iii better understood and more universally acknowledged
by non-Christians in the modern world than they were then except by a few
thinkers like Porphyry, the argument passes to the Miracles, which are the
evidence that Christ is something more than human, to hypotheses which
professed to account for them, viz. invention and sorcery, and to the question
of the credibility of the witnesses to our Lord's abnormal acts. It is
remarkable that one who could be so diffuse should, in so short a space, have
combined so many arguments in one connected scheme; and still more that he
should have made central the points that are central, viz. the historical
Person of Christ, His Ethics, His miraculous Power, and the credibility of the
Gospel-writers, treated as involving generally all belief in witness to
historical facts.
The great mass of the Demonstratio
is an elaborate rechauffee of past apologetics, but in this book we feel
the touch of something fresh, free, original, something that springs from keen,
personal interest, warm perception, and ardent conviction. It is not sword-play,
but actual warfare, and there are rapier-strokes of satire, which the hand of
Swift might have dealt. In literary quality, as well as in appositeness to the
subject discussed, the book is remarkable. Its finish, completeness in itself,
and contrast with the Demonstratio as a whole might suggest that it was
a separate essay, written in actual controversy with an opponent who drew out
Eusebius' keenest logic and dialectical skill, and that this essay was
eventually incorporated in the greater but more academic work.
Its argument may be
summarized as follows:
[[87-102]] Jesus claimed
in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke
iv. 21) to be the fulfilment of the prophecy of a Saviour (Isa. lxi. i). Moses'
prophecy of a successor "like himself" (Deut. xviii. 15), who should
come at the fall of the Jewish kingdom (Gen. xlix. 10), Isaiah's "Root of
Jesse" (Isa. xi. 1), Micah's prediction of Bethlehem (Micah v. 2),
Isaiah's "suffering servant" (Isa. liii. 3-8), who died that He might
rise to rule over the world through His Church, are only fulfilled in Christ.
[[102-107c]] Reply to
attacks upon Christ as (i) deceiver; (ii) wizard.- First on the basis of
mere humanity (ως περι κοινου και τοις λοιποις παραβλησιου) Christ must be
realized as the best
x man who ever lived. Consider the ethical outcome of
His teaching, in purity, meekness, sanity of mind, benevolence, love of truth.
He called back the lost ideals of Abraham, and gave them to the whole world;
their value is admitted, for even the Greek oracles praise Abraham's
monotheism. He abjured a sacrificial worship, but so did Porphyry (de Abst.
ii. 34) and Apollonius of Tyana. He taught that the world was created and would
one day be destroyed, even as Plato did, and also the doctrine of the Immortality
of the Soul, and thus made His poor disciples wiser than supercilious
philosophers, who seem proud to claim identity with the flea, the worm, and the
fly. He stressed a divine judgment, punishment, and an eternal life with God.
He recognized angels and daemons, helpers and foes of the soul just as the
Hebrews did. All this is ethically sound.
[[107d-125b]] But there
was a divine side to Christ, as is shown by His Miracles of mercy and love; He
died voluntarily, rose again, and ascended to heaven. The miraculous in the
life of Christ is in line with the miraculous in Christianity. Those who deny
it must either prove that it was invented, or the result of sorcery. Now the
type of teaching Christ gave His disciples is utterly opposed to their
inventing falsehoods. It was ascetic, and made truth and purity the first
essentials of conduct. If you admit the fanciful hypothesis that He really
taught them fraud and specious lying you are landed in absurdities. Deceit
could afford no corporate cohesion, κακω κακος ου φιλος, ουδε αγαθω: and again, what had
they to expect but a death like His? After His death, too, they only honoured
Him the more! They were even ready to die for Him. It is inconceivable that
they knew Him to be really vicious. And equally impossible that, if they were,
they should propose to convert the whole world, and actually do so, poor and
uneducated as they were. You must imagine them meeting secretly after the
Crucifixion, admitting Christ's deceit, and yet conspiring to propagate the
Gospel-story: "Let us see," they say, "that our freak lasts even
to death. There is nothing ridiculous in dying for nothing at all."
