Author: Albert C. Knudson
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THEOLOGY has its roots in the objective reference of religious experience. If religion had no such reference, if it were purely subjective, there would be no theology. In that case religion would have no intellectual content. But that it does have such a content has been made evident in the preceding chapter. Religion by its very nature refers to a Divine Object, it looks beyond the visible to the invisible, it has transcendental implications. These implications, however, are at first vague and ill-defined. They call for clarification, for systematic exposition, for rational justification. This it is that gives rise to theology.
There are, as we have seen, two main types of religion: the mystical with its leaning toward impersonalism and pessimism, and the prophetic with its stress on personality and hope. Of the latter type, Christianity is the chief representative. As such it stands for a definite theistic world-view. But there is a question as to whether this world-view is exclusively a matter of revelation or whether it is also grounded in reason. If we take the former view, Christian theology has merely the task of systematically expounding the Christian faith; if we take the latter view, it has the additional task of seeking rationally to justify [p. 66] it. On this point there has been a long-standing debate.
There has also in this connection been a question as to whether in addition to faith and reason there is not another more direct and immediate source of religious knowledge. Some have maintained that there is, that the soul is capable of a direct and intuitive apprehension of the Divine. In this way mysticism has been introduced into Christian theology and has played a considerable role in it. Whether it is, however, congenial to the true nature of Christianity, is a question on which there has been and is wide difference of opinion. Many regard it as an exotic, as an alien and disturbing influence.
Then, too, Christianity has brought into theology a new and distinctive problem. Like other religions it is at bottom concerned with the superworld, with the question of its reality, its nature, and its relation to human life. But all these problems in the Christian system come to a focus in the person and work of Christ. In him Christianity claims to have a unique and absolute revelation of God. A new problem, consequently, arises as to how this could be and how it is to be conceived the problem of Christology. The details of this problem will come up for discussion in a later volume, but in a preliminary way some account needs here to be taken of it insofar as it implies the absoluteness of Christianity.
The particular topics, then, to be discussed in the present chapter are the relation of the Christian faith to reason or knowledge, its relation to mysticism, and its claim to be the absolute religion.
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The relation of faith, and reason to each other is one of the most complex problems that has arisen in the history of Christian thought and one with reference to which there has been the widest diversity of opinion. We may distinguish two main tendencies. Some have held that faith and reason are mutually antithetical, and hence have either tried to destroy one in the interest of the other or have held to a “double truth.” Others have maintained that there is a kinship between them, but have interpreted this kinship in different ways, either subordinating one to the other or holding that they in some sense imply or supplement each other. Both of these tendencies have been widely represented in the history of Christian theology.
The first received occasional expression in the early church, as, for instance, by Tertullian, and has perhaps never been without its representatives. But there are two periods, at which it became acute, if not dominant. One was the close of the Middle Ages and the other the past fifty years or so. Professor W. P. Paterson has pointed out that in its attitude toward religious knowledge Christian thought has twice traversed “the cycle of appreciation, exaggeration and depreciation.” [1] The first cycle extended from the Apostolic Age to the Reformation, and the second from the Reformation* to modern times. We to-day represent about the same depreciatory attitude toward religious knowledge that we find at the close of the medieval period.
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The causes of this attitude are various, but we need not here inquire into them in detail. We should, however, distinguish between a vigorous and triumphant faith which opposes itself to knowledge and a weak and halting faith which lives only by renouncing the claim to knowledge. The latter is a sign of spiritual decay and may be regarded as owing its origin to a pathological state of the religious consciousness. The former has its source in religious and practical motives and in a more or less dualistic and agnostic type of philosophy. The chief source is the religious feeling or conviction that reason is a purely human faculty and that the knowledge it acquires is also purely human. It cannot, therefore, be of any positive value in the field of religious belief. For the one source and object of faith is God. He alone redeems us and gives us a saving knowledge of himself. Human reason itself can do nothing toward that end. There is, consequently, a necessary antithesis between faith, on the one hand, and reason or knowledge, on the other, since the former is divinely imparted to us, while the latter is a human endowment or attainment.
This dualistic view has often been strengthened by practical exigencies. The church has been under the necessity of defending itself against the encroachment of heresy, and in so doing has not infrequently found it more convenient and effective to appeal to the authority of its own faith than to the common reason. Reason has been declared to be incompetent to deal with religious beliefs, and to be, when so used, an inevitable source of error. The dualism of faith [p. 69] and reason has thus served the purposes of ecclesiastical authoritarianism and has to some degree been the result of it. It has also naturally been linked up with a more or less agnostic tendency in philosophy. Indeed, philosophical agnosticism may be said to be the logical correlate of the antithesis of faith and reason. If faith is the sole source and ground of religious conviction, it follows necessarily that reason is metaphysically incompetent.
In the long discussion connected with this dualistic view there has been much unclearness and confusion of thought with reference to the meaning of “faith,” “reason,” and “knowledge.” “Faith” has generally been interpreted as implying an objective and authoritative revelation. But the content of revelation and the nature of its authority have been very differently conceived. There has also been wide difference of opinion as to the nature of faith, whether it should be regarded as primarily volitional or intellectual and whether it should be viewved as exclusively the work of the Divine Spirit or as at least partly human. Then, too, there has been no agreement as to the exact nature and limits either of reason or knowledge. A certain antithesis to “faith” has been affirmed, but the line of demarcation between reason or knowledge, on the one hand, and faith, on the other, has never been defined in such a way as to command general assent. Schleiermacher and Kant, no doubt, made important contributions to the problem, so that there is some warrant for holding that they mark a new era in the history of Apologetics. [2] But the history of thought [p. 70] since their day offers little justification for the view that they solved the problem.
Both Schleiermacher and Kant rejected the older theistic proofs, and the former sought to build up a theology based exclusively on the Christian consciousness. In so doing he fell in line with those theologians who in the past had opposed faith to reason. He disagreed with them in their depreciation of reason and in their authoritarian conception of revelation, but he agreed with them in asserting the independence of the Christian faith and in limiting theology to a systematic exposition of it. The “rational” justification of Christianity he regarded both as unnecessary and as impossible, at least in the older apologetic sense of the term. And this has perhaps been the prevailing view in Protestant theology since his time. It was adopted by Albrecht Ritschl and his followers, and to-day Karl Barth in a quite different manner and spirit is advocating it.
With the claim to independence on the part of faith no fault need be found. Religion does not and could not live from the crumbs that fall from the table of philosophy or ethics. It stands in its own right. But from this it does not follow that faith and reason are irreconcilable or that they are entirely disparate activities so that faith can receive no support from reason. Whatever may be said of the value of the theistic arguments, faith cannot completely divorce itself from reason. It is reason that makes faith articulate, it is reason that systematizes faith, it is reason that helps ward off heresy, it is reason that commends faith to the unbelieving world. Without reason faith would [p. 71] be an inchoate emotion or an erratic bowlder in the life of man. It is reason that weaves faith into the warp and woof of our common experience. No doubt it may also serve the interests of unbelief or be so construed as to lead to a state of suspense with reference to the ultimate objects of faith. But this negative relation to religion does not inhere in the nature of reason as such. There is nothing in reason that necessarily puts it in antagonism to faith; one is not purely human and the other purely divine. Nor is there any valid ground for holding that reason may be used to systematize the intellectual content of faith, but not used to establish its truth. The process of systematizing calls for a certain amount of rational evaluation just as truly as a formal defense does. Between the systematic exposition and rational justification of religion there is no sharp line of demarcation . The latter is a natural supplement to the first. Vie conclude, then, that the dualistic view of faith and reason had its origin in a mistaken supernaturalism and cannot be consistently carried through. [3]
The currency which this type of thought at present has and which it had toward the close of the medieval period must be regarded as the outcome of a transient mood. It does not express the settled conviction of the church. Theology cannot be permanently based upon such a dualism. The normal and representative view is that which holds to the kinship of faith and [p. 72] reason. This is the view that has prevailed during most of the church’s history.
The kinship of faith and reason, however, has been differently conceived. We may perhaps distinguish three historic views: the Augustinian or Platonic, the Thomistic or Aristotelian, and the Hegelian. All of these assumed a fundamental accord between faith and reason, but the actual human relationship of the two to each other they conceived differently.
The Augustinian view recognized two sources of knowledge, Authority and Reason, and subordinated the latter to the former. “Nothing,” said Augustine, “is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind.” But he did not oppose the human and the divine sources of knowledge sharply to each other. He regarded every act of knowing as due in part at least to divine illumination. The human mind, he said, cannot be its own light. In knowing it is bathed in an atmosphere of incorporeal or uncreated light. There is, he held, a light of eternal reason by which all men are illuminated and to which all knowledge is in some measure due. Human reason does not, therefore, even in its present estate, stand directly opposed to divine illumination; it rather presupposes it. And so it is also with its relation to faith. “Understand,” said Augustine, “that thou mayest believe, believe that thou mayest understand.” [4] “For we could not believe at all unless we were rational beings.” [5] Believing implies an understanding [p. 73] of what is believed; and understanding in turn implies belief. The latter point was especially emphasized by Anselm. “I do not seek,” he said, “to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe that unless I believed, I should not understand.” [6] Belief, in other words, while not produced by the understanding, is not a blind act. It both leads to knowledge, and in its inception, as Augustine pointed out, is guided by it. Faith thus implies reason and reason faith. One cannot exist without the other.
