Chapter 11

But because we recognize a measure of truth in all the historical Religions, it does not follow that we can recognize an equal amount of truth in all of them. The idea that all the Religions teach much the same thing--or that, while they vary about that unimportant part of Religion which is called doctrine or dogma, they are all agreed about Morality--is an idea which could only occur to the self-complaisant ignorance which of late years has done most of the theological writing in the correspondence columns of our newspapers. The real student of comparative {150} Religion knows that it is only at a rather advanced stage in the development of Religion that Religion becomes in any important degree an ethical teacher at all. Even the highest and most ethical Religions are not agreed either in their Ethics or in their Theology. Not only can we recognize higher and lower Religions; but the highest Religions, among many things which they have in common, are at certain points diametrically antagonistic to each other. It is impossible therefore reasonably to maintain that fashionable attitude of mind towards these Religions which my friend Professor Inge once described as a sort of honorary membership of all Religions except one's own. If we are to regard the historical Religions as being of any importance to our own personal religious life, we must choose between them. If we put aside the case of Judaism in its most cultivated modern form, a form in which it has been largely influenced by Christianity, I suppose there is practically only one Religion which would be in the least likely to appeal to a modern philosophical student of Religion as a possible alternative to Christianity--and that is Buddhism. But Buddhist Ethics are not the same as Christian Ethics. Buddhist Ethics are ascetic: the Christianity which Christ taught was anti-ascetic. In its view of the future, Buddhism is pessimistic; Christianity is optimistic. Much as {151} Buddhism has done to inculcate Humanity and Charity, the principle of Buddhist Humanity is not the same as that of Christianity. Humanity is encouraged by the Buddhist (in so far as he is really influenced by his own formal creed) not from a motive of disinterested affection, but as a means of escaping from the evils of personal and individual existence, and so winning Nirvana. We cannot at one and the same time adhere to the Ethics of Buddhism and to those of Christianity, though I am far from saying that Christians have nothing to learn either from Buddhist teaching or from Buddhist practice. Still less can we at one and the same time be Atheists with the Buddhist and Theists with the Christian; look forward with the Buddhist to the extinction of personal consciousness and with the Christian to a fuller and more satisfying life. To take an interest in comparative Religion is not to be religious; to be religious implies a certain exclusive attachment to some definite form of religious belief, though it may of course often be a belief to which many historical influences have contributed.

I have been trying to lead you to a view of Revelation which recognizes the existence and the importance of those exceptional religious minds to whom is due the foundation and development of the great historical Religions, while at the same time we refuse, in the last resort, to recognize any {152} revelation as true except on the ground that its truth can be independently verified. I do not mean to deny that the individual must at first, and may quite reasonably in some cases throughout life, accept much of his religious belief on authority; but that is only because he may be justified in thinking that such and such a person, or more probably such and such a religious community, is more likely to be right than himself. Rational submission to authority in this or that individual postulates independent judgement on the part of others. I am far from saying that every individual is bound to satisfy himself by personal enquiry as to the truth of every element in his own Religion; but, if and so far as he determines to do so, he cannot reasonably accept an alleged revelation on any other ground than that it comes home to him, that the content of that Religion appeals to him as true, as satisfying the demands of his intellect and of his conscience. The question in which most of us, I imagine, are most vitally interested is whether the Christian Religion is a Religion which we can accept on these grounds. That it possesses some truth, that whatever in it is true comes from God--that much is likely to be admitted by all who believe in any kind of Religion in the sense in which we have been discussing Religion. The great question for us is, 'Can we find any reason for the modern man {153} identifying himself in any exclusive way with the historical Christian Religion? Granted that there is some truth in all Religions, does Christianity contain the most truth? Is it in any sense the one absolute, final, universal Religion?'

