Jet engines to Jesus Christ, Encyclopedia Americana 1965

Bibliography. Renan, J. Ernst, Life of Jesus (Lon-

don 1863); Seeley, J. B., Ecce Homo (London 1866);

Holtzmann, O., Life of Jesus (London 1904); Sanday,

W., Life of Christ in Recent Research (Oxford 1907);

Schweitzer, A., The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Lon-

don 1910); Scott, E. F., The Ethical

The Meaning of His Life. The once-popular notion that the church's faith in Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God, the Revealer of God and the Redeemer of men, is based either upon the miracle stories, found in all the Gospels, or upon his transcendent claims, set forth in the Gospel of John, is now recognized to be quite in- adequate. The epistles lay no emphasis upon the events of Jesus' earthly life, though many of them contain references to it, and all of them presup- pose it. Paul lays no stress whatever upon either the miracles or the claims of Christ; instead, the basis of Christian faith, for Paul, is invariably the character of Christ and his Resurrection, the one, the manifestation in human life of the self- denying, self-giving love of God's true Servant and Son, who humbled himself and became obedi- ent, even to death-even death upon a cross; the other, the consequence of this act, when God "highly exalted him" and gave him the name (Lord) which is "above every name" (Philippians 2:5-11). The human character of Jesus is by no means lost amid the divine splendor of his glorification. The one who is to judge mankind is the very one who once lived as man upon earth, and died upon the Cross (Romans 8:34), an idea very similar to that in Luke 12:8. As the church made clear when it repudiated Gnosticism (see BIBLE-Canon of the New Testament), the human and historical life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus is the indispensable, inalienable foundation of the specifically Christian faith, namely the faith in God's self-revelation in Christ (compare II Corinthians 5:19). The later theological con- ception of Christ presupposed his perfectly hu- man nature, and at the same time his true deity. The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) defined him as "truly God" and "perfectly man." Still later, the doctrines of Atonement and the Eucharist also took for granted his complete and perfect human- ity. Such modern theories as the "Christ myth" are rejected by all the scientific historians.