Christian
The Melchizedek
teachings entered Europe along many routes, but chiefly they came by way of
Egypt and were embodied in Occidental philosophy after being thoroughly
Hellenized and later Christianized. The ideals of the Western world were
basically Socratic, and its later religious philosophy became that of Jesus as
it was modified and compromised through contact with evolving Occidental
philosophy and religion, all of which culminated in the Christian church.
For a long time in
Europe the Salem missionaries carried on their activities, becoming gradually
absorbed into many of the cults and ritual groups which periodically arose.
Among those who maintained the Salem teachings in the purest form must be mentioned
the Cynics. These preachers of faith and trust in God were still functioning in
Roman Europe in the first century after Christ, being later incorporated into
the newly forming Christian religion.
During the third
century after Christ, Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar both in
appearance and in the character of their ritual. A majority of such places of
worship were underground, and both contained altars whose backgrounds variously
depicted the sufferings of the savior who had brought salvation to a sin-cursed
human race.
In the days of Jesus
three languages prevailed in Palestine: The common people spoke some dialect of
Aramaic; the priests and rabbis spoke Hebrew; the educated classes and the
better strata of Jews in general spoke Greek. The early translation of the
Hebrew scriptures into Greek at Alexandria was responsible in no small measure
for the subsequent predominance of the Greek wing of Jewish culture and
theology. And the writings of the Christian teachers were soon to appear in the
same language. The renaissance of Judaism dates from the Greek translation of
the Hebrew scriptures. This was a vital influence which later determined the
drift of Paul's Christian cult toward the West instead of toward the East.
Many, but not all,
of Philo's inconsistencies resulting from an effort to combine Greek mystical
philosophy and Roman Stoic doctrines with the legalistic theology of the
Hebrews, Paul recognized and wisely eliminated from his pre-Christian basic
theology. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to restore the concept of the
Paradise Trinity, which had long been dormant in Jewish theology. In only one
matter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to transcend the teachings of
this wealthy and educated Jew of Alexandria, and that was the doctrine of the
atonement; Philo taught deliverance from the doctrine of forgiveness only by
the shedding of blood. But Paul's theory of original
sin, the doctrines of hereditary guilt and innate evil and redemption
therefrom, was partially Mithraic in origin, having little in common with
Hebrew theology, Philo's philosophy, or Jesus' teachings. Some phases of Paul's
teachings regarding original sin and the atonement were original with himself.
After
leaving Jerusalem and before Paul became the leading spirit among the gentile Christian
churches, Peter traveled extensively, visiting all the churches from Babylon to
Corinth. He even visited and ministered to many of the churches which had been
raised up by Paul. Although Peter and Paul differed much in temperament and
education, even in theology, they worked together harmoniously for the
upbuilding of the churches during their later years.
Jesus did not attack
the teachings of the Hebrew prophets or the Greek moralists. The Master
recognized the many good things which these great teachers stood for, but he
had come down to earth to teach something additional, "the voluntary
conformity of man's will to God's will." Jesus did not want simply to
produce a religious man, a mortal wholly occupied with religious feelings and
actuated only by spiritual impulses. Could you have had but one look at him,
you would have known that Jesus was a real man of great experience in the
things of this world. The teachings of Jesus in this respect have been grossly
perverted and much misrepresented all down through the centuries of the
Christian era; you have also held perverted ideas about the Master's meekness
and humility. What he aimed at in his life appears to have been a superb
self-respect. He only advised man to humble himself that he might become truly
exalted; what he really aimed at was true humility toward God. He placed great
value upon sincerity--a pure heart. Fidelity was a cardinal virtue in his
estimate of character, while courage was the very heart of his teachings.
"Fear not" was his watchword, and patient endurance his ideal of
strength of character. The teachings of Jesus constitute a religion of valor,
courage, and heroism. And this is just why he chose as his personal
representatives twelve commonplace men, the majority of whom were rugged,
virile, and manly fishermen.
The apostles never
ceased to be shocked by Jesus' willingness to talk with women, women of
questionable character, even immoral women. It was very difficult for Jesus to
teach his apostles that women, even so-called immoral women, have souls which
can choose God as their Father, thereby becoming daughters of God and
candidates for life everlasting. Even nineteen centuries later many show the
same unwillingness to grasp the Master's teachings. Even the Christian religion
has been persistently built up around the fact of the death of Christ instead
of around the truth of his life. The world should be more concerned with his
happy and God-revealing life than with his tragic and sorrowful death.
