Advent and ascension
Subtitle: or, How Jesus came and how he left us
Publisher: Eaton & Mains
Published: 1903
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Table of contents: title: CONTENTS; title: CHAPTER I.; title: PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS.; title: 1. Has there been a widespread feeling of the need of an incarnation ? page io. The revelation of God through the things he had made and the words he had spoken, not enough, n. Call for the supernatural, 12. And the supernatural, properly proved, our guide in this doctrine, 13. Review of philosophic thought, 14. Eastern thought; in Buddhism ; in Greece and Rome, 14. In a real Incarnation, dimly hinted elsewhere, but everywhere needed, all would culminate, 15.; title: 2. Would such an event fitly introduce a career meeting alike divine and human wants ? 15. God may need it in self-vindication, and man need it in order to act broadly and rightly, 16. How else, in such a world as this, decide whether God is love or hate? 18. Some such overpowering manifestation needed as would settle the question, 19. Browning's words about the Incarnation as solving all difficulty, 20.; title: 3. Is any other way of advent more probable than that described in the New Testament ? 21. The Coming One must come into the race by the way of a human birth, 22. Human nature not originally and necessarily sinful, 23; must come in a Hebrew line ; in a nation giving honor to virgin life ; must be of regal descent, and yet live among common people, 23.; title: 4. What should one so born be expected to be and to do? He must be human, 24. But he must be more than a man's highest measure of God, 25. Instead of “limitation by humanity," extension as far as humanity, 26. Not only subjective feeling, but objective manifestation of God in an Incarnation, is needed, 26. Must be a person through whom God can be restored to man, and man to God, 26.; title: 5. Can we think of any better method of furnishing to the world the proof of such an event than that proposed by the New Testament? 27. The method of the time demanded that disciples should repeat the words and deeds of a Master, 27. “Oral Gospels,” 28. The earliest Epistles were to be the earliest documentary proof. By Epistles, the divine idea of Incarnation was to be expressed, 29; the subsequent Gospels were to give the needed details, 30. Such a method of presenting the evidence commends itself when understood, 32.; title: CHAPTER II.; title: THE WITNESSES TO THE INCARNATION.; title: 1. God has given us a progressive revelation — he had spoken before Jesus came; at periods of emergency; in sacred rites; by prophetic men, 34. Hebrew prophecy grounded in Hebrew history, 36. Glances beyond immediate events, to the Coming One, 37. The word “witness,” so often used, 37. The historical fact was to be historically proved. Intellectual and moral proof as good in its sphere as mathematical proof, 38. The “testimony of God” comes to us in the form of literature — the most satisfactory and enduring form, 39. Natural human faculties strengthened and inspired, 39. Sketches, both “ideal” and “minutely actual,” in describing the coming Christ, 41. Promises of him steadily developed — all of them not about some one thrust in upon men, but of one “to be born,” 42. An immense preparatory “gospel of the nativity,” 43; title: 2. The testimony of Jesus to himself: claimed that he was the prophetic Christ, 45. Declared that the prophecies, in minute and definite things, were “concerning himself,” 46.; title: 3. Testimony of disciples: mission of the Twelve, 47. But a Paul was needed to set forth in documents the comprehensive idea, 49. “Back to Christ.” Paul’s earlier Epistles older documents than the Gospels. Gospels fill in details of the idea given in Epistles, 50. Deity through humanity. Christ as “Jehovah,” 51. “God over all.” After conversion through the divine idea, converts would inquire about details, such as Christ’s birth, 54. Paul’s crucial declaration, 55. Peter’s point of view, 55. That of John, 55. James, in his peculiar view, 58. The Epistles taken as a whole, 59. The personal Christ and the official Christ, 60. The relation of Christ to God described in governmental terms; in forensic terms; in filial terms; in terms of vitality, 64. Evangelists give us sketches rather than biographies. These have a peculiarly self-evidencing power, 64. Why the detail of the virgin birth in two Gospels, and in these two only, 65. The chapters of Matthew and Luke cannot be subsequent additions, 66. Peculiar confirmations of them, 67. Each evangelist his own purpose, and so his own point of view, 69. The consent of