Article January 8, 1916 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from John Whitehead, Charles F. Dole

[The Christian Commonwealth]

Although the greatest determinant of modern faith, influencing every clause of the creed, is our changed idea of God, yet it is with regard to the historic figure of Jesus that we are most conscious of the working of the new knowledge. The whole force of modern historical study, with its rediscovery of ancient texts, its abstraction of sources and editors, and its analysis of evidence, has been turned upon the half human and half divine figure which the church has taught us to find in the New Testament.

What has been the result? First, there has been a great increase in the study if not the imitation of Jesus' life, regarded as that of the greatest of the saints. Secondly, experience has generally found something unexplained and inimitable in Jesus' character. But thirdly, there is a growing disposition to think that while this experience justifies a different attitude toward Jesus from that which we adopt toward other saints, it need not involve acceptance of the Catholic Christology, but points rather toward a recasting of this in a modern form.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Special Announcements