, and in the light of his radiant faith we cannot but believe. But we do not get Jesus from our beliefs, we get our beliefs from Jesus. And they must of necessity be under constant correction by his mind and spirit.
If some are afraid of what might happen if we were to give India Jesus without hard-and-fast systems of thought and ecclesiastical organization, lest the whole be corrupted, let our fears be allayed. Jesus is well able to take care of himself. He trusted himself to the early disciples, who were no better and no worse than the Indian people; and having got hold of him they went forth in that name with power. Having little ecclesiastical system, little body of set doctrine, they created their own forms out of the passion of love they had for him. These forms were real because they came out of the white heat of that passion. They expressed life. We believe that India will fall intensely in love with the Christ of the Indian Road, that love will turn to glad submission to him as Saviour and Lord, that out of that loving submission will come a new radiant expression of him in thought and life.
We who feel that we must be steadiers of the ark must remember that Jesus can take care of himself, even in moments when there seems most to fear. He fell into the hands of his Jewish enemies—and lo, there was an atonement and a resurrection! Are we afraid to have him fall into the hands of his Indian friends? Will he be swallowed up? Never mind, he was swallowed up once before and there was a resurrection. There may be another! I only know that since he has come into India’s thought and life everywhere there is the cracking of old things and the breaking up of dead forms. It looks to us as though there is a resurrection taking place now!
There is no real danger lest Jesus be lost among the many in all this, that it may end up in his being put in the Pantheon of Hinduism. Greece and Rome tried that and the Pantheons amid which he was placed are gone—Jesus lives on. He is dynamic, disruptive, explosive like the soft tiny rootlets that rend the monuments of man’s pride. Like the rootlets he quietly and unobtrusively goes down into the crannies of men’s thinking, and lo, old forms and customs are broken up. Absorb him? You may as well talk about the moist earth in springtime absorbing the seed! The seed absorbs it, for it is life. Jesus is Life. He will take care of himself.
“Give us Jesus,” said a Hindu to me, “just Jesus. Do not be afraid that we will make a human Jesus out of him, for his divinity will shine out of its own accord.”
At any rate there never was a situation in which Jesus was not Master, and never more so than when he was upon the cross, and even in the tomb. He will be Master upon the Indian Road—yes, even at the crossroads of India where rival creed and clashing thought flow at cross purposes.
“Where cross the crowded ways of life,
Where sound the cries of race and clan
Above the noise of selfish strife,
We hear thy voice, O Son of man.”