The authority of Christ
By: by David W. Forrest
Publisher: T. & T. Clark
Published: 1906
Place of publication: Edinburgh
Language: eng
Number of pages: 437
Subjects: Person and offices; Church and state
Table of contents: title: I. The recognition of Christ as the incarnate Son; title: 1. Statement of the questions to be discussed; title: Grounds on which a unique authority is ascribed to Christ; title: The two qualities that differentiate him from others who in their measure reveal God; title: 2. What sinlessness means as applied to Christ; title: The possibility of a sinless human life denied by many on two grounds; title: The one method by which sinlessness can be proved; title: Some who accept Christ's sinlessness can be proved; title: Inadequacy of this view; title: 3. His mediatorship : the claims he made for himself; title: The contention that these express only his historic consciousness of sonship, not his essential or metaphysical oneness with the father; title: 4. The place of Christ's resurrection in the argument for his deity. Contrast in this respect between the Apostles' standpoint and ours; title: 5. Affirming Christ's eternal sonship we speak secundum hominem; title: Our categories in construing God's life, only approximative; but none the less indispensable for that; title: II. The illegitimate extension of Christ's authority; title: 1. The gospel records must decide what deity meant in Christ's incarnate experience; title: The Chalcedonian definition controlled by abstract conceptions of Godhead and manhood; title: The docetic tendency in patristic church; title: The distinction between Christ's "divine mind" and his "human mind" unscriptural; title: 2. The gospels assign to Christ a place in humanity in a definite historic succession: what this involves; title: Christ and the Gentile world; title: His relation to Israel, unique. Are his allusions to Old Testament characters and incidents authoritative in the historical sphere? Reasons against this view; title: 3. Christ's predictions and those of prophets and apostles; title: His unbroken communion with the Father does not of itself carry with it plenary intellectual vision; title: 4. The limitations of Christ's thought, involved in the reality of his moral growth; title: His miracles wrought by virtue of a power received from the Father; title: 5. The church discussions regarding the right conceptions of the person of Christ, inevitable; title: The divine and the human akin: but the human type of thought discursive, the divine intuitive; title: The Gospels leave no doubt as to which of these types ruled in Christ's case: the divine self-restrained within the limits of humanity; title: It is no objection to the kenotic view that it does not answer questions lying outside the historical revelation; title: III. Christ's authority on God: The spiritual as the distinctive sphere where Christ's authority rules. Need of defining the kind of authority which belongs to Him; title: 1. Christ does not seek to verify God by speculative argument; title: Why metaphysic cannot yield the results that religion demands; title: Thought or reason not identical with the ratiocinative faculty; title: The ethical intuition implicitly universal; title: 2. Christ fixes on the ethical quality in man as the organ for attaining the knowledge of God; title: The progressive imperatives of man's moral nature only to be explained by the urgency of an indwelling divine life; title: Christ's revelation of God resides not merely in what he taught but in what he was; title: He guarantees God as the correlative of duty; title: 3. If Christ appeals to what is universal in man, why are there many in whom his attestation of God awakes no response?; title: In some, this is due to moral disloyalty. In others, who are lovers of truth, to too narrow an idea of what truth is; title: The methods of physical science inapplicable to the moral world; title: The conditions of verifying ethical and religious truth: the "venture of faith"; title: 4. Theistic belief and the problem of suffering; title: Why individual suffering must largely remain inexplicable; title: 5. Christ finds God in outward nature, because the first finds him in his own experience; title: The "remorseless cruelties" of the natural world: why not fatal to the Christian belief in God; title: IV. Christ's authority on individual duty: Christ's words and acts, diverse expressions of the one filial spirit; title: 1. His injunction, "resist not him that is evil"; misconceptions of Tolstoy and Steeley; title: The saying "Give to him that seeth thee"; what it means for us to-day; title: His commands have often to be divested of their particular form, in order that their intention may be fulfilled; title: 2. His acts not meant to be formally imitated; title: The great principle of right conduct: consideration for others' good; title: The complexity of its application; title: 3. Christ's attitude of abstention in relation to the social and political wrongs of his age; title: A similar abstention not observed by Christians; title: Reasons for this contrast between his conduct and theirs; title: a) Difference of political environment; title: b) Difference of function: He, the Redeemer; they, the redeemed; title: 4. Fallacy underlying the idea that we can best discover our duty by asking, what would Jesus do?; title: Activities which would not blend with his specific mission as Redeemer may be justifiable and even obligatory for us; title: By ruling out these from our conduct we misrepresent (I) Christ's example in His relation to men; (2) The real character of His Gospel; title: The apostles not determined in their action by