Starbuck emphasizes the surrender of the will in conversion even when
the will has been consciously exercised. "We are confronted with the
paradox ... that in the same persons who strive towards the higher life,
self-surrender is often necessary before the sense of assurance comes.
The personal will must be given up. In many cases relief persistently
refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort
in the direction he desires to go."[114] He adds that "faith is the next
step after self-surrender, or even the accompaniment of it.... Then
faith comes in, which means that the soul is in a receptive attitude....
One throws oneself completely on the world-will, so that one may become
a 'receiver of its truth and an organ of its activity.'"[115]
114: "Psychology of Religion," pp. 113, 114.
115: _Ibid._, p. 117.
Royce remarks that our religious need is supreme, and "is accompanied
with the perfectly well-warranted assurance that we cannot attain the
goal unless we can get into some sort of communion with a real life
infinitely richer than our own.... The religious ideal grows out of the
vision of a spiritual freedom and peace which are not naturally
ours."[116] "The little will of the conscious and limited individual,"
says J. B. Pratt, "must simply give up before the deeper will of the
larger personality, stretching out from the conscious centre no one
knows how far, can take control."[117]
116: "Sources of Religious Insight," pp. 53, 54.
117: "Psychology of Religious Belief," 1907, p. 161.
It is clear that the evangelical scheme of salvation, "Heaven's easy,
artless, unencumber'd plan," has found strong and unexpected support
from the modern study of religious experience. The impressive
testimonies above, if translated into Pauline language, mean that
salvation is by faith and not by works of the law. The examples from
which the generalizations are made are taken mostly from orthodox
circles, but even those who are but loosely attached to Christianity in
its usual forms are saved in the same way. Thus James says of the
mind-curers that "they have demonstrated that a form of regeneration by
relaxing, by letting go, psychologically indistinguishable from the
Lutheran justification by faith and the Wesleyan acceptance of free
grace, is within the reach of persons who have no conviction of sin and
care nothing for the Lutheran theology."[118] The theologian might
contend that Christianity is a sort of "sleeping partner" in these
schemes, and that they contain the mustard seed of faith sufficient to
save; but, however this may be, the fact remains that the mind-cure
schemes teach a form of salvation by faith, not by works.
118: "Varieties," p. 111.
The strain of attention and constant anxiety, involved in the effort to
keep the law and save oneself, leads to exhaustion and despair. The
struggle is hopeless, the psychologist would say, because the nervous
centres become exhausted. Man cannot, however zealous for the law, by
conscious activity and moral struggle attain inward peace. Salvation by
works is psychologically as well as theologically impossible.
II. METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The students of religious experience are to a remarkable degree in
agreement with one another and with the teachings of evangelical
Christianity in their view of the place and power of religion in human
life, and of the need of salvation and the way of salvation.
Disagreements arise when they seek no longer to describe religious
experience but to interpret that experience. Our authorities, in
technical language, agree very largely when they study the phenomenology
of religion, but differ widely as to its metaphysical implicates.
It may properly be asked whether the psychology of religion, while
dealing with the deep things of man, is competent to reveal the deep
things of God. Should the psychologist venture to draw any inferences
in the metaphysical sphere? Strictly speaking he is studying only
subjective phenomena, and the self-imposed limitations of his subject
should forbid him from launching into metaphysical speculation. If he
cannot, as a psychologist, call his soul his own, much less can he infer
that God exists or that Christianity is true. He must remain, perforce,
in the outer courts of the temple, and cannot enter the inner shrine.
As a matter of fact no writer on the psychology of religious experience
really confines himself within strictly empirical limits. Metaphysical
inferences are in fact drawn, or very plainly suggested, and the
important question becomes what inferences of this nature, whether
positive or negative, are proper and legitimate. Religious experience is
at any rate not self-explanatory, but points to something beyond itself,
whether that something be merely a disordered nervous system, or a
natural impulse such as that of sex, or a department of consciousness
outside of the normal, or a Great Beyond, whether conceived as Humanity
or as the living God. We may consider then, (1) the physical explanation
of religion, including the sexual; (2) the psychological explanation;
(3) the social explanation; and (4) the theological explanation.
1. Lowest in the scale is the view of religion which regards it as the
result of abnormal physical or psychophysical conditions. This theory
is the expression of a robust secularism, which can quote the proverb,
"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be," and would
prescribe a dose of physic (as his friends did for George Fox) for those
in distress on account of their sins. "For the modern materialist, as
for the ancient Manichee, sin is a question of physiology; moral
depravity only a manifestation of corporeal disorder."[119] Religion and
crime, in this view, both depart from the line of normal existence, and
are pathological phenomena. But if religion is a disease, it afflicts
men in all sorts of physical and mental states, and is practically a
universal disease, taking the world at large.
119: Robert Law: "The Tests of Life," p. 131.
Akin to this pathological explanation of religion is that which sees in
it either a natural expression, or else a perversion, of the sexual
instinct. "In a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of
the reproductive instinct,"[120] says Starbuck; and G. S. Hall says that
"in its most fundamental aspect, conversion is a natural, normal,
universal, and necessary process at the stage when life pivots over from
an autocentric to a heterocentric basis."[121] This view is popular with
those who would give a naturalistic account of the religious life,
especially of conversion.
120: "Psychology of Religion," p. 401.
121: "Adolescence," Vol. II, p. 301.
In assuming a close connection between human and divine love, the
mystics and the materialists join hands. With both the sexual is
transmuted into the spiritual. Plato made the transition in his
"Phædrus," comparing divine with human love and even with the latter in
a degraded form. The sexual passion and the passion for purity both
alike stir human nature to its depths, and the love of God and the love
of woman are somehow akin. Religion in all ages has made free use of the
imagery of love and marriage. The close connection has been emphasized
by the statistics which show that the period between twelve and twenty
years is preëminently the age of conversion.
On the other hand, the relations between the sexual and the religious
life are so various that it does not seem possible to place them in the
simple relation of cause and effect. In ancient religions there were
examples of phallic worship and the mutilation of priests, of temple
prostitutes and vestal virgins. Polygamy and celibacy have both alike
been enjoined in the name of religion. The imagery of the bride and the
bridegroom has been freely used by the mystics, but it is employed as
well by those who are thought to oppose religion.[122] It is true that in
Christian circles the curve of conversion rises suddenly and is at its
height during the adolescent period; but again the facts are not so
clear as to warrant the inference that conversion is an effect of the
development of the sexual life. The adolescent period is the time also
of the awakening of the intellectual and æsthetic faculties, of the
feeling of responsibility and the stirring of ambition. Unless all of
these are irradiations of the sexual impulse, it cannot be said that the
religious awakening, coming within this period, must be so regarded. The
adolescent period is one of peculiar religious susceptibility, but in
part this may be due to the influence of social pressure, brought to
bear very strongly at this period by parents and teachers. Again, the
exceptions on both sides are too many. Adolescents, even those under
religious influences, are not always converted; indeed this period is
one of peculiar susceptibility to doubt. It is notorious that this is
the time when the Sunday-school and the church are apt to lose their
hold on the boys, and the questionnaires show juvenile atheism as well
as juvenile piety. Sex development cannot well be the cause both of
religion and irreligion.
122: In an appreciation of the late John Davidson, it is said that
"an obsession by sexual metaphors was his imaginative besetting
sin."--A. S. Mories, in _Westminster Review_, July, 1913, p. 81.
While conversions are most frequent in the adolescent period, they occur
both before and after it, as the statistics show. The notable
conversions which have been most far-reaching in their effects, such as
those of Paul, Augustine, and Luther, have occurred after adolescence.
Conversion with Augustine meant the repression of sex desires and a
celibate life, while in the case of Luther it meant freedom to marry.
James observes that "the effects are infinitely wider than the alleged
causes, and for the most part opposite in nature."[123] Paul's conversion
and that of multitudes after him have no suggestion of a sexual element,
and it is notable that men are apt to become increasingly occupied with
religion in advancing age as the sexual impulse wanes.
123: "Varieties," p. 11, note.
The adolescent theory of conversion has, indeed, a lesson for Christian
parents and teachers. They should urge upon boys and girls decision and
public identification with the church during this period; but it would
be a loss to religion if religious teachers should forget the profound
psychology of the motto: "Give me a child for his first seven years, and
you can have him for the rest of his life." As Stevens says: "We cannot
wait till adolescence is reached before we win the soul for God. That
would be fatally late. The boy must know that the highest is the highest
when he sees it, and must have been prepared to love it."[124] The
profound emotional disturbance of puberty is not regeneration in the
Christian sense, while at that time the conditions for it may be
peculiarly favourable.
124: "Psychology of the Christian Soul," p. 173.
2. Midway between those explanations of religion which refer it to a
physical and to a supernatural cause is the psychological theory
advocated by James, that the special seat or source of the religious
life is in the Subconscious. While the "subliminal" and the
"subconscious" are newcomers in psychology, they have already played a
considerable rôle in religious discussion, and have been used in
illustration and even in reconstruction of theological doctrine.
Multiple personality illustrates the Trinity; the subconscious is made,
as in Sanday's "Christologies Ancient and Modern," the sphere of the
divine nature of Christ; and psychical research is looked to by some as
a hopeful reinforcement or scientific demonstration of the doctrine of a
future life.