This, however, does not mean that faith has no mysteries or that its mysteries are all open to reason. Human knowledge has its limits. But these limits are not arbitrarily fixed by the nature either of faith or reason. Faith is not a barrier, but a challenge to reason. It invites rational investigation, reflection, justification. It does not spurn reason, but seeks cooperation with it. And so we find Anselm developing his famous ontological argument for the existence of God and his almost equally famous theory of the atonement. We likewise find Augustine seeking to throw light upon the Trinity and other mysteries of the Christian faith. Such intellectual ventures as these could not be entirely successful, nor were they intended to be. But they did establish a liaison between faith and reason, and thus prepared the way for a rational theology --a theology that sought not only to expound, but also to justify the intellectual content of religion.
The Thomistic conception of faith and reason, [p. 74] which superseded the Augustinian in the thirteenth century, was based upon the Aristotelian philosophy. Platonism was aprioristic and mystical in its theory of knowledge. This gave to the human intellect an indefinite reach and led to a mingling of natural and supernatural knowledge which prevented a sharp line of demarcation between them. It also tended to release human thought from its bondage to sense and to encompass it with a divine light that afforded it direct glimpses of the superworld. Aristotelianism, on the other hand, was empiricistic and naturalistic. It restricted knowledge to sense experience and to what could be legitimately extracted from it. There was, consequently, no place left for the ontological argument or for direct divine illumination. The existence of God might be inferred from the existence of the world, but no direct insight into the necessity or actuality of his being was possible. The inference to his existence was by its very nature indirect and was effected solely by the natural reason, leading only to such a conception of his nature as was warranted by sense experience. Whatever lay beyond this conception in the^ Christian view of God was due to revelation and was beyond the power of the human mind to substantiate. It was wholly mysterious in character and could be accepted only on authority.
The abstract Augustinian antithesis between authority and reason was thus translated into a strict epistemological dualism, and a sharp distinction drawn for the first time between natural and revealed theology. The latter was based upon the authority of revelation and had to do with the distinctive doctrines [p. 75] of the Christian faith such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. These doctrines were regarded as transcending human reason. No proof of them was possible. All that the theologian could do was to expound them and to show that they are not self-contradictory or contrary to reason. For however much these doctrines might transcend human reason, they were not regarded as irrational. They, rather, represented a profounder type of reason which the human mind could not fathom, but between which and the human reason there was no essential contradiction. Their validity, however, depended not upon their inherent rationality, but upon the divine authority from which they proceeded. It was revelation, not reason, that guaranteed their truth.
Natural theology, on the other hand, was concerned with such doctrines as are accessible to the unaided reason, doctrines that are not peculiar to Christianity, as, for instance, the belief in God and immortality. These doctrines might not be capable of absolute demonstration, but rational grounds could be offered in support of them which put them on the same level as other conclusions reached by philosophy and science, and in this general sense they might be said to be demonstrable.
Religious truth, or theology, was thus divided into two parts, one based on natural reason and the other on divine revelation. Strictly speaking only the latter called for faith. For faith as distinguished from reason could exist only where the light of reason failed. But here a double difficulty arose. It was by no means certain just where the line between faith [p. 76] and reason should be drawn; and it was also not clear to which the greater degree of certainty should be attached. From one point of view faith seemed less certain than reason, for reason yields knowledge, and knowledge by its very nature carries with it a greater degree of certitude than faith. But from another point of view faith seemed more certain than reason, for it is based upon divine authority and in comparison with it human reason is weak and errant. Then, too, the content of faith was not clearly fixed. The truth revealed in Scripture manifestly included not only the distinctive doctrines of Christianity, but also such general religious doctrines as those relative to God and immortality for which there was supposed to be a basis in reason. The provinces of faith and reason thus seemed to overlap each other, and it would also seem that there were two different kinds of faith, one supported by reason and the other transcending it. The tendency, however, was to emphasize the latter and yet to insist that there could be no fundamental conflict between faith and reason. Such was the view of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, [7] and such is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. It was also the view that prevailed in orthodox Protestant circles down to a century or so ago.
Augustinianism and Thomism both subordinated reason to faith. They differed chiefly in the fact that Thomism distinguished more sharply than Augustinianism [p. 77] between natural and supernatural knowledge and based theology more exclusively upon the latter. The effort was made, but with rather indifferent success, as we have seen, to draw a hard-and-fast line between the truths of reason and those of revelation, while it was still maintained that the two were in fundamental accord with each Bother. In the case of any apparent conflict between them reason must yield to revelation. That seemed the logical procedure, and it was furthermore the line of action naturally required by the recognized authority of the church. But with the modern decline of ecclesiastical authority there was a tendency for reason not only to assert its independence, but to assume the hegemony. Instead of allowing itself to be subordinated to faith it now subordinated faith to itself, and that, too, with the conviction that rightly understood there is a fundamental harmony between them. In bringing about this harmony there are two methods possible. One may cut down faith to fit reason, or one may enlarge reason so as to make it fit faith. The first method was adopted by the “deistic” movement and the result was such a cramping of faith that eventually “deism” became practically synonymous with atheism. The other method was adopted by Hegel, who found in reason a basis not only for faith in the transcendent reality of spirit, but for faith in the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. By developing this position and sustaining it with all the resources of genius he rendered for a time a very considerable service to the historic Christian faith. He gave to it an intellectual standing that it seemed to have permanently [p. 78] lost under the disintegrating influence of eighteenth-century rationalism. But in doing so he transformed its true nature by subordinating it to a more or less alien “reason” and by giving to it a new symbolical interpretation.
To the symbolic theory of religious belief as such no objection need be raised. Symbolic truth is no doubt better than no truth at all. But when the truth supposed to be symbolized turns out to be radically different from that which the symbol originally denoted, there is a question whether the symbolic interpretation renders a permanent service to the cause either of faith or reason. And this question may legitimately be raised with reference to the Hegelian interpretation of religion and particularly of Christianity. Its distinction between truth in the form of Vorstellung (imaginative representation) and truth in the form of Begriff (concept) is suggestive and describes fairly well the difference between religion or theology, on the one hand, and much philosophy, on the other. But when it is maintained that the Vorstellung of theistic religious faith has only a temporary validity, that it is merely preliminary in character and that it is destined eventually to give way to the Begriff of a pantheistic absolute idealism, [8] it is evident that we have to do with a viewpoint that involves a fundamental reconstruction of the Christian faith. Faith now becomes a pale reflection or vague anticipation of reason and derives its entire justification [p. 79] from that relationship. In and of itself as a unique body of belief it has no ultimate validity. Its truth is to be found not in itself, but in the idealistic and pantheistic philosophy which it is supposed to adumbrate. In other words the truth of faith is reason.
This Hegelian view of the relation of faith and reason to each other is manifestly unsatisfactory from the standpoint of faith; and the same may be said of the Platonic and Aristotelian views from the standpoint of reason. Hegelianism denies to faith its uniqueness and absoluteness and intellectualizes it too much. Augustinian Platonism and scholastic Aristotelianism, on the other hand, did not allow reason to come to its full rights. They subordinated it to faith in the case of a conflict between the two, and failed to define satisfactorily the nature of each. They linked up faith too closely with ecclesiastical authority and, at the same time, gave to it too intellectualistic a cast. Augustinianism, furthermore, did not distinguish clearly between human reason and divine illumination, while Thomism distinguished too sharply between them and tried to draw a fixed dividing line between the realm of reason and that of faith, assigning the first to natural theology and the latter to revealed theology. This Thomistic solution of the problem of faith and reason has had great historical influence and is not yet obsolete, but its persistence is due to its practical utility in conserving the idea of an objective religious authority rather than to its own adequacy in dealing with the complex data involved in the problem.
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Modern thought has made three important contributions toward a more satisfactory determination of the relation of faith and reason to each other. It has released faith from its traditional connection with an external and more or less coercive authority, and has given to it as well as to reason an autonomous position in human life. It has, in the next place, interpreted faith in a more voluntaristic sense than heretofore and has shown that in this respect it is a permanent presupposition of reason rather than a temporary adumbration of it or a transitory stage in its development. In the third place, it has defined reason more precisely and shown from what points of view it is and from what points of view it is not an ally of faith.
It was Schleiermacher who first clearly and emphatically grounded religious faith in the human soul itself and gave to it a place co-ordinate with if not superordinate to the intellect and the moral nature. Faith, as thus understood, did not, it is true, necessarily include the full Christian faith. But insofar as the latter represents religion in its highest and purest form, it is entitled in a pre-eminent degree to whatever logical cogency or apologetic value attaches to Schleiermacher’s contention that autonomous validity is to be ascribed to man’s religious nature. Such a grounding of faith dispenses with the idea of an external and absolute authority. To some minds this may seem a loss. But whatever loss is sustained at that point is more than recouped by the new independence that releases it from, bondage alike to tradition and to reason and enables it to stand in its own [p. 81] right. We have here a kind of naturalistic justification of faith taking the place of the older supernaturalistic and authoritarian apologetic.
