We want an avat??r, i.e. a 'descent' of God in human
form; indeed, we seem to need several such 'descents,' appropriate to
the changing circumstances of the ages. Did not the author of the
Fourth Gospel recognize this? Certainly his portrait of Jesus is so
widely different from that of the Synoptists that a genuine
reconciliation seems impossible. I would not infer from this that the
Jesus of the Fourth Gospel belonged to a different age from the Jesus
of the Synoptists, but I would venture to say that the Fourth
Evangelist would be easier to defend if he held this theory. The
Johannine Jesus ought to have belonged to a different aeon.
ANOTHER IMAGE OF GOD
Well, then, it is reasonable to turn for guidance and help to the
East. There was living quite lately a human being of such consummate
excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even
to identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead. Let us admit,
such persons say, that Jesus was the very image of God. But he lived
for his own age and his own people; the Jesus of the critics has but
little to say, and no redemptive virtue issues from him to us. But the
'Blessed Perfection,' as Baha'ullah used to be called, lives for our
age, and offers his spiritual feast to men of all peoples. His story,
too, is liable to no diminution at the hands of the critics, simply
because the facts of his life are certain. He has now passed from
sight, but he is still in the ideal world, a true image of God and a
true lover of man, and helps forward the reform of all those manifold
abuses which hinder the firm establishment of the kingdom of God.
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