John H. Finley

BY

CHARLES FOSTER KENT, PH.D., LITT.D.

Jesus of Nazareth was so many-sided that each man and each age have found in him the qualities in which they are most interested. He has with truth been characterized as prophet, poet, philosopher, physician, and saviour of men. In the eyes of his contemporaries he was pre-eminently the teacher of the masses, the healer of the sick, and the friend of sinners. The ascetic Middle Ages saw in him only the man of sorrows, and pictured him as sad and anÆmic. To the Protestant reformers and the Puritans he was the supreme protestant against the sins of mankind. The discerning thinkers of our present social age are beginning to recognize in him the great social psychologist, who not only analyzed the ills of society but also provided for them a potent cure.

The majority of men, however, fail to appreciate Jesus’ social teachings, because they think of him as far removed from the complex social programme presented by our highly developed civilization; but the enlightened historian well knows that between the first century in which Jesus lived and our own there are many startlingly close analogies. In Jesus’ day the old racial and national bonds had been largely destroyed and many ancient traditions and customs had been rudely shattered or else cast aside. Men were sharply divided into classes separated by clashing interests. Industrial slavery held great masses of men in a bondage that was both physical and moral. Herded together in congested districts of the great cities that had suddenly sprung into existence, they lived a life that was in many respects worse than that of the beast. Lax divorce laws and looser marital relations had undermined the integrity of the home. A great wave of social immorality was destroying the physical and spiritual health of the individual and of society.

At the same time mankind was beginning to feel its unity and to work out its problems in universal terms. The yearning for brotherhood and for vital bonds that would bind each man to his fellows was strong. Consciously or unconsciously men everywhere were seeking for a satisfying philosophy of life that would afford them peace and happiness in this life and a definite hope of even greater joy in the realm beyond. They were also longing for a social organization that would give them freedom and an opportunity for each to live his life to the full. Dissatisfaction with the outworn social programmes of the past was expressed on every side. The expectancy of a dawn of a new day was almost universal.

Practically every type of social programme known to us to-day was found in that old Roman world. Rome, in name still a republic, was in reality an imperial monarchy, ruled absolutely by the will of one man. It was a typical representative of the ancient autocratic idea of government. The old Hebrew commonwealth, like the city states of Greece, was only a memory of the past, but it stood for the democratic ideal—the rule of the people, by the people, for the people—in which the ultimate authority was vested in a popular assembly. Subject to the rule of Rome, the later Jewish hierarchical form of government still survived in Jerusalem as a representative of that peculiar type of social organization in which religious and temporal authority are blended. The rule of the rabble, to be instituted by violence and revolution and maintained by force, found its protagonists in those bloody, relentless Bolshevists of the first century, the Zealots. They only waited the leader and the opportunity to fly at the throats of their Roman masters and to make a mad attempt to overthrow all existing forms of government. On the ruins of society they wished to set up a Jewish state that would rule the rest of mankind with a rod of iron.

Down along the rocky banks of the brook Kedron, less than fifteen miles from Jerusalem, lived the Essene brotherhoods. They represented the purest type of communistic socialism. All property was held in common. The results of the labor of each went into the common store. All shared alike their possessions. It was also a nobler communism than we know to-day, for its chief aim was not the division of the products of human enterprise, but the lofty and unselfish ideals of serving and uplifting humanity.

The learned scribes and Pharisees were dreaming of a far different type of world state: one that was to be suddenly and miraculously established. Jerusalem was to be its capital and a Jewish Messiah its head. The faithful martyrs who had died for their religion were to be reincarnated to share its glories. The heathen nations were to be subdued and the rule of Israel’s God was to be recognized throughout the whole earth.

Only a few humble students of the prophets and psalmists were quietly working and hoping for a society in which justice, good-will, and mutual helpfulness were to be the compelling bonds and the will of God the guiding authority. Autocracy and democracy, hierarchy and anarchy, communistic socialism and nationalistic theocracy each found enthusiastic devoted supporters in that vast laboratory of social experimentation in which Jesus lived. Every type of social programme that we know to-day was there represented.

Did he have a social plan, and was it adapted to the needs of the twentieth as well as to those of the first Christian century? The records of Jesus’ work are so fragmentary that they have given to most readers the impression that he was simply an itinerant preacher and teacher without definite plan and method. Paul is ordinarily regarded as the great organizer who gave Christianity its corporate form. A more careful study of the facts, however, reveals a clearly defined aim and a systematic, comprehensive plan underlying all of Jesus’ work.

