Your Weekly Machen Fix: Was Jesus a Christian?

The following excerpt comes from Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923.

According to modern liberalism, in other words, Jesus was the Founder of Christianity because He was the first Christian, and Christianity consists in maintenance of religious life which Jesus instituted.

But was Jesus really a Christian?  Or, to put the same question in another way, are we able or ought we as Christians to enter in every respect into the experience of Jesus and make Him in every respect our example?  Certain difficulties arise with regard to this question.

The first difficulty appears in the Messianic consciousness of Jesus.  The Person whom we are asked to take as our example thought that He was the heavenly Son of Man who was to be the final Judge of all the earth.  Can we imitate Him there?  The trouble is not merely that Jesus undertook a special mission which can never be ours.  That difficulty might conceivably be overcome; we might still take Jesus as our example by adapting to our station in life the kind of character which He displayed in His.  But another difficulty is more serious.  The real trouble is that the lofty claim of Jesus, if, as modern liberalism is constrained to believe, the claim was unjustified, places a moral stain upon Jesus’ character.  What shall be thought of a human being who lapsed so far from the path of humility and sanity as to believe that the eternal destinies of the world were committed into His hands?  The truth is that if Jesus be merely an example, He is not a worthy example; for He claimed to be far more.

Against this objection modern liberalism has usually adopted a policy of palliation.  The Messianic consciousness, it is said, arose late in the experience of Jesus, and was not really fundamental.  What was really fundamental, the liberal historians continue, was the consciousness of sonship toward God – a consciousness which may be shared by every humble disciple.  The Messianic consciousness, on this view, arose only as an afterthought.  Jesus was conscious, it is said, of standing toward God in a relation of untroubled sonship.  But he discovered that this relation was not shared by others.  He became aware, therefore, of a mission to bring others into the place of privilege which He Himself already occupied.  That mission made Him unique, and to give expression to His uniqueness He adopted, late in His life and almost against His will, the faulty category of Messiahship.  

Many are the forms in which some such psychological reconstruction of the life of Jesus has been set forth in recent years.  The modern world has devoted its very best literary efforts to this task.  But the efforts have resulted in failure.  In the first place, there is no real evidence that the reconstructed Jesus is historical.  The sources know nothing of  a Jesus who adopted the category of Messiahship late in life and against His will.  On the contrary the only Jesus that they present is a Jesus who based the whole of His ministry upon His stupendous claim.  In the second place, even if the modern reconstruction were historical it would not solve the problem at all.  The problem is a moral and psychological problem.  How can a human being who lapsed so far from the path of rectitude as to think Himself to be the judge of all the earth – how can such a human being be regarded as the supreme example for mankind?  It is absolutely no answer to the objection to say that Jesus accepted the category of Messiahship reluctantly and late in life.  No matter when He succumbed to temptation the outstanding fact is that, on this view, He did succumb; and that moral defeat places an indelible stain upon His character.  No doubt it is possible to make excuses for Him, and many excuses are as a matter of fact made by the liberal historians.  But what has become then of the claim of liberalism to be truly Christian?  Can a man for whom excuses have to be made be regarded as standing to his modern critics in a relationship even remotely analogous to that in which the Jesus of the New Testament stands to the Christian Church?