The Son of Man X. The Uniqueness of Christ

Irish Jesuit Province

The Son of Man X. The Uniqueness of ChristAuthor(s): Hugh KellySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 79, No. 940 (Oct., 1951), pp. 437-442Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516436 .

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THE SON OF MAN?X

THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST

By HUGH KELLY, S.J.

THERE

is a way of speaking of Christ, employed by non

Christians, against which a genuine Christian must always feel a movement of protest. This way of speaking is not usually

meant to be disrespectful or disparaging, but to one who knows who

Christ is it is not merely false but is a kind of betrayal. Non

Christians will refer to Him as one of a class of religious teachers. He is mentioned along with Confucius, Mahomet, St. Paul, Seneca, etc. He may be explicitly considered as the greatest of them; but

He is definitely in the class and He differs from the others in degree and not in kind. In support of this estimation certain sayings of

Christ are quoted which seem to be paralleled by the sayings of some

of the teachers mentioned. For instance, the golden rule of our

conduct towards our neighbours formulated in the Sermon on the

Mount, "All things, therefore, whatsoever you would that men should

do to you, do you also to them ". (Matt, vii, 12); that rule or some

thing equivalent has been found in some pagan moralists and no

doubt some other apparent likenesses could be found. For not

every word of Christ was a revelation unknown until then; some

of His moral precepts expressed in the same sermon, isolated and

taken in a certain superficial sense, might have been formulated by other teachers.

But the injustice is committed when men go on to say that because

there is some resemblance in a few moral precepts, therefore the

resemblance must be extended to the whole doctrine and career;

and Christ must be made one of a class, a teacher like others. It

is surprising that such a judgment could be made not merely by a

well-informed man but even by anyone who had read, even

cursorily, the New Testament. The other moral teachers of humanity, of different ages and races, have been mere men, wiser, no doubt, in some important respects than their contemporaries; but limited

and weak, not free from sin and error, in no respect above human

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IRISH MONTHLY

stature in doctrine, dignity, claims, authority. But the Christ of the

gospels is evidently above human stature. The immediate and

spontaneous impression a reader of His life, of the gospels, gets is

that hare is One Who is not like others; One Who is in many respects

unique, in teaching, works, claims, authority. To class Him with

others because of some slight superficial resemblance of expression is to close one's eyes to the enormous differences which exist Never

man spoke like this; never man did works like these; were the

ejaculations of those who heard and saw Him. They must express the opinion of everyone who reads the gospels with a mind that is

not entirely prejudiced. I have spoken already of the miracles of Christ, but I must refer

to them here because one of their purposes was to enable us to

judge rightly about Him. These mighty works so clearly surpassing human power?where are they paralleled in the life of any of the

teachers who are classed with Him? That perfect, easy power over

all diseases, even over death itself, the control of the raging elements, the domination over the evil spirits, nothing remotely resembling these has been claimed for others. And even the miracles of Christ

are strongly contrasted with the genuine miracles of the Old

Testament or those of saints of the Church. The prophets and

saints have at times exercised a power which was supernatural; but

in a very limited measure, and only as a result of their prayer and

impetration. The power they exercised was clearly given to them, was not their own. But Christ exercises His power with ease and

authority. The power resides in Him; He uses it as He pleases; He

has not to beg for it, or to wait for it to be given Him; He has it in

plenitude. He is the Master of the physical as well as the spiritual world. To think of Mahomet or Confucius or Seneca in such a

way is simply ludicrous.

But it is from the point of view of His doctrine that Christ is

usually compared to these other men. But from this point of view

the comparison is at once seen to be completely misleading. The

few points of resemblance belong only to the surface of His teaching and do not touch the heart of it; they are merely remote applications of some of His principles. Consider the following passage given

by two of the Evangelists (Matt, xi, 27; Luke x, 21):?"All things are delivered to Me by My Father. And no man knoweth the Son

but the Father; neither doth any one know the Father but the Son

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UNIQUENESS OP CHRIST

and He to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him. Come to

Me all you who labour and are heavily burdened and I will refresh

you. Take up My yoke upon you and learn of Me because I am

meek and humble of heart; and you shall find rest to your souls.

For My yoke is sweet and My burden light." Now it is at once unthinkable that these words should be attributed

to any other teacher. There is about them an air of authority, an

assurance of power, a breadth and sweep of application which stamp them as unmistakably His. What other religious teacher ever

claimed to have such an intimate, exclusive knowledge of God? What other moralist or philosopher has invited the whole world to

come to Him with their troubles and burdens and has promised them refreshment? From any other lips such claims so vast, so

sweeping, so simply but firmly advanced would be the height of

absurdity, the ravings of a megalomaniac. On Christ's lips alone these words do not surprise us. We expect

them from Him. They are consonant with all we know of Him.

Consider again a sentence He spoke to His Apostles at the Last

Supper: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No man

cometh to the Father but by Me" (John xiv, 6). In these words

He claims to be the sole origin of spiritual life to the whole world, to all the generations; He makes the claim that only by Him can

any human soul come to the possession of God, Who is the last end and supreme happiness of every created soul. He is the way, the only way by which the world can cross the chasm which separates it from the true and living God. And yet that stupendous claim

is made with the quiet assurance of a man who knows He is speaking the truth. There is no trace of boasting, or of wild uncontrolled

speaking. It is the calm utterance of a Man Who knows His power and His mission.

