§ 5. THE ARGUMENT OK THE THIRD BOOK

The Third Book of the Demonstratio seems to claim special consideration. As a piece of apologetic it is extraordinarily full and to the point. It seizes the real salients in the evidential controversy, and is occupied with topics which must always come foremost in the defence of Christianity. It is no argument in the air, it comes down to meet the ordinary unbeliever in the crowd, and begins by speaking to him of Christ as "one bearing ordinary humanity and like the rest." Upon the acknowledged basis of the beauty of His human life, and the perfection of His ethical teaching - xv -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 - xi -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 - xx - 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 - xx -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 - xx -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 - xx -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 - xx -iv world of our day doubts it. But as has been well said: "There is no proof that the ethical principles have existed effectively in the past except in connection with Christian doctrine, so there is little probability that they can ever exist in the future, for the mass of men at least, except in dependence on a living Christ."⁷