Towards the Truth

22
Even when he declares himself “Lord of the Sabbath” 7 , he does
not claim any extraordinary jurisdiction, for he gives the reason,
because “the Sabbath was made for man, and hot man for the Sabbath”,
according to which argument every son of man is lord of the
Sabbath.
“Jesus did not call himself the Son of God except in an allegorical
way, in which it could be said of all men” 8 . There are texts in which
he declares his union with the Father, but there are also texts in
which he admits his inferiority, which difficulty is cleared out of the
way in Theology, as voiced by my reverend opponent, when he spoke
of Christ as having two wills and two natures, divine and human,
but yet only one person. How is that possible? “If ye have faith,
nothing shall be impossible unto you.” 9 . But where is the authority
who can tell us after so many centuries what was in the mind of Jesus
when he uttered those ambiguous statements, if he uttered them at
all? For, even when Peter confessed his faith in Jesus saying, “Thou
art the Christ”, he charged them that they should tell no man of
him. 10 .
If with all our modern means of telecommunication as telephone,
telegraph, wireless, television, photography, printing, etc., yet we
cannot arrive at the rock-bottom-truth underlying some of the recent
historical facts, which happened in the last war, how can we expect
to find the absolute truth in records based on frail human memory,
communicated orally by many links in a long chain of narrators?
If we do not expect to be told the full truth in our daily papers, but
make suspiciously at least 50% allowance for propaganda—whether
the source be friend or enemy—if we cannot expect the full historical
truth even in our great Sri Lanka Chronicle, the Mahāvaṁsa,
why then claim such a thing for Biblical history, which yet is the
7 Mark: II, 28.
8 Dr. Glover: Conflict of Religions, p. 131.
9 Matth: XVII, 20.
10 Mark: VIII, 30.