The subconscious is used in a rather loose way by popular and even by
scientific writers. James regards it as "nowadays a well-accredited
psychological entity,"[125] while Pratt refers to the use that is made of
it as "rather questionable psychology."[126] Some of its possible and
legitimate meanings are: (_a_) Those hereditary dispositions which,
unknown to the man himself, largely shape his actions; or (_b_) the
psychophysical machinery of habitualized action. As Jastrow says: "We
rise upon steps of our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their
task."[127] The subconscious again (_c_) may mean that subliminal
activity of the mind which, when the conscious strain of effort and
attention has been unsuccessful, often, as it seems, does the work for
one, recalling the forgotten name, solving the problem, or even creating
a new product such as a finished song or poem.
125: "Varieties," p. 511.
126: _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 231.
127: "The Subconscious," p. 433.
Lastly (_d_) the subconscious may refer to that more occult sphere to
which belong the phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, multiple
personality, and perhaps telepathy, in virtue of which the subject
performs actions or has ideas to which his ordinary consciousness gives
no clew. The subconscious in any or all of these senses is at least the
dwelling place of mystery. Starbuck admits that "what happens below the
threshold of consciousness must, in the nature of the case, evade
analysis."[128] It is a mysterious region of shadows, a twilight zone in
which the divine and human may meet. It may be in itself the source of
the religious life, or at least the channel through which revelation and
redemptive influence may come.
128: "Psychology of Religion," p. 107.
In James' exposition the subconscious part of a man is the higher part;
and man is conscious that this higher part of himself "is co-terminous
and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in
the universe outside of him."[129] What is this more? Our point of
contact with it is the subconscious self; and without asking for the
farther limits of the "More," and "disregarding the over-beliefs," "we
have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider
self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of
religious experience, which, it seems to me, is literally and
objectively true as far as it goes."[130]
129: "Varieties," p. 508.
130: _Ibid._, p. 515.
James' theory of the subconscious as the organ of religion can appeal to
many undoubted facts, but if it means, as the tendency of his exposition
indicates, that the subconscious as the organ of religion has superior
moral worth to the life of full consciousness, it may be insisted that
the subliminal sphere is the source of evil as well as of good. The
subconscious may be identified with the flesh as well as with the
spirit. If the subconscious, to use Pauline language, is the medium of
higher spiritual influences, it is also the seat of the "old Adam," of
"sin that dwelleth in me." In this region is to be found the source
alike of the unexpected heroisms and weaknesses of men, of Peter's
courage before the Council and of his cowardice before the serving maid.
Hereditary and habitualized dispositions and tendencies are like the
submerged part of an iceberg, and the winds of conscious resolution and
effort are often powerless against the sweep of the hidden current
beneath.
It may be admitted that "if the grace of God miraculously operates, it
probably operates through the subliminal door,"[131] but it should be
remembered that in this region of the subliminal there are "dragons" as
well as seraphim. Hypnotic influences may be therapeutic or they may be
baleful, and in the region of the subconscious, it is hinted, insane
delusions and psychopathic obsessions may find their source.[132] The
subconscious is a battle-field rather than itself a source of help, and
it cannot be said that the subconscious man of the shadows, if he exists
in any of the rôles assigned to him, is any better or more religious
than the man who has his being in the full sunlight of conscious
activity. The psychological explanation of religion, like the
pathological and the sexual, really proves too much. From all these
alleged sources of religious life, not only saving influences but
destructive influences flow. Royce's criticism is that "the new
doctrine, viewed in one aspect, seems to leave religion in the
comparatively trivial position of a play with whimsical powers--a prey
to endless psychological caprices."[133]
131: "Varieties," p. 270.
132: _Ibid._, p. 235.
133: "William James and Other Essays," p. 23.
3. Another theory of religion, now popular, seeks its explanation not in
any bodily condition or stage of growth, nor in any special department
of the mental life, but in the social relationships of men. Religion
becomes a recognition of social values, "a consciousness of the highest
social values,"[134] and is practically to be identified with patriotism,
altruism and the vision of the future of society. "To-day," says Leuba,
"most men and women derive whatever strength they may have to maintain
their integrity and to devote themselves to the public good from their
respect and love for their family, their friends, their business
associates, and the state, and from their desire for the respect and
love of men, much more than from any religious conviction. It is no
longer the consciousness of God, but the consciousness of Man that is
the power making for righteousness."[135] No metaphysical assumptions
need be made by this view of religion except that of the existence of a
world of one's fellow-men, a postulate which seems necessary even to a
functional psychology.
134: Ames: "Psychology of Religious Experiences," p. viii.
135: "A Psychological Study of Religion," p. 311.
However much in harmony with the spirit of the age, the social
explanation of religion is one-sided and is inadequate to the depth and
massiveness and infinite perspective of religious experience. Religion
is a triangle with God, the self and one's brother at its three angles.
(_a_) The Social theory of religion gives no adequate recognition of
the worth either of the individual or of society. The deepest message of
religion is that the soul is worth something to God. Man, in spite of
his social obligations, is not made simply for his brother. "We die
alone," Pascal says, and there is a sense in which we live alone. As a
writer on the psychology of the New Testament says: "The self, according
to the New Testament, is not merely a social self developing in a
community of other finite selves; it is a divine self realizing its
ideal powers of service, and fulfilling its destiny only in a fellowship
with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ."[136] Unless Humanity is
endowed with the attributes of Deity, as it almost seems to be in the
Positivist ritual, the estimate of society is also lowered when men are
viewed as having relations and obligations only to one another. As James
Ward has pointed out, Humanity can only have the significance and
sacredness of the individuals from whom it is abstracted, and if these
have no permanent or enduring worth, no more has Humanity.[137]
136: M. S. Fletcher: "The Psychology of the New Testament," p. 245.
137: "The Realm of Ends," p. 387.
(_b_) The humanitarian view narrows too much the horizons of religion.
It would exclude from religion the sense of infinite dependence, and of
devotion to and communion with a personal higher Power. A religion of
humanity merely will seem superficial to the mood which cries out, "My
soul is athirst for God," or "I seek _Thee_ in order that my soul may
live." If the religion of the anchorite was one-sided, so equally is
that of the humanitarian.[138] Neither sin nor righteousness can be
interpreted in exclusively social terms, unless the conception of the
community be so enlarged as to include the Great Companion and the Great
Demander. The social theory, again, has no apparent place for the
religion of solitude which finds God in nature. A New England writer
says of Mount Ranier:
138: The hermit saints, from this modern standpoint, would not
deserve to be called religious at all, as witness this remark of
Ames: "If religion is participation in the ideal values of the
social consciousness, then those who do not share in this
consciousness are non-religious."--"Psychology of Religious
Experiences," p. 356.
"I saw the mountain three years ago: Would that it might ever be my lot
to see it again! I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is
a moral force in my life." "Climb the mountains," says one of the best
known of American mountaineers, John Muir, "and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The
winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while care will drop off like autumn leaves."[139]
139: See J. H. Williams: "The Mountain That Was 'God,'" pp. 40, 113.
(_c_) The religion of humanity must look outside itself for its highest
inspiration for social service and for the norm of social progress. It
was Christianity that created the atmosphere in which "the enthusiasm of
humanity" and zeal for social service could flourish. Christianity has
emphasized the value of the individual, and the sacredness of family
relationships and the brother-hood of the children of the one Father.
Without divine love as its pattern and inspiration human love would lose
in comprehension and in intensity.
Society in its progress has ever waited for the signal to be given by
some prophet from the deserts, or some seer who has brought from the
mount of vision the pattern of a better social order. Those who see in
social service the essence of religion are faced with the paradox that
the wisest and most beneficent social influences have flowed from those
experiences in which the individual turned his back on society and
flaunted its ideals. A declaration of independence of society seems
needed before there can be the most effective social service. By an
unsocial act Abraham left his country and his kindred and his father's
house, and yet in him all the families of the earth have been blessed;
through Paul's unsocial act in deserting the traditions of his fathers,
the course of Western civilization has been profoundly influenced;
George Fox's unsocial act in depriving his town of the services of a
useful tradesman, and making for himself a suit of leather, has been
called by an acute observer, Carlyle, doubtless by an over-emphasis, the
greatest event of modern history. Religion, in fact, first asserts
itself as something over and above all social relations before its
social mission can be performed.
4. The interpretation of religious experience by the psychologists has
not always been favourable to theistic or Christian belief, but the
failure of other explanations, if established, will lead us to seek a
more adequate one by referring to a Reality transcending human
experience and social relationships. The study of religious psychology
has, in fact, furnished a broad basis from which a metaphysical or
theistic inference can be drawn. Such an inference, cumulative in its
effect, may be drawn from the universality of religious belief, from the
imperativeness of social obligations implying a supersocial sanction,
and from the regenerative effects of religion to an adequate cause. "God
is real since He produces real effects."[140] But the study of religious
experience has not only strengthened the older theistic arguments, but
has in effect formulated two new arguments, the pragmatic and the
mystical.
140: "Varieties," p. 517.
The Pragmatic Argument for theism has been stated by James in the spirit
of his later philosophy. Taking religions as including creeds and
faith-states, James says that without regard to their truth "we are
obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence on action and
endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions
of mankind."[141] The pragmatic argument would then run: "The uses of
religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of the
individual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in
it."[142] There is a satisfaction, a fullness of life, an energy and an
expansiveness flowing from religion which are not enjoyed apart from it,
and its usefulness, from this standpoint, is a guarantee of its truth.