The second contribution made by modern thought to the solution of our problem takes us a step further. It not only asserts that religious faith is co-ordinate with reason in the sense that it is autonomously valid, but shows us why it may properly be regarded as such. The older religious thought took little account of the presuppositions of knowledge. Our ordinary knowledge, mediated through sense and intellect, was rather taken for granted as self-evident and as manifestly valid, at least within certain prescribed limits. That such knowledge involves practical interests and ideals and is conditioned by them, received scant attention. Certainly, no special significance was attached to the fact. But since the enunciation of the Kantian doctrine of the primacy of the practical reason increasing stress has been placed upon the volitional and vital factors that condition our common knowledge or supposed knowledge. This emphasis has been carried to an irrational extreme by pragmatists and instrumentalists, but the basal fact, that knowledge is rooted in our practical nature, in our interests and ideals, is not discredited thereby. Take, for instance, our natural sciences. They assume that the world is intelligible and that we are able to understand it. Neither of these assumptions can be demonstrated. They rest upon an instinctive faith in reason and in the validity of our cognitive ideal. If it were necessary to demonstrate their truth in advance, the natural sciences would [p. 82] never get under way. They owe their entire development to faith. Indeed, without faith there could be no knowledge. In a profounder and more universal sense than either Augustine or Anselm realized, we must believe in order that we may know.
The faith that underlies scientific knowledge is not, it is true, religious faith. But from the epistemological point of view the two kinds of faith are in principle alike, since both consist in assuming the objective reality of ideals whose existence cannot be demonstrated. The ideal in one case is cognitive and in the other ethical. But both are assumed to be real. And the fact that this assumptive element underlies both science and religion, constituting, as it were, their common denominator, is a fact of profound significance. For if the assumption of the reality of an ideal is legitimate and valid in one case, there is no good reason why it should not be in the other. Logically faith in its religious form has as sound a basis as has faith in its scientific form. And since the latter is commonly accepted, no valid objection can be raised in principle to the former. There is, therefore, no antithesis between faith and reason. Bather does reason presuppose faith; it will never supersede it.
This, however, is true of reason and faith only in their more general aspects. It is possible to construe reason in such a way as to make it antithetical in content, if not in principle, to religious faith. And here it is that modern thought has made its third contribution to our problem. It has defined reason more precisely and thus clarified its relation to religious belief. [p. 83] But this does not mean that any one definition of reason or of knowledge has been agreed upon. There are three such definitions and each implies a different attitude toward the Christian faith. One may be called the necessitarian or deterministic, another the positivistic or agnostic, and the third the teleological. None of these is modern in the sense that it was unknown to earlier times, but all three have in modern thought been more clearly formulated and more sharply differentiated from each other.
The deterministic conception of reason received its most thoroughgoing expression from Spinoza and gained wide currency through the influence of a materialistic interpretation of science. Such a view is manifestly out of harmony with the Christian faith and, when logically carried out, excludes it altogether. The positivistic or agnostic conception of knowledge owes its present vogue largely to Hume, Kant, and the empirical sciences in general. Theoretically, this view leaves the door open to faith, and some theologians, as we have seen, have sought to establish an alliance between the two. But no such alliance can endure. The prevailing tone and temper of positivism, is naturalistic, and for Christian theology to be linked up with it is for it to be unequally yoked with unbelief. A reason that denies all knowledge of the superworld will end by suppressing faith also.
We are then left with the teleological conception of reason as the only one consistent with the Christian faith. And it may be added that it is also the only one that is consistent with itself. A positivistic reason [p. 84] that denies the categories of substance and cause never succeeds in dispensing with them. In one way or another it surreptitiously introduces them into its own operations and thus negates its own fundamental principle. On the other hand, a reason that sees in the world an absolutely necessitated system, either logical or mechanical, destroys itself. For only a free intelligence can distinguish between truth and error and thus make knowledge possible. If reason, then, is to escape self-contradiction and self-destruction, it must rise above the positivistic and also the necessitarian plane and be conceived of as free and purposive. Such a reason will not only be consistent with itself, but it will give us a view of the universe that is consistent with religious belief. It will find purpose not only in itself but in the world, it will show us that personality is the only satisfactory key to ultimate reality, and will thus furnish a sound basis for Christian faith.
Reason, so conceived, stands in its own right, but it is nevertheless an ally of faith, and faith in its turn is an ally of reason. The two belong together. There is no reason without a measure of faith, and there is no self-consistent reason without more or less of religious faith. On the other hand, there is no faith without some reason, and there certainly is no self-consistent faith without a very considerable admixture of reason. Knowledge is not a biarchy in which reason and faith hold separate rule over independent provinces. It is a monarchy governed by rational faith or by believing reason. In some instances or in certain respects the rational factor may [p. 85] be dominant and in others the believing factor. Bat the two cannot be completely separated. Only an illicit abstraction can divorce them. No sharp line can, therefore, be drawn between the theology of reason and that of revelation. One involves the other, and no theology is complete without both. “Revealed theology” is grounded in “natural theology,” and natural theology derives its dynamic and living content from revealed theology. It is, then, a mistake to try to limit theology to an exposition of the Christian faith. An adequate theology must seek also a rational justification of it. But “rational” in this connection must be understood in the broader teleological sense of “reasonable.” A purely logistic or empiricistic rationalism can furnish no basis for religious faith. Such a basis can be found only in a rationalism that recognizes purpose as a fundamental category of thought.
In addition to reason there is another source of religious knowledge to which both Christian and non-Christian have appealed. Reference has already been made to it. It is mystical experience, the direct apprehension of the Divine through a supersensuous and superrational act OP state of the soul.
The term “superrational,” as employed in this connection, is not altogether free from ambiguity. It may denote superiority merely to the formal or discursive reason or it may denote superiority to all reason. The latter view has been held by many mystics and those among the most influential. They have [p. 86] ascribed to man a faculty altogether distinct from reason by means of which, he may enter into union with God and acquire an “experimental perception” of his presence. This faculty has been variously designated as the spark of the soul, its essence, its center, its apex, its ground, its virginal portion, as the fund of the spirit, the summit of the mind, and the synteresis. But whatever name may be applied to it, it is that capacity, which the soul is supposed to have, of directly contemplating and embracing the Infinite. This “contemplation” has a specific character. In its highest and purest form it manifests itself as ecstasy, a state of mind in which the subject becomes one with its Divine Object. “The eye with which I see God,” said Meister Eckhart, “is the same eye with which he sees me.” [9] In order to know him, “I must become completely he and he I; so that this he and this I become and are one I.” [10] Such a unitive experience as this may with Plotinus rightly be said to be “reason no longer, but more than reason, and before reason, and after reason.” [11]
By excluding all differentiation and otherness ecstatic contemplation transcends not only discursive thought, but articulate thought itself and becomes in its very nature ineffable. Much may be said with reference to it. It may be analyzed and systematized into a kind of science, as mystics since the time of Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor have sought to do; and from this point of view one might with [p. 87] Harnack define mysticism as “rationalism applied to a sphere above reason,” and say with Goethe that it is “the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings”; but in its essence the contemplative or mystical experience is something apart from reason, unique and independent, if not antithetical to it. Such is the sense in which its superrationality is perhaps most commonly understood.
There are, however, those who seek to bring reason and the mystical experience into closer relation to each other and who hold that the latter is to be regarded as superrational only in the sense that it transcends the discursive reason. If reason be interpreted as “the logic of the whole personality,” -as it ought to be, the mystic, we are told, would have no interest in appealing to a faculty above reason. He might regard his own unique experience as “the very pinnacle of rationality.” [12] Instead, then, of accepting Harnack’s definition of mysticism, as above given, we might with Dean Inge invert it, and say that mysticism is “reason applied to a sphere above rationalism.” [13] This interpretation of the relation of the mystical and the rational to each other is entirely tenable, provided we understand by the “mystical” the more moderate form of that type of experience.
But what we are here concerned with is not the relation of mysticism to reason, but its relation to faith. The problem of faith and mysticism has never been so acute as that of faith and reason. Mystical experience has been less of a disturbing factor in Christian [p. 88] thought than the natural reason. There has been a “mystical” as well as a “natural” or rationalistic theology, but it has had a much more limited influence, and has affected “dogmatic” theology much less seriously. The principle at issue, however, in the two cases has been substantially the same. Mystical experience and reason both belong to the “natural” man in the sense that they both have had a recognized place in the so-called “natural” religions, and hence the question has arisen as to the relation which they sustain or ought to sustain to the “revealed” Christian faith. This question, so far as it has to do with reason, we have considered at length. It is now our task to deal with it insofar as it is concerned with mysticism. In the preceding chapter we distinguished the mystical type of piety as embodied in various non-Christian religions from the prophetic type embodied in Christianity, and pointed out certain fundamental differences between them. But here we have to do with a modified form of mysticism, with mysticism within the Christian Church, and the problem of its relation to faith is quite different from the general problem of the relation of the mystical and prophetic types of piety to each other.
