Christ's Exposition of His Doctrine and the Origin of His Teaching

Article 2 — Christ’s Exposition of His Sublime Doctrine

I. Illumination. “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27); “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12:34). Christ preached constantly the love of God for men: He came “that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10); “come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matt. 11:28). His unction is everywhere united with a salutary austerity: “if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). His word is living and effectual, “reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit … and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12); and it is above all in His teaching on the Beatitudes, and in His last discourse with His Apostles, that this unction of Christ appears most clearly.

II. Unction. Christ preached above all to the poor. He Himself possessed the Holy Ghost “without measure” (John 3:34), yet communicates that same Spirit to other men only “with measure,” lest their natural weakness be overwhelmed by it. He recommends humility above all to His Apostles: “unless you … become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Bossuet summed up the character of this teaching perfectly: Christ’s doctrine, he wrote, is at once milk for the weak and bread for the strong.

The sublimity of the Christian Faith is shown, throughout, by this same union of things highest and lowest — the riches of divine mercy together with the depths of human misery, the supernatural together with the natural, the mystical together with the eminently practical. St. Paul prays that believers may be granted the strength “to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth: to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge” (Eph. 3:18–19) — a charity so original, and so far beyond anything the best efforts of unaided human reason could conceive, that its sublime harmony itself becomes a further sign of divine origin.

III. Efficacy. “The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life” (John 6:64). How many men and women, across every century since the days of Christ, have faithfully followed His admonitions, notwithstanding great and repeated difficulties? Christ alone could make His own doctrine perennially living and efficacious, in exact accordance with His own promise: “heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). Every one of these characteristics of His preaching — its power of illumination, its unction and attraction, its efficacy in genuinely transforming souls across the centuries — brings irresistibly to mind Peter’s own words, spoken when many others had turned away: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68–69).

Article 3 — The Origin of the Teaching of Christ

The doctrine taught by Christ was neither excogitated by mere human genius, nor was it an eclectic system drawn together from other, pre-existing forms of religion.

I. The testimony of Christ and of His contemporaries. “All things have been delivered to me by my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son” (Matt. 11:27). John the Baptist testifies of Him: “he that cometh from above, is above all … what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth … for he whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God: for God doth not give the Spirit by measure” (John 3:31–34). When asked, “how doth this man know letters, having never learned?” Christ Himself replied: “my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do the will of him, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, he is true, and there is no injustice in him” (John 7:16–18). Speaking privately to His disciples, Christ said: “I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you” (John 15:15). And the ordinary people, for their part, marvelled openly: “how came this man by this wisdom, and miracles? Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Matt. 13:54–55).

II. The doctrine of Christ is not a syncretism.

(A) It was not borrowed from Jewish teachers. Although Christianity stands to the Mosaic religion as the perfect stands to the imperfect, the differences between them are so many and so fundamental that the transition from one to the other required, of itself, a special intervention of God. (1) The Mosaic religion was given to the Jews alone; Christianity is given to all mankind. (2) The Jews as a whole expected a temporal Messiah; Jesus came instead as a purely spiritual Messiah. (3) The fundamental doctrines of Christianity — the Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption through the Cross, justification by faith together with good works — were, explicitly, entirely unknown to the Jews of that time. (4) Christ’s teaching on interior dispositions and interior justice differed sharply from the received tradition of the Jewish elders and of the Pharisees. (5) The Gospel, properly speaking, was not itself preached by John the Baptist; his own mission was avowedly preparatory only. (6) The Essenes, for their part, laid such stress on legal ceremonial observance — including, notably, in matters touching marriage — that their whole outlook stood in real opposition to the freedom of Christ’s own teaching.

(B) It was not borrowed from Greek or Latin philosophical sources. (a) Pagan teachers had no real knowledge whatever of the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Redemption; some pagan philosophers even doubted the immortality of the soul, and the corresponding accountability of human action after death. (b) The ethical systems of pagan philosophy differ fundamentally from Christianity, which is founded on the love of God: pagan philosophers sought, and found, in their own best teaching nothing beyond a certain refined individual satisfaction, and humility itself was despised, pride being reckoned by the Stoics among the virtues rather than the vices. (c) Pagan philosophy, moreover, showed little genuine concern for the well-being of ordinary people — Horace’s own words are well known, expressing his contempt and avoidance of the common crowd — and Christ’s teaching was, correspondingly, accounted sheer folly within the pagan intellectual world: when St. Paul preached at the Areopagus on the resurrection of the dead, “some indeed mocked, but others said: We will hear thee again concerning this matter” (Acts 17:32). St. Paul himself sums up the contrast to the Corinthians: “the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:22–24).

(C) It was not borrowed from Eastern religions. Gunkel, in his study of the religious-historical background of the New Testament, maintains that Christianity is itself a syncretism, its principal element drawn from pagan mysticism. It is true that, in the first century of the Christian era, a genuine pagan syncretism of Greek and Eastern cults did exist, in which Zeus, Bacchus, Serapis, and Mithra were all worshipped together; but Gunkel can point to only a few, and merely external, resemblances between this pagan syncretism and Christianity — a certain resemblance in the death and resurrection of various pagan gods, some resemblance in the symbolism of initiation rites and of Christian baptism, and in the sacred banquets by which pagan devotees supposed themselves to enter into communion with Mithra or with Dionysus. But two considerations decisively tell against any real dependence: first, the pagan mystery rites themselves appealed merely to the imagination and the emotions, and were, not infrequently, frankly obscene in character; and second, the whole teaching of the pagan mystics remained irreducibly polytheistic — a fundamental difference of kind, not merely of degree, from the strict and unwavering monotheism at the very heart of Christian revelation.