It is merely to state this argument in the more familiar terms of cause
and effect to say as James does elsewhere that "work is actually done
upon our finite personalities, for we are turned into new men, and
consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our
regenerative change."[143] God is real since He produces real effects.
141: "Varieties," p. 506.
142: _Ibid._, p. 459.
143: _Ibid._, p. 516.
The Mystical Argument for theism is based on the claim that in religious
experience there is a more immediate certainty of the presence of God
and a stronger assurance of His existence than can be gained from purely
intellectual processes. This evidence, it is clear, may be of the
strongest possible kind to the mystic himself, but may seem to be weak
or even negligible to the outsider, since the experience in the nature
of the case is private and incommunicable. Before the mystical claim is
appraised we must distinguish further the various kinds of mysticism. We
must distinguish between the absorption of the Buddhist with his passion
for annihilation, and the Christian's delight in the Lord; and between a
mysticism which means identity of substance and the deification of man,
and a moral mysticism which realizes at once that God is infinitely near
in His grace but infinitely far in His holiness.
It is fair to ask whether the assurance of the presence of God enjoyed
by many Christians in all ages, according to their testimony, is
immediate or inferred knowledge, and whether it should be called
knowledge or faith. The answer of the mystic might be that there is a
"felt indubitable certainty of experience" which is not dependent on the
solution of epistemological problems. Otherwise we could not be sure of
our own existence or of that of our fellows until we had specialized in
the theory of knowledge and solved the problem, which has haunted modern
philosophy, of the knowledge of other selves. If it be objected again
that a subjective experience cannot ground an inference to an objective,
and much less to a supernatural, cause,[144] it may be said that the
experience itself, if correctly reported, is supernatural in character.
Whether it be Paul's "peace that passes understanding," or Peter's "joy
unspeakable and full of glory," or Edwards' "inward sweet delight in God
and divine things," or a modern scientist's consciousness of the
presence of God, said to be "as strong and real to me as that of any
bodily presence,"[145] it is of such a character that no other inference
than that to a supernatural cause can properly be drawn. The mystical
argument is not based like the other arguments of natural theology upon
the regular course of things, but upon what claims to be a new
supernatural experience, a new life with new capacities and powers, and
new emotions and insights.
144: See Höffding: "Philosophy of Religion," p. 99.
145: "A Scientist's Confession of Faith," by E. L. Gregory, 1898, p.21.
It must be noticed, in conclusion, that the evidence which the
psychologists have so industriously collected, showing that religion is
good for the individual and for society, has been taken almost
exclusively from the circle of Christian influences. We might paraphrase
James' pragmatic argument and say that Christianity is true because it
is good for the individual and for society. His argument from cause
might also be applied to Christianity, for the mystical experiences
adduced are in great measure not merely those of communion with God but
of communion with God in and through Christ. By no analysis in fact, as
D. W. Forrest says, is the Christian "able to distinguish his communion
with the Father from his communion with Christ. They are blended as
consciously real in one indivisible experience."[146] The testimony of
Christian experience is to a Power and a Presence which the Christian
feels only as he hears and accepts the gospel message and looks to
Christ for forgiveness, guidance, and help. "A man who is converted, in
the New Testament sense, is one who has surrendered to a force
immeasurably greater than anything he has of himself; one who has
awakened to the overwhelming consciousness of a spiritual world brought
to a focus before him in the Person of Jesus Christ."[147] The Christian
believes that he receives grace from the Father and the Son. "When Jesus
deals with us and works within us, He does what only God can do. All
Christian experience is nothing if it is not this."[148]
146: "The Christ of History and of Experience," p. 166.
147: H. Wheeler Robinson: "The Christian Doctrine of Man," 1911,
p. 322.
148: P. C. Simpson: "The Fact of Christ," pp. 130, 131.
After all the secret of the Lord, known to Christians in the catacombs
at Rome as they sang, "Jesu, Amor Meus," known to medieval Christians as
they sang "Jesu, Dulcis Memoria," and known equally to modern Christians
who sing "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," is with them that fear Him. It has
been well said that Christianity must be known from the inside, if it
is to be known at its full worth. In the nature of the case the evidence
of Christian experience is not demonstrative to an outsider. It can come
to him only in the way of an appeal: "Come and see; taste and see that
the Lord is good."
IV
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND RECENT PHILOSOPHY
The two systems of philosophy which were dominant at the turn of the
century were unfriendly to theistic and Christian belief. Naturalism on
the one hand and Absolutism on the other could find no place for a
positive faith in God, freedom and immortality. The opening years of the
century witnessed a revolt against these two systems; and the leading
characteristic of twentieth century thought, over against an agnostic
naturalism and a pantheistic or impersonal absolutism, has been its
reaffirmation of spiritual values. There has been a new emphasis upon
the rights of personality, as against the enmeshing and enchaining
forces of nature on the one hand and an all-engulfing Absolute on the
other.
Philosophical readers will remember the moral tonic of James' collection
of essays, "The Will to Believe" (1902), with its picturesque style, its
originality of standpoint and its moral enthusiasm. Here was a
philosopher of medical training and of unquestioned scientific standing,
and yet with the insight and earnestness of a prophet, making a valiant
defense of spiritual realities, of human freedom, and the rights of the
volitional and moral sides of our nature. As an evolutionist he
contended that "the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field
of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will
drive irreligion to the wall."[149] And as a psychologist he found that
theism appealed to every energy of our active nature and released the
springs of every emotion, and held that "infra-theistic conceptions,
materialism and agnosticism, are irrational because they are inadequate
stimuli to man's practical nature."[150]
149: "The Will to Believe," p. 213.
150: _Ibid._, p. 134.
Readers who had been breathing the stifling air of naturalism, so fatal
to spiritual aspiration, or the too rarified atmosphere of absolutism
with its "transcendence" of personality and moral distinctions, will
remember also the sense of satisfaction and relief with which they read
that other volume of protest, from the other side of the water,
"Personal Idealism" (1902). It was refreshing to find that there was a
body of brilliant young thinkers, alive to the scientific atmosphere of
the time, and trained in the philosophic orthodoxy of the English
schools, and yet boldly asserting the rights of personality in God and
man.
This twofold protest against a denial, from whatever side, of the rights
of personality was organized into the movement we call Pragmatism,
under the leadership of William James, ably assisted by F. C. S.
Schiller in Oxford and John Dewey in this country.[151] It is not to be
wondered at if this reaction went too far, as the pendulum swung from
the extreme of Being to that of Becoming. We find Pragmatism, reacting
against monism, whether materialistic or idealistic, going over to
pluralism; from the extreme of a "block universe" in which time is
nothing passing to the other extreme of a "strung-along universe" in
which time is everything; from pantheism going over to a vaguely
indicated polytheism; from an absolute truth and an absolute Being
sitting in smiling repose above the strife of time to a "God in the
dirt" and a truth that could be made, or unmade, perhaps too easily.
151: For fuller discussion of this movement, the writer may refer to
his article, "Pragmatism, Humanism and Religion," in the _Princeton
Theological Review_, October, 1908.
Our discussion will be more concrete if we select leading
representatives from the four nations most addicted to philosophy, and
examine their attitude towards the Christian Faith and towards its
theistic foundations.
I. BERGSON AND CREATIVE EVOLUTION
In close relation to the pragmatic movement, and set forth with a
wonderful magic of style, is the philosophy of Henri Bergson which
finds its mature expression in his "Creative Evolution." It is a
remarkable testimony to the wealth of suggestion and many-sidedness of
Bergson's philosophy that its support has been claimed by a number of
movements of diverse aim. Modernists in theology, syndicalists in the
sphere of social agitation, and even, it is said, cubists in art, appeal
to Bergson for philosophical support; and affinities have been pointed
out between his _élan vital_ and Schopenhauer's will-to-live, Von
Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and Nietzsche's aggressive
individualism. We must ask whether his _élan vital_ can be baptized, and
his "Creative Evolution" be made the basis for a spiritual philosophy.
It will be useful to notice some features of Bergson's system before
attempting to estimate its bearings upon religious problems. The story
of evolution as Bergson describes it, certainly in an engaging manner,
is a drama in three acts. The _élan vital_, or otherwise consciousness,
is the hero, but is imprisoned by matter (the villain), and is striving
blindly for release. In the first act, the vital impulse tunnels its way
through the opposing element of matter into the vegetable world. The
result is only the lethargy and immobility of vegetable forms, and is so
far a failure. The next act finds consciousness working its way into the
animal world and attaining mobility and becoming in so far free from the
entanglements of matter; but here again there is partial failure.
Consciousness is arrested at the stage of instinct, and, resting content
with a response to the environment which is patterned after the
mechanical action of matter, fails to attain freedom. In the third act,
"by a tremendous leap," consciousness, in spite of the efforts of matter
to drag it down to the plane of mechanism, reaches at last spontaneity
and freedom in man. The drama reaches its _dénouement_ in man and his
ability not only to move in response to environment, but to control the
environment. It is intimated that there may be a sequel, in which life
pursues its career in another stage of existence.