precedents, but by the guidance of a living Lord; title: V. Christ's authority on corporate duty; or, Christianity and the state; title: 1. The methods of the church and of the state, diametrically opposite; title: Christ not opposed to compulsory government as represented in an earthly state; title: The authority of a political ruler, a trust from God; title: St. Peter and St. Paul on the duty of civil obedience; title: 2. The extent to which Christianity can be expressed in the action of a corporate body, limited by the distinctive character of the corporation; title: The limits in the case of a voluntary association easily defined; title: Not so in the case of the state, which is a necessary society; title: The deepening realization of what belongs to its proper function, due predominantly to Christianity; title: Moral obligations incumbent on the individual which do not exist for the state; title: 3. The relation of the state to Christian doctrine; title: Dr. Arnold's theory of the unity of Church and state; title: The results that follow from making Christianity "the basis of citizenship"; title: The delimitation of the two spheres of Church and state; title: Does not mean the extrusion of religion from civil affairs; title: 4. The recognition of religion by the state; title: The civil establishment of the church; title: Advocated as helping to extend the church's influence; this view examined; title: What constitutes a Christian nation; title: The question of religious instruction in the national schools; of a different character from that of the establishment of the church; title: Difficulty of the problem; the diverse considerations that have to be taken account of; title: No method universally the best; title: International policy subject to moral obligations; title: Yet not to the same obligations as individual action; title: VI. Christ's authority on human destiny: The kingdom of God: Christ's view of the end to be interpreted by His view of the process that leads up to it; title: 1. The phrase, Kingdom of God: not originated by Christ; but he gave it a new content; title: From the inwardness of the kingdom, as conceived by Him, spring to facts: its reality as a present power, the gradualness of its growth; title: Christ did not share the "catastrophic" conceptions of Jewish apocalyptic; title: 2. The kingdom a process, but a process that is to reach its consummation; title: Why the present mundane order presupposes a final judgment; title: This judgment to be realized through the completed manifestation of what Christ is; title: 3. While affirming the consummation, Christ asserts his ignorance of the "day or hour"; title: This quite in harmony with the character of his vocation; title: How can we account for the sayings attributed to him which foretell the time of the end?; title: He spiritualizes current eschatological terms: the Sypnoptics and the fourth Gospel; title: His varying references to the end correspond with his statement that he did not know the "day or hour"; title: 5. Is the final judgment based merely on man's earthly record? Christ does not explicitly say so; title: Considerations that seem to point to a probation after death; but Christ's teaching in its main lines does not encourage the idea; title: The few truths regarding destiny which carry his authority; title: VII. The incarnation and the Holy Spirit; title: 1. The divine self-limitation involved in the incarnation, temporary: a means to an end; title: Christ's death, the culminating point of a sacrifice which began in his assumption of humanity; title: The theory that the incarnation would have taken place apart from sin, and according to the absolute purpose of God; title: Tends to lesson our sense of the self-surrender which the incarnation implied; title: 2. Christ's promise of the Spirit as ushering in a fuller revelation; title: Why the incarnate period had first to close; title: The history of the church shows the conditions necessary for receiving the Spirit's illumination; title: The will of Christ gradually revealed to the apostles (a) through the teaching of new facts; and (b) through their own deepening spiritual life; title: 3. The ethical content of the Christian consciousness: how unfolded; title: Moral forces, working in the social and political sphere, have revealed to the Church the fuller meanings of its own ethic and doctrine; title: These forces, though often antagonistic to the church, had their origin in Christ's teaching; title: 4. The operation of the Spirit intertwined with man's intellectual activities; title: With the advance of knowledge, religious conviction assumes new intellectual forms: this transition never accomplished without friction; title: 5. Christ's teaching: reasons for the form He gave it; title: Place of the intellect in the apprehension of His message; as e.g. his "sacramental" words; title: The idea that He spoke with full prevision of future misconceptions of His teaching: untenable; title: 6. The church as an organized body; Christ not anti-institutional; title: The early church; its affluent spiritual life, leading to diverse methods of organization; title: The itinerant supplanted by the local ministry; title: The rise of the mono-episcopate; title: Church administration, the sphere in which the false conception of Christ's authority has been most disastrous; title: How the theory of apostolic succession grew up; title: Exaggerated deference paid to the fathers; title: In what sense the scriptures are authoritative; title: Ecclesiastical polity a branch of applied ethics; title: The truth embodied once for all in the incarnate life; but man's apprehension of it imperfect and growing.