"What could be finer than to make both gods and men our enemies for no
possible reason? . . . And suppose we convince no one. we shall have the
satisfaction of drawing
down upon ourselves in
return for our inventions the retribution for our deceit." Such theories
are ridiculous, for there is no doubt that persecution and death faced the
Apostles. Yet there was no traitor among them after the Ascension. And they
actually succeeded in their adventure. Now this hypothesis of a conspiracy to
deceive might be used with equal force with regard to Moses, or the Greek
philosophers, and indeed all those whose lives history records.
The simplicity,
devotion, and ascetic lives of the Apostles guarantee their honesty. They faced
all for truth and the Name of Christ. The Gospels reveal their modesty and
straightforwardness in unexpected ways. It has been well said: "We must
put complete confidence in the disciples of Jesus, or none at all";
distrust of them logically means distrust of all writers. Why allow invidious
distinctions? The Passion is the crowning crux, how could they have invented a
story which would handicap all their efforts? That they gave a true account of
it really authenticates their accounts of the Miracles, and glorious
manifestations of Christ.
The evidence of
Josephus, too, may be called in with good effect. (See note on this passage.)
[[125b-141a]] Against
the alternative view that Christ was a sorcerer.- The suggestion is opposed
to the whole trend of His teaching and manner of life. He was unworldly, pure,
and retiring; sorcerers are the reverse. If He had been one His followers would
have resembled Him, but the great mark of the whole Christian Church is its
abhorrence of magic. No Christian has ever admitted himself to be a sorcerer
even to escape death. And this argument may be extended-in all ways the virtues
of Christians vouch for the character of their Master. They afford "clear
evidence of the nurture of His words." The Greeks boast of the
self-sacrifice of Democritus and Krates, but Christian zealots can be counted
by the myriad. They know what Plato alone knew about God, but he was confessedly
unable to make God known, whereas it is the common task of the Christians.
But was Christ's sorcery
self-taught, or learned from others ? If the former then it showed something of
the nature of supernatural power, if the latter, meaning that He was taught it
in Egypt, what a strange thing that Christ
i should so utterly outstrip His teachers, and
institute a new nation and new laws, as He has done. Once more note that He
paid no court to the daemons, and that they even now shudder at His Name. Think
of His union with the Father, His purity, justice and truth, His perfect
character, and you will laugh at the suggestion. The very drumons hear witness
to him in the Oracles quoted by Porphyry as "a man signal in
holiness." His grandeur is shown by His choice of poor men for apostles,
"because maybe he had in mind to do the most unlikely things." And
what a design it was-to rule the whole world! And His followers were to do the
work simply "in His Name." That alone explains their success. They
had to preach the paradox, that God came on an embassy in a human body, and
died on a Cross! The only explanation of their success is His co-operation with
them, for the Gospel in itself is not plausible. The Power He gave them to work
miracles amazed their hearers, and induced them to yield to the message:
without His Power they could never have succeeded.
And you may add to this
the providential preparation of the world for the preaching of the Gospel
through the establishment of the Roman Empire, whose Heads both by their
leniency and severity have assisted the divine purpose of spreading the Gospel.
[[141a]]
Such a summary as the
above is but a sorry skeleton. It is void of all the life and vividness, the
subtle turns, the satirical touches of the argument. But it reveals on what
ground the writer really rested in his defence of Christianity. His apology is
seen to be not abstract and a priori, but almost modern in its hold on
historical fact. Let us consider the points that stand out.
(i) There is the
argument from Prophecy. It is fashionable to say that the Apologists were
deluded in their persistent efforts to link the Gospel facts with prophetic
predictions. No doubt they were in a sense deluded, and the greater part of the
Demonstratio is a monument to the delusion. But yet, though the method
is changed, there is still an argument from prophecy. The lines of optimistic
hope for mankind that run through the Hebrew prophets
ii do meet at the feet of Christ. He alone satisfies
their majestic anticipations.
