The Value of the Testimony of Christ
The Messianic and doctrinal testimony of Christ commends itself to our acceptance by reason of His extraordinary wisdom and sanctity. Some Rationalists — Harnack and Renan among them — hold that Christ was mistaken, at least to some degree, in His own self-understanding, and that His sense of a divine mission sprang simply from a vivid, if illusory, consciousness of His own union with God.
I. Christ’s Testimony Regarding His Mission Is Emphatically Taught as a Doctrine to Be Believed by All
From the beginning of His public life to its end, Christ expressly asserted that He had been sent by God to reveal to men the doctrine necessary for salvation; and many critics even of the Liberal school — Dalman and Wernle among them — acknowledge that Christ never once appears uncertain regarding this mission. “He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting” (John 5:24); “he that believeth in me, hath everlasting life” (John 6:47); “he that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18); “he that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16) — a text expressly concerned with the necessity of believing in the divine mission of the very Christ in whose name men are baptized. As St. Thomas notes, the Apostles themselves understood that to suffer martyrdom rather than deny Christ was a genuine duty; and Christ Himself had said, “he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33).
If Christ were deceived in so grave and repeated an affirmation, the delusion would have had to be perpetual, implying an enthusiasm tantamount to insanity — for no sane man could persuade himself, without interruption and across years of public life, that he was a divine ambassador greater than all the prophets, one in whom all mankind must believe under pain of damnation, unless he had actually received from God the most certain internal or external signs of that divine mission. The possibility of such a pathological delusion, however, is excluded once the wisdom and the sanctity of Christ Himself are properly considered.
II. The Wisdom of Christ Excludes the Possibility of Error
All parties allow that Christ must be counted among the wisest of men, as is evident from both His doctrine and His work; surpassing every philosopher, He gave mankind a wonderful and coherent solution to the essential problems concerning God, man, and the future life, and taught the highest mysteries, precepts, and counsels with the greatest possible simplicity.
The admiration He aroused is noted repeatedly throughout the Gospels. At only twelve years of age, “all that heard him, were astonished at his wisdom and his answers” (Luke 2:47); after the Sermon on the Mount, “the people were in admiration at his doctrine. For he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes and Pharisees” (Matt. 7:28–29); and when the Temple guards were sent to arrest Him, they returned instead reporting, “never did man speak like this man” (John 7:46). His prudence and perspicacity appear vividly in His answers to the Pharisees and Sadducees — on the woman taken in adultery (John 8:3ff.), on the tribute due to Caesar (Matt. 22:15–21), on the resurrection of the dead (Matt. 22:23–32) — answers so complete that “no man durst from that day forth ask him any more questions” (Matt. 22:46). He judges every matter with the greatest tranquillity of soul, even when afflicted with deep injury, and shows, in all humility, the very reason for the rightness of His judgment: “I cannot of myself do any thing. As I hear, so I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 5:30); “my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me” (John 7:16). And He speaks, throughout, with the authority proper to a supreme teacher: “amen, amen I say to you: if any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever” (John 8:51); “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness” (John 8:12); “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
III. The Sanctity of Christ Confirms His Testimony
The lives of philosophers frequently fail to correspond with the ethical doctrine they themselves teach; in Christ, by contrast, there is a perfect harmony between His teaching and His life — magnanimity, meekness, fortitude, mercy, and justice are all conspicuously present together. Sanctity, properly understood, implies two distinct characteristics: the absence of sin and of every imperfection, and the positive presence of the virtues, above all a firm and constant union with God.