It is important to remember that for more than three-fourths of his life Jesus was an active business man and, therefore, in close touch with the economic and social life of his age. He was a son of Joseph, the technÔn, that is, the constructor or builder. It is probable that the early death of Joseph left Jesus, the eldest son, in charge of this family firm of builders. The names of four other sons are given. This added responsibility would mean that Jesus was not only a manual laborer himself but was also accustomed to directing the work of others. The conclusion that he was a master builder, who knew the importance of a definite plan and method and of carefully counting the cost, is confirmed by many of his teachings. “Who of you, if he wishes to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the costs to see whether he has money to complete it? Or what king, on going to war with another king, does not first sit down and deliberate whether with ten thousand men he can withstand the one who is coming against him with twenty thousand?”

No one laid greater stress on foresight than did Jesus. At every point he reveals familiarity with system, method, and organization. In this respect he is more like the modern Occidental than the Orientals of his day. His detailed directions to his disciples, when he sent them out two by two to extend the bounds of his work, are models of business efficiency. “Take nothing but a staff,” which makes long journeys on foot comparatively easy. “Take no extra baggage,” which impedes progress. “Do not stop to greet any one on the road,” for the elaborate Oriental greetings often consumed hours of precious time. Commanded to take no food, they were dependent upon that Oriental hospitality which opened wide the door and the heart of those whom the disciples were to reach and to help. “Stop only at the homes where you receive a hearty welcome,” for there only can you do efficient work. “Be content with the entertainment provided, and do not go from house to house,” for in this way will you avoid wasteful distraction. “Go out two by two,” for this is the best unit in doing effective work (as our modern drives have amply demonstrated). Directness, economy, and practical efficiency characterize each of these commands. The principles underlying them are everywhere accepted as standard in the scientific business world of to-day.

Jesus, as portrayed in the earliest records, was not an impractical dreamer nor a wan ascetic, as ordinarily pictured in art and in popular imagination, but a practical man of affairs with definite plans and systematic methods of carrying them into execution.

The evidence that Jesus has a definite social plan is cumulative and convincing. From the beginning of his public appearance his thought and activities were shaped by it. It is the background of that dramatic story of the temptation, which comes straight from the lips of Jesus himself. Though its language is highly figurative, the story throws a flood of light upon Jesus’ purpose. The first temptation suggests the vigor with which he rejected the natural inclination to yield to the instinctive desire for ease and self-indulgence and to use his divine powers for his own happiness rather than that of society. The second and third temptations deal with the methods to be used in carrying out his far-flung social programme. Should he use sensational devices and by some miraculous act, such as throwing himself down from the temple heights, gratify the popular demand for divine credentials? Or should he realize his plan by compromise?

The breadth of his social outlook is clearly disclosed by this third temptation; from the first his plan included “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” The tempting thought came to him that these could easily be brought under his benign sway, if he would but set aside his lofty ideals, if he would but be silent regarding the crimes of the ruling powers, if he would but give up his exalted conception of the rule of God and fulfil the current national expectations that were beating strong in the hearts of the multitudes that thronged about him. As the event proved, they were eager to hail him as the popular Messiah. His temptation to bow down to Satan is vividly illustrated in the dramatic scene where Peter professes his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and then tries to dissuade him from going up into Jerusalem to face shame and probable death. “Away with you, Satan,” is Jesus’ vehement exclamation, “for you are thinking the thoughts of man, not of God!” This striking incident makes it very clear that in the mind of Jesus there was a definite, practical plan, far different from that which obsessed his race and in the end lured them on to their ruin in the tragic years of69 and70. So eager was he to see its early adoption, not only by his race but by all nations, that short cuts and even compromises were to him very real temptations. But his social plan was so clearly defined that the specious doctrine that the end justifies the means could not swerve him. He had no desire to build a social structure that would rise and fall like the thousands that have been reared before and since—what Henry Adams describes as “the perpetual building up of an authority by force and the perpetual appeal to force to overthrow it.”

Jesus’ words to Peter, “On this rock I found my community,” indicated that he was seeking to build a structure that would endure, because it was built on the solid rock of reality and in accordance with the divine purpose. For this reason he keenly appreciated the importance of building on the right foundations and with the right material. The major part of his time and energy was devoted to preparing these materials. Hence his intense interest in the saving and remaking of men and women. Peter, the rock, was typical of the social citizens that he was seeking to develop and out of which he planned to build his new society.

Like Zoroaster, Confucius, and Gautama Buddha, Jesus was not content with presenting merely an abstract social programme. He was eager to incarnate it in flesh and blood, so that men could see it with their eyes and participate in it. With all the enthusiasm and energy of his kinetic personality, he went about laying the foundations for the new society. This aim alone explains why at first he left Galilee, went down into Judea, and allied himself with that courageous herald of the new social order, John the Baptist. When the opposition of the Jewish leaders and the cruel relentlessness of Herod Antipas closed the doors of Jerusalem and Judea to Jesus he returned to Galilee but not to Nazareth. He chose instead, as the scene of his future work, the great Jewish metropolis of Capernaum. Its choice as the centre of his public activity is exceedingly significant. Jesus was by birth and training a peasant. He always felt most at home among the tree-clad hills. City life had none of the attractions for him that it had for Paul, the cosmopolitan. Going to a great city was for Jesus a daring adventure. He went to Capernaum because it was the largest centre of Jewish population in northern Palestine. As the present ruins indicate, it extended for four or five miles along the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, from the point where the Jordan enters the lake on the north to the borders of the plain of Genneseret to the northwest. Across the Jordan was Bethsaida, and a few miles to the north, at the head of a rocky gorge, was Chorazin, another of the many populous suburbs of the greater Capernaum.

