A confusion has crept into the interpretation of the Gospel story—a confusion in dramatis personae.
A bold analogy may illustrate the contrast. If the biography of Jesus of humanist Christianity can be compared to a "log cabin to White House" story, the biography of classical Christianity can be pictured as its opposite. The biography of the Jesus of the New Testament is a "White House to log cabin" story. It all depends upon the identification of the chief actor. Is the hero a man or is he God?
Let us suppose, by way of parable, that a great king of England, in the days when kingship meant high rule and power, had disappeared from his royal palace for three years. He had not abdicated, but was evidently living somewhere in his kingdom incognito, unrecognized. And then, by way of a climactic scene of discovery, news spread through the kingdom that the king has been living his hidden three years as a serf and a slave in the slums of London, a servant of the meanest and lowliest of his people. Recognized once more as king, he ascends the royal throne.
What would be the effect of such an event? There would be those who would label the story impossible. Kings do not act like that. But for the people of the slums, who had witnessed the event, the story would be incomparable good news. They would shout it from the housetops and spread word of it from mouth to mouth. Groups of believers would appear, banded together to preserve in memory this wondrous story and to give praise and thanks for such a king. A new relationship between king and people, a covenant unheard of before would result: palace doors now open to the humblest citizens as well as to dukes and earls, the king's friends from the slums even receiving precedence! A new dignity devolving upon serf and slave!
Could a slum citizen ever forget that the ruler of the realm once considered him worthy of companionship in his humblest oi homes and once served him? If his king now asked for service in return, and for conduct befitting intimate friendship with royalty, would not the slum citizen's heart and will respond: A voluntary morality based on gratitude would replace the older enforced morality of royal law.
My parable, like most parables and analogies, is sadly incomplete and even faulty. The drama of the Gospel story of the New Testament is far larger in scope than our medieval tale. One objective, however, may have been won—the illustration of the basic contrast between two rival views of the biography of Jesus. Is the Gospel story a drama of a human ascent or one of a divine descent? Is the hero man or God?
The Christian faith of Bible and creed and historical Christianity depends upon identifying the chief actor in the drama as a divine as well as a human being. He must be accepted as both truly king and truly slave. His acts are to be received as the acts of Deity, his words as equal in authority with those of the God of the Old Testament. As in the parable of the king's descent from the palace to the slum, there would be no point to the story unless the king were really king (or son, acting fully in his name), and so the Christian epic stands or falls with acceptance or nonacceptance of a corresponding identification. Apply skepticism to the identification and the whole drama is in ruins.
No reader of the New Testament account of the early Church can fail to see that . . . the biography of Jesus was received as a story of that very God descending from heaven for the love of man. Here is no mere martyr or human hero-story. Here is an action involving a coming down. . . .
Clearly if the drama upon which Christian faith is founded is merely a human hero-story, its result merely an ethical gospel, then . . . the whole Christian story disappears from history, and the Christian faith of the centuries with it. To allude once more to the parable of the great king—if the king of the story had turned out not to have been the king at all but merely a citizen-hero, then the event might have caused a ripple of wonder and constituted an ethical example, but there would have been no change in the relations between a king and his people. The slums would have remained unredeemed slums and the royal palace a forbidden castle.
As, in the parable, no new relationship between slum and palace could have resulted except for those who acknowledged the identity between slave and king, so the faith of Christians depends upon the acceptance of an analogous identity, as though they were one actor in a drama.
The cross symbolizes not merely human brotherly love but also God's love. The earliest Christian creed—and in some sense still the only essential Christian creed—is the little phrase, "Jesus is Lord."