As the attempt has been made to establish an antithesis between faith and reason, so a similar attempt has been made in the case of faith and mysticism. But the approach to the problem has been somewhat different. It has, for instance, been argued by Ritschl and some of his followers that mysticism is the characteristic form of Catholic piety, and that it has no place in the true Christian faith as exemplified in [p. 89] Protestantism. Again, it is maintained by Emil Brunner and other representatives of the so-called “crisis” or “dialectic” theology that there is a Protestant as well as a Catholic mysticism, and that the former as well as the latter stands opposed to the true Pauline and Reformation “faith.” With these two conceptions of mysticism and its relation to faith we shall deal briefly.
The Ritschlian view has been expressed most vigorously by Wilhelm Herrmann. [14] He understands by mysticism the Neoplatonic type of piety, “a piety which feels that which is historical in positive religions to be burdensome and so rejects it.” This piety is purely subjective, based on feeling, and leads to a vague and empty conception of Deity: God is the mere negation of the world. Such a religious experience as this, we are told, belongs “outside of Christianity.” There it will everywhere arise “as the very flower of the religious development.” But the Christian must declare it to be a “delusion.” For what makes us Christians is this, that “in the person of Jesus we have struck upon a fact that is incomparably richer in content than any feelings that arise within ourselves, and that makes us so certain of God that our conviction of being in communion with him is able to justify itself before the bar of reason and of conscience.” [15] The trouble with mysticism, according to Herrmann, is its subjectivity and its consequent emptiness and lack of certainty. It fails to give an adequate place to Christ either in our religious experience [p. 90] or in our conception of God. It no doubt may look upon him as the way to God, but it thinks of communion with God as possible beyond him and without him. And this Herrmann regards as “unchristian.” The Christian does not “merely come through Christ to God,” he finds “in God nothing but Christ.” . In the personal life of Jesus Christ he has a positive vision of God, and this vision is final and absolute; it dominates his entire religious experience. This is the distinctive position of Protestantism, and hence it has no place for mysticism with its Neoplatonic presuppositions. “It will never be possible,” says Harnack, “to make mysticism Protestant without flying in the face of history and Catholicism. . . . A mystic who does not become a Catholic is a dilettante.” [16]
By way of response to this Ritschlian teaching it may be urged that mysticism, is not to be identified with its Neoplatonic form. The essential thing in it is the “direct and immediate consciousness of the Divine Presence,” and this is something quite independent of the particular type of philosophy one holds. It is an elementary religious fact, “common to all religion.” There are in religion three fundamental elements: the historical or institutional, the intellectual or speculative, and the mystical or experimental. [17] One of these may be emphasized more than the other and in this way different types of religion may arise. But each has its place in every concrete or positive religion, and the differentia of mysticism is to be [p. 91] found not in any novel element that it contains, but in the special stress that it places upon the subjective or experiential factor in religion. This factor may undergo a unique development under the fostering influence of some particular philosophy or theology such as the Neoplatonic, but what constitutes mysticism is not this unique development, but the common religious experience upon which it is based. Wherever we have the sense of direct communion with God, there we have a mystical experience. Mysticism is not, then, “a particular species of “religion,” as Herrmann insists, but, rather, one aspect of universal religion or a special emphasis within it. And from this point of view Herrmann was himself a mystic. He felt himself “inwardly grasped of God” and insisted that he differed from the Neoplatonic mystic solely in the way in which he became aware that God was touching him. 18 The divine touch, however, as he experienced it, he refused to call “mystical”; but the difference between him and others at this point was hardly more than verbal.
More important was his onesided stress on the ethical element in Christianity. No doubt this was the major emphasis in the teaching of Jesus and the prophets. They appealed to the absoluteness of the Moral Law, to the categorical imperative, as the means of awakening within men the sense of the Eternal. But in addition to Goodness there are other ideals that reveal the Divine to us, the ideals of Beauty and Truth. And in any comprehensive religion these too must receive recognition. There is a [p. 92] danger, it is true, that under the influence of the aesthetic and the intellectual ideal religion may degenerate into a vague sentimentalism or a lifeless dogmatism; and for that reason there will always be need of the ethical or prophetic emphasis in religion. But this emphasis may become one-sided, and in that case religion may degenerate into a dry and shallow moralism. We need a religion for the whole life; and this means that Truth and Beauty as well as Goodness must be regarded as avenues of approach to the Eternal, and it also means that the mystic sense will be associated with every revelation of the ideal. The Ritschlian conception of “faith” is too narrow, too exclusively ethical.
Again, Ritschl and Herrmann, by way of reaction against the subjectivity of mysticism, sought to establish an impossible historical objectivity. They pointed to the solid fact of Christ as over against the shifting sands of feeling. Here, we were told, is an historical datum that remains the same from age to age. And not only is it more secure than our mystical feelings; it is incomparably richer in content. In Christ we have a wealth of religious truth that sets him apart from every other religious teacher and that gives to him an altogether unique place in human history. Through him, and through him alone, we come to God. There is none other name given among men whereby we may be saved.
In the Ritschlian insistence on this point we have, it is evident, a genuine Christian note; but it is equally evident that this Christian note does not warrant us in condemning the religious life of the non [p. 93] Christian or sub-Christian world as worthless. If it were not for a native human capacity for God, there would be no appreciation of the life of Christ and no unique worth would be attributed to him. Indeed, the very conception of Christianity as the crown and apex of man’s religious development presupposes something beneath it of which it is the crown and apex. The vague and diffused religiosity of the natural man is the foundation on which the concentrated and truly spiritual life of the Christian is reared. Between the two there is no fundamental antithesis; rather do they involve each other. For there can be no true subjectivity without more or less objectivity, and there can be no true objectivity without more or less subjectivity. The subjective mysticism of the natural man can find its completion only in the objectivity of Christian faith, and the objective fact of Christ presupposes the inner native yearnings of the human soul. One may, out of regard for the absolutist claim of Christianity, say with a measure of justification that it is Christ, and he alone, who gives to other religions whatever permanent truth and worth they have; but, on the other hand, it may also be said with equal truth, that it is the native religious needs and insights of men that alone make possible the appreciation and recognition of the unique dignity of Christ.
The attempt of the Ritschlian school to draw a sharp line of demarcation between faith and mysticism must, then, be pronounced a failure. There is an exclusive mysticism which is to be rejected as non-Christian. But in his reaction against it Herrmann [p. 94] fell into an “excessive Christocentrism,” a kind of “Panchristism” and developed a view of the Christian faith which Von Hugel has rather aptly described as “an exclusive amalgam of moralism and history.” [18], Such a conception of “faith” may serve the purposes of a partisan Protestantism by differentiating it sharply from Catholicism, but in doing so it narrows Protestantism and tends to eliminate from it one of the most vigorous and wholesome forces that has appeared in its entire history. I refer to pietism in its various German and English forms. During the latter part of his life Ritschl devoted ten years to the writing of a great three-volume work on the History of Pietism, in which he contended that pietism was not a return to the teaching of Luther, nor an advance beyond it, but a reversion to the mystical type of piety current in medieval Catholicism. Even Harnack condemned this attack upon pietism as “one-sided, narrow, and partisan.” There is, it is true, a certain kinship between pietism and mysticism; both stress the subjective or emotional element in religion. But this common element, they would both insist, goes back not simply to the Middle Ages, but to the teaching of Paul and John. In the New Testament there is no antithesis between “faith” and mystical experience. [19]
More recently Emil Brunner and other representatives of the “crisis” theology have sought to establish a still more radical distinction between faith and [p. 95] mysticism than that advocated by the Ritschlian school. Not only do they repudiate mysticism in its more extreme form, they reject the experiential principle upon which all mysticism rests. What they primarily object to in mysticism is not its extreme doctrine of divine transcendence, nor its indifference to history, but its doctrine of the divine immanence, its conviction that God manifests himself in human experience, and that through feeling or some other form of psychical activity man is able to lay hold of the Divine. Taking their cue from Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whom they regard as “the greatest Christian thinker of the past century,” [20] they insist that there is an “endless qualitative difference between time and eternity,” and thus by one fell stroke they cut the ground not only from under all mysticism, but from under all rationalism and all moralism. Neither in the human will nor the human reason nor human feeling can God be found. He is the antithesis of everything human. The whole adventure of mysticism is, therefore, a mistake, yes, more than a mistake, an “impious presumption.” It assumes that through our own experience we can lay hold of God, that men can really build a tower high enough to reach to heaven.