(A) Christ was without sin or defect. To the Jews who sought to kill Him, He could say without fear of contradiction, “which of you shall convince me of sin?” (John 8:46). Even the holiest of men grieve over their own sins and imperfections; Christ, though the most humble of all, shows no such consciousness of sin. His own disciples, who had known Him intimately in both His private and public life, who had seen Him in sorrow and in joy alike, could write of Him: “who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22); “in him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5); “him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21); He was “tempted in all things like as we are, without sin” (Heb. 4:15). The chief priests and the whole council sought false witness against Jesus, in order to put Him to death, “and they found none” (Matt. 26:59–60); the charge of blasphemy laid by the high priest against His self-testimony was itself, on inspection, simply the fruit of prejudice (Matt. 26:65); Judas himself confessed, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4); and Pilate declared, “I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it” (Matt. 27:24).
(B) Christ manifested the practice of all the virtues in His life — even virtues that seem naturally to pull in different directions — and He practised them all in a heroic degree.
Charity and filial devotion toward God were in Him most perfect: “did you not know, that I must be about my father’s business?” (Luke 2:49); “my meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work” (John 4:34); “I do always the things that please him … I honour my Father … I seek not my own glory” (John 8:29, 49–50). Before His Passion He prayed: “Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee … I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:1–4); and at the crisis of His sacrifice: “if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). “He became obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8), and His last words were, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). In false or pseudo-mysticism, a merely apparent love of God frequently ends by destroying the love due to men, and leads instead to spiritual pride; in Christ, by contrast, love of all men is everywhere strengthened, never diminished, by His love of God.
Charity and mercy toward men were, in Christ, profound, universal, and efficacious, directed above all toward the noblest part of man — the soul, made in the image of God and ordained for eternal life. He is the “shepherd” of souls, who knows them individually and leads them (John 10:3–14); He loves all alike — Jews and Gentiles, sinners, the poor, the infirm, the afflicted; even Judas is addressed by Him as “friend.” His charity, moreover, is genuinely efficacious, not merely sentimental: “greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13); “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep” (John 10:11); “God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (John 3:16); “the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many” (Matt. 20:28); “this is my body, which is given for you … this is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you” (Luke 22:19–20). To the penitent thief He said, “this day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), and of His own torturers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Yet Christ’s charity never degenerated into mere weakness: fraternal correction is, on His own teaching, itself an act of charity (Matt. 18:15), and He showed a just and inflexible severity toward the obstinately hypocritical Pharisees (Matt. 23:13–36) and toward the sellers cast out of the Temple (John 2:14–15) alike. In Christ, the strictness of justice and an immense mercy were perfectly united: “mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed” (Ps. 84:11).
Self-denial, humility, and meekness mark His life throughout: “if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24); “learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29). He lived thirty hidden years in obscurity before His public ministry began; He repeatedly forbade His miracles and His Transfiguration to be made known; He sought not His own glory but His Father’s; He preached above all to the poor; He chose humble and largely unlettered men for His Apostles, and washed their feet with His own hands at the Last Supper. Together with this humility and meekness, He united an unmistakable personal dignity, magnanimity, and perfect sincerity.
Fortitude, perseverance, and patience remained unshaken in Him even under the extremities of the Passion, where He manifested a heroic patience, praying for His own persecutors and commending His soul to His Father even as He died; the Roman centurion who witnessed His death exclaimed, “indeed this was a just man” (Luke 23:47). Even Rousseau, no friend to revealed religion, was moved to write that if the life and death of Socrates were those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus were those, one might almost say, of a god (cf. Émile, Bk. IV, “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar”).
(C) The harmony and stability of these heroic virtues in Christ together constitute a genuine moral miracle. Sanctity, in this degree, is from God alone. The sanctity of Christ is superhuman: that a single man should manifest the exercise of every virtue in the highest possible degree — fortitude, meekness, love, justice, mercy together, with none crowding out any other — already points to extraordinary help from God; and to persevere unshaken in every one of these heroic virtues simultaneously, across an entire lifetime and through the extremities of a violent death, is simply impossible without a special divine intervention. The sanctity of Christ, in short, is itself miraculous. But God does not lend the weight of miraculous intervention to what is untrue. The testimony of Christ, therefore, that He is the true ambassador of God, is established by divine authority, and so rightly commends itself to our belief.