From Reason and Dogma, Or, Footprints of a Soul By Henry Truro Bray 1897
“I have but little faith, Mr. Merton, in the doctrines of Christianity. I have scarcely attended services for years. Since you have been here, I have come pretty regularly; but just as soon as you are gone, I shall fall back again into my old place of indifference. I have a contempt for the average minister. It is shocking to hear their contradictions; insulting to hear their maledictions against those who refuse to believe in their nature-subverting assertions. Who can believe, for instance, that a being in human shape is the infinite God of the universe! I declare that it is absolutely impossible for a reasonable man to believe such absurdity, as the dogma about the deity of Christ."
“I do not believe...that Jesus Christ was God. There have been, and are, men who are relatively very pure. Like a mirror, they seem to reflect the image of what the good man might suppose God to be. Such were Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus Christ, and many others; and it is possible, though by no means certain, that Jesus Christ remains the greatest of all the great. In this sense, and in this sense only, can I believe that Jesus Christ was divine, In one sense all things are divine; for nature in its entirety flows out from God, as light from the sun. Nature itself is an emanation from Deity. Reason can conceive a being in human shape permeated as it were with the Universal Spirit, as a sponge in the ocean is permeated with water; but it can not conceive the ocean as contained in the sponge, nor a man as containing God. If the Universal and Infinite Spirit was not contained in the human body of Christ, then, as the sponge would not contain the sea, so was Christ not God. As permeated with God, he might have been divine; as a sponge permeated with water, would be watery. But as the sponge contained in the ocean, can not be the ocean which contains it; so the finite, limited, human body of Christ, contained in the universe, could not have contained the Universal Being which contained him. As of others, so of Christ; divinity is predicable, but deity is unthinkable, and absurd. It is impossible for an intelligent man to conceive of a place where God is not: it is impossible that God should not fill the whole; impossible that the whole of existence should not be contained in Him; impossible that He should be less than infinite. It is, therefore, impossible that God should be bounded, or outlined, or have any conceivable form; and, therefore, it is absurd to think of the unbounded, formless, infinite Deity as being contained in the bounded, definitely formed body of Christ. And if God was not contained in the body of Christ, then was Christ not God. It is philosophically possible that Christ was full of deity; but that no more makes Christ God, than the fulness of the sponge with water, makes the sponge the ocean. It is possible, therefore, that Christ was in God; but it is impossible that God was in Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment