Chapter 19 in Part I of God in the Dock: Essays on Theology ...
by C.S. Lewis
What are we to make of Jesus Christ? This is a question which has,
in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not
what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The
picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an
elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner
meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of 'How are we to
solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and
acts of this Man?' This problem is to reconcile two things. On the
one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity
of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even
by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I
am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point
of saying, 'I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity'——and
there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this
Man and of his immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at
its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism, it is full of wisdom
and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest
degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.
The other phenomenon is quite the appalling nature of this Man's
theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather
to stress the point that the appalling claim which this Man seems
to be making is not merely made at one moment of His career. There
is, of course, the one moment which led to His execution. The moment
at which the High Priest said to Him, 'Who are you?' 'I am the Anointed,
the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see Me appearing at
the end of all history as the judge of the Universe.' But that claim,
in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look
into His conversation you will find this sort of claim running through
the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, 'I
forgive your sins.' Now it is quite natural for a man to forgive
something you do to him. Thus if somebody cheats me out of ££5
it is quite possible and reasonable for me to say, 'Well, I forgive
him, we will say no more about it.' What on earth would you say
if somebody had done you out of ££5 and I said, 'That
is all right, I forgive him'? Then there is curious thing which
seems to slip out almost by accident. On one occasion this Man is
sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill above it and suddenly
in comes an extraordinary remark——'I keep on sending you
prophets and wise men.' Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly,
almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through
the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. Here
is another curious remark: in almost every religion there are unpleasant
observances like fasting. This Man suddenly remarks one day, 'No
one need fast while I am here.' Who is this Man who remarks that
His mere presence suspends all normal rules? Who is the person who
can suddenly tell the School they can have a half-holiday? Sometimes
the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker,
is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude.
'You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners.' and He never remotely
suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He
says again, 'I am begotten of the One God, before braham was, I
am,' and remember what the words 'I am' were in Hebrew. They were
the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the
name which it was death to utter.
Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral
teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of
a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most sane and
humble of men. There is no half-way house and there is no parallel
in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him 'Are
you the son of Bramah?' he would have said, 'My son you are still
in the vale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked,
'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you would have
gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have
rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius,
'Are you Heaven?', I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks
which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea
of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question.
In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is
either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion
which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached
egg, when you are looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you
may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for
you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere
moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people
who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects——Hatred
——Terror——Adoration. There was no trace of people
expressing mild approval.
What are we to do about reconciling the two contradictory phenomena?
One attempt consists in saying that the Man did not really say these
things, but that His followers exaggerated the story, and so the
legend grew up that He had said them. This is difficult because
His followers were all Jews; that is, they belonged to that Nation
which of all others was most convinced that there was only one God——that
there could not possibly be another. It is very odd that this horrible
invention about a religious leader should grow up among the one
people in the whole earth least likely to make such a mistake. On
the contrary we get the impression that none of His immediate followers
or even the New Testament writers embraced the doctrine at all easily.
Another point is that on that view you would have to regard the
accounts of the Man as being legends. Now, as a literary historian,
I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they
are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and am quite
clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic
enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are
clumsy, they don't work up to things properly. Most of the life
of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else
who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would
allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues,
there are no conversations that I know of in ancient literature
like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature,
until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into
existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told
Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing
comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the
art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary
scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation
of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put
it simply because he had seen it.
Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection.
It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say,
'The importance of the Resurrection is that it gives evidence of
survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.' On
that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened
to all men, the difference being that in Christ's case we were privileged
to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian
writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the Universe
had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door which had always
been locked had for the very first time been forced open. This is
something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don't mean
that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed
in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had to assure
them that he was not a ghost. That point is that while believing
in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally
different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture
of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being
has arisen in the Universe. Something new had appeared in the Universe:
as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death,
does not get divided into 'ghost' and 'corpse'. A new mode of being
has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it?
The question is, I suppose, whether any hypothesis covers the facts
so well as the Christian hypothesis. That hypothesis is that God
has come down into the created universe, down to manhood——and
come up again, pulling it up with Him. The alternative hypothesis
is not legend, nor exaggeration, nor the apparitions of a ghost.
It is either lunacy or lies. Unless one can take the second alternative
(and I can't) one turns to the Christian theory.
'What are we to make of Christ?' There is no question of what we
can make of Him, it is entirely a question of what He intends to
make of us. You must accept or reject the story.
The things He says are very different from what any other teacher
has said. Others say, 'This is the truth about the Universe. This
is the way you ought to go,' but He says, 'I am the way the Truth,
and the Way, and the Life.' He says, 'No man can reach absolute
reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you
will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved.'
He says, 'If you are ashamed of Me, if, when you hear this call,
you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come
again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you
from God and from Me, whatever it is, throw it away. If it is your
eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself
first you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy
load, I will set that right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out,
I can do that. I am Re-birth, I am Life. Eat Me, drink Me, I am
your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I have overcome the whole
Universe.' That is the issue.
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