It was most
astounding in that day, when women were not even allowed on the main floor of
the synagogue (being confined to the women's gallery), to behold them being
recognized as authorized teachers of the new gospel of the kingdom. The charge
which Jesus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teaching and
ministry was the emancipation proclamation which set free all women and for all
time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spiritual inferior. This was a
decided shock to even the twelve apostles. Notwithstanding they had many times
heard the Master say that "in the kingdom of heaven there is neither rich
nor poor, free nor bond, male nor female, all are equally the sons and daughters
of God," they were literally stunned when he proposed formally to
commission these ten women as religious teachers and even to permit their
traveling about with them. The whole country was stirred up by this proceeding,
the enemies of Jesus making great capital out of this move, but everywhere the
women believers in the good news stood stanchly behind their chosen sisters and
voiced no uncertain approval of this tardy acknowledgment of woman's place in
religious work. And this liberation of women, giving them due recognition, was
practiced by the apostles immediately after the Master's departure, albeit they
fell back to the olden customs in subsequent generations. Throughout the early
days of the Christian church women teachers and ministers were called deaconesses
and were accorded general recognition. But Paul, despite the fact that he
conceded all this in theory, never really incorporated it into his own attitude
and personally found it difficult to carry out in practice.
The concept of Jesus
is still alive in the advanced religions of the world. Paul's Christian church
is the socialized and humanized shadow of what Jesus intended the kingdom of
heaven to be--and what it most certainly will yet become. Paul and his
successors partly transferred the issues of eternal life from the individual to
the church. Christ thus became the head of the church rather than the elder
brother of each individual believer in the Father's family of the kingdom. Paul
and his contemporaries applied all of Jesus' spiritual implications regarding
himself and the individual believer to the church as a group of believers; and
in doing this, they struck a deathblow to Jesus' concept of the divine kingdom
in the heart of the individual believer.
It is just because
the gospel of Jesus was so many-sided that within a few centuries students of
the records of his teachings became divided up into so many cults and sects.
This pitiful subdivision of Christian believers results from failure to discern
in the Master's manifold teachings the divine oneness of his matchless life.
But someday the true believers in Jesus will not be thus spiritually divided in
their attitude before unbelievers. Always we may have diversity of intellectual
comprehension and interpretation, even varying degrees of socialization, but
lack of spiritual brotherhood is both inexcusable and reprehensible.
Mistake not! there
is in the teachings of Jesus an eternal nature which will not permit them
forever to remain unfruitful in the hearts of thinking men. The kingdom as
Jesus conceived it has to a large extent failed on earth; for the time being,
an outward church has taken its place; but you should comprehend that this
church is only the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, which will
carry it through this material age and over into a more spiritual dispensation
where the Master's teachings may enjoy a fuller opportunity for development.
Thus does the so-called Christian church become the cocoon in which the kingdom
of Jesus' concept now slumbers. The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still
alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence,
just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding
of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development.
The Christian belief
in the resurrection of Jesus has been based on the fact of the "empty
tomb." It was indeed a fact that the tomb was empty, but this is not the
truth of the resurrection. The tomb was truly empty when the first believers
arrived, and this fact, associated with that of the undoubted resurrection of
the Master, led to the formulation of a belief which was not true: the teaching
that the material and mortal body of Jesus was raised from the grave. Truth
having to do with spiritual realities and eternal values cannot always be built
up by a combination of apparent facts. Although individual facts may be
materially true, it does not follow that the association of a group of facts
must necessarily lead to truthful spiritual conclusions.
Many earnest persons
who would gladly yield loyalty to the Christ of the gospel find it very
difficult enthusiastically to support a church which exhibits so little of the
spirit of his life and teachings, and which they have been erroneously taught
he founded. Jesus did not found the so-called Christian church, but he has, in
every manner consistent with his nature, fostered it as the best existent
exponent of his lifework on earth.
If the Christian
church would only dare to espouse the Master's program, thousands of apparently
indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual
undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this
great adventure.
At the time of the
writing of the New Testament, the authors not only most profoundly believed in
the divinity of the risen Christ, but they also devotedly and sincerely
believed in his immediate return to earth to consummate the heavenly kingdom.
This strong faith in the Lord's immediate return had much to do with the
tendency to omit from the record those references which portrayed the purely
human experiences and attributes of the Master. The whole Christian movement
tended away from the human picture of Jesus of Nazareth toward the exaltation
of the risen Christ, the glorified and soon-returning Lord Jesus Christ.