1. It is evident at a glance that the view of evolution here set forth
in barest outline offers many points of contrast to what has been
accepted as evolutionary orthodoxy. The history of life with both Darwin
and Bergson is a struggle: but with Darwin it is a struggle for
existence, with Bergson a struggle for freedom, for efficiency, for
complexity. With Darwin there is a struggle of living beings with one
another, conceived after the analogy of economic competition; with
Bergson there is a struggle of life against matter and necessity. The
struggle for existence, in a sense, has been moralized. It is a struggle
for the existence and higher life of consciousness.
2. Creative evolution is not materialistic evolution, for life is not a
development from matter but is an upward tendency opposing the downward
current of matter. The increasing complexity of living forms is not the
result of the movements of matter, or of chemical-physical laws, but of
an opposition, successful in a unique degree in men, to the imprisoning
and entangling forces of matter.
3. The later stages in evolution, while connected with the earlier in
continuity of development, may contain elements that are essentially
new. A living being is "a reservoir of indetermination and
unforeseeability."[152] The new species cannot be explained, except by an
illegitimate process of thought, by what is presented in the old. The
appearance of a new species is something as new as the composition of a
symphony of Beethoven. Man, then, in his powers and destinies is not to
be judged by his likeness to the brutes, but by what he possesses over
and above the qualities of animal life, by those achievements and
endowments to which animals have failed to attain. Since man, and man
alone, has come so far, and in him alone consciousness has broken the
chains of mechanical necessity, "we shall have no repugnance in
admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness
pursues its path beyond this earthly life."[153]
152: "Life and Consciousness," _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 34.
153: _Ibid._, p. 43.
4. Creative evolution is the antithesis of mechanical evolution. Bergson
protests that the conception of mechanism as applied to life is
inadequate, because (1) it is artificial, growing out of our habits of
controlling matter. It is an instrument of the intelligence, not giving
us an insight into life, which we must gain rather in intuition, the
higher faculty in Bergson's system. A mechanical representation of
nature is always a "representation necessarily artificial and
symbolic."[154] (2) Mechanical conceptions are inapplicable to living
beings, because of the irreversibility of the movements of living forms;
and (3) the mechanical theory is negatived by the facts of the
psychophysical connection. "The hypothesis of an equivalence between the
psychical state and the cerebral state implies a veritable absurdity, as
we tried to prove in a former work."[155] No mechanical theory and no
theory of accidental variations, whether insensible or abrupt, can
account for the production of so complex an organ as the eye.[156]
154: "L'Évolution Créatrice," 7th ed., 1911, p. iv.; E. T.,
"Creative Evolution," 1911, p. xii.
155: _Ibid._, p. 384; E. T., p. 355.
156: _Ibid._, pp. 82 ff.; E. T., pp. 75 ff.
His critique of other theories prepares the way for Bergson's own view
that the forms of living beings are due to an original vital impulsion,
not in the single organism, but in life as a whole, seeking, without
foresight of the result, to overcome the downward tendency of matter.
Bergson's suggested _via media_ between creationism and evolutionism,
his rejection of a theory of chance variations, and his vigorous polemic
against mechanism, all seem to prepare the way for a spiritualistic
philosophy. It is true that the land of the spirit has not yet been
explored, but Bergson, as one writer expresses it, has at least thrown a
bridge across the chasm between the material and the spiritual. While
his "Creative Evolution" has been placed upon the Index, we must
remember that he himself claims that this work and those that preceded
it have resulted in the conceptions of liberty, of spirit and of
creation. "From all this," as he says, "we derive a clear idea of a free
and creating God, producing matter and life at once, whose creative
effort is continued, in a vital direction, by the evolution of species
and the construction of human personalities."[157]
157: See Edouard Le Roy: "The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson," E.
T., pp. 224 f.
The point in Bergson's system which seems least in harmony with theistic
belief is his criticism and rejection of finalism. Bergson fears that
the temporal series will be swallowed up in the "dark backward and abysm
of time," or rather of eternity. The finalism of a foreseen end means
with him fatalism, fixity, with no play for freedom, and a reality in
time only of a secondary order. Again, in opposition to finalism he
urges the variety of living forms. Could the end of all the varied
history be merely the production of man? This cannot be proved, because
everywhere we see in nature contingency and variety, and apparent
cross-purposes if purpose at all. There is no single line of evolution
leading up to man. Some fossil forms from remote periods show exactly
the same structure as living forms to-day. Further, the vital impulse
striving towards freedom meets with obstacles, and failure and arrest
are manifest in the lethargy of vegetables and the mechanical reflexes
of animals, if these are viewed with reference to the assumed end of the
creation of man. The only finalism which Bergson will admit is that of a
push towards freedom in virtue of an original vital impulse, blindly and
often vainly seeking to overcome the movement of matter towards
necessity. It is a _vis a tergo_ happening at last to issue, without any
foresight of the result, in the appearance of man.
It is not clear, however, that Bergson has been able to dispose of
finalism, or to find some conception between it and the theory of chance
which he rejects. The disc of a talking machine, to one not familiar
with it, with its spiral lines broken in a haphazard way, would seem to
exclude purpose; but when it is properly adjusted the voice of a Melba
or a Caruso can be heard. So there may be some standpoint from which the
bewildering variety of nature will reveal some unitary purpose. It may
be, to use the figure of the artist, that the purpose is not solely the
production of man, but that the variety and beauty of the natural world
is an expression of the joy of the Creative Artist in his work. The
purpose may be more comprehensive, and the fact that all natural history
does not plainly lead to the production of man is not in itself a proof
that man was not the intended consummation of the process.
It is noteworthy that Bergson, a master in the use of illustration,
cannot find any exact illustration of the kind of evolution he wishes to
describe. He compares the course of evolution to a road, leading to a
city, but hastens to add that, for evolution, the end of the road is not
seen.[158] He says again that "if one wished to express himself in terms
of finality, it must be said that consciousness ... has sought an issue
in the double direction of instinct and intelligence. It has not found
it in instinct and it has not obtained it upon the side of intelligence,
except by a sudden leap from animal to man. So that, in the last
analysis, man would be the _raison d' être_ of the entire organization
of life upon our planet."[159] He adds again, however, that this would
be but a manner of speaking, and that there is nothing in reality but a
certain current of existence and an antagonistic current, whence all the
evolution of life. Once more it will be asked, how is this sudden leap,
so tremendous in its consequences, to be conceived? Is it a leap in the
dark, like the leap of a fish from the water into a rowboat? Is man thus
only a happy accident? Or must we see in the vital impulse, or behind
it, some real instrumentality of guidance? If the original current of
life is wholly blind and purposeless, it would arrive nowhere, or else
its arrival at humanity would be as much the result of chance as if it
were due to a fortuitous collocation of atoms.
158: "L'Évolution Créatrice," p. 112; E. T., p. 102.
159: _Ibid._, pp. 200 f.; E. T., pp. 184 f.
But let us return to Bergson's favourite and beautiful figure of the
artist. The effort to objectify the ideal, and to put it in concrete
form in words or upon canvas, is said to be precious though painful. It
is precious and more precious than the work it results in, "because,
thanks to it, we have drawn from ourselves not only all there was there,
but more than was there: we have raised ourselves above ourselves."[160]
160: _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 41.
Is the Divine Artist subject to this kind of evolution? In moments of
creative activity does He thus avail Himself of a "plus-power" in the
universe, to use Emerson's expression, and does He thus, like the human
artist, raise Himself above Himself? If so, we must think of God as
altogether such a one as we are, rather than as the source and ground of
being and the life and light of men. Such a deity is rather to be
identified with the stream of life than with the Ultimate lying behind
both life and matter. The Divine Artist, so conceived, would lack the
clearness of human prevision of ends, and would be of a relatively lower
order of endowment. The striving of the vital impulse without foresight
of an end is of an infra-human rather than a super-human kind; for even
a "complete and perfect humanity," Bergson says, "would be that in which
these two forms of conscious activity [intuition and intelligence]
attain their full development."[161]
161: "L'Évolution Créatrice," p. 289; E. T., p. 267.
A recent critic has said that while Bergson has removed the mechanical
obstacles to liberty he has not discovered the spiritual conditions
requisite for it, and that "he has, most unintentionally, brought us
back, in this anti-Finalism, to that Naturalism which he has so
successfully resisted when it masqueraded as a sheer Mechanism."[162]
There can be no doubt that the spirit of his philosophy is one of
progress, and that the tendency of his thought is spiritualistic; his
_élan vital_ is an _élan en avant_, and his God (if one be admitted in
his system) is a God of hope. But the questions will still arise
whether the vital impulse means for society a destructive radicalism or
a constructive renewal; whether, in its ethical aspect, it means a
will-to-live no matter what happens to any one else, or a
will-to-live-better; and whether it will eventually be transformed into
a pessimistic resignation or transmuted into spiritual aspiration.
162: F. von Hügel: "Eternal Life," p. 301.
In the religious aspect of his philosophy, Bergson stands at the parting
of the ways. He must associate with creation not merely an impulse
vaguely psychical, but the personal attributes of will, intelligence and
purpose, and so advance towards theism; or else he must be content to
rest in naturalism, albeit of a glorified type.