the others, 70. Matthew writes for the Jew; Luke for the Gentile, 72. In the Gospels the doctrinal is combined with the historical idea of the Incarnation, 72. Historical facts reflected in the spiritual experience, 74. Writers of Gospels are Hebrews; they were writers in a skeptical age, 80. Ethical duty founded by them on the Incarnation, 84.; title: CHAPTER III.; title: THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES.; title: Definiteness of the records, 88. Genealogical tables, 93. Why inserted only in Matthew and Luke, 94. Difference between lineal and royal descent; but both coincide at last, 95. Luke so near Holy Family as to hear and record their words, 96. No need of inventing such a story, 96. Tracing a royal descent impossible after destruction of Jerusalem, 98. Questions about date of enrollment and place of nativity, 101. Those, vital questions in early centuries and for Jewish converts, 102. Mark’s assumption of the facts, 103. John intimates, but without definite description, the virgin birth, 106. Paul also through Luke, whose purity and delicacy are manifest in the story, no. Social, political, and personal circumstances; Magi, shepherds, and Roman ruler; presentation in temple, 114. General impression made by the facts, 116. Special impression made (1) upon the virgin mother, 120; (2) upon the public of his day, 121 ; (3) upon his disciples, 122; (4) Christ’s own consciousness, 123; (5) in subsequent centuries by the records, 124. Divinity extended rather than limited by Incarnation, 13 1. Christ’s full knowledge of all he needed to know at any stage of his official career, 132. Godet’s summary of the evidence, 133. Recapitulation of argument, 134. Christianity built on historic facts, 137. These not to be set aside by any theory of “the inexactness of human language,” 141. Nor by any theory of “moral value- judgments,” 142. The facts must be taken at their historic worth, 144-148.; title: CHAPTER IV.; title: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE LORD’S DEPARTURE.; title: How should we expect Jesus would end his career? 153. What should follow his death? 154. Completeness over against bodily death is bodily resurrection, 155. Possibility as to any resurrection of a human body, 155. The real essence alike of mind and body unknown, 158. Larger capacities than we now know, probable, 158. Constitutional basis for changing manifestations in both, 159. Death of the visible sometimes the opportunity for invisible potencies, 159. Premonitions of resurrection in nature, 162. Argument for a possible or a probable resurrection is argument for a body capable of ascension as well, 163. There is the great probability of a spiritual body with capacities for the spiritual man, 166.; title: CHAPTER V.; title: THE WITNESSES TO THE LORD'S RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION.; title: The earliest writer to name on his pages these facts is Paul, 168. His means of knowledge, 168. His grasp of Christianity as a whole, 170. He enumerates, incidentally, six of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection, 171-175. His own testimony as one who saw the risen Christ on the way to Damascus, 177. He argues from these manifestations the corporeity of Christ at the resurrection, 178. The testimony of others from whom the evangelists derived the incidents, 178. The continuous testimony of the writers of the New Testament not only to the resurrection but the ascension of Jesus, 179. The Christ of “The Revelation” is the risen, ascended, and reigning Christ, 180.; title: CHAPTER VI.; title: THE TESTIMONY OF THESE WITNESSES.; title: The four evangelists. Matthew’s incidents in keeping with his purpose, 183. Mark’s incidents looking at the facts from another point of view, 185. Luke’s specific purpose shown in the incidents he records, 187. John’s testimony given with peculiar vividness, 189. Peter’s, testimony not only through Mark, but in his Epistles, 191. The contradictory theories and their failure, 193- 197. The completed resurrection in the ascension, 198. Summary of the evidence for the resurrection : (1) Former miracles prepare for this, 199. (2) Gives him especial memory in the thought of the world, 200. (3) He promised it, 201. (4) Seen repeatedly by those who best knew him, 202. (5) Witnesses not credulous at outset, 205. (6) The multitude of the witnesses, 206. (7) Immediate article of faith in the churches, 207. (8) Gave rise to vital doctrine, 208. All these arguments for the ascension as the completion of the resurrection, 21 1. The whole career from advent to ascension compels a peculiar intervening life, 212-214. The coming Christ, 215.