Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/205

Rh miracle, and is apprehended by the mind specially fitted for this apprehension; and he points out that such a conception as that of the Christian revelation, such an idea as .that of the continuous manifestation of God in the world, does not belong to any pagan religion or theology. This manifestation of God, which is miracle in the proper sense of the word, and the special apprehension of it, which is inspiration in the more limited meaning, have happened, and have been recorded, and the apologist has therefore as much to do with the record of the reve lation as with the revelation itself ; and hence, after the preliminary investigations into the nature of revelation and its twin sides, manifestation and inspiration, comes an investigation of the sources from which we derive our knowledge of this revelation. The whole question of the Canon of Scripture must, therefore, be looked into and settled, the character, historical or other, the authenticity, and the credibility of the various books of the Old and New Testaments must be discussed, and whatever assistance in this task can be obtained from contemporary history must be taken advantage of. Connected with this inquiry, several difficult and delicate questions arise, about the relation between inspiration and perfect historical accuracy in every point, the questions of plenary and non-plenary inspiration, whether plenary inspiration requires perfect accuracy in minute details of history, whether it demands scientific accuracy of description, &c., none of which can be entered into here. From the records of the revelation the apologist turns to the revelation itself. We have already distinguished the Christian from other pretended revelations, by saying that it is a revelation which has Christ, while other revelations have not Christ, and in our day the whole attack and defence have centred round the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ. The opponents of Christianity, feeling that the core of the system which they are attacking is the supernatural life of Christ, set themselves to attack that conception, and they do so by attempting to show, either that there was no such life as that of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, or else that it was not supernatural there was no such man as Jesus Christ, or if there was, He did not differ wholly from other men. The first mode of attack is that adopted by D. F. Strauss, and the second that of Ernest Renan and others. Strauss s position is somewhat of this kind : the historical and the supernatural are so inextricably mixed the one with the other that they cannot be separated, but the supernatural is on general grounds impossible, and therefore the historical is impossible also. He accordingly sets himself to show that the Gospels are not credible as history, and he resolves the Gospel life of Jesus of Nazareth into a poem, the poem of the Jewish nation and, indeed, of the human race. This is the basis of his celebrated mythical theory. Renau, on the other hand, cannot admit the thorough-going destructive criticism of Strauss. There must have been such a life as that of Jesus of Nazareth, although the account we have of it is a highly coloured picture. He admits the life, but denies the supernatural element in it, and explains it by saying that it was created round about the historical life by the enthusiasm of the early disciples ; in short, he separates the historical from the super natural, and while he admits the one he rejects the other. The apologist answers such attacks as these very much by pitting the one antagonist against the other. He asserts with Strauss that the historical and the supernatural are inseparably blended, and he takes from Renan the general idea, that, according to all laws of historical research, the Gospel narratives are truly historical. In this way he tries to show, specially against Strauss, that there is no time, even if the Gospel narratives are brought down to the latest possible date, for the growth of the poem into which 191 lie resolves the life of Christ ; and specially against Renan, he points out that if the historical be granted even only to the length to which Renan goes, it is so blended with the supernatural that the miraculous cannot be separated from it. This defence of the historical and supernatural character of the life of Christ, and of Christianity because it has the life of Christ as its centre and essence, widens into a general description of His position and character as these are shown in the Gospels. Apologetics tries to show that Jesus Christ is, as it were, the sum of all the previous revelation of God contained in the Old Testament. It traces the broadening down of revelation, in order to show how perfectly the life of Christ came as the conclusion and perfection of all that went before, and that it fulfilled both. Jewish prophecy and pagan aspiration. It attempts to show that Jesus is not merely the actual and perfect fulfilment of every previous theophany, but that He is and must be the Perfect Revelation of God. It does this in various ways : by describing the character of Jesus, unique intellectually and unique morally; by describing the teaching of Jesus, and its marvellous similarity and yet dissimilarity with the doctrines of Jewish revelation and Gentile philosophy; by describing the actual work of Jesus, by showing that in Him miracle or manifestation and prophecy or inspiration came to their culmination ; and by pointing to the mission of the Holy Ghost and tho victorious spread of Christianity throughout the world. Such is a short outline of Apologetics and the field of investigation which it occupies : we shall now proceed to give a short summary of the history of the study. The historical course of Apologetics may be divided into five great periods: The first period, extending from the beginning of the 2d century to the end of the 5th, may be subdivided into two: (1.) From the beginning of the 2d to the beginning of the 3d century; and, (2.) From the beginning of the 3d to the end of the 5th. The first of these is marked by the writings of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix. The two Apologies of Justin were directed, the one against the Jews, and the other against the pagans. In both he follows the same method of justifying the Christian religion from the charges which were then commonly brought against it, and then attack ing his opponents severely. All the apologists of this age follow the same course, and we see from their writ ings that the common attacks upon Christianity were charges of atheism, immorality practised at their Agapae, the Thyestsean banquets, and the like. The second of these periods is marked by the writings of Origen, Arnobius, Lactantius, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine. These names show the course that Apologetics was taking. It had raised itself far above the position of a mere defence against vulgar prejudice and polished sarcasm; and Origen, when he opposed Celsus, was giving a philosophical defence against a philosophical attack upon the principles which lay at the basis of Christianity (cf. Pressense 3 Hist, de lEylise, 2 mc serie, ii. pp. 104-142). &quot;With Arnobius begins the study of Christian evidences ; and he tries to show that Christianity is not merely probable, but certainly true ; while Lactantius proceeds upon the idea that, if Christianity be only clearly understood, it must be accepted, that its best defence is a clear statement of the principles on which it rests. Eusebius, on the other hand, is the first of the learned apologists, and proves the truth of Christianity by an elaborate comparison between it and all that was best in the various systems which went before it, and so far prepared the way for it. Cyril opposes Julian as Origen had opposed Celsus. Julian had directed his attack against the claims of Christianity to universal dominion; he admitted that it was one form, but denied that it was the only form of