This assumption, according to Brunner and Barth, is the very negation of everything distinctively Christian. What Christianity emphasizes is “revelation” and “faith,” and these are diametrically opposed to the “union-intuition” of mysticism and to every attempt to bridge the gulf between the human [p. 96] and the divine from the manward side. Religious experience either with or without its intuitions and ecstasies cannot get us away from the human shore. Only revelation and faith can, and both of these come from God. They form no part of human experience. “Believing God is the antithesis of experiencing God. . . . Our faith stands opposed to all experience just as it stands opposed to death and the Devil.” [21] We believe in spite of the contradiction of experience. Indeed, it is the contradictory character of experience that makes faith necessary; and for that reason faith is itself superempirical, superhuman, so much so that we do not know when we have it; we can only “believe that we believe.” [22] There is no way, therefore, of bringing faith into alliance with mystical experience or with experience of any kind. In faith and mysticism we have two distinct types of relation to God. One is Christian, the other heathen; and the two logically exclude each other. !No real compromise between them is possible. Faith cannot be translated into religious experience without being distorted. Hence Christian mysticism so called is a hybrid. It is “a mixture of faith and mysticism, of heathenism and Christianity, just as Catholicism as a whole is. This holds also of the religion of Schleiermacher,” [23] and of “modern” piety in general. The great need of our day, consequently, is to disentangle the two and establish their essential antithesis.
Such is the program of the Barthian theology. [p. 97] That it has a considerable value as a reaction against a one-sided stress on the divine immanence and as a reaction against the easy-going humanism of our time, is not to be denied. But the attempt to establish a sharp antithesis not only between faith and mysticism, but between faith and religious experience as a whole must be set down as a theological misadventure. For one thing, the supposed or, rather, presupposed “endless qualitative difference between time and eternity” is an arbitrary assumption. Religion no doubt requires a contrast between the human and the divine, but it also requires a kinship between them, if our needs are to be fully met. To insist on the contrast at the expense of the kinship is to do violence to faith and reason alike. Furthermore, “revelation” and “faith” have their proper place and find their true meaning only within religious experience. To detach them from it and even oppose them to it is to reduce them to empty abstractions. And if we then seek to give them content and reality by importing them in some miraculous way into the stream of history or of human consciousness, we have no means of distinguishing them from their immediate human environment except by appealing to some human standard, objective or subjective. To make them the tests of their own divine character is to leave them still in a superhuman isolation. The fact is that there is no way of drawing a hard-and-fast line between the human and the divine. To oppose faith to mystical experience on the ground that one is divine and the other human is to fall into an obsolete supernaturalism.
[p. 98]
As in the case of faith and reason, so in the case of faith and mysticism, we must, then, affirm a kinship. But as we found it necessary to distinguish different kinds of “reason,” so it is necessary to distinguish different kinds of mysticism, and particularly two, a more extreme and a more moderate type. The more extreme type was introduced into Christianity largely through the influence of pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings date from the early sixth century. They were translated into Latin in the ninth century by John Scotus Erigena, but did not apparently come into general vogue until the twelfth century. From that time on they became the great source of the mystical theology. [24] Their essential teaching has been described as that of “the Neoplatonic philosophy slightly sprinkled with baptismal water from a Christian font.” What they especially emphasized was the extreme transcendence of the Ultimate Reality. Language was almost exhausted in the effort to bring out its ineffable character. Only in negative terms could it be described, and yet it was said to transcend all human thought in worth as well as being. The assumption was that the highest degree of universality and also the highest degree of worth correspond with the highest degree of reality. But the ruling notion in the conception of ultimate reality was that of absolute universality, a concept devoid of positive content and identical with bare unity. Now, such a negative and abstract Reality as this, even though capitalized, could hardly fulfill the function of the Christian Deity, and so we find Meister Eckhart [p. 99] distinguishing between the Godhead and God. This became a popular idea in mystical circles. [25] God was regarded as the personalization of the Godhead, its manifestation and self-realization, and hence as a derived or secondary Being. Among mystics, consequently, the Christian thought of God was shadowed by the thought of a Reality more ultimate, and, therefore, superior to him.
Under the influence of this pantheistic conception, inherent in the philosophic and more extreme form of mysticism, there arose a tendency to ascribe to dogmatic theology a purely symbolical character and to treat its strict theism as essentially metaphorical. An indifference to biblical history also grew up as a result of the immediacy of the mystic’s experience. If God was directly and immediately apprehended by the intuition of the mystic, what need was there of an historical revelation? The important thing is to know God and be sure of him, and if this can be attained through mystical vision and ecstasy, why should we trouble ourselves about the facts of history? Such a line of reasoning as this was an almost inevitable accompaniment of the mystical movement, and hence there arose a distinct divergence between it and historical Christianity. The latter made the person of Christ and the personality of God central in its teaching, while the former, under the influence of Neoplatonism, tended to obscure both.
[p. 100]
It was, however, mysticism only in its more negative and abstract form that developed in this way a parallax with the Christian faith. The milder and more common form of mysticism had no conscious connection with Neoplatonic metaphysics. It appeared, as we have seen, in the teaching of Paul and John, and throughout Christian history has usually stood close to the traditional teaching of the church. This teaching it has sought to vitalize. It has stressed the importance of religious experience, an experience that actually grips God. Now, such an experience involves no break with the past, nor does it involve an ecstatic union with a “superessential” Reality. It is linked up with faith in the historic Jesus and in the God of Jesus. Instead of being independent of this faith it presupposes it. And in this connection it may be pointed out that all mystical experience implies faith of some kind. The more extreme type of Christian mysticism is based on faith in the Neoplatonic philosophy, and the milder type upon our traditional Christian faith. But it is faith in both cases that gives rise to the experience. Mysticism and faith do not, then, exclude each other, nor are they independent of each other. Without faith there could be no mystical or truly religious experience, and without such experience faith would have no vitality. Faith produces mystical experience, and mystical experience in turn vitalizes faith. This holds true both of the Christian and the Neoplatonic faith.
But what we are here chiefly concerned about is the question as to whether mystical experiences may be regarded as supplementing the Christian faith [p. 101] either in the way of validating it or of adding to its content. The latter kind of supplement is no doubt theoretically possible, but in view of the preceding discussion we should hardly expect positive additions to the content of faith from the experiences of the mystics. Such experiences, as we have seen, are constituted by faith, and hence would naturally reflect it rather than make additions to it. And this, on the whole, is what has actually taken place in the history of Christian mysticism. Here and there mystics have departed from the traditional faith, but they have not done so because of any new revelations of truth made to them in their mystical experiences. They have done so because they had an implicit faith in some non-Christian philosophy such as Neoplatonism, and because this faith molded their experiences into conformity with certain conceptions of God and of the spiritual life different from those sponsored by Christian tradition. In general, however, this deflection from the Christian faith on the part of mystics has been largely negative in character. It has consisted in blurring the positive outlines of Christian belief rather than in substituting anything definite in its stead. Mystics as a rule have been agreed in saying that as a result of their experiences they were sure that God is, but what he is they did not know. From them we would not, therefore, naturally expect any positive additions to the content of the Christian faith. It is not particular or new truths that they have sought to impart to us. [26]
[p. 102]
What mysticism has primarily aimed to do has been to validate faith, to furnish an experimental verification of it. “Contemplation,” said Bernard, “is concerned with the certainty of things.” [27] And that it has attained this end in the case of multitudes is evident. But has the supposed verification been trustworthy? Do mystical experiences actually apprehend an objective reality and thus supply us with a kind of perceptual evidence of the truth of religion? Or is the objectivity of religious experience merely an illusory projection into reality of what is given in faith itself? At this point there is much confusion of thought, due to the failure to bear in mind the fact that faith and mystical experience involve each other. There is no such direct and unmediated apprehension of God as some mystics have claimed. But there is also no such apprehension of any objective reality whatsoever. All perceptual experience is interpreted experience; it is conditioned by the apprehending mind. Nowhere do we have pure, unmediated objectivity. Without the categories of thought we could have no knowledge of the external world, and without faith we could have no knowledge of God. Our mystical experience is conditioned by faith in about the same way that our sense experience is conditioned by the categories. But in neither case is the validity of the experience rendered dubious because of the condition on which it rests. All experience and all knowledge necessarily have their conditioning factors. There is, then, no inherent reason [p. 103] mystical experience should not be objectively valid.
Such experience, however, can hardly be regarded as an independent validation of faith. It is, rather, a self -validation on the part of faith itself. What 1 mystical experience does is to give such vividness and richness of emotional content to> faith that its objectivity becomes akin to that of vision. It imparts to faith a self-certainty which approaches that of sight. But in doing so it does not so much add anything to faith as evoke from faith what is already contained in it. In other words, what we have in mystical experience is not so much an extra-fiducial justification of faith as the self-evidencing power of faith itself. And in this connection it is important to note that faith justifies itself in experience. The effort has repeatedly been made to find a purely objective basis for faith. This motive underlay the old doctrine of biblical infallibility, and has recently reappeared in the Barthian contention that revelation is an ultimate and self-grounding fact and that faith is a divinely produced response to it. Faith does not belong to our experience, nor is it justified by it. It is superempirical and finds its justification or self-justification solely in the Deus dixit of Scripture. Beyond that we are told we cannot go.
