From the Catholic Encyclopedia
The surpassing eminence of the character of Jesus has been acknowledged by men of the most varied type:
Kant testifies to His ideal perfection;
Hegel sees in Him the union of the human and the Divine;
the most advanced sceptics do Him homage;
Spinoza speaks of Him as the truest symbol of heavenly wisdom;
the beauty and grandeur of His life overawe Voltaire;
Napoleon I, at St. Helena, felt convinced that "Between him [Jesus] and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison" (Montholon, "Récit de la Captivité de l'Empereur Napoléon").
Rousseau testifies: "If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god."
Strauss acknowledges: "He is the highest object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible".
To Renan "The Christ of the Gospels is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms. His beauty is eternal; his reign will never end."
John Stuart Mill spoke of Jesus as "a man charged with a special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue".
Not that the views of the foregoing witnesses are of any great importance for the theological student of the life of Jesus; but they show at least the impression made on the most different classes of men by the history of Christ.
In His relation to men Jesus manifested certain qualities which were perceived by all, being subject to the light of reason; but other qualities were reserved for those who viewed Him in the light of faith. Both deserve a brief study.
(1) In the Light of Reason
There is no trustworthy tradition concerning the bodily appearance of Jesus, but this is not needed in order to obtain a picture of His character. It is true that at first sight the conduct of Jesus is so many-sided that His character seems to elude all description. Command and sympathy, power and charm, authority and affection, cheerfulness and gravity, are the some of the qualities that make the analysis impossible. The make-up of the Gospels does not facilitate the work. At first they appear to us a bewildering forest of dogmatic statements and moral principles; there is no system, no method, everything is occassional , everything fragmentary. The Gospels are neither a manual of dogma nor a treatise on casuistry, though they are the fountain of both. No wonder then the various investgators have arrived at entirely different conclusion at the study of Jesus. Some call Him a fanatic, others make Him a socialist, others again an anarchist, while many call Him a dreamer, a mystic, an Essene. But in this variety of views there are two main concepts under which the others may be summarized: Some consider Jesus an ascetic, others an aesthete; some emphasize His suffering, others His joyfulness; some identify Him with ecclesiasticism, others with humanism; some recognize in Him the prophetic picture of the Old Testament and the monastic of the New, others see in Him only gladness and poetry. There may be solid ground for both views; but they do not exhaust the character of Jesus. Both are only by-products which really existed in Jesus, but were not primarily intended; they are only enjoyed and suffered in passing, while Jesus strove to attain an end wholly different from either joy or sorrow.
(a) Strength
Considering the life of Jesus in the light of reason, His strength, His poise, and His grace are His most characteristic qualities. His strength shows itself in His manner of life, His decision, His authority. In His rugged, nomadic, homeless life there is no room for weakness or sentimentality. Indecision is rejected by Jesus on several occasions: "No man can serve two masters"; "He that is not with me, is against me"; Seek first the kingdom of God", these are some of the statements expressing Christ's attitude to indecision of will. Of Himself He said: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me"; "I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me." The authority of the Master does not allow its power to be questioned; He calls to men in their boats, in their tax-booths, on their homes, "Follow me", and they look up into His face and obey. St. Matthew testifies, "The multitude...glorified God that gave such power to men"; St. Mark adds, "the kingdom of God comes to power"; St. Luke says, "Thou hast given him power over all flesh"; the Book of the Acts reads, "God anointed him...with power"; St. Paul too is impressed with "the power of our Lord Jesus". In His teaching Jesus does not argue, or prove, or threaten, like the Phrarisees, but He speaks like one having authority. Nowhere is Jesus merely a long-faced ascetic or a joyous comrade, we find Him everywhere to be leader of men, whose principles are built on a rock.