II. EUCKEN AND THE TRUTH OF RELIGION
Since the death of William James, the brightest stars in the
philosophical firmament have been Henri Bergson of Paris and Rudolf
Eucken of Jena. One reason for the popularity of both is that the centre
of interest in their best-known works is not in epistemology. They do
not approach the problem of existence as beholders, merely asking how
they can see, and whether what they see is real, but their standpoint is
that of intimate, vital human experience. Both writers place themselves
in the stream of life, and find that the moments of deepest insight into
reality are those of creative activity in art or other constructions of
the mind, or else, with Eucken, of moral achievement and victory.
Eucken has been called the German Emerson, and his message to his time
is that of a seer rather than of a systematizer. He is the prophet of a
spiritual life, protesting against materialism and secularism, and
vindicating the sovereign rights of the spiritual aspects of existence.
In the term "Activism," which he applies to his philosophy, he intimates
that there must be an activity of the soul upon its material and social
environment, before the insights of philosophy and the achievements of
art and the experiences of religion can be attained. There must be an
assertion by the soul of its own spiritual nature. The conviction that
man is not merely the product of nature, but in his spiritual life is
independent and supreme, is not the result of a revelation to a passive
recipient. It is an achievement, a venture of faith, a self-assertion of
the soul in the face of hostile forces which would confine it within the
trivial and the phenomenal.
Eucken's relation to Christianity will appear if we notice briefly (1)
his critique of other philosophical theories; (2) his own constructive
theory of religion; and (3) his answer to the question, Can we still be
Christians?
1. As an exponent of the "monistic trinity" of the Good, the Beautiful,
and the True, Eucken is brought into comparison with his famous
colleague, Haeckel, with whose "brand-new monism" he has little
sympathy. Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its
ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot
be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him.
From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own
activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art,
social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he
contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is
constructed through the activity of the human mind alone."[163]
163: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," 3d ed., 1912, p. 36;
E. T., "The Truth of Religion," 1913, p. 52.
Against Pragmatism, with which Eucken's Activism has some superficial
resemblance, he argues for the "independent character of reality over
against our experience of it." He believes that our deepest nature can
be called into action only by the recognition of an Ought, which has an
existence and value of its own, regardless of the opinions of any group
of individuals or of the whole human race. "When the good of the
individual and of humanity becomes the highest aim and the guiding
principle, truth sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opinion....
Truth can exist only as an end in itself. 'Instrumental' truth is no
truth at all."[164]
164: "Main Currents of Modern Thought," p. 78.
The method of the intellectualist as well as of the voluntarist is
inadequate to reach the truth of religion. Religion should be a fact of
the whole man, and of his own decision, and it should recognize by a
unique experience, which cannot be called exclusively feeling or thought
or will, an encompassing and basal whole. Thought "left simply to its
own resources would never be able to get beyond empty forms and highly
abstract conceptions."[165] No merely intellectual form of religion is
able to overcome doubt. Thus "the transformation of the Spiritual Life
into an impersonal thought-process destroys it to its very foundation."
165: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," p. 121; E. T., "The
Truth of Religion," p. 176.
2. This effort, already in part described, to assert an independent
spiritual world over against a natural world, this recognition of
over-individual standards and of an absolute, self-subsistent Spiritual
Life (_Geistesleben_), is called Universal Religion. The term Godhead to
indicate this conception is in some ways preferable to that of God. A
higher stage of religion is indicated by Eucken's term Characteristic
Religion, by which is meant a deeper insight into the divine, a more
personal experience of the divine energy of Spiritual Life. Universal
Religion, it may be said, is the demand or the feeling after God; while
Characteristic Religion is the supply or the finding of God. In the
effort to conform to the over-individual standards and to attain harmony
with the divine, there is an inevitable sense of weakness and failure.
It becomes evident that man's own energy cannot save him from inner
discord. "If a rescue is possible, Divine power and grace must do the
work. That such power and grace really accomplish this, is the
fundamental conviction of religion."[166] There originates a mutual
intercourse with the soul and God as between an I and a Thou; and
"consequently, there culminates here a movement away from the colourless
conception of the Godhead to that of a living and personal God."[167]
166: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," p. 295; E. T., p. 425.
167: _Ibid._, p. 299; E. T., p. 430.
Eucken's teaching has been called a philosophical restatement of
Christianity. He reiterates in philosophical language the theological
doctrines of sin, of the new birth, of divine grace, and of the
supremacy of Christian love. His argument for immortality is the
religious argument: "The Infinite Power and Love that has grounded a new
spontaneous nature in man, over against a dark and hostile world, will
conserve such a new nature and its spiritual nucleus, and shelter it
against all perils and assaults, so that life as the bearer of life
eternal can never be wholly lost in the stream of time."[168]
168: _"Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion,"_ p. 303; E. T., pp. 435 f.
3. From our exposition thus far it would seem unnecessary to ask the
question, Can we still be Christians? and we are not surprised that
Eucken's answer is, "We not only can but must be Christians."[169] A
closer examination of his teaching shows that this question, and even
the previous question, Can we still be theists? may naturally be raised.
It is true that Eucken recoils from pantheism as lessening the energy of
life,[170] and declares that the transcendence of the Divine must be
asserted; but on the other hand we are warned that "the notion of the
personal is here only a symbol for something transcending all
conceptions and words."[171] It is too emotional and anthropomorphic.
Eucken will not declare unqualified allegiance either to pantheism, to
theism in its usual form or to agnosticism. In the Spiritual Life the
opposition of monism and dualism, and apparently of the personal and the
impersonal, are transcended. The overcoming of opposites in a way
impossible for reason is precisely the office and prerogative of
religion. It is to be noticed in his account of spiritual life that
prayer, "the core of religion," is singularly absent; and in his
exposition of Christianity he gives no prominence to the Fatherhood of
God, central as that conception was in the teaching of Jesus.
169: "Können wir noch Christen sein?" 1911, p. 236; E. T., "Can
We Still Be Christians?" p. 218.
170: _Ibid._, p. 154; E. T., p. 143.
171: _Ibid._, p. 129; E. T., p. 120.
With the doctrine of personality thus loosely held, it is no wonder that
there are many elements in Christianity as usually understood which are
uncongenial to Eucken's mode of thought. We cannot, he says, confine the
union of God and man to one unique instance, and we must demand an
immediate relationship between God and man throughout the whole breadth
of the Spiritual Life; nor can we make the expression of divine love and
grace dependent upon its one expression in Jesus Christ.[172] One time
cannot set the standard for all time,[173] nor one historical person,
absolutely, for all persons. The denial of sensible miracle, he allows,
cuts deep into historical Christianity, but such a denial is
necessary.[174] To affirm miracle is to make the spiritual too dependent
on the sensible, and such a central miracle as the Resurrection "would
mean an overthrow of the total order of nature, as this has been set
forth through the work of modern investigation."[175]
172: "Können wir noch Christen sein?" p. 186; E. T., p. 172.
173: _Ibid._, p. 28; E. T., p. 27.
174: _Ibid._, p. 167; E. T., p. 155.
175: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," p. 370; E. T., p. 527.
However great the figure of Jesus may be, His greatness must be confined
to the realm of humanity. "If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ
is not the second Person in the Trinity, then He is man; not a man like
any average man among us, but still man. We can, then, revere Him as a
leader, a hero, a martyr; but we cannot directly bind ourselves to Him
or root ourselves in Him (_bei ihm festlegen_); we cannot submit to Him
unconditionally. Still less can we make Him the object of a cult. To do
so would be nothing less than an intolerable deification of a human
being."[176]
176: "Können wir noch Christen sein?" p. 37; E. T., pp. 34 f.
What of those, we may ask, who in religious experience find themselves
"rooted and grounded" in Christ? Eucken's readers cannot expect relief
from this quarter, for religious experience, he holds, is too subjective
and human to ground an inference to the nature of Spiritual Life.[177] It
is evident that Eucken has cut deep into Christianity alike on its
historical, its doctrinal and its experiential sides. He distinguishes
between form and substance, but acknowledges that "religion has lost
unspeakably much through the upheaval of the old form";[178] and that
this must somehow be made good. We might, without violence in the
comparison, imagine the case of a Mohammedan who, trained in modern
modes of thought but clinging to old associations, asked himself the
question, Can we still be Mohammedans? "Yes," he might reply, "but we
must retain only the essence or soul of Mohammedanism--its monotheism.
The historical body or existential form of Mohammedanism, namely, that
Mohammed was the prophet of God and that the Koran is a revelation from
heaven, must be given up. And even when we speak of the unity and
personality of God, we must remember that we are employing symbol and
metaphor."
177: Eucken's neglect of the experiential standpoint is a common
complaint among his critics. See M. Booth: "R. Eucken: His
Philosophy and Influence," p. 199.
178: "The Truth of Religion," p. 577. The German, p. 404, is
less emphatic.
Eucken presents the remarkable phenomenon of a man whose thought is
saturated with Christian influence, who appreciates the moral power and
splendour of Christianity and its regenerative effects in history, and
yet is unable to reconcile its distinctive features with the fundamental
concepts of his philosophy. He shows the close connection of the
questions, What think ye of Christ? and, What think ye of God? and that
assured belief in the personality of God and in His incarnation in a
Person belong together. "No one cometh to the Father but by me." That a
Christianity such as Eucken preaches, removed from supports in history,
in authoritative doctrine, in religious experience, perhaps even in a
rational theism, can retain its moral power and act as a spiritual lever
for the elevation either of the masses or the classes, remains to be
proved.