In this huge metropolis were crowded “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” whom Jesus came to seek and to save. Jesus went down into the sickness and crime-infected slums of Capernaum to transform them and to make them the homes of happy, co-operating men and women. In that large, typical suburban centre he aimed to establish the fraternal community that was to be the corner-stone of the new social order that he hoped would ultimately include “all the nations of the world.”

He also chose the greater Capernaum because it was the focal centre from which the great international highways radiated in all directions. Past its western suburbs ran the main caravan road from Egypt and Philistia to Damascus and Babylonia. Other roads ran southward to Jericho and Jerusalem. Another great highway ran past it from Arabia northwestward across the plain of Genneseret to Tyre and Sidon, and then on to Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. It is evident that Jesus, not Paul, initiated early Christianity’s broad policy of establishing fraternal communities in the great strategic centres, and from there extending their influence to the smaller cities and towns, and thence to the surrounding country districts. This was clearly a part of his social plan, and the spread of these Christian communities to Jericho, Damascus, CÆsarea, and Antioch within the first decade after his death confirmed its practical wisdom.

In Capernaum Jesus found all types of men, women, and children. Here were presented superlative needs and superlative possibilities. Here every phase of the social problem was in evidence. Here were the rich and poor, learned and ignorant, honest and dishonest, happy and unhappy, reputable citizens and outcasts, the well and the sick. With each of these classes Jesus came into intimate contact. From every rank he drew the followers who became members of the fraternal community that he was seeking to found. A social plan that succeeded in the greater Capernaum had world-wide possibilities. That great metropolis, with its population of perhaps a quarter of a million, was a fitting laboratory for the world’s greatest social psychologist.

Into this great field Jesus threw himself with untiring zeal and enthusiasm. His final words, as he left it to escape the treachery of the Pharisees and of Herod Antipas, indicate clearly that he had hoped to transform this huge city into one great fraternal community: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For had the marvellous deeds that have been performed in you been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes; I tell you it will be better for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. Will you, Capernaum, be exalted to the sky? No, you will go down to destruction. For had the marvellous deeds performed in you been done in Sodom, it would have remained standing until this day.”

To-day the site of the greater Capernaum is an uninhabited ruin. A dread silence has settled down upon it. Yet no student of history can for a moment doubt the implication of Jesus’ pathetic words. Capernaum might to-day and through the intervening centuries and for all time have been “exalted to the sky” had its citizens in the first Christian century responded to their great opportunity. Then and there the problems common to all human society might have been solved. There the whole world might have beheld the glorious vision of a vast city in which sin and sickness and suffering had been banished, and love and loyalty and zeal to serve the common cause bound all together into one great fraternal community. There the students of all nations and ages might have studied in concrete form the principles and laws that lie at the foundation of a perfect society. Within even the limits of the first century the Capernaum plan might have been transplanted and developed in all the great cities of the earth.

From the moment that Jesus entered Capernaum he went to work to gather about him and train a band of helpers that would effect the great transformation. He did not make the mistake of many later social creators of trusting merely to external organization. He began by remaking men and by training individual citizens. He personally selected each of his helpers and first freed their bodies from disease, their minds from error and prejudice, and their hearts from hate and jealousy. In turn he filled their minds with a broad, practical philosophy of life and their hearts with faith and love and the desire to co-operate. After he had trained them by careful teaching and thorough apprenticeship, he sent them forth under his direction to become fishers of men—that is, to attract and train definite men and women, so that they also might be prepared to become worthy citizens in the fraternal community.

The plan was as simple as it was practical. It was in perfect accord with all the laws, natural, social, and psychological, that later scientific study has disclosed. That it met at once with partial success is an established historic fact, for of the five hundred disciples to whom Paul refers in 1Corinthians15:6, probably the great majority, if not all, belonged to the Capernaum community. But it is equally clear that Jesus’ success at Capernaum was not commensurate with his hopes and that his relative failure was due to that which the Infinite has made a basic principle in the universe—the freedom of the human will. The convincing common sense, the radiant sympathy and love, and the attractive social plan of the Master Teacher were not able to conquer the fixed habits and prejudices and hatreds of a majority of the inhabitants of the greater Capernaum. The wooden orthodoxy and the narrow jealousy of the Pharisees led them to block and undermine, rather than support his work. The opposition of these acknowledged religious leaders confused the minds of the people. How electrical and far-reaching would Jesus’ great social experiment have been, had it met with the immediate success he craved, only the imagination can picture. That from Capernaum might have gone forth mighty influences that would have quickly transformed human society as a whole is not beyond the realm of practical possibility, for the world was closely knit together in the first Christian century and nothing is more potent in society than practical demonstration. Even as it was, the social leaven that Jesus placed in greater Capernaum spread with remarkable rapidity, so that before the close of the first Christian century fraternal communities were found not only in Damascus, CÆsarea, and Antioch, but in all the great cities and even the remote provinces of the Roman Empire.