(b) Poise
It may be said that the strength of Christ's character gives rise to another quality which we may call poise. Reason is like the sails of the boat, the will is its rudder, and the feelings are the waves thrown upon either side of the ship as it passes through the waters. The will-power of Jesus is strong enough to keep a perfect equilibrium between His feelings and His reason; His body is the perfect instrument in the performance of His duty; His emotions are wholly subservient to the Will of His Father; it is the call of complying with His higher duties that prevents His austerity from becoming excessive. There is therefore a perfect balance or equilibrium in Jesus between the life of His body, of His mind, and of His emotions. His character is so rounded off that, at first sight, there remains nothing which could make it characteristic. This poise in the character of Jesus produces a simplicity which pervades every one of His actions. As the old Roman roads led straight ahead in spite of mountains and valleys, ascents and declivities, so does the life of Jesus flow quietly onward in accordance with the call of duty, in spite of pleasure or pain, honour or ignominy. Another trait in Jesus which may be considered as flowing from the poise of His character is His unalterable peace, a peace which may be ruffled but cannot be destroyed either by His inward feelings or outward encounters. And these personal qualities in Jesus are reflected in his teaching. He establishes an equilibrium between the rightousness of the Old Testament and the justice of the New, between the love and life of the former and those of the latter. He lops off indeed the Pharisaic conventionalism and externalism, but they were merely degenerated outgrowths; He urges the law of love, but shows that it embraces the whole Law and the Prophets; He promises life, but it consists not so much in our possession as in our capacity to use our possession. Nor can it be urged that the poise of Christ's teaching is destroyed by His three paradoxes of self-reliance, of service, and of idealism. The law of self-sacrifice inculcates that we shall find life by losing it; but the law of biological organisms, of physiological tissues, of intellectual achivements, and of economic processes shows that self-sacrifice is self-realization in the end. The second paradox is that of service: "Whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister: and he that will be first among you, shall be your servant." But in the industrial and artistic world, too, the greatest men are those who have done most service. Thirdly, the idealism of Jesus is expressed in such words as "The life is more than the meat", and "Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." But even our realistic age must grant that the reality of the law is its ideals, and again, that the world of the idealist is impossible only for the weak, while the strong character creates the world after which he strives. The character of Jesus therefore is the embodiment of both strength and poise. It thus verifies the definition given by such an involved writer as Emerson: "Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset...The natural measure of this power is the resistence of circumstances."
(c) Grace
But if there were not a third essential element entering into the character of Jesus, it might not be attractive after all. Even saints are at times bad neighbours; we may like them, but sometimes we like them only at a distance. The character of Christ carries with it the trait of grace, doing away with all harshness and want of amiability. Grace is the unconstrained expression of the self-forgetting and kindly mind. It is a beautiful way of doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, therefore opens all hearts to its possessor. Sympathy is the widst channel through which grace flows, and the abundance of the stream testifies to the reserve of grace. Now Jesus sympathizes with all classes, with the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the happy and the sad; He moves with the same sense of familiarity among all classes of society. For the self-righteous Pharisees He has only the words, "Woe to you, hypocrites"; he disciples, "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Plato and Aristotle are utterly unlike Jesus; they may speak of natural virtue, but we never find children in their arms. Jesus treats the publicans as His friends; He encourages the most tentative beginnings of moral growth. He chooses common fishermen for the corner -stones of His kingdom, and by His kindliness trains them to become the light of the world and the salt of the earth; He bends down to St. Peter whose character was a heap of sand rather than a solid "foundation, but He graciously forms Peter into the rock upon which to build his Church. After two of the Apostles had fallen, Jesus was gracious to both, though He saved only one, while the other destroyed himself. Women in need are not excluded from the general graciousness of Jesus; He receives the homage of the sinful woman, He consolves the sorrowing sisters Martha and Mary, He cures the mother-in -law of St. Peter and restores the health of numerous other women of Galilee, He has words of sympathy for the women of Jerusalem who bewailed His sufferings, He was subject to His mother till He reached man's estate, and when dying on the Cross commanded her to the care of His beloved disciple. The grace of the Master is also evident in the form of His teaching: He lays under contribution the simple phases of nature, the hen with her chickens, the gnat in the cup, the camel in the narrow street, the fig tree and its fruit, the fishermen sorting the catch. He meets with the lightest touch, approaching sometimes the play of humour and sometimes the thrust of irony, the simple doubts of His disciples, the selfish questions of His hearers, and the subtlest snares of his enemies. He feels no need of thrift in His benefits on the few as abundantly as the vastest multitudes. He flings out His parables into the world that those who have ears may hear. There is a prodigality in this manifestation of Christ's grace that can only be symbolized, but not equalled, by the waste of seed in the realm of nature.