Our twentieth century philosophers are the prophets of a new age.
Bergson's teaching opens before each individual and before humanity new
possibilities of achievement, as, in obedience to the vital impulse, the
army of humanity rushes on "in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down
every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even
death."[179] Eucken, with the more serious burden of a moral message, has
proclaimed with voice and pen the gospel of a new spiritual life and a
new spiritual world. Do not these twentieth century prophets reëcho in a
certain sense, each in his own language, the message which was heard
among the Galilean hills in an age from which the centuries are
measured, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"?
179: "L'Évolution Créatrice," p. 294; E. T., p. 271.
III. WARD AND THE REALM OF ENDS
Our English speaking philosophers, in the more usual fashion, base their
religious philosophy upon a theory of knowledge. It is noticeable,
however, that both James Ward and Josiah Royce, while belonging to the
idealistic tradition coming down from Kant and Hegel, show the influence
of a revolt from that tradition. Ward begins with the many, with
pluralism, while he ends with the one; and Royce declares himself an
advocate of Absolute Pragmatism.
The great services of Ward to religious philosophy in his "Realm of
Ends" are, first, his transition from pluralism to theism, and, second,
his demonstration anew of the strength of the philosophical argument for
immortality.
1. His theistic argument in a nutshell is this, that while there is no
road from the One to the Many, there is an open road from the Many to
the One, with sign-posts upon the way. We must start with pluralism,
says Ward, because no reason can be given why the One, in whatever way
conceived, should become the Many. Why should the homogeneous become
heterogeneous, or the indeterminate determinate, or why should the
absolute become split up into finite spirits? A creation out of nothing
cannot, for Ward, solve the problem, for his conception of creation is
that of "intellective intuition," in which God as subject is necessary
to the existence of the world as object, but the world, from this
standpoint, is equally necessary to God.
There is no way of passing, then, from an absolute One to the Many, from
singularism to pluralism. We must start with Babel and achieve, if we
can, "one language and one speech." In its modern form Pluralism is a
revolt alike from nineteenth century Absolutism, which was the dominant
school in Germany and England, and from the Naturalism brought to the
fore by the advance of scientific research, and interpreting mind in
terms of nature. Pluralism has been called a means of escape alike from
"Naturalism's desert and the barren summit of the Absolute." The ancient
pluralism took the form of atomism, but the concourse of atoms may
account for rigidity and uniformity but not for spontaneity. The modern
type of pluralism, starting at the level of self-consciousness, posits a
multitude of monads or individuals acting towards self-conservation and
self-realization, and can, it is believed, do full justice alike to law
and contingency, to spontaneity and fixity. The pluralist, operating on
the principle of continuity, assumes that there are conscious
individuals or monads in various degrees lower than man down to the
minimal point of complete unconsciousness; and higher consciousnesses
than man up to a being who may be called in a sense supreme, but is
never more than one of the many, not inclusive of them, and, however
exalted, is never more than _primus inter pares_.
The modern pluralist as described by Ward is a "pampsychist"; he
believes that all existence is soul-like. There is a multiplicity of
soul-like beings of various grades of development, some dominating, some
serving, "conative and cognitive individuals bent on self-conservation
and seeking the good."[180] All existence is soul-like, although, in what
we call inorganic matter, these cognitive and conative monads have
been largely "denatured" and reduced to the semblance of mechanism and
routine. They have become "finished and finite clods, untroubled by a
spark."
180: "The Realm of Ends," 1911, p. 223.
The pluralist assumes at the outset a multiplicity of soul-like beings;
but he cannot explain satisfactorily their inter-action, or their action
towards a common end. If, indeed, a pluralistic standpoint were
hopelessly infected with contradictions, as the Eleatics might hold,
then "the way to theism would be hopelessly barred; for from pluralism
speculation really always has and always must begin."[181] Pluralism
begins with the many and ends with the many. But did it really begin at
the beginning, and does it really reach the end? Pluralism, Ward
insists, "points both theoretically and practically [and both forward
and backward] beyond itself."[182]
181: "The Realm of Ends," p. 224.
182: _Ibid._, p. 436.
Following Ward in his transition from pluralism to theism, we notice:
(1) The pluralist stops with "the totality of a Many in their
inter-action regarded as the ultimate reality." But this position "is
incomplete and unsatisfying. A plurality of beings primarily independent
as regards their existence and yet always mutually acting and reacting
upon each other, an ontological plurality that is somehow a cosmological
unity, seems clearly to suggest some ground beyond itself. The idea of
God presents itself to meet this lack." But this idea of God would be
meaningless "unless God were regarded as transcending the Many; so there
can be no talk of God as merely _primus inter pares_."[183] There can be
no democratic idea of God, for by its very nature the idea of God
implies something unique and incomparable and sovereign. The existence
of the Many then looks back to the existence of the One as ground or
creator.
183: "The Realm of Ends," p. 241.
The pluralistic view, then, does not, apart from theism, make a unified
world; a pluralistic universe is in fact a contradiction in terms. Such
a unifying conception as theism affords answers to the subject in
relation to the manifold objects of experience; in fact it is doubtful
if an absolute pluralism is a possible conception since we never know of
the Many apart from the One. Theism, again, in its doctrine of a
dominant monad and a supreme world spirit, is in agreement with the
generalizations of science. All theories of the derivation of finite
spirits, whether evolutionist, creationist, or traducian, agree in
deriving the Many from the One.
(2) The coöperation of the Many also points in the direction of the One
if, as is generally assumed, this coöperation is towards any common
goal. The coöperation, it may be said, is due to chance, a fortuitous
concourse of purposes; but if there is a tendency to one end, the
question is inevitable, Why should the Many tend towards one end unless
they had in the One their source? Theism is reached as the alternative
of supposing that the inter-actions of the Many are a mere welter of
happenings without meaning or purpose. Evolution and history show an
increase of complexity and coöperation, and if all things work together
it is natural to believe that all things work together for good. "The
God who knows all loves all," and only the immanence of God in the world
as defined by theism can give assurance that the pluralist's ideal will
be fulfilled.[184] Apart from theistic belief there would be no reason to
expect progress on the whole, for "a world entering upon a fresh
evolution cannot start where it left off and may even begin in less
favourable conditions than before." "In a word, without such spiritual
continuity as theism alone seems able to ensure, it looks as if a
pluralistic world were condemned to a Sisyphean task. _Per aspera ad
astra_ may be its motto, but _facilis descensus Averno_ seems to be its
fate."[185]
184: "The Realm of Ends," pp. 229 f.
185: _Ibid._, pp. 214 f.
Further (3) theism enriches and enhances the pluralist's ideal by all
the ineffable blessedness that the presence of God must yield. To sum
up: "The theoretical demand for the ground of the world, then, as well
as the practical demand for the good of the world, is met by the idea
of God."[186] As related to the Many the One is the "ultimate source of
their being and ultimate end of their ends."[187]
186: "The Realm of Ends," p. 423.
187: _Ibid._, p. 442.
2. While Ward is a Platonist alike in his belief in immortality and in
connecting that belief with the doctrines of the preëxistence and
transmigration of souls, his general argument for a future life follows
the more usual lines. It is based upon both rational and moral grounds
and expressed with unusual beauty and power.
Man's native capacities and preëminently the moral law within him point
far beyond any ability he has in the present life, and it is to be
assumed, with Kant, that "no organ, no faculty, no impulse, in short
nothing superfluous or disproportionate to its use, and therefore
aimless, is to be met with."[188] Against a continuance of life there are
no valid objections to be raised. We cannot prove a negative, and the
burden of proof rests with those who deny its possibility. The
immortality of influence or of the race cannot be substituted for
personal immortality. If humanity or society is an end in itself, "then
the persons who constitute it must share in this end."[189] "The
wearisome procession of generation after generation of mortals in
pursuit of an _ignis fatuus_, all hoping, all working for what none
attain, might divert a Mephistopheles but would certainly not be a
realm of ends."[190]
188: "The Realm of Ends,", p. 411.
189: _Ibid._, p. 389.
190: _Ibid._, p. 428.
The moral arguments for a future life are bound up with an estimate of
the worth of human personality, but are ultimately rational as well. If
death ends all, not only are we of all creatures most miserable, but God
also, if in this case He exists, is mocked, and the world whose highest
ideals are not and cannot be fulfilled is without ultimate meaning. We
have then the dilemma: "Either the world is not rational or man does not
stand alone and this life is not all. But it cannot be rational to
conclude that the world is not rational, least of all when an
alternative is open to us that leaves room for its rationality--the
alternative of postulating God and a future life."[191]
191: "The Realm of Ends,", pp. 409 f.
A belief in transmigration is with Ward organically connected with his
pluralism and pampsychism. For the pluralist "all the individuals there
are have existed from the first and will continue to exist
indefinitely";[192] and it follows that "'metempsychosis' in some form
seems an unavoidable corollary of thoroughgoing pampsychism, so long as
we look broadly at the facts of life as a whole."[193] The same doctrine
that "all the individuals there are have existed from the first"
affects, it should be noticed, the quality of Ward's theism. God is not
transcendent in time, for we cannot conceive God without the world. He
is not transcendent as being in His existence independent of the world,
for a God who is not a creator is an abstraction.[194] Again He is not
transcendent in the sense that He can now exercise creative power, for
there can be no new creation since the beginning.