That will be the subject for our consideration in the next lecture. But meanwhile I want to suggest to you one very broad provisional answer to our problem. Christianity alone of the historical Religions teaches those great truths to which we have been conducted by a mere appeal to Reason and to Conscience. It teaches ethical Monotheism; that is to say, it thinks of God as a thinking, feeling, willing Consciousness, and understands His nature in the light of the highest moral ideal. It teaches the belief in personal Immortality, and it teaches a Morality which in its broad general principles still appeals to the Conscience of Humanity. Universal Love it sets forth as at once the central point in its moral ideal and the most important element in its conception of God. In one of those metaphors which express so much more than any more exact philosophical formula, it is the Religion which teaches the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. And these truths were taught by the historical Jesus. No one up to his time had ever taught them with equal clearness and in equal purity, and with the same freedom from other and inconsistent teachings: {154} and this teaching was developed by his first followers. Amid all aberrations and amid all contamination by heterogeneous elements, the society or societies which look back to Christ as their Founder have never in the worst times ceased altogether to teach these truths; and now they more and more tend to constitute the essence of Christianity as it is to-day--all the more so on account of the Church's gradual shuffling off of so many adventitious ideas and practices which were at one time associated with them. Christianity is and remains the only one of the great historical Religions which has taught and does teach these great truths in all their fullness.[2] These considerations would by themselves be sufficient to put Christianity in an absolutely unique position among the Religions of Mankind.

I have so far been regarding our Lord Jesus Christ simply as a teacher of religious and ethical truth. I think it is of fundamental importance that we should _begin_ by regarding him in this light. {155} It was in this light that he first presented himself to his fellow-countrymen--even before (in all probability) he claimed to be the fulfiller of the Messianic ideal which had been set before them by the prophets of their race. And I could not, without a vast array of quotation, give you a sufficient impression of the prominence of this aspect of his work and personality among the earlier Greek Fathers. Even after the elaborate doctrines of Catholic Christianity had begun to be developed, it was still primarily as the supremely inspired Teacher that Jesus was most often thought of. When the early Christians thought of him as the incarnate Logos or Reason of God, to teach men divine truth was still looked upon as the supreme function of the Logos and the purpose of his indwelling in the historical Jesus. But from the first Jesus appealed to men as much more than a teacher. It is one of the distinctive peculiarities of religious and ethical knowledge that it is intimately connected with character: religious and moral teaching of the highest kind is in a peculiar degree inseparable from the personality of the teacher. Jesus impressed his contemporaries, and he has impressed successive ages as having not only set before man the highest religious and moral ideal, but as having in a unique manner realized that ideal in his own life. Even the word 'example' {156} does not fully express the impression which he made on his followers, or do justice to the inseparability of his personality from his teaching. In the religious consciousness of Christ men saw realized the ideal relation of man not merely to his fellow-man but also to his heavenly Father. From the first an enthusiastic reverence for its Founder has been an essential part of the Christian Religion amid all the variety of the phases which it has assumed. The doctrine of the Christian Church was in its origin an attempt to express in the philosophical language of the time its sense of this supreme value of Christ for the religious and moral life of man. As to the historical success and the present usefulness of these attempts, I shall have a word to say next time. Meanwhile, I would leave with you this one thought. The claim of Christianity to be the supreme, the universal, in a sense the final Religion, must rest mainly, in the last resort, upon the appeal which Christ and his Religion make to the moral and religious consciousness of the present.

LITERATURE

See the works mentioned at the end of the next Lecture, to which, as dealing more specially with the subject of Lecture v., may be added Professor Sanday's _Inspiration_, and Professor Wendt's _Revelation and Christianity_.

[1] Throughout his writings, but pre-eminently in the _Theoetetus_.

[2] If it be said that Judaism or any other Religion does now teach these truths as fully as Christianity, this may possibly apply to the creed of individual members of these Religions, but it can hardly be claimed for the historical Religions themselves. I should certainly be prepared to contend that even such individuals lose something by not placing in the centre of their Religion the personality of him by whom they were first taught, and the communities which have been the great transmitters of them. But in this course of lectures I am chiefly concerned with giving reasons why Christians should remain Christians, rather than with giving reasons why others who are not so should become Christians.

