Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors. James Freeman Clarke

Mrs. Crowe's “Night Side of Nature,” Robert Dale Owen's “Footfalls from the Boundary of the Unseen World,” which, after being sifted by a fair criticism, will leave a large residuum of irresolvable facts.

      C. Higher than these is a preternatural elevation of the whole character, as in such cases as that of Joan of Arc, where a young girl, ignorant, a peasant, destitute of all common [pg 079] means of influencing any one, by the simple power of faith, because she believed herself inspired and commissioned, succeeded in gaining the command of the armies of France, and then of achieving a series of victories, equal, on the whole, as mere military exploits, to those of the first captains of the world.

      In all these cases we see manifestations of a power in the soul over nature, body, men, and the laws of time and space. So we say, secondly—

      III. This power was possessed in the highest degree known in this world by Jesus of Nazareth, and it differed in him from these other cases in these points:—

      1. It was always voluntary in its exercise, never involuntary. He was not possessed by it, he possessed it. He used it just when and where he chose to use it. It was always at his command; he never appears to have tried to work a miracle, and failed. So—

      2. It was in him constant, and not occasional. In other cases where the miraculous element appears, it seems to come and go; but to Jesus the spirit was not given by measure. He had it always.

      3. This power in him was total, and not partial. It was therefore harmonious—in harmony with all his other qualities. He had power over diseases of the body, and also those of the soul. He knew what was in man, and what was in nature—in the present, and in the future. There was nothing ecstatic, enthusiastic, nothing of excitement, about him; but everything denoted a fulness, a pleroma, of this spiritual life.

      4. The exercise of this power in Christ was always eminently moral, never wilful. The one or two seeming exceptions, as, for example, the cursing the fig tree, and the causing the evil spirits to go into the swine, ought to be explained in harmony with the vast majority of his actions, [pg 080] which always are guided by love, and justice, and a holy sense of what is true and good.

      5thly, and lastly. The miracle power of Jesus reached a higher point of development than in any one else. The raising of the dead to life, and the mysterious power over nature indicated by the turning of water into wine, by the miracle of the loaves and fishes, calming the storm, if facts, are facts unparalleled in any other biography, but seem possible, however unintelligible, when considered as emanating from such a masterly and commanding spirit as that of Jesus.

      And this finally brings us to the miracle of the resurrection, concerning which we will first quote from an article in a late number of the “Westminster Review,” to show the most recent ideas of the critical and negative school on this point.

§ 8. Miracle of the Resurrection. Sceptical Objections.

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      In an article in the “Westminster Review,” in “The Life of Christ, by Strauss,” occurs the following passage:—

      “For of the two alternatives open to free inquiry, that if Jesus died he never reappeared, or if he reappeared he never died, Strauss considers the former not only preferable, but the only tenable one; for he cannot persuade himself that a feeble sufferer, who at first had scarcely strength to leave the tomb, and in the end succumbed to death, could have contrived to inspire his followers with the conviction that he was the Prince of life, the Conqueror of the grave. Strauss thus admits that faith in the supernatural revival of the buried Nazarene was undoubtedly the profession of the Christian Church, the unconditional antecedent without which Christianity could have had no existence. If, then, we refuse to assume the resurrection to be an historical fact, we have to explain the origin of the Church's belief in it. The solution which satisfies Strauss, and which seems to us also an adequate interpretation of the problem, is dependent [pg 081] on the two following positions: 1. The appearance of Jesus was literally an appearance, an hallucination, a psychological phenomenon. 2. It was also a sort of practical fallacy of confusion, a case of mistaken identity.

      “But it will be said that this natural solution of the problem implies a foregone conclusion—the rejection of the Orthodox or supernatural solution. Of course it does; and accordingly Strauss has been accused of dogmatical or unphilosophical assumption. But the rejection of the theological solution is not the result of ignorant prejudice, but of enlightened investigation. Anti-supernaturalism is the final irreversible sentence of scientific philosophy, and the real dogmatist and hypothesis-maker is the theologian. That the world is governed by uniform laws is the first article in the creed of science, and to disbelieve whatever is at variance with those uniform laws, whatever contradicts a complete induction, is an imperative, intellectual duty. A particular miracle is credible to him alone who already believes in supernatural agency. Its credibility rests on an assumption—the existence of such agency. But our most comprehensive scientific experience has detected no such agency. There is no miracle in nature; there is no evidence of any miracle-working energy in nature; there is no fact in nature to justify the expectation of miracle. Rightly has it been said by an English savant and divine, that testimony is a second-hand assurance, a blind guide, that can avail nothing against reason; and that to have any evidence of a Deity working miracles, we must go out of nature and beyond reason.

      “Strauss's prepossession, therefore, is justifiable. It is the prepossession of the rational theist, who does not believe in a God who changes his mind and improves with practice—the prentice maker of the world; it is the prepossession of the pantheist, in whose theory of the perfect government of an immanent God, miracle is an extravagance and absurdity; it is the prepossession of the philosophical naturalist, whose [pg 082] experience of the operations of nature recognizes no extra-mundane interventionalism.”

      We have quoted this passage as containing the most distinct statement of an extreme anti-supernaturalism. Admitting the death of Jesus as a fact, it denies his resurrection as a fact, and that on doctrinal and theoretic grounds. Declaring anti-supernaturalism to be the final irreversible sentence of scientific philosophy, it assumes supernaturalism to be a denial that the world is governed by uniform laws. It assumes the resurrection of Christ to be at variance with those uniform laws. It denies the existence of any supernatural agency in the affairs of this world. It denies that there ever has been a miracle in nature, or any extra-mundane intervention in the history of nature or man.

      This is what claims to be science, at the present time. We deny that it is science, and assert it to be pure dogmatism and theory, contradicted by numerous facts. It is pure theory to assume the resurrection of Jesus to be a violation of law. It is pure theory to define a miracle to be something opposed to law. It is pure theory to assume that the miraculous facts ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels must have been, if they occurred, violations of law. It is an assumption, contradicted by geology, that there is nothing in the experience of the naturalist of the operations of nature to show any extra-mundane intervention.

      We have admitted, indeed, that these same assumptions have been made by Orthodox theology. Orthodox theologians have also assumed the miracles of Christ to be violations of the laws of nature. But some of the most distinguished theologians, in all ages of the Church, have not so defined them. And there is no reason why the man of science should deny the possibility of fact because an unscientific explanation has been given of that fact by others. This writer virtually says, “I will not believe that Christ appeared after his death, on any amount of testimony, because [pg 083] some persons have defined such appearances as being opposed to the laws of nature.” It is certainly true that we cannot fully believe in the reality of any phenomenon which seems to us to be a violation of law. It is also true that the reported facts concerning the appearances of Jesus seem like a violation of law. But the scientific course is neither to deny the facts, nor to explain them away, but to study them, in order to see whether, after all, they may not lead us to some new laws, before unknown.

      The resurrection of Jesus deserves this study, since, according to the confession of science itself, the