Part 4 (1/2)
The great practical effect of religion, then, must be to create a demand for a new and higher world in opposition to the world of nature. For this new life religion must provide an ultimate standard. ”Religion must at all times a.s.sert its right to prove and to winnow, for it is religion--the power which draws upon the deepest source of life--which takes to itself the whole of man, and offers a fixed standard for all his undertakings.” Religion must provide a standard for the whole of life, for it places all human life ”under the eternity.” It is not the function of religion to set up a special province over against the other aspects of his life--it must transform life in its entirety, and affect all the subsidiary aspects.
But religion is not gained, any more than human freedom, once for all time--it must be gained continually afresh, and sought ever anew. Thus the fact of religion becomes a perpetual task, and leads to the highest activity.
Eucken speaks of two types of religion--Universal and Characteristic Religion. The line of division between them is not easy to draw, but the distinction gives an opportunity for emphasising again the essential elements of true religion.
_Universal Religion_ is a more or less vague appreciation of the Spiritual, which results in a diffused, indefinite spiritual life. The personality has appreciated to some extent the opposition between the natural and the spiritual, and has chosen the spiritual. He adopts a new att.i.tude or mood, towards the world in consequence, and that is an att.i.tude of fight against the world of nature. But everything is vague; the individual has not yet appreciated the spiritual world as his own, and feels that he is a stranger in the higher world, rather than an ordinary fully privileged citizen. He has not yet a.s.sociated himself closely enough with the Universal Spirit, everything is superficial, there is hunger and thirst for the higher things in life, but these have not yet been satiated.
Some people never get beyond this vague appreciation of the spiritual until perhaps some great trial or temptation, a long illness or sad bereavement falls to their lot. Then they feel the need for a religion that is more satisfying than the Universal Religion with which they have in the past been content. They want to get nearer to G.o.d; they feel the need of a personal G.o.d who is interested in their trials and troubles.
They are no longer satisfied with the conception of a G.o.d that is far away, they thirst for His presence. This feeling leads the individual to search for a more definite form of religion, in which the G.o.d is regarded as supremely real, and reigns on the throne of love. The personality enters into the greater depths of religion, and it becomes a much more real and powerful influence in his life. He has no longer a mere indefinite conception of a Deity, but he thinks of G.o.d as real and personal. Instead of adopting a changed att.i.tude towards the world of nature, he comes to demand a new world. He is now a denizen of the spiritual world, and there results ”a life of pure inwardness,” which draws its power and inspiration from the infinite resources of the Universal Spiritual Life in which he finds his being. This type of religion Eucken calls _Characteristic Religion_.
The historical religions would seem to represent, to some extent, the attempts of humankind to arrive at a religion of this kind. A further distinction arises between the historical forms of religion, of which one at most, if any, can express the final truth, and the Absolute form of religion, which if not yet conceived, must ultimately express the truth in the matter of religion.
Eucken is never more brilliant than he is in the examination he makes of the historical forms of religion, for the purpose of formulating the Absolute and final form; some account of this must be given in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
RELIGION: HISTORICAL AND ABSOLUTE
In examining the various historical forms of religion, Eucken, as we should expect, is governed by the conclusions he has arrived at concerning the solution of the great problem of life, and especially of the place of religion in life.
A religion which emphasised the need for a break with the world, and of fight and action for spiritual progress, the possibility of a new higher life of freedom and of personality, and the superiority of the spiritual over the material, and which presented G.o.d as the ultimate spiritual life, in which the human personality found its real self, would thus meet with highest favour, while a form of religion that failed to do so would necessarily fail to satisfy the tests that he would apply.
He does not spend time discussing various religions in detail, but deals with them briefly in general, in order to show that the Christian religion is far superior to all other religions, then he makes a critical and very able examination of the Christian position. He considers it necessary to discuss in detail only that form of religion that is undoubtedly the highest.
The historical religions he finds to be of two types--religions of law and religions of redemption. The religions of law portray G.o.d as a being outside the world, and distinct from man, One who rules the world by law, and who decrees that man shall obey certain laws of conduct that He lays down. Failure to obey these laws brings its punishment in the present or in a future life, while implicit obedience brings the highest rewards. To such a G.o.d is often attributed all the weaknesses of the human being, sometimes in a much exaggerated form--hence His reign becomes one of fear to His subjects.
A religion of law a.s.sumes that man is capable of himself of obeying the law, and is responsible for his mode of life; it a.s.sumes that man is capable through his own energy of conquering the world of sin, and of leading the higher life.
Religions of this type possess of course the merit of simplicity, transparency, and finality. The decrees, the punishments and rewards are given with some clearness and are easily understood; there is no appeal and little equivocation. They served a useful purpose in the earlier ages of civilisation, but cannot solve the problem for the complex civilisation and advanced culture of the present age. They place G.o.d too far from man, and attribute to man powers which he cannot of himself possess. The conceptions of the Deity involved in them are too anthropomorphic in character--too much coloured by human frailties.