In this view we have a highly rarefied conception of faith, one that seeks to gain pure objectivity by eliminating all human alloy. The conception, however, is hardly one that can commend itself to critical thought. Its sharp separation of faith from experience must be set aside as an illicit abstraction, and [p. 104] the essentially authoritarian view of revelation which it implies must be rejected as both “irrational” and arbitrary. There is no way of completely escaping subjectivity. The very acceptance of revelation is a subjective act and so also is the determination of its content. Faith, furthermore, can become concrete and real only by being embodied in experience. In the abstract we may distinguish the two, and from this point of view we may think of mystical experience as supplementing and confirming faith. But from the concrete point of view we must think of it as the expression of a certainty inherent in faith itself.
This, however, does not mean that mystical experience has no objective ground and is illusory. It, rather, means that both faith and mystical experience have such a ground and are trustworthy. Both have a divine source. But that faith should be so produced or occasioned by the Divine Spirit as to reveal an objective order is commonly overlooked; and hence if faith does not receive a kind of independent perceptual verification in mystical experience, the skeptical conclusion is sometimes drawn that both it and the mystical experience are devoid of cognitive significance. In order to meet this objection, consequently, it has been claimed that mystical experiences are at bottom independent of faith or, at least, may be such. They have come to men who were professed unbelievers. Such a case was that of Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), “the great nature mystic of the nineteenth century.” [28] He accepted the [p. 105] current naturalistic philosophy of his time and proclaimed himself an “agnostic” and even an “atheist.” Yet he had mystical experiences that revealed to him “the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely higher than Deity,” 30 and that led him to express himself in terms strikingly similar to those of Dionysius, Saint John of the Cross, and other great mystics. Indeed, toward the close of his life he was led by his mystical intuitions to accept the Christian faith. Now, that such an unbeliever as he had these visions and ecstatic experiences is, we are told, a “convincing vindication of the fundamental principles of Catholic theology and mysticism.” It proves that the intuition of the mystic is not “the reflex of a creed previously accepted,” but an independent revelation of an objective reality.
To this it may be replied that Jefferies must have actually had a profounder faith than the agnostic or atheistic creed which he verbally professed and that it was this profounder faith that gave rise to his mystical experiences. In any case these experiences were expressions of faith rather than disinterested visions of an “unutterable existence infinitely higher than Deity.” What he says about them makes that evident. Still, it is significant that in his case they prepared the way for the Christian faith. His experience in that respect illustrates the true relation of nature and grace to each other. Grace, as Thomas Aquinas used to say, does not destroy nature, but [p. 106] presupposes and perfects it. No doubt the natural mysticism of the soul is seriously defective and calls for drastic criticism, as does also the natural reason. But neither is antithetical to “revealed” religion. Bather is the Christian faith the crown of both.
Thus far we have argued that Christianity stands in an organic relation to the common reason and the common religious experience, and that it is the function of theology not only to expound the Christian faith, but also to justify it in the light of our common intellectual and religious life. The older dualistic and supernaturalistic view is then mistaken. Christianity does not stand apart from the rest of human life as alone divine. It is not an island separated from the great human mainland. It is, rather, a mountain peak rising up out of the broad plane of human need and human aspiration. It is the climax of the natural, not its antithesis. There is, we are told, a light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And it is this light that we have in Christianity, a light that came to its sharpest and brightest focus in the person of Christ. Between the light that we have in him and the light that we have in the reason and religious experience of the “natural” man there is no absolute contrast. The difference is one of degree. But the difference of degree is so great as to be practically a difference of kind. Whatever acknowledgments of truth and worth in other religions have come from representative Christian thinkers, [p. 107] they have always ascribed to Jesus an altogether unique significance. They have seen in him the one perfect revealer of God. Whether there be any other revelations of God or not, he has revealed the Father jn so exclusive a sense or so pre-eminent a degree as to be entitled to be called “the Word of God.” In him we have final or absolute truth. Such has been the claim of the Christian Church from, the beginning. On this claim the church was founded, and from it the distinctive content of its theology has been largely derived.
The Christian claim to absoluteness was at first spontaneous, a product of the unreflective consciousness. One might call it “naive” in the sense that it was not a reasoned conclusion. It was, rather, an instinctive conviction. This was true of Jesus’ own estimate of himself and his mission as well as of that current among his immediate disciples. He and they did not institute a scientific comparison between the new faith and other religions, and then conclude that the new faith was superior to all other religions and hence absolute. Its absoluteness or finality was given immediately in Jesus’ own self-consciousness and in the faith of his disciples. His Messianic claim implied it, and so, of course, also did the acceptance of the claim by others. Some scholars, it is true, have denied that Jesus made any such claim. But so deeply is it embedded in the Gospels that to eliminate it would go far toward destroying their historical credibility. If the gospel portrait of Jesus is at all to be trusted, we must ascribe to him “the consciousness of being the Fulfiller, of sitting regnant upon the [p. 108] throne of history.” [29] And that this conception of him was accepted by his followers needs no proof. For them he was from the very beginning the climax of revelation, the inaugurator of the kingdom of God upon earth.
One might, and as a rule one does, distinguish between the message and the messenger, but in the case of Jesus the two were bound up with each other. The perfection of the messenger guaranteed the perfection of the message, and the perfection of the message pointed to the perfection of the messenger. Both put upon the Christian movement the stamp of uniqueness and finality. Jesus was more than a prophet; he was the Son, who alone knows the Father and reveals him to men (Matt. 11. 27) . And his message was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Indeed, it was in a sense more than that. It introduced, according to Paul, a new kingdom of grace, distinct from and in a way opposed to the older reign of the law. Christianity did not then simply supplement Judaism, it did not simply differ from it quantitatively; it differed from it qualitatively, it abrogated it. And still more so did it stand apart from and overshadow the other religions. No believer questioned its complete supremacy. Its absoluteness was taken for granted. But for that very reason it was not at first made the subject of special study, nor was it theoretically grounded in a thoroughgoing way.
Two tendencies early manifested themselves. One was to base the absoluteness of Christianity upon its [p. 109] isolation, the other upon what might be called its climactic relation to other religions. These tendencies, as we have seen, lay back of the long discussion concerning faith and reason and also that relative to faith and mysticism. In reviewing these controversies we decided in favor of the second view, the synthesis of the Christian faith with reason and mysticism rather than its diastasis. But the two views have received such definite and distinct formulations in connection with the problem of the absoluteness of Christianity that they call for further consideration. Both views have had representatives throughout virtually the whole of Christian history. But it was the first, the belief in the isolation of Christianity, that eventually gained the ascendancy in western theology. Here the Christian religion was separated from all other religions by its supposed miraculous origin. It, and it alone, was declared to be based upon divine revelation. Other religions were referred to human or demonic sources and condemned as false. The belief was that man in his natural state as a result of the fall was entirely incapable of attaining to a saving knowledge of God. True religion must, therefore, be divinely communicated to men. And such a communication we have in the Bible. It was miraculously inspired, and this inspiration guarantees its truth. If it were not inspired, it might be true, but it would not be divine truth. What makes it divine is its miraculous inspiration. Miracle is thus the presupposition of revelation, and it is also its only adequate authentication. That a message is divinely true is confirmed by the miracle or miracles [p. 110] that attend it. Only in this way, it was held, could we be assured of the truth of Christianity. But such authentication is to be found in abundance in connection with its origin, and to be found there alone. Hence it is the one inspired, revealed, divinely true, absolute and eternal religion.
This exclusive supernaturalistic method of grounding the finality of the Christian religion stands close to popular religious thought. It was developed during the medieval period, and in its most pronounced form was widely held by Protestant theologians down to a century or two ago. It crumbled, however, before the advance of biblical criticism, of natural science, and of the modern philosophy of the divine immanence, and to-day represents an “overcome standpoint.” Important modifications or modernizations of it have appeared, it is true, during the past century. The famous “Erlanger School,” for instance, represented by such men as Hofmann and Frank, made the miracle of the new birth the fundamental datum of theology, seeking to deduce from it the historicity of the biblical miracles. Ritschl and Herrmann attributed to the inner life of Jesus an essentially miraculous character, and made it normative and in that sense authoritative, in theology. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are at present emphasizing the miracle of revelation as the basal thing in theology, but the content of revelation they determine in a quite subjective way, rejecting altogether the doctrine of biblical infallibility. These different schools have all sought to establish the absoluteness of Christianity by some sort of more or less miraculous isolation, [p. 111] but the older supernaturalistic authoritarianism, they all repudiate. They recognize no purely miraculous authentication of truth before which the human reason must bow. Revelation for them is self-evidencing; it justifies itself. In that respect they are modernistic.
With the fall of the older exclusive and rationalistic supernaturalism a new method of establishing the absoluteness of Christianity was introduced by Hegel and Schleiermacher, especially the former. This method marked a return to that tendency in the early church which recognized a kinship between the gospel and the higher thought and life of heathendom, which saw in the superiority of the gospel to all other religions a difference of degree rather than of kind, and which held that the Logos, incarnate in Jesus, illumined also the minds of men in general. There is, however, this difference between the ancient teaching and that of Hegel, that the latter stressed the idea of development, holding that Christianity is not an isolated or unrelated fact, but the climax of an evolutionary process, the highest and completest embodiment of the idea of religion. The Hegelian teaching is, consequently, called “evolutionistic apologetics” by way of distinction from earlier types of Christian thought. It also differed from the older apologetics, especially that of the particularistic type, in that it laid stress on the content and essence of Christianity rather than upon its miraculous authentication^ Indeed, the latter it excluded. It saw everywhere in the religious history of mankind one and the same process. No miracle or miracles differentiate one [p. 112] religion from the others. All religions it regarded as divine. But they represent different stages of development, and the culminating stage, the logical crown of the whole process, it found in the Christian faith. Christianity is, therefore, the absolute religion. In it we have the full self-realization of God in human consciousness.