Many other like statements of His might be quoted, all of them

marked with the same note of power; such statements as could come

only from Him and which, by no stretch of imagination, could be

conceived as uttered by anyone else. In all He said there is the

same unmistakable air of assured authority, whether He teaches

or promises or claims. No; other teachers do not speak with such

a tone: they reach their message painfully, with much dependence on the ideas of their time; they hold it precariously; they change often; they make mistakes. Their teaching is disproved or discredited

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by those who come after them; it quickly grows out of date. There

is nothing of this about the teaching of Christ. He possesses it fully and from the beginning; He imposes it as a Master from whom

there is no appeal; He does not speak for His own generation but

for all men. "Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words

shall not pass away." No other teacher could speak that language. Or consider the significance of the Resurrection in the present

connexion. The Resurrection of Christ was not an event that

happened to come after His death, an unexpected thing that occurred

beyond all calculation. Quite the contrary, it was foretold, and

promised. At the beginning of His public life, on His first visit

to Jerusalem as Teacher, when asked to give some authorization

for the action of driving the traffickers from the temple, He said: "

Destroy this temple and in three days I will build it up" (John ?,

19). The temple, as St. John tells us, was His body; and thus at

that date He foretold His death and resurrection. He made the same prophecy at other times, when closer to His Passion, and with

greater clearness. When He foretells the Passion He always ends

the series of His sufferings with the words, "

and the third day will

rise again ". His resurrection was then an integral part of His work

of redemption; it was the crown, the completion of the death on

Calvary. But He gave it a special significance as the chief sign of

the truth of His mission. He might have pointed to many other

signs which proved indubitably that He was sent by God. But on

several occasions He singled out the Resurrection as the official, the

greatest and most compelling sign and proof that He was all He

claimed, that all He said was true. His enemies understood Him;

they took up His challenge; they determined to see to it that nothing would happen that would give any colour to His prophecy.

Accordingly they went to Pilate, the morning after Christ was buried, and said :

" Sir, we have remembered that that seducer said while

He was yet alive: After three days I will rise again. Command,

therefore, the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day, lest perhaps His disciples come and steal Him away and say to the people: He

is risen from the dead "

(Matt, xxvii, 62). In their malicious fore

sight they were only making more evident the fact which they wished

to falsify. They only succeeded in establishing more clearly the

great sign which Christ had given of His mission. The Resurrection

then was the supreme sign which Christ gave of Himself; on its truth

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UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST

was built the Faith of His disciples, and of the Church. But it also

makes impossible any real comparison between Him and any other

religious or moral teacher.

One other point suggests itself, as a sign of the uniqueness of

Christ: it is a sign that is capital, and in its way is as compelling as the others we have mentioned. Throughout the Gospel we hear

from Him claims, promises and threats which presuppose that He

had an importance in human life in general that was simply supreme. "Blessed are ye when they shall revile you and persecute you and

speak all that is evil against you, untruly for My sake "

(Matt, v, 11). "

He that shall lose his life for Me shall find it "

(Matt, x, 39). "

But

he that shall deny Me before men I will also deny him before My Father Who is in Heaven

" (Matt, x, 33). And in the description

of the last judgment He teaches us that the lot of the good and

the wicked turns upon the charity they have shown or refused to

the sick and needy, just because charity done to these sick and needy is done to Himself. "As long as you did it to one of these My least

brethren you did it to Me" (Matt, xxv, 40). When Christ speaks like this He is not referring to His teaching.

A religious teacher may well make great or even extravagant claims

for his doctrine, that it is true, that it is of great importance. But

he will not make such claims for himself, for his own individual

life. But in these words Christ is affirming that He has a significance and a value for human life that is transcendent. In them He claims

for Himself from all men, not merely for His doctrine, a loyalty, a

service, a depth of sacrifice, to which, literally, there is no limit. In

Himself He is the supreme value for all human life, to secure which men will give what is dearest, their own reputations and lives. And

the conclusion again from this consideration must be that such a

claim not merely has not been made by any other teacher, but that it is simply inconceivable from anyone but Christ.

Christ is then not simply a religious teacher or reformer who can be mentioned with a number of others. He must not even be

spoken of as the greatest of such a class, because He simply is not in such a class. He is unique and incomparable, as is abundantly clear from the features of His life we have considered. As I said, some of the men who speak of Christ in this way do so in ignorance and inadvertence. But there are others who do so of set purpose.

By comparing Him with others in His teaching they hope to reduce

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IRISH MONTHLY

and invalidate the supreme claim of His career, the claim that He was not a mere man but that He was also the Son of God. That is the truth about Christ which must be preserved because it gives value to everything else in Him.

THE PROUD HEART

We who profess to love each other well,

Why is it we so dangerously postpone Love's revelation? Is the making-known So humbling then? Seeing 'twixt Heaven and Hell

In the hush of soul-peril we both stand, How strange to grudge the quickening word of praise, Refuse the mutual pressure of the hand, Poor sole support through abysmal nights and days. O heart of yours, O heart of mine, proud-veiled,

Saving its riches for the barren day When dear, near need to far-off peace has paled? Tell me if Love Incarnate loved this way;

Who, calling all His faithful friends apart, " Behold this Heart," He said, and showed His Heart.

Joan Sw?etman

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The Son of Man X. The Uniqueness of Christ