(2) In the Light of Faith
In the light of faith the life of Jesus is an uninterrupted series of acts of love for man. It was love that impelled the Son of God to take on human nature, though He did so with the full consent of His Father: "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" (John, iii, 16). For thirty years Jesus shows His love by a life of poverty, labour, and hardship in the fulfillment of the duties of a common trademan. When His public ministry began, He simply spent Himself for the good of His neighbour, "doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil" (Acts, x, 38). He shows a boundless compassion for all the infirmities of the body; He uses His miraculous power to heal the sick, to free the possessed, to resuscitate the dead. The moral weaknesses of man move His heart still more effectively; the woman at Jacob's well, Matthew the publican, Mary Magdalen the public sinner, Zacheus the unjust administrator, are only a few instances of sinners who received encouragement from the lips of Jesus. He is ready with forgiveness for all; the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates His love for the sinner. In His work of teaching He is at the service of the poorest outcast of Galilee as well as of the theological celebrities of Jerusalem. His bitterest enemies are not excluded from the manifestations of His love; even while He is being crucified He prays for their pardon. The Scribes and Pharisees are treated severely, only because they stand in the way of His love. "Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you" (Matt., xi, 28) is the message of His heart to poor suffering humanity. After laying down the rule, "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John, xv, 13), He surpasses as it were His own standard by dying for His enemies. Fulfilling the unconscious prophecy of the godless high-priest, "It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people" (John, xi, 50), He freely meets His sufferings which He could have easily avoided (Matt., xxvi, 53), undergoes the greatest insults and ignominies, passes through the most severe bodily pains, and sheds His blood for men "unto remission of sins" (Matt., xxvi, 28). But the love of Jesus embraced not only the spiritual welfare of men, it extended also to their temporal happiness: "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt., vi, 33).
The surpassing eminence of the character of Jesus has been acknowledged by men of the most varied type:
Kant testifies to His ideal perfection;
Hegel sees in Him the union of the human and the Divine;
the most advanced sceptics do Him homage;
Spinoza speaks of Him as the truest symbol of heavenly wisdom;
the beauty and grandeur of His life overawe Voltaire;
Napoleon I, at St. Helena, felt convinced that "Between him [Jesus] and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison" (Montholon, "Récit de la Captivité de l'Empereur Napoléon").
Rousseau testifies: "If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god."
Strauss acknowledges: "He is the highest object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible".
To Renan "The Christ of the Gospels is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms. His beauty is eternal; his reign will never end."
John Stuart Mill spoke of Jesus as "a man charged with a special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue".
Not that the views of the foregoing witnesses are of any great importance for the theological student of the life of Jesus; but they show at least the impression made on the most different classes of men by the history of Christ.
In His relation to men Jesus manifested certain qualities which were perceived by all, being subject to the light of reason; but other qualities were reserved for those who viewed Him in the light of faith. Both deserve a brief study.
(1) In the Light of Reason
There is no trustworthy tradition concerning the bodily appearance of Jesus, but this is not needed in order to obtain a picture of His character. It is true that at first sight the conduct of Jesus is so many-sided that His character seems to elude all description. Command and sympathy, power and charm, authority and affection, cheerfulness and gravity, are the some of the qualities that make the analysis impossible. The make-up of the Gospels does not facilitate the work. At first they appear to us a bewildering forest of dogmatic statements and moral principles; there is no system, no method, everything is occassional , everything fragmentary. The Gospels are neither a manual of dogma nor a treatise on casuistry, though they are the fountain of both. No wonder then the various investgators have arrived at entirely different conclusion at the study of Jesus. Some call Him a fanatic, others make Him a socialist, others again an anarchist, while many call Him a dreamer, a mystic, an Essene. But in this variety of views there are two main concepts under which the others may be summarized: Some consider Jesus an ascetic, others an aesthete; some emphasize His suffering, others His joyfulness; some identify Him with ecclesiasticism, others with humanism; some recognize in Him the prophetic picture of the Old Testament and the monastic of the New, others see in Him only gladness and poetry. There may be solid ground for both views; but they do not exhaust the character of Jesus. Both are only by-products which really existed in Jesus, but were not primarily intended; they are only enjoyed and suffered in passing, while Jesus strove to attain an end wholly different from either joy or sorrow.
