The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

Having undertaken to compose this work at your request, I beg permission to dedicate it to you. In doing so I feel that it is a duty which I owe both to you and to myself that I should state the position which we respectively occupy with regard to it. Your responsibility is confined to having requested me to compose a work in refutation of certain principles now widely disseminated, which impugn the supernatural elements contained in the New Testament. For the contents of the work and for the mode of treatment I alone am responsible. When I considered the position of the present controversy, I felt that it was impossible to treat the subject satisfactorily except on the principle that the responsibility for the mode of conducting the argument and of answering the objections should rest with the writer alone. In dealing with a subject so complicated, involving as it does questions of philosophy and science as well as the principles of historical criticism, I can scarcely venture to hope that every position which I have taken will prove acceptable to all the various shades of theological thought. I have endeavoured to take such as seemed to me to be logically defensible without any reference to particular schools of theological opinion. As the entire question is essentially historical, I have done my utmost to exclude from it all discussions that are strictly theological. Modern unbelief however puts in two objections which if valid render all historical evidence in proof of the occurrence of miracles nugatory, namely that they are both impossible and incredible. In meeting these I have been compelled to appeal to what appear to me to be the principles of a sound philosophy. In all other respects I have viewed the question before me as exclusively one of historical evidence.

If the Resurrection of our Lord is an actual occurrence, it follows that Christianity must be a divine revelation. If it is not, no amount of other evidence will avail to prove it to be so. As it has been strongly affirmed that for this great fact, which constitutes the central position of Christianity, the historical evidence is worthless, I have devoted the latter portion of this volume to the consideration of this question, with a view of putting before the reader the value of the New Testament when contemplated as simple history. Using the Epistles as the foundation of my argument, I have endeavoured to prove that the greatest of all the miracles recorded in the Gospels rests on an attestation that is unsurpassed by any event recorded in history. For this purpose I have used the Epistles as simple historical documents, and I have claimed for them precisely the same value which is conceded to other writings of a similar description. The feeling among Christians that these writings contain the great principles of the Christian faith has occasioned it to be overlooked that they are also contemporary historical documents of the highest order. As such I have used them in proof of the great facts of Christianity, above all in proof of the greatest of them, the Resurrection of our Lord.

With these observations I now present you the following work, with the hope that it may prove the means of removing many of the difficulties with which recent controversial writers have endeavoured to obscure the subject. Trusting that it maybe accepted by the great Head of the Church, the reality of whose life and teaching as they are recorded in the Gospels it is designed to establish,

I remain, my Lords and Gentlemen, Your’s faithfully, C. A. Row.

London, January, 1875.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE POSITION OF THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN THE OPPONENTS AND THE DEFENDERS OF CHRISTIANITY.

Although every portion of the Bible is vehemently assailed by the various forms of modern Scepticism, it is clear that the real turning point of the controversy between those who affirm that God has made a supernatural revelation of himself to mankind, and those who deny it, centres in those portions of the New Testament which affirm the presence of the supernatural. The question may be still further narrowed into the inquiry whether the person and actions of Jesus Christ, as they are depicted in the Gospels, are historical facts, or fictitious inventions. If the opponents of Revelation can prove that they are the latter, the entire controversy will end in their favour. It would in that case be utterly useless to attempt to defend any other portion of the Bible; and the controversy respecting the Old Testament becomes a mere waste of labour. If, on the other hand, Christians can prove that the narratives of the four Gospels, or even of any one of them, are a true representation of historical facts, then it is certain that God has made a revelation of himself, notwithstanding the objections which may be urged against certain positions which have been taken by Ecclesiastical Christianity, and the difficulties by which certain questions connected with the Old Testament are surrounded.

It follows, therefore, that the historical truth of the facts narrated in the Gospels constitutes the central position of the entire controversy. It is not my purpose on the present occasion to discuss the general question, whether the delineation of Jesus Christ which the Gospels contain is one of an ideal or an historical person. That question I have already considered in “The Jesus of the Evangelists.” But as the various forms of modern unbelief are making the most strenuous efforts to prove that the supernatural elements of the New Testament are hopelessly incredible, and that the attestation on which the supernatural occurrences mentioned in it rests, is simply worthless, it is my intention to devote the present volume to the consideration of this special subject, and to examine the question of miracles, and their historical credibility.

Modern scepticism makes with respect to supernatural occurrences (under which more general term I include the miracles of the New Testament), the three following assertions, and endeavours to substantiate them by every available argument:

1st. That all supernatural occurrences are impossible.

2nd. That, if not impossible, they are incredible; that is, that they are contrary to reason.

3rd. That those which are narrated in the New Testament are devoid of any adequate historical attestation, and owe their origin to the inventive powers of the mythic and legendary spirit.

