Who is Jesus?/Book 1/Part 2/Chapter 8
VIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF A CORRECT IDEA OF GOD
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I KNOW of but one sect or Christian denomination in the world that worships Jesus Christ as the only God of heaven and earth. This is the so-called New Church, or Church of the New Jerusalem, but more popularly known as the Swedenborgian Church, from the fact that its teachings were derived through the Swedish scientist and theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg. They claim that in the one person of Jesus Christ men see all that they can know of God; that in this one personality exists the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the Divine Soul, the Son is the Divine Body, and the Holy Spirit is the Divine Proceeding or Divine Activity. They hold that this requires only one personality, or identity, and fully conforms to the Scriptures. In this one person we are to perceive as the soul the Jehovah of the Old Testament, as His expression in time and space the man, Christ Jesus, and as to His activity or proceeding life, the Holy Spirit; but there is in these three phases or manifestations of God only one identity or personality. They say that if man was created in the image and likeness of God, then God must be as the original is to its likeness. A statuette of Abraham Lincoln, for example, should give us a fair idea of what Abraham Lincoln looked like. As we behold in man a soul, a body, and a proceeding activity of the soul operating through the body, so the infinite God must be likewise soul, body, and proceeding life, and these three phases or manifestations are no more three separate personalities than our soul, body, and activity are three separate beings. They are three phases of one being.
This seems to be a perfectly rational conception of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. It is not necessary that we shall here examine into the claims of Swedenborg apart from these views. His biography can be found in any encyclopedia, and his writings can be found in any public library. We are concerned only with a correct conception of God in Jesus Christ.
But men of today argue that this endless discussion of the question is unimportant. What is the necessity, they urge, of exact definition? Whether Jesus is Divine in any unique sense, or merely Divine as all men are claimed to be Divine; whether he is thought of as the Second Person of a Trinity of Persons, or as a splendid example to follow in life and teachings, what does it matter?
This argument is very much like asking what the advantage is of having a correct idea of our solar system and of the universe about us. It is true that men, before the discovery of the fact that the earth was round and turned on its own axis every twenty-four hours and circled about the sun once in three hundred and sixty-five days were just as happy and contented in many respects as afterward; but without our knowledge of the facts as they are Columbus could not have discovered the new world, the globe would not be circumnavigated as it is today, and all races and nations brought together almost as one community. The world of our day is not the world that believed in the fabrications of the ancients in regard to the earth and the sun and the universe; the knowledge of the facts has not only changed our conceptions, but also transformed practically everything of our lives. It has given us a new kind of world to live in and interrelated all human interests.
Without a correct idea of God in Jesus Christ men cannot relate themselves intelligently to the Divine Being. If God is the source and center of all our life, it is indispensable that we shall have clear ideas concerning Him.
Our Unitarian friends, for example, worship an invisible God. The center of their solar system is invisible. They are like men who shut themselves up in houses and never see the sun. They do, indeed, perceive the sunlight as it enters their homes through the doors and windows. They feel the warmth of spring and summer and the cold of autumn and winter; but they only imagine the source from which the phenomena of light and heat and all consequent activity proceed. How can men who have never looked up at the heavens and beheld the roseate hues of dawn, the splendor of noonday, and the glories of the sunset know correctly of the world in which they live? What can men know of this earth who have never seen the sun? So what can men know of God who have never beheld His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the Sun of righteousness, the Dayspring from on high, God made manifest to men who are not blind?
Likewise, in what a topsy-turvy universe must men live who think of God as existing in three separate and distinct personalities? It is as if they saw triple. When they look up at the sun of their moral universe they behold three suns, an appearance which they cannot comprehend rationally and do not try to understand; they content themselves with saying, Although we see three suns, yet we know that there is only one sun. But their religious theories, and thus all the proceeding activities of their lives, are based upon the appearance of three solar centers. Into what lop-sided confusion must their theories be thrown who argue or deduce from three centers, each of which is equal in every way to the other! There can be no trueness of motion in their orbits, for they behold three orbits or paths not coincident. What but falsities can result in a theology based upon such a threefold center?
We are confronted every day with the inquiry if Christianity has failed as a religious system, since apparently it has not permeated the lives of men seriously enough to produce a conformity to the precepts of Jesus in any universal way among men and nations. Mistaken notions of Christianity have indeed failed to transform the world. Is it not high time to obtain correct ideas of God in Christ in order that a true Christianity, based upon Jesus as God, may be tried?