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LECTURE VI

CHRISTIANITY

In my last lecture I tried to effect a transition from the idea of religious truth as something believed by the individual, and accepted by him on the evidence of his own Reason and Conscience to the idea of a Religion considered as a body of religious truth handed down by tradition in an organized society. The higher Religions--those which have passed beyond the stage of merely tribal or national Religion--are based upon the idea that religious truth of enduring value has been from time to time revealed to particular persons, the Founders or Apostles or Reformers of such religions. We recognized the validity of this idea of Revelation, and the supreme importance to the moral and religious life of such historical revelations, on one condition--that the claim of any historical Religion to the allegiance of its followers must be held to rest in the last resort upon the appeal which it makes to their Reason and Conscience: though the individual may often be {158} quite justified in accepting and relying upon the Reason and Conscience of the religious Society rather than upon his own.

The view which I have taken of Revelation makes it quite independent of what are commonly called miracles. All that I have said is quite consistent with the unqualified acceptance or with the unqualified rejection of miracles. But some of you may perhaps expect me to explain a little more fully my own attitude towards that question. And therefore I will say this much--that, if we regard a miracle as implying a suspension of a law of nature, I do not think we can call such a suspension _a priori_ incredible; but the enormous experience which we have of the actual regularity of the laws of nature, and of the causes which in certain states of the human mind lead to the belief in miracles, makes such an event in the highest degree improbable. To me at least it would seem practically impossible to get sufficient evidence for the occurrence of such an event in the distant past: all our historical reasoning presupposes the reign of law. But it is being more and more admitted by theologians who are regarded as quite orthodox and rather conservative, that the idea of a miracle need not necessarily imply such a suspension of natural law. And on the other hand, decidedly critical and liberal theologians are more and more disposed to admit {159} that many of the abnormal events commonly called miraculous may very well have occurred without involving any real suspension of natural law. Recent advances in psychological knowledge have widened our conception of the possible influence of mind over matter and of mind over mind. Whether an alleged miraculous event is to be accepted or not must, as it seems to me, depend partly upon the amount of critically sifted historical evidence which can be produced for it, partly upon the nature of the event itself--upon the question whether it is or is not of such a kind that we can with any probability suppose that it might be accounted for either by known laws or by laws at present imperfectly understood.

To apply these principles in detail to the New Testament narratives would involve critical discussions which are outside the purpose of these lectures. I will only say that few critical scholars would deny that some recorded miracles even in the New Testament are unhistorical. When they find an incident like the healing of Malchus's ear omitted in the earlier, and inserted in the later redaction of a common original, they cannot but recognize the probability of traditional amplification. At the same time few liberal theologians will be disposed to doubt the general fact that our Lord did cure some diseases by spiritual influence, or that an appearance of our Lord to the disciples--of whatever nature--actually {160} did occur, and was the means of assuring them of his continued life and power. At all events I do not myself doubt these two facts. But at least when miracles are not regarded as constituting real exceptions to natural law, it is obvious that they will not prove the truth of any teaching which may have been connected with them; while, even if we treat the Gospel miracles as real exceptions to law, the difficulty of proving them in the face of modern critical enquiry is so great that the evidence will hardly come home to any one not previously convinced, on purely spiritual grounds, of the exceptional character of our Lord's personality and mission. This being so, I do not think that our answer to the problem of miracles, whatever it be, can play any very important part in Christian Apologetic. When we have become Christians on other grounds, the acts of healing may still retain a certain value as illustrating the character of the Master, and the Resurrection vision as proclaiming the truth of Immortality in a way which will come home to minds not easily accessible to abstract argument. The true foundation not merely for belief in the teaching of Christ, but also for the Christian's reverence for his Person, must, as it seems to me, be found in the appeal which his words and his character still make to the Conscience and Reason of mankind. This proposition would be {161} perhaps more generally accepted if I were to say that the claim of Christ to allegiance rests upon the way in which he satisfies the heart, the aspirations, the religious needs of mankind. And I should be quite willing to adopt such language, if you will only include respect for historic fact and intellectual truth among these religious needs, and admit that a reasonable faith must rest on something better than mere emotion. Fully to exhibit the grounds of this claim of Christ upon us would involve an examination of the Gospel narratives in detail: it would involve an attempt to present to you what was this teaching, this character, this religious consciousness which has commanded the homage of mankind. To attempt such a task would be out of place in a brief course of lectures devoted to a particular aspect of Religion--its relation to Philosophy. Here I must assume that you feel the spiritual supremacy of Christ--his unique position in the religious history of the world and his unique importance for the spiritual life of each one of us--; and go on to ask what assertions such a conviction warrants us in making about his person and nature, what in short should be our attitude towards the traditional doctrines of the Christian Church.