It is my purpose, in the course of the present work, to traverse each of these three positions, and to show:

1st. That miracles and supernatural occurrences are not impossible; and that the arguments by which this has been attempted to be established are wholly inconclusive.

2nd. That they are neither incredible, nor contrary to reason; but are entirely consistent with its dictates.

3rd, That the greatest of all the miracles which are recorded in the New Testament, and which, if an actual historical occurrence, is sufficient to carry with it all the others, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, rests on the highest form of historical testimony.

Such is my position.

A recent writer, who has ably advocated the principles of modern scepticism, the author of “Supernatural Religion,” has in the opening passage of his work clearly placed before us the real point at issue. He states the case as follows:

“On the very threshold of inquiry into the origin and true character of Christianity we are brought face to face with the supernatural. It is impossible, without totally setting aside its peculiar and indispensable claim to be a direct external revelation from God of truths which otherwise human reason could not have discovered, to treat Ecclesiastical Christianity as a form of religion developed by the wisdom of man. Not only in form does it profess to be the result of divine communication, but in its very essence, in its principal dogmas it is either superhuman or untenable. There is no question here of mere accessories, which are comparatively unimportant, and do not necessarily affect the essential matter, but we have to do with a scheme of religion claiming to be miraculous in all points, in form, in essence, and in evidence. This religion cannot be accepted without an emphatic belief in supernatural interposition, and it is absurd to imagine that its dogmas can be held, whilst the miraculous is rejected. Those who profess to hold the religion, whilst they discredit the supernatural element, and they are many at the present day, have widely receded from Ecclesiastical Christianity. It is most important that the inseparable connection of the miraculous with the origin, doctrines, and the evidence of Christianity should be clearly understood, in order that inquiry may pursue a logical and consistent course.”—_Supernatural Religion, page 1._(1)

I fully accept all the chief positions laid down in this passage as an adequate statement of the points at issue between those who affirm and those who deny that Christianity is a divine revelation. A few minor points require a slight modification, as incurring the danger of confusing ideas that ought to be carefully distinguished.

The writer before me also raises no minor issue. Although the work is entitled “Supernatural Religion, or an inquiry into the reality of divine revelation,” its object, which is consistently carried out throughout it, is to impugn the historical character of the Gospels, and to prove that the supernatural occurrences which are recorded in them are fictitious. The title of the work might have justified the writer in assailing other portions of the Bible; but he clearly sees that to adopt this course is only to attack the outworks of Christianity, and to leave the key of the entire position unassailed. In doing so he has pursued a far nobler course than that which has been adopted by many of the opponents of the Christian faith. He has directed his attack against the very centre of the Christian position, the historical credibility of the supernatural actions attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospels, being well aware that a successful assault on this position will involve the capture of all the outworks by which it is supposed to be protected; while it by no means follows that a successful assault on any of the latter involves the capture of the citadel itself. This writer does not take up a bye question, but he goes direct to the foundation on which Christianity rests. In doing so, it must be acknowledged that he has taken a straightforward course, and one which must bring the question of the truth or falsehood of Christianity to a direct issue.

I fully agree with the chief position taken in the quotation before us, that Christianity involves the presence of the supernatural and the superhuman, what in fact is generally designated as the miraculous, or it is nothing. To remove these elements out of the pages of the New Testament, is not to retain the same religion, but to manufacture another quite different and distinct from it. In the first place, we have the great central figure in the Gospels, the divine person of Jesus Christ our Lord, and the entire body of his actions and his teaching. He, although depicted as human, is at the same time depicted as superhuman and supernatural, not merely in his miraculous works, but in his entire character. To remove the divine lineaments of Jesus Christ out of the Gospels is simply to destroy them. Besides this, we have a large number of miraculous actions attributed to him. These are inextricably interwoven with the entire narrative, which, when they are taken away, loses all cohesion. Lives of Jesus which have been set forth, deprived of their supernatural and superhuman elements, are in fact nothing better than a new Gospel composed out of the subjective consciousness of the writers. Various attempts have been made to pare down the supernatural and superhuman elements in the Gospels to the smallest possible dimensions. Still they obstinately persist in remaining. If everything else is struck out of the Gospels, except their moral teaching, we are left in the presence of teaching which is raised at an immense elevation above the thoughts and conceptions of the age that produced it; and of a teacher, who while distinguished by the marks of pre‐eminent holiness and greatness of mind, is also distinguished by a degree of self‐assertion in his utterances of moral truth, which is without parallel, even among the most presumptuous of men. Deal with the Gospels as we will, while we allow any portions of them to remain as historical, we are still in the presence of the superhuman.