The religions of law have had to give place to those of a superior type--the religions of redemption. These religions appreciate the difficulty there exists for humankind of itself to transcend the world of sin, and are of two types--one type expressing a merely negative element, the other a negative and positive element.
The typical negative redemptive religion is that of Buddhism. Buddhism teaches us that the world is a sham and an evil; and the duty of man is to appreciate this fact, and to deny the world, but here the matter ends--it ends with world-renunciation and self-renunciation. There is only a negative element in such a religion, no inspiration to live and fight for gaining a higher world. This, of course, cannot provide a satisfactory solution to the problem, for no new life with new values is presented to us. It is a religion devoid of hope, for it does not point to a higher life. ”A wisdom of world-denial, a calm composure of the nature, an entire serenity in the midst of the changing scenes of life, const.i.tute the summit of life.”
Christianity teaches us that the world is full of misery and suffering, but the world in itself is really a perfect work of Divine wisdom and goodness. ”The root of evil is not in the nature of the world, but in moral wrong--in a desertion from G.o.d.” Sin and wickedness arise from the misuse and perversion of things which are not in themselves evil.
Christianity calls for a break from the wickedness of the world. It calls upon man to give up his sin, to deny, or break with, the evil of which he is guilty. But it does not expect man to do this in his own strength alone--G.o.d Himself comes to his rescue. Unlike Buddhism, it does not stay at the denial of the world, but calls upon man to become a citizen of a higher world. This gives a new impetus to the higher life; man finds a great task--he has to build a kingdom of G.o.d upon the earth.
This demands the highest efforts--he must fight to gain the new world, and must keep up the struggle to retain what he has gained. The inferiority of Buddhism as contrasted with Christianity is well described by Eucken in the following words: ”In the former an emanc.i.p.ation from semblance becomes necessary; in the latter an overcoming of evil is the one thing needful. In the former the very basis of the world seems evil; in the latter it is the perversion of this basis which seems evil. In the former, the impulses of life are to be entirely eradicated; in the latter, on the contrary, they are to be enn.o.bled, or rather to be transformed. In the former, no higher world of a positive kind dawns on man, so that life finally reaches a seemingly valid point of rest, whilst upon Christian ground life ever anew ascends beyond itself.”
From such considerations as these, Eucken comes to the conclusion that of the redemptive religions, which are themselves the highest type, Christianity is the highest and n.o.blest form, hence his main criticism is concerned with the Christian religion. This does not mean that he finds neither value nor truth in any other form of religion. His general conclusion with regard to the historical religions is that they ”contain too much that is merely human to be valued as a pure work of G.o.d, and yet too much that is spiritual and divine to be considered as a mere product of man.” He finds in them all some kernel of truth, or at least a pathway to some part of truth, but contends that no religion contains the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ”As certainly,” he says, ”as there is only one sole truth, there can be only one absolute religion, and this religion coincides entirely in no way with any one of the historical religions.”
Eucken's great endeavour in his discussion of the Christian religion is to bring out the distinction between the eternal substance that resides in it and the human additions that have been made to it in different ages, between the elements in Christianity that are essentially divine and those essentially human. Divested of its human colourings and accretions, Christianity presents a basis of Divine and eternal truth, and this regarded in itself, can well claim to be the final and absolute religion.
The conclusion he has come to with regard to the eternal truth as contrasted with the temporary colourings of Christianity, with the essential as contrasted with the inessential, can best be outlined by taking in turn some of the main tenets and characteristics of the Christian faith.
Eucken's conception of the negative movement is very much akin to the Christian idea of _conversion_. The first stage is merely a movement away from the world, but after a time, in the continuous process of negation, the negative movement attains a positive significance; when this stage is arrived at Eucken would apply the term conversion. He would not limit the negative movement to one act or to one point in time; the movement towards a higher world must be maintained--the sustaining of the negative movement being a test of the reality of conversion. The process of conversion is not a process to be pa.s.sively undergone, or to originate from without, but is a movement starting in the depths of one's own being.
As already pointed out, Eucken believes in _redemption_. The past is capable of reinterpretation and transformation, because we can view our past actions in a new light and so change the whole, since the past is not a closed thing, definite in itself, but a part of an incomplete whole. He considers, however, that the Christian doctrine of redemption makes it too much a matter of G.o.d's mercy, instead of placing stress upon the part that man himself must play. The possibility of redemption in his view follows from the presence and movement of the spiritual life in man, not merely from an act of the founder of Christianity, and he avers that while traditional Christianity emphasises the need for redemption from evil, it does not emphasise sufficiently the necessary elevation to the good life that must result.