"We may say,"
writes Prof. W. E. Barnes, in his essay On the Permanent Value of the Old
Testament,6 "that the prophets saw, each
under a form suited to his own age, a vision of God's presence with men,
realised to a new degree, and 'specialised' (if the word may be used) in Israel
through the instrumentality of a visible leader of Israel. The ideas of a
chosen people and of a chosen leader upon whom the Spirit of God rests are
found in those prophetic passages." The prophecies to which he alludes are
Micah iv. 8 to v. 6; Isa. ix. 1-7, xi. i-io, Hi. 13 to liii. 12; Jer. xxiii.
15, 16. It is worthy of remark that in selecting five passages of typical
Messianic prophecy, the fourth-century and the twentieth-century scholar choose
three out of the five the same.
(ii) The historical
Personality of Jesus as perfect Man stands out in a very modern way. The εν ανθρωποις πολιτευσαμενον και παθοντα of the Creed of
Caesarea, upon which Eusebius had been brought up, had not failed of its
effect; neither had his patient study of the Gospels. Whatever his theory of
the union of the Divinity with the Humanity, he had a very clear and a very
true conception of the Humanity of our Lord. He speaks of the Man Christ Jesus
almost as One Whom he has known. Ho follows Him on His works of mercy. He
catches the spirit of His words. He feels their supreme truth, their unexampled
beauty, their divine audacity, their kingly authority. He imagines correctly
Christ's effect upon His followers, he argues back from the ideals of the
followers to the uniqueness of the Master.
It is quite remarkable
that Eusebius should start with the human Christ, and describe him as the best
man that ever lived, before introducing the conception forced upon him by the
Miracles that He was divine as well. It was the method of the Master Himself,
and therefore the right one.
(iii) Eusebius' view of
the value of the witness of the writers of the Gospels, and of the first
teachers of Christianity, has been a feature of many volumes of evidences to
iii the days of Butler and
Paley and our own time. But it may be doubted whether the argument from the
simplicity and transparent honesty of these "unlearned and ignorant
men" has ever been more cogently put, their bravery, their persistence,
their devotion, their facing the certainty of "labours, dangers and
sufferings," the magnificence of the design with which they set out, the
paradox they were called to preach, the divine power that made them triumph.
In the last fifty years
of New Testament criticism how often has it been evident that these books and
their writers were being put to tests, from which all other records were
exempt. This, too, Eusebius deprecated. Criticism should treat all alike, and
to treat all as the Gospels have been treated would leave history a mass of
questionable documents and disputed statements.
(iv) There is an ethical
stress of deep significance in the whole book. The Humanity of Christ and His
teaching are made to challenge the unbeliever first of all by their moral
value; it is claimed for them that they satisfy, and more than satisfy,
human aspirations after goodness. The Miracles are presented as worked for
moral ends. It is the ethical interest that gives the fire of indignation and
the sting of satire to the arguments that Christ is neither charlatan nor
sorcerer. Again and again the purity and self-control, the justice and love of
truth, the unselfishness and benevolence of the Christian teaching, and of its
result in countless lives that philosophy would have been powerless to affect,
are dwelt upon. As we have seen, Eusebius reads back from the lives of
Christians the character of Christ - that is to say, he finds in actual life
around him something of the moral ideal that he knows to be summed up in Christ
from Whom the life of men around receives it. He shews throughout a very real
appreciation of the bearing of faith on conduct. The life of the Christian is
the ultimate Court of Appeal for the reality of Christ. Ethical value
demonstrates a divine power as its spring and source. They that overcome the
world prove the truth of the Gospel. Eusebius is defending the Gospel of a
divine Christ; the merely human Christ is One Whose character implies the divine
as well; and He is the source and stay of moral progress. Eusebius realized
this; the