This apologetic is the modern substitute for the older dogmatic supernaturalism. Its underlying idea is impressive, and there is no doubt an important truth in it. But in the logical-dialectical form in which it was developed by Hegel, it was an imaginative construction out of touch to a large extent with historical reality. History is not a field dominated by general ideas that operate with logical necessity toward the achievement of some end. It is a realm of freedom, of purpose, and of personality, and as such defies reduction to any predetermined scheme of development. It is, furthermore, a realm of the concrete and the individual, and is so infinitely varied in its ever-changing life that no concepts or system of concepts could express its full meaning and worth. Every being no doubt stands related to other beings, but over and above these relations it has its own individuality, which is, to some extent, unique and inexplicable. This was true of Jesus in a pre-eminent degree; indeed, true of him in a superlative degree if we hold to the absoluteness of his mission. Hegel recognized this and sought to provide for it by making him the perfect embodiment of the Idea. But the ascription of such supreme importance to a single individual seemed hardly consistent with the logic of [p. 113] the system as a whole. So there arose among Hegelian theologians a tendency to subordinate the person of Christ to the principle or idea embodied in him and to find the essence and absoluteness of Christianity in the latter. The idea, for instance, represented by Jesus, was that of the union of the human and the divine. This is the highest conceivable idea, and since it constitutes the essence of the Christian faith it stamps Christianity as the absolute religion. But in what sense and to what extent this idea was embodied in the person of Christ is a question on which there has been wide difference of opinion. Hegel himself saw in Jesus the actual God-Man, the manifestation of the Absolute in the realm of the finite. But his disciple Strauss declared that the Idea loves not to pour all its fullness into one example in jealousy toward all the rest and in his Life of Jesus sought to show that the actual historical Jesus was a very different person from the God-Man of the Christian faith.
Schleiermacher laid more stress on the particular and the distinctively religious than did Hegel. Instead of beginning with the general idea of religion and seeking to show that it received its completest embodiment in the person of Christ or in Christianity, he began with concrete Christian experience, as perfectly expressed in the person of Jesus, the archetypal man, and sought to show that it represents the highest conceivable type of religion and as such is the universal and absolute religion. Hegel deduced the absoluteness of Christianity from the fact that it embodies the universal and perfect idea of religion; [p. 114] Schleiermaeher, on the other hand, deduced the absoluteness and universality of Christianity from its own moral and spiritual perfection. In other words, according to Hegel, the absolute perfection of Christianity was derived from and authenticated by the universal idea of perfection, while, according to Schleiermacher, the absolute perfection of Christianity was inherent in itself and hence, to a large extent at least, self -verifying. But neither the self-verification nor the authentication by a universal standard furnished a logical basis for the absoluteness of Christianity in the sense of its “unsurpassability.” Both involved subjective factors in the way of evaluation that excluded the possibility of their being objectively convincing. There is no way by which it can be demonstrated that Christianity will never be superseded by another and higher religion. Origen, Nicholas of Cusa, and more recently Troeltsch have held that it would be thus superseded or at least might be, and various Christian sects such as the Montanists in the early church and the Joachimites in the medieval church proclaimed a new Age of the Spirit transcending that of the Son. The theoretical possibility of such an advance beyond the Christian gospel cannot be gainsaid. Neither the evolutionism of Hegel and Schleiermacher nor the exclusive supernaturalism of dogmatic theology provides an effectual barrier against it.
The question of the “unsurpassability” of Christianity, however, is only one phase of the problem of its absoluteness, and that a phase of subordinate importance from the practical point of view. No immediate [p. 115] or vital interest of the church is involved in it. In the past it has been commonly assumed that the revelation of God in Christ would never be transcended, and this is, no doubt, still the general belief. But if it should be concluded with Origen and Nicholas of Cusa that an “everlasting gospel,” an “eternal religion of immediate vision,” will eventually displace historical Christianity, no serious evil would result. The only unfavorable effect, if any, would be to dim slightly the halo of absolute sanctity that now surrounds the Christian faith. Its present superiority and authority would not be challenged.
A more important phase of the problem has to do with the question as to whether absoluteness can be affirmed of any historical phenomenon. It has been vigorously urged by Troeltsch [30] and by G. B. Foster [31] that history is by its very nature relative and that no historical person or institution can consequently be absolute. And as against the older dualistic supernaturalism this consideration has weight. Jesus and the Bible were not miraculously isolated from the rest of the world. They stood related to other religions and other religious leaders and were to a considerable extent determined in their nature by this relationship. Jesus was in a real sense a man of his own time. But if so, how can absoluteness be ascribed to him? It is customary to distinguish between the permanent and the transient elements in his teaching [p. 116] and that of Scripture, and it is difficult to see how this distinction can be avoided. But is it really valid in a thoroughgoing sense? Are there elements in the teaching and experience of Jesus that are permanent in the sense of being eternally and absolutely true? Troeltsch seems to think not. He apparently holds that the distinction between the transient and the permanent or the shell and the kernel is merely an apologetic device and fails altogether to solve the problem under consideration. “Actual absoluteness of the kernel,” he says, “absolutizes also the shell, and actual relativity of the shell relativises also the kernel.” [32] It would, then, seem that we must choose between an absolute supernaturalism, on the one hand, and an all-engulfing relativism, on the other.
But this sharp antithesis between the absolute and the relative seems to me abstract and misleading. It suggests that by the absolute we must mean something static and unchangeable, and that if Christianity is to be really absolute, it must have a rigid core of being that remains the same from age to age. Then, since the existence of such a rigid core would be inconsistent with the unceasing change and consequent relativity of history, it is concluded that history and absoluteness exclude each other. But such a static interpretation of absoluteness is unwarranted. In the field of religion God is the absolute, and he is far from being a static Being. He is the dynamic source of the world; and it is through man’s communion with him that religion takes on an absolute character. This is true of religion [p. 117] in general, and it is pre-eminently true of Christianity. In Christ Jesus we believe we have an instance of perfect union and communion between God and man, and in this perfect union we have something absolute and final. The exact nature of the union and the precise content of the revelation mediated through it cannot be reduced to fixed and unchangeable formulae. Nor can they be appropriated in their fullness by men. The human appropriation of the gospel will always be relative and subject to growth. But to the gospel itself, as embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus, there is no reason why we should not ascribe finality. If in Christ we come face to face with God as nowhere else, that very fact imparts to him and to his mission a character that may properly be described as “absolute.” [33]
Absoluteness, as applied to Christianity, has thus for us a double meaning. It means that in Christ we have an actual revelation of the Absolute, of God, and it also means that this revelation is the highest known to men. [34] In the former sense absoluteness is a matter of Christian experience; we have what seems to us an immediate knowledge of God through Christ. In the latter sense it involves a comparative study of the world’s religions. Such a study might at first seem to lead to endless complexity. But on surveying the religious field as a whole it turns out that there are very few religions that need to be taken into account [p. 118] in dealing with the question of the supremacy of Christianity. “It is amazing,” says Troeltsch, “on how few ideas mankind has in truth lived”; [35] and this is especially true in the religious realm. Among the great ethical and spiritual religions which alone need to be considered in this connection we have, on the one hand, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, which have a common root and represent a common type. On the other hand, we have the great Oriental religions, Brahmanism and especially Buddhism, representing another type. Along with these there have been various forms of speculative or rational religion both in the East and the West, but these have had no independent or self-sustaining power. They have been offshoots from the historical religions and have derived their vitality from them. Only in the latter “does the productive power of religion pulsate.”
The religions of the world may then be said to reduce themselves essentially to two: the prophetic-Christian and the Buddhistic-Oriental. As between these two it may not be possible to establish the superiority of Christianity in such an objective way as to convince the Buddhist. When it comes to one’s ultimate world-view, subjective factors are involved that defy logical control. Nevertheless, there are norms in the religious life that enable us to determine with a fair degree of objectivity the relative rank of the different religions, and on the basis of these norms we are justified in maintaining that Christianity is superior to Buddhism and to every [p. 119] other religion, superior in its theological content, superior in its ethical teaching, superior in its power to meet the deepest needs of the soul. This conclusion is warranted by the comparative study of religions; but the ultimate decision of the question cannot, of course, be effected by mere study. It can be reached only in history itself, which has been described as the battlefield of standards of value. There the struggle is going on. The personal and ethical optimism of Christianity is pitted against the impersonal and quietistic pessimism of the East, and the probability is that as Western science is sweeping over the East so it will eventually be with the Christian faith. Its own intrinsic superiority would seem to guarantee its ultimate triumph, and in this sense we may hold to its absoluteness.