(a) Strength
Considering the life of Jesus in the light of reason, His strength, His poise, and His grace are His most characteristic qualities. His strength shows itself in His manner of life, His decision, His authority. In His rugged, nomadic, homeless life there is no room for weakness or sentimentality. Indecision is rejected by Jesus on several occasions: "No man can serve two masters"; "He that is not with me, is against me"; Seek first the kingdom of God", these are some of the statements expressing Christ's attitude to indecision of will. Of Himself He said: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me"; "I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me." The authority of the Master does not allow its power to be questioned; He calls to men in their boats, in their tax-booths, on their homes, "Follow me", and they look up into His face and obey. St. Matthew testifies, "The multitude...glorified God that gave such power to men"; St. Mark adds, "the kingdom of God comes to power"; St. Luke says, "Thou hast given him power over all flesh"; the Book of the Acts reads, "God anointed him...with power"; St. Paul too is impressed with "the power of our Lord Jesus". In His teaching Jesus does not argue, or prove, or threaten, like the Phrarisees, but He speaks like one having authority. Nowhere is Jesus merely a long-faced ascetic or a joyous comrade, we find Him everywhere to be leader of men, whose principles are built on a rock.
(b) Poise
It may be said that the strength of Christ's character gives rise to another quality which we may call poise. Reason is like the sails of the boat, the will is its rudder, and the feelings are the waves thrown upon either side of the ship as it passes through the waters. The will-power of Jesus is strong enough to keep a perfect equilibrium between His feelings and His reason; His body is the perfect instrument in the performance of His duty; His emotions are wholly subservient to the Will of His Father; it is the call of complying with His higher duties that prevents His austerity from becoming excessive. There is therefore a perfect balance or equilibrium in Jesus between the life of His body, of His mind, and of His emotions. His character is so rounded off that, at first sight, there remains nothing which could make it characteristic. This poise in the character of Jesus produces a simplicity which pervades every one of His actions. As the old Roman roads led straight ahead in spite of mountains and valleys, ascents and declivities, so does the life of Jesus flow quietly onward in accordance with the call of duty, in spite of pleasure or pain, honour or ignominy. Another trait in Jesus which may be considered as flowing from the poise of His character is His unalterable peace, a peace which may be ruffled but cannot be destroyed either by His inward feelings or outward encounters. And these personal qualities in Jesus are reflected in his teaching. He establishes an equilibrium between the rightousness of the Old Testament and the justice of the New, between the love and life of the former and those of the latter. He lops off indeed the Pharisaic conventionalism and externalism, but they were merely degenerated outgrowths; He urges the law of love, but shows that it embraces the whole Law and the Prophets; He promises life, but it consists not so much in our possession as in our capacity to use our possession. Nor can it be urged that the poise of Christ's teaching is destroyed by His three paradoxes of self-reliance, of service, and of idealism. The law of self-sacrifice inculcates that we shall find life by losing it; but the law of biological organisms, of physiological tissues, of intellectual achivements, and of economic processes shows that self-sacrifice is self-realization in the end. The second paradox is that of service: "Whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister: and he that will be first among you, shall be your servant." But in the industrial and artistic world, too, the greatest men are those who have done most service. Thirdly, the idealism of Jesus is expressed in such words as "The life is more than the meat", and "Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." But even our realistic age must grant that the reality of the law is its ideals, and again, that the world of the idealist is impossible only for the weak, while the strong character creates the world after which he strives. The character of Jesus therefore is the embodiment of both strength and poise. It thus verifies the definition given by such an involved writer as Emerson: "Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset...The natural measure of this power is the resistence of circumstances."