192: "The Realm of Ends,", p. 204.
193: _Ibid._, p. 213.
194: _Ibid._, p. 245.
Before pampsychism, with its "unavoidable corollary" of metempsychosis,
is adopted this theory itself should be subjected to a closer
examination. While pampsychism has undoubted advantages as a
philosophical theory, it has serious difficulties as well. It appears to
have but slight relation to the progress of science in any of its lines.
The whole scheme of evolution, from the inorganic through the vegetable
to animal and man, is seriously modified. The movement is from
consciousness to what is called matter, but consciousness seems to have
suffered a sort of a "fall"; for in the geologic and astronomic ages
before the introduction of life consciousness was at any rate reduced to
the vanishing point. What, then, of the reality of those processes which
geology and astronomy describe? Their reality as more than an imaginary
prelude to human or animal life is open to question. The physiologist,
moreover, will contend that there is no evidence of the presence of
consciousness except in connection with a nervous system, or will at
most admit a kind of diffused consciousness in all organic matter. The
astronomer, finally, will think it strange to be told that while "we
cannot, of course, affirm that a star or a meteor or a cluster of
particles is an individual," we must as pluralists believe "that the
real beings these phenomena imply have some spontaneity and some
initiative."[195]
195: "The Realm of Ends," p. 455.
Both pampsychism and mechanism may be accused of pushing the principle
of continuity too far. It is an error to reduce all objects and all
activities, all thinking beings and all objects of our thought, to
mechanism and its products and by-products, thus explaining away the
peculiar nature of man as a conative and cognitive being. But it is
equally an error in the other direction, it may be contended, to reduce
all of reality, by an exaggeration of anthropomorphism and a return
though in a refined form to the method of primitive animism, to the
analogy of social intercourse.
It is hazardous to stake the interests of theism upon a technical theory
of knowledge such as that upon which pampsychism is based. One may
gratefully appreciate the cogency and value of Ward's theistic argument
in its general aspects without being convinced that the doctrine of
pampsychism is the only, or indeed the firmest, basis upon which
theistic belief can be reared.
IV. ROYCE AND THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY
Our American philosopher, Josiah Royce, has always been occupied with
the religious aspects of philosophy, but has of late shown a special
interest in the philosophical interpretation of the doctrines of the
Christian Faith. His mature views are expressed in his essay on "What is
Vital in Christianity?" in his volume, "William James and Other Essays"
(1911), and in his Lowell lectures, "The Problem of Christianity"
(1913).
Royce believes that if there is to be a philosophy of religion at all,
such a philosophy must include in its task "the office of a positive and
of a deeply sympathetic interpretation of the spirit of Christianity,
and must be just to the fact that the Christian religion is, thus far at
least, man's most impressive vision of salvation, and his principal
glimpse of the homeland of the spirit."[196]
196: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 11.
In Christianity Royce finds a religion of loyalty, defined as "the
practically devoted love of an individual for a community." Christianity
is in its essence "the most typical, and so far in human history, the
most highly developed religion of loyalty;"[197] and it was in Pauline
Christianity that the Christian ideas of the community, the lost state
of the individual and of atonement or grace first received their full
statement, though not their complete formulation. Paul's addition to the
doctrine of love, thought by himself to be inspired by the Spirit of the
Ascended Lord, consisted in his placing love to the church side by side
with love to God and to one's neighbour. "Christian love, as Paul
conceived it, takes on the form of Loyalty. This is Paul's simple but
vast transformation of Christian love."[198]
197: "The Problem of Christianity," I, pp. xvii. f.
198: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 98.
The reduction of what is vital in Christianity to the so-called pure
gospel of Christ, as recorded in the body of the presumably authentic
sayings and parables, is to Royce profoundly unsatisfactory. "If He had
so viewed the matter, the Messianic tragedy in which His life-work
culminated would have been needless and unintelligible."[199] What is
most vital in Christianity "is contained in whatever is essential and
permanent about the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement."[200]
199: "William James and Other Essays," pp. 140 f.
200: _Ibid._, p. 155.
In these respects Royce shows his sympathy with traditional Christianity
as over against the standpoint of modern liberalism. He protests in
effect, in the first place, against a "reduced" Christianity based upon
the Synoptic teaching of Jesus alone, and upon this teaching only after
alleged Johannine and Pauline elements have been cut out. Secondly, he
finds that Christianity includes doctrine as well as ethics. And, third,
he finds in Paul's teaching not a perversion of the gospel, but a
developed statement of the central ideas of Christianity.
Unlike many philosophers, Royce takes an austere view of the misery and
tragedy of sin, as "grave with the gravity of life, and stern only as
the call of life, to any awakened mind, ought to be stern."[201] The
sinner cannot save himself. By his own deed he has banished himself to
the hell of the irrevocable. If there is to be atonement which shall
reconcile the traitor to his own deed and the community to the act of
treachery against it, an atonement stated in purely human terms, it must
be an "objective" atonement, not merely one of moral influence upon the
traitor. It must be by some creative deed of loving ingenuity by which
the world is made better than it would have been had the treason never
been done. Thus the family of Jacob was reunited in peculiarly tender
ties after the reconciliation. "Through Joseph's work all is made better
than it would have been had there been no treason at all."[202]
201: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 120.
202: _Ibid._, I, p. 370.
In his purely human and untheological treatment of sin and grace,
Royce's thought has professedly moved within the limits of social
relationships. Sin is an act of broken faith or disloyalty to the
community. The sinner is restored from his estate of misery by the
saving grace of the community.[203] "'Atonement' and 'Divine Grace' may
be considered as if they were expressions of the purely human process
whereby the community seeks and saves, through its suffering servants
and its Spirit, that which is lost."[204]
203: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 390.
204: _Ibid._, I, p. xxxviii.
While Royce's exposition of sin and grace is full of suggestion and
insight, it is more philosophical than Biblical. Thus at important
points the contrast between Paul and Royce's interpretation of Paul is
very striking. Royce hints at the divinity of the community, while Paul
asserts the divinity of Christ. Royce says, Be loyal to the community,
while Paul would say primarily, Believe in Christ and be loyal to Him.
"Loyalty to the personal Christ," says a reviewer of Royce's work, "has
been (and surely is) even a more vital element in Christianity than
loyalty to the community."[205] Royce would say that by the grace of the
community we are saved; while with Paul the Saviour is personal and it
was the vision of Christ, not of the community, that transformed his
life.
205: H. Rashdall in _Mind_, N. S. 91 (July, 1914), p. 411.
Again it is not easy to read the doctrine of the beloved community and
of the community as the source of grace into the words or the spirit of
the teaching of Jesus. The attempt, however, is made. In the parable of
the Prodigal Son, the voice of the father, who is "for the moment simply
the incarnation of the spirit of this community,"[206] is said to be the
voice of the family, welcoming the wanderer; and the joy of the father
is the joy of the family in his return. If this be so the father should
have said, "The family fellowship is restored," instead of saying, "This
my son was dead and is alive again."
206: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 353.
Even Royce's Old Testament illustration from the story of Joseph, where
we find a grievous betrayal and then a deed which leaves the community,
in this case the family, richer in love and more united in heart than if
the deed of betrayal had not been done, does not support Royce's
principle that the ideal community is the saviour and the source of
atoning grace. The story to be illustrative should have been reversed;
Joseph should have been the betrayer and destroyer of the family life,
and then the brethren unitedly by their love and ingenuity should have
won him back.
How then does the loyal community which is to be the source of grace
originate? Royce admits that it can only be by "some miracle of
grace,"[207] and the problem becomes acute when we consider the origin of
the historical community of the Christian Church. The usual view is that
here a miracle of grace has happened in the person of Jesus, the author
and finisher of loyalty, but in that case there could be no such
"simplification of the problems of Christology,"[208] as Royce desires.
Who, then, was the founder of the Christian Community? It was not Paul,
for he found a community already in existence. It was not the human
Jesus, though He gave the signal, for we cannot say that, speaking of
Jesus as an individual man, we know that He explicitly intended to found
the Christian Church.[209] It was not the divine Christ, for "the human
source of all later Christologies must be found in the early Christian
community itself."[210] We must in fact renounce our quest for the origin
of the Christian Church, for its foundation depended "upon motives which
we cannot fathom by means of any soundings that our historical materials
or our knowledge of social psychology permit us to make."[211] Such
recourse to a convenient agnosticism, however rhetorically it may be
expressed, does not bring us out of the circle, that the church founded
itself, and in that case, as a source of grace, saves itself. The modern
man, under Royce's guidance, is relieved from the problems of
Christology only to find that those of ecclesiology are equally
pressing.
207: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 185.
208: _Ibid._, I, p. xxiii.
209: _Ibid._, I, p. 418.
210: _Ibid._, I, p. 415.
211: _Ibid._, I, p. 419.
The conception of the community is obviously fruitful alike in its
ethical and its theological implications, and Royce's discussion of it,
so elevated in its tone, will doubtless be for the "strengthening of
hearts" as he desires. But inferences foreign to Christian thought are
drawn when it is suggested that "Man the community may prove to be
God,"[212] and that in "this essentially social universe" the community
is "the Absolute."[213] This is the voice of Hegel rather than that of
Paul.
212: "The Problem of Christianity," I, p. 409.