The Christian faith, however, to which absoluteness is ascribed, cannot be identified with any of the historic creeds, nor can it be identified with the teaching of Scripture as a whole. It is only the essence of Christianity that can be said to be absolute. But what is this essence? How is it to be defined? It was a little over a century ago that this problem in its technical sense was first raised. Previous to that time the dogmatic temper was in the ascendancy. It took various forms, that of ecclesiasticism, of biblicism and of rationalism. The first of these ascribed absoluteness or infallibility to the church, the second to the Bible, and the third to certain abstract truths of reason. None of them had any proper appreciation of the principle of historical development. They all identified Christianity with a certain definite body [p. 120] of truth, and hence made no effort to determine its true nature by an empirical study of its history. For them the essence of the Christian faith was already given in the objective standard of truth which was accepted, and, consequently, there was no need of defining it more precisely. This dogmatic attitude was dominant in the church down to the close of the eighteenth century; and not until it was overcome and a true historical spirit had been introduced could there be a genuine scientific inquiry into the essential nature of the Christian religion.
It was Schleierinacher who gave us the first important definition of Christianity, based on a study of its history and its relation to other religions. The older rationalism, moralism, and dogmatism he emphatically rejected. For him religion was not a mere knowing or doing. It was something deeper, a feeling, a vital experience. It was also concrete and individual, a spontaneous, historical growth. With the so-called “natural religion” of his day, the religion of reason, he had little patience. He saw in it but a faded image of real religion. The latter he found only in the positive or historical religions. These religions were related to each other, but each one had also its own distinctive nature, and any complete definition of it would involve both factors, its uniqueness and its relation to other religions. These two factors appear in Schleiermacher’s definition of Christianity. “Christianity,” he says, “is a monotheistic faith of the teleological type, and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by the fact that everything in it is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus [p. 121] of Nazareth.” [36] In this definition the central place accorded to Jesus of Nazareth should be noted. It should also be noted that this central place is accorded him because of his relation to redemption. It is the redemptive experience made possible through him that differentiates the Christian religion from all others. It should, furthermore, be noted that Christianity is put in the same class with certain other religions insofar as it is a monotheistic and teleological faith.
Ritschl defined the Christian religion in somewhat the same way that Schleiermacher did. “Christianity,” he said, “is the monotheistic, completely spiritual and ethical religion, which, based on the life of its Author as Redeemer and as Founder of the kingdom of God, consists in the freedom of the children of God, involves the impulse to conduct from the motive of love, aims at the moral organization of mankind, and grounds blessedness on the relation of son ship to God, as well as the kingdom of God.” [37] The new element in this definition is the emphasis placed on the ethical side of the Christian life as represented by the idea of the kingdom of God. Jesus stands related not only to the work of redemption, but also to the moral organization of mankind. Both of these lines of activity are essential to the Christian faith. Ritschl used to say that Christian truth is not a circle with a center, but an ellipse with two foci; the foci are redemption and the kingdom of God. But apart from his special emphasis on the latter idea his definition [p. 122] of Christianity did not differ much from that of Schleiermacher.
Troeltsch objected to these and other similar definitions on the ground that they assumed that the essence of Christianity had been the same from the beginning. It was his contention that its essence changed from age to age, and that there is no self-identical concept or impulse that has persisted throughout its history and been the source of its expansive power. This view “is the natural corollary of Troeltsch’s historical relativism, and has no better basis than his relativistic theory in general. As a living historical movement it is no doubt true that Christianity defies encasement in any conceptual strait-jacket and also reduction to any single impulse or pair of impulses. It is too broad and too rich a movement to be exhaustively expressed in any formula; but this does not mean that there is no continuity of the Christian faith. Christianity has its own élan vital, and there is no reason for holding that this has not remained essentially the same through the ages. Indeed, Troeltsch himself, when he comes to defining the essence of Christianity, adopts substantially the same view as that of Schleiermacher and Ritschl. “The Christian faith,” he says, “is faith in the divine regeneration of man, who, as belonging to the world, is alienated from God a regeneration effected through the knowledge of God in Christ and resulting in union with God and social fellowship in the kingdom of God.” [38]
[p. 123]
We speak of these modern definitions of Christianity as “scientific,” but they are such only in a general sense by way of contrast with the dogmatic views of an earlier day. They are not in the strictly empirical sense of the term “scientific.” They are not arrived at by mere generalization. We cannot determine the essence of Christianity by purely inductive means. We must call in an objective standard which will enable us to distinguish the essential from what is accidental or perverse or peculiar to an individual or group. And this standard has necessarily a subjective origin. If a person is unfriendly to the Christian religion, he is likely to find its essence in some obsolete dogma or conception. On the other hand, if he is a Christian believer he will naturally find its essence in some ideal that appeals to the thinking man of to-day and that has about it the ring of permanence. In any case, we cannot escape a certain personal equation in our definition of Christianity. Pure objectivity is impossible. But this need not lead us to do violence to history. It should simply put us on our guard against a premature dogmatism.
The “essence” of Christianity is the modern substitute for the infallible book or infallible church of the past. Even when strict biblical or ecclesiastical infallibility was generally accepted, theologians were always implicitly guided by a more or less clearly defined conception of the essential nature of the Christian faith. They never actually ascribed equal authority to all parts of the Bible and to all the dogmatic decrees of the church. They always distinguished [p. 124] between what appealed to their conscience and intelligence and what did not, and in doing so they followed consciously or unconsciously the lead of what they believed to be the essence of Christian teaching. But since the infallibility of the Bible or church was abandoned, this “essence” has become the recognized source and norm of theology.
It is not so clearly defined as the older standards, but it is derived from them and retains what was really authoritative in them. We learn from Scripture and the history of the church what the Christian faith in its essence is; and the task of Christian theology is to expound its intellectual content and justify it so far as possible from the standpoint of the common reason and the common religious experience. Its ultimate justification it must find in itself.
The Nature of Religion, pp. 324-36. ↩︎
So Theodore Haering, The Christian Faith, I, p. 103. ↩︎
“He that takes away reason,” said John Locke, “to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both.” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, XIX, 4. ↩︎
Sermo XLIII, p. 9. ↩︎
Epistle CXX, 3. ↩︎
Proslogium, Chap. I. ↩︎
For an excellent exposition of the medieval conception of the relation of faith and reason or philosophy and theology to each other, see Duns Scotus, by C. P. S. Harris (1927), especially Vol. I. ↩︎
Hegel himself, it is true, objected to being called a pantheist, but in the sense that he did not allow a place for the free relation of God to the world his system would generally be admitted to be pantheistic. ↩︎
See Studies in Mystical Religion, p. 231, by Rufus M. Jones. ↩︎
See Mysticism, p. 502, by Evelyn Underbill. ↩︎
Ennead VI, 9, 10. ↩︎
Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xxi, by Ruf us M. Jones. ↩︎
Christian Mysticism, p. 21. ↩︎
The Communion of the Christian With God, pp. 19-56. ↩︎
German edition, 1892, pp. 27f ↩︎
Quoted by W. R. Inge in Christian Mysticism, p. 345. ↩︎
See Baron von Hügel, The Mystical Element in Religion, I, pp. 50-82, ↩︎
The Mystical Element of Religion, II, pp. 263-69, 332f. ↩︎
For a well-balanced statement of the relation of mysticism to the Christian life see Humanism and Christianity, by Bishop Francis J. McConnell, pp. 96-124. ↩︎
E. Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, p. 99. ↩︎
E. Brunner, ibid., p. 188. ↩︎
K. Earth, Römerbief, p. 128. ↩︎
E. Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, p. 388. ↩︎
See Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, pp. 180f. ↩︎
Compare Theologia Germanica, Chap. XXXI: “To God, as God-head, appertain neither will, nor knowledge, nor manifestation, nor anything that we can name, or say, or conceive. But to God as God, it belongeth to express himself, and know and love himself, and to reveal himself to himself.” ↩︎
See A Philosophical Study of Mysticism, pp. 70-82, by Charles A. Bennett. ↩︎
De Consid. II, 5, translated by G. Lewis. ↩︎
See The Philosophy of Mysticism, pp. 371-88, by Edward I. Watkin. ↩︎
See Is Christianity the Final Religion? p. Ill, by A. C. Bouquet. ↩︎
Die Absolutheit des Christentums. For an exposition of Troeltsch’s views in English see H. S. Sleigh, The Sufficiency of Christianity, and A. C. Bouquet, Is Christianity the Final Religion? pp. 189-240. ↩︎
The Finality of the Christian Religion. ↩︎
Die Absolutheit des Christentums, p. 35. ↩︎
See The Originality of the Christian Message, pp. 161-91, by H. R. Mackintosh. ↩︎
See Walter Scheller, Die Absolutheit des Christentums (1929), where it is argued that Christianity is an absolute religion but not the absolute religion. ↩︎
Die Absolufheit des Christentums, p. 61. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, Par. 11. ↩︎
Justification and Reconciliation, p. 13. ↩︎
Gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 512; R. S. Sleigh, The Sufficiency of Christianity, p. 134; American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 13. ↩︎