(c) Grace
But if there were not a third essential element entering into the character of Jesus, it might not be attractive after all. Even saints are at times bad neighbours; we may like them, but sometimes we like them only at a distance. The character of Christ carries with it the trait of grace, doing away with all harshness and want of amiability. Grace is the unconstrained expression of the self-forgetting and kindly mind. It is a beautiful way of doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, therefore opens all hearts to its possessor. Sympathy is the widst channel through which grace flows, and the abundance of the stream testifies to the reserve of grace. Now Jesus sympathizes with all classes, with the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the happy and the sad; He moves with the same sense of familiarity among all classes of society. For the self-righteous Pharisees He has only the words, "Woe to you, hypocrites"; he disciples, "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Plato and Aristotle are utterly unlike Jesus; they may speak of natural virtue, but we never find children in their arms. Jesus treats the publicans as His friends; He encourages the most tentative beginnings of moral growth. He chooses common fishermen for the corner -stones of His kingdom, and by His kindliness trains them to become the light of the world and the salt of the earth; He bends down to St. Peter whose character was a heap of sand rather than a solid "foundation, but He graciously forms Peter into the rock upon which to build his Church. After two of the Apostles had fallen, Jesus was gracious to both, though He saved only one, while the other destroyed himself. Women in need are not excluded from the general graciousness of Jesus; He receives the homage of the sinful woman, He consolves the sorrowing sisters Martha and Mary, He cures the mother-in -law of St. Peter and restores the health of numerous other women of Galilee, He has words of sympathy for the women of Jerusalem who bewailed His sufferings, He was subject to His mother till He reached man's estate, and when dying on the Cross commanded her to the care of His beloved disciple. The grace of the Master is also evident in the form of His teaching: He lays under contribution the simple phases of nature, the hen with her chickens, the gnat in the cup, the camel in the narrow street, the fig tree and its fruit, the fishermen sorting the catch. He meets with the lightest touch, approaching sometimes the play of humour and sometimes the thrust of irony, the simple doubts of His disciples, the selfish questions of His hearers, and the subtlest snares of his enemies. He feels no need of thrift in His benefits on the few as abundantly as the vastest multitudes. He flings out His parables into the world that those who have ears may hear. There is a prodigality in this manifestation of Christ's grace that can only be symbolized, but not equalled, by the waste of seed in the realm of nature.
(2) In the Light of Faith
In the light of faith the life of Jesus is an uninterrupted series of acts of love for man. It was love that impelled the Son of God to take on human nature, though He did so with the full consent of His Father: "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" (John, iii, 16). For thirty years Jesus shows His love by a life of poverty, labour, and hardship in the fulfillment of the duties of a common trademan. When His public ministry began, He simply spent Himself for the good of His neighbour, "doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil" (Acts, x, 38). He shows a boundless compassion for all the infirmities of the body; He uses His miraculous power to heal the sick, to free the possessed, to resuscitate the dead. The moral weaknesses of man move His heart still more effectively; the woman at Jacob's well, Matthew the publican, Mary Magdalen the public sinner, Zacheus the unjust administrator, are only a few instances of sinners who received encouragement from the lips of Jesus. He is ready with forgiveness for all; the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates His love for the sinner. In His work of teaching He is at the service of the poorest outcast of Galilee as well as of the theological celebrities of Jerusalem. His bitterest enemies are not excluded from the manifestations of His love; even while He is being crucified He prays for their pardon. The Scribes and Pharisees are treated severely, only because they stand in the way of His love. "Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you" (Matt., xi, 28) is the message of His heart to poor suffering humanity. After laying down the rule, "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John, xv, 13), He surpasses as it were His own standard by dying for His enemies. Fulfilling the unconscious prophecy of the godless high-priest, "It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people" (John, xi, 50), He freely meets His sufferings which He could have easily avoided (Matt., xxvi, 53), undergoes the greatest insults and ignominies, passes through the most severe bodily pains, and sheds His blood for men "unto remission of sins" (Matt., xxvi, 28). But the love of Jesus embraced not only the spiritual welfare of men, it extended also to their temporal happiness: "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt., vi, 33).
