Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 84:335 (Jul 1927)
Article: The Innermost Thinking Of Jesus, The Norm Of Perfect Truth A Study In The Apologetic Significance Of Christ’s Habitual Thinking
Author: Robert C. Hallock

BSac 84:335 (July 1927) p. 307

The Innermost Thinking Of Jesus, The Norm Of Perfect Truth A Study In The Apologetic Significance Of Christ’s Habitual Thinking

Robert C. Hallock

Thinking is a process for the attainment of truth; truth is in order to goodness. Angels think, unto enlarging truth, growing goodness. Demons think, but hating goodness they attain to no truth. Man thinks, but blunderingly; his processes distorted, his results uncertain. Rodin’s powerful statue, “The Thinker,” is more pitiful than powerful, tragic in its revealing of the human thinker as utterly baffled. A thinking man, and an aeronaut lost in the mists of a starless night, both need especially a fixed norm, an orientator.

Quot homines, tot sententiae; no two think alike, and none perfectly. The choir in our lunatic asylum sing, but no two sing the same tune: if a master singer came amongst them and each would sing with him, then all would sing together, all would sing aright. Might not discordant human thinkers do well to stop their clamant debatings for a little, think in unison with some Master Thinker, and so find themselves thinking in flawless harmony?

Jesus Christ was a man; He thought with all human processes, but without any human source of error. Sinless in life, flawless in mind, divinely illumined, His thinking presents the norm of perfect truth which all men need. Why then do not earth’s baffled thinkers try the obvious plan of all thinking just as Jesus thought, as a way to find truth upon which all can agree?

My critic objects, however, that this simple proposition gets us nowhere, since even now every Christian thinker is satisfied that he thinks in perfect accord with the thoughts of Jesus. This objection is an appeal to agnosticism as to Christ’s thinking. But there are valid criteria of thought. It is possible to distinguish between the

BSac 84:335 (July 1927) p. 308

thinking of Plato and that of Aristotle; between Mill and Hamilton; between Behaviorist psychologist and Purposive psychologist. And though we cannot comprehend the fulness of the thinking of Jesus, we do know that He thought, that His thinking was understandable, and that He intended us to understand what He thought and convert that thinking of His into act. It must be, then, that thoughtful men can determine certainly whether Christ’s thinking and their own coincide. If so, the thinking of Jesus is a valid norm of truth.

Is it illogical then to propose that all Christians, both young and old, both liberal and conservative, accept that norm and think just as Jesus thought? “The revolt of youth against the Church” has a fearsome sound; but we welcome youth’s eager spirit, if only their turning from the Church be to st...