213: _Ibid._, II, p. 296.
In an essay on Browning's theism Royce has remarked: "To say God is Love
is, then, the same as to say that God is, or has been, or will be
incarnate, perhaps once, perhaps--for so Browning's always monistic
intuitions about the relation of God and the world always suggest to
him--perhaps always, perhaps in all our life, perhaps in all men."[214]
The doctrine of the incarnation is thus acknowledged to be vital not
only for Christianity but for theism as well. "The fact of the
Incarnation," as Westcott has said, "gives reality to that moral
conception of God as active Love without which Theism becomes a
formula."[215] But the meaning of incarnation and its support of theistic
belief is weakened in proportion as it is interpreted not in an
historical sense but as an incarnation "perhaps always, perhaps in all
men."
214: _The New World_, Vol. V, 1896, p. 416.
215: "The Epistles of John," p. 75.
In his emphasis upon the incarnation and atonement, Royce has shown a
profound appreciation of what is vital in Christianity, but his
discussion shows also that these doctrines themselves, in being removed
from their historic setting and adapted to the requirements of a
philosophical theory, may easily lose what is for religion their most
vital elements.
Each of our four philosophers has performed an important service for
religious thought. Bergson has made an effective protest against
materialism. Eucken has asserted the reality of the spiritual world.
Ward has strengthened the philosophical foundations of belief in God and
immortality. Royce has found in the distinctive ideas of Christianity
the crown of religious philosophy.
The deeper thought of our age, judged by its leading exponents, has been
working towards Christianity and not in the opposite direction. It has
broken away from materialism with its denial of a spiritual world. It
has broken away from an idealism which denies personality in God and
man. It has been strongly attracted to Christianity, and influenced in
its intellectual constructions by the teaching of Christ and of the
Apostles. It is at one with Christianity in its ethical standpoint and
emphasis. The Cross is no longer foolishness to the Greek, when leaders
of philosophic thought find in Christianity their brightest glimpse into
the homeland of the spirit, the source of their deepest insights into
truth, the inspiration of their most fruitful activity and the key to
the solution of their profoundest problems.
V
The Christian Faith and Other Religions
Four universals were contained in the last commands of the Risen Christ:
"All authority has been given unto me. Go, disciple all the nations,
teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you: and lo, I
am with you all the days." If the marching orders of the Church were to
be obeyed, the Christian Faith must be brought into contact and into
conflict not only with Judaism but with all the ethnic faiths. If its
program is to be carried out successfully, Christianity must supersede
all other religions. In this lecture we must consider the relation of
Christianity to ancient religions, or those prevalent in the Roman
Empire at the time of its founding, and then its relation to modern
religions.
I. CHRISTIANITY AND ANCIENT RELIGIONS
That the religion of the cross, which started in a despised and
persecuted sect among a people without intellectual or military
prestige, should in three centuries become the state religion of the
Roman Empire, is often spoken of as the miracle of history. The early
missionary could not appeal to military force or to an obviously
superior type of civilization, and the wonder is not that Christianity
conquered the Roman world but that it ever secured a foothold at all.
The familiar argument has been: "We can account for the progress of
Christianity, against obstacles and without outward aids, only upon the
assumption that a divine power was working within."
Since the rise of the "religious-historical school" in Germany some
dozen years ago, the question of Christianity's relation to contemporary
religions has come up in a new form, and has been brought into the
foreground of theological discussion. The victory of early Christianity,
it is asserted, is due to the fact that Paul not merely presented it to
the Romans in a juridical form, but that he preached the myth or mystery
of a dying and rising Saviour to the myth loving Greeks; and it is even
said that the New Testament portrait of Christ, whatever historical
reality lies behind it, is in fact a sort of glorified composite
photograph made out of the elements of a Jewish Messiah, a Greek Apollo
or Adonis and an Egyptian Osiris. The claim is made by the more extreme
members of the "religious-historical school" that every feature of
Christianity that was supposed to be original, and indeed practically
the whole Gospel narrative, can be parallelled closely or remotely in
Persian, Hindu, Syrian, Egyptian or Greek religious literature, or in
the Old Testament and the teaching of the philosophers.
The reasons for Christianity's triumph over other religions may be still
to seek, but its claim to supernatural authority is called in question
by the recent movement in scholarship which has taken as its motto, The
study of the Christian Faith in the light of the history of religions.
"It would be strange indeed," a writer has remarked, "if such parallels
did not raise new questionings in the place of old certainties. If the
accounts of miraculous births and resurrections are plainly fabulous
when we meet with them in other faiths, are they necessarily historical
when they occur in the Christian Scriptures? At any rate we feel that
stringent evidence will be required to prove them so."[216]
216: J. Warschauer: _American Journal of Theology_, July, 1912,
p. 336.
When we study the relation between early Christianity and the religions
of the time it is clear that some established principles are needed to
control the comparison. When it is discovered, for instance, that
Confucius had seventy-two disciples and an inner circle of ten "select
ones," and that he spoke the Golden Rule in a negative form, does it
follow that the Gospel accounts of the choice of the twelve and of the
seventy were borrowed from Confucius? Clemen's formulation of the
principles that must govern the comparison will be generally accepted:
(1) "A religious-historical explanation is impossible if it leads to
untenable consequences or proceeds from untenable presuppositions. (2)
The sense of the New Testament passage, as well as the contents of the
non-Jewish idea, must first be fully ascertained. (3) We ought never to
assume that ideas of an advanced religion have been altogether borrowed,
until we have done our best to discover any germs of them in the native
religious literature. (4) The non-Jewish idea that is brought in as an
explanation must really in some degree correspond to the Christian one.
(5) This element must have been already in existence: an idea that is
subsequent in its emergence cannot, of course, have given rise to one
previously existent. (6) It must be shown in regard to any foreign idea
that it was really in a position to influence Christianity, or Judaism
before it, and how."[217] To these might be added that the possibility of
coincidence must not be overlooked.
217: "Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish Sources," 1913,
pp. 17, 18. Principle (3) is quoted from Cheyne.
With these principles, most of them self-evident, in our minds, let us
glance at the topics of immediate interest in our present field: (1)
The Virgin Birth and its parallels; (2) the worship of Christ and the
Emperor-cult; and (3) Christianity and the Mystery Religions.
1. In its relation to the stories of current mythology, the Virgin Birth
was a subject of active discussion in the time of the fathers. The
patristic apologists make two points in referring to the mythological
parallels. On the one hand, the similarity of the Gospel story in its
supernatural element to the stories prevalent at the time is appealed to
in order to commend it to the acceptance of the Greeks. Thus Justin
says: "We propound nothing different from what you believe regarding
those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter."[218] Similarly Origen says: "There
is no absurdity in employing Grecian histories to answer Greeks with a
view to showing that we are not the only persons who have recourse to
miraculous narratives of this kind."[219] On the other hand, the
difference between the Christian and the heathen stories is appealed to
as proof of the moral and historical superiority of the Gospel
narratives. Justin says that the Virgin conceived "not by intercourse
but by power;"[220] and Origen, referring to a tradition about the birth
of Plato, says that such stories are "veritable fables."[221]
218: "Apol.," I, 21.
219: "Contra Cels.," I, 37.
220: "Apol.," I, 33.
221: "Contra Cels.," I, 37.
The notion is popular to-day that stories of the birth of a god or a
hero from a virgin are common in non-Christian religions, and the remark
is heard that the Virgin Birth of Jesus would be credible were it not
for these parallels. A closer examination shows, however, that while
supernatural births were the common property of most ancient religions,
the Virgin Birth was a distinctive and spontaneous feature of
Christianity. Thus Clemen remarks that "what we find in Indian thought
(at any rate in earlier times) is not a Virgin Birth in the proper sense
of that term, but only a miraculous birth, and one of quite a different
type from the birth of Jesus."[222] Alluding to the fact that Buddhism was
so entirely outside the western range of vision as to be noticed very
meagrely in the Greek and Roman literature, Clemen says that "if there
are similarities that cannot be accidental between this later Buddhistic
literature and the New Testament, the question would arise whether the
former could not be dependent upon the latter,"[223] since Christianity
penetrated early to India.
222: "Primitive Christianity," pp. 294, 295. Clemen would himself
trace the idea of the Virgin Birth to a passage in Philo ("De.
Cher." 13 f.) in which the wives of the Patriarchs represent virtues
(p. 297).
223: _Ibid._, p. 37.
Clemen quotes Franckh to the effect that "none of these personages that
play the part of a mother-goddess is thought of as a virgin. It is only
in the course of time that Ishtar is everywhere put in the place of the
earlier mother-goddesses.... As mother-goddess, Ishtar has no male god
who permanently corresponds to her. This is the reason why she is
vaguely spoken of as the 'virgin' Ishtar. But it must be emphatically
asserted that here the idea of virginity undergoes a vague
deflection."[224]
224: "Primitive Christianity," p. 292.
Of the parallels adduced, only two are clearly cases of birth from a
virgin: Simon Magus (_Clem. Recog._ II, 14) and a certain Terebinthus
(_Acta Archelai et Manetis_, c. 52), both of whom claimed to be born
from a virgin; but, as Grützmacher remarks, these stories arose under
Christian influences and are found in post-Christian writings so that
they are not the root but the product of the Gospel narratives;[225] and
E. Petersen admits