You may know something of the position taken up in this matter by the dominant school of what I may call believing liberal Theology in {162} Germany--the school which takes its name from the great theologian Ritschl, but which will be best known to most Englishmen in connexion with the name of Prof. Harnack, though it may be well to remember that Harnack is nearer to the left than to the right wing of that school. The fundamental principle of that school is to base the claims of Christianity mainly upon the appeal which the picture of the life, teaching, character, and personality of Christ makes to the moral and religious consciousness of mankind. Their teaching is Christo-centric in the highest possible degree: but they are almost or entirely indifferent to the dogmatic formulae which may be employed to express this supreme religious importance of Christ. In putting the personal and historical Christ, and not any doctrine about him, in the centre of the religious life I believe they are right. But this principle is sometimes asserted in an exaggerated and one-sided manner. In the first place they are somewhat contemptuous of Philosophy, and of philosophic argument even for such fundamental truths as the existence of God. I do not see that the subjective impression made by Christ can by itself prove the fact of God's existence. We must first believe that there is a God to be revealed before we can be led to believe in Christ as the supreme Revealer. I do not believe that the modern world will permanently accept a view of the Universe {163} which does not commend itself to its Reason. The Ritschlians talk about the truth of Religion resting upon value-judgements. I can quite understand that a value-judgement may tell us the supreme value of Christ's character and his fitness to be treated as the representative of God to us, when once we believe in God: but I cannot see how any value-judgement taken by itself can assure us of that existence. Value is one thing: existence is another. To my mind a Christian Apologetic should begin, like the old Apologies of Justin or Aristides, with showing the essential reasonableness of Christ's teaching about God and its essential harmony with the highest philosophic teaching about duty, about the divine nature, about the soul and its eternal destiny. The Ritschlian is too much disposed to underrate the value of all previous religious and ethical teaching, even of Judaism at its highest: he is not content with making Christ the supreme Revealer: he wants to make him the only Revealer. And when we turn to post-Christian religious history, he is apt to treat all the great developments of religious and ethical thought from the time of the Apostles to our own day as simply worthless and even mischievous corruptions of the original, and only genuine, Christianity. He tends to reduce Christianity to the _ipsissima verba_ of its Founder. The Ritschlian dislikes Dogma, not because it may be at times a {164} misdevelopment, but because it is a development; not because some of it may be antiquated Philosophy, but simply because it is Philosophy.[1]

In order to treat fairly this question of doctrinal development, it must be remembered that what is commonly called dogma is only a part--perhaps not the most important part--of that development. Supreme as I believe to be the value of Christ's great principle of Brotherhood, it is impossible to deny that, if we look in detail at the moral ideal of any educated Christian at the present day, we shall find in it many elements which cannot explicitly be discovered in the _ipsissima verba_ of Christ and still less of his Apostles. And development in the ethical ideal always carries with it some development in a man's conception of God and the Universe. Some of these elements are due to a gradual bringing out into clear consciousness, and an application to new details, of principles latent in the actual words of Christ; others to an infusion of Greek Philosophy; others to the practical experience and the scientific discoveries of the modern world. Christianity in the course of nineteen centuries has gradually absorbed into itself many ideas from various sources, {165} christianizing them in the process. Many ideas, much Hellenic Philosophy, many Hellenic ideals of life, many Roman ideas of government and organization have thus, in the excellent phrase of Professor Gardner, been 'baptized into Christ.' This capacity of absorbing into itself elements of spiritual life which were originally independent of it is not a defect of historical Christianity, but one of its qualifications for being accepted by the modern world as a universal, an absolute, a final Religion.