The strength of Jesus’ social plan lay in its simplicity. Society in the first century, as at present, had become hopelessly complex. The individual was but a spoke in the wheel of things. He was so enmeshed in a rigid social organization that he had few opportunities for spontaneous self-expression. Jesus quietly set aside all this complex social machinery and substituted a simple neighborhood organization, so simple that its members were unconscious of any organization at all. The warm, fraternal spirit of the fraternal community, which was simply an extension of the high ideals and traditions of the Jewish home, provided the atmosphere that every man, and especially “the lost,” the millions of detached men, women, and children in the old Roman Empire, were craving. In these Christian communities they found friendship and good-will. If they were needy, here they were sure of help. If they were sad, they found sympathy and comfort. If they stumbled and fell, they were tenderly lifted up, given counsel, and guided in the way of life.

Here the deepest yearnings of their hearts were satisfied, for they were taught to listen to the inward voice. The Master himself set the example of devoting many hours in his crowded ministry to prayer and meditation. Under his guidance they learned to enter the inner chamber of their souls, and there to gain peace, joy, and inspiration from communion with him who reveals himself to all who seek him in sincerity and truth.

The fraternal community enabled each member to gratify his higher desire for self-expression. Jesus also had the marvellous power of arousing these desires. The needs and work of the community gave each member, however great or however humble be his gifts, abundant opportunity to use them. The humblest could enjoy the proud consciousness of serving the community, even if it be only in serving the food at the common meal. Those who possessed the gifts of teaching or preaching or healing had ample opportunity to use them in a social environment that was receptive and appreciative. If the task be outside and attended with danger, those who served were always sure of warm support and sympathy within the community.

Mark tells us that the life of the fraternal community that Jesus founded at Capernaum was characterized by a joyousness that aroused the harsh criticisms of the captious Pharisees. They complained that, unlike John the Baptist, Jesus never taught his followers to fast. The Master acknowledged the charge, and likened their lives together to one continuous wedding-feast. When we recall that a wedding-feast was the one event in the ancient East that brought joy and recreation and amusement to all members of the community, we begin to gain a true conception of the charm of that community life which Jesus developed, and to understand why it appealed to young and old alike. Here recreation and religion were perfectly blended. Here every man found physical, mental, and spiritual life, and that in abundant measure. Had not the Pharisees, as Jesus said, persistently blocked the door, the masses would undoubtedly have sought admission to the fraternal community in great numbers, for we are told that the common people heard him gladly.

Jesus was not content merely to open wide the door to all who were seeking fellowship and inspiration to fuller living. From the first he began to train his disciples that they might go forth on a mission of healing, preaching, and teaching. His social plan included an aggressive, organized missionary propaganda. He not only himself sought the lost, but also trained and taught his followers to do the same. This fact explains not only the tremendous drawing, but also the kinetic power of early Christianity.

To-day every individual is consciously or unconsciously longing for a fraternal community in which he can find sympathy, good-will, and an opportunity to serve his fellow-men. Capital and industry are groping for a common basis of justice and co-operation, where they can forget their present destructive feuds and hatreds and join in conserving their mutual interests and in discharging their obligations to society. All the nations of the earth are eager to perfect an agreement which will eliminate the horrible wastage of hate and war and enable them to dwell together as one great family. The Christian Church is also seeking a way in which it may adequately meet the crying needs of the individual and of society.

Is it not possible that Jesus’ social plan is the true and only way so to adjust the individual to his environment that he will find that which he is seeking? Is it not possible that Jesus’ plan provides the only practical way to eliminate the disastrous hatreds and wastage of modern industry, and to bring capital and labor into effective co-operation? Is it not possible that his idea of the fraternal community is the only satisfactory solution of our international problems? Is it not true that his simple social plan represents the historic commission of the Christian Church, and that the Church’s present divisions and most of its complex machinery are only impedimenta? Is it not possible that a whole-hearted effort to carry through his social plan in this plastic twentieth century might unite not only his nominal followers, but also the many who are not now reckoned as members of his fold? Upon the answers that the leaders of this generation make to these fundamental questions depends the future of our civilization. To the leaders in our Christian institutions of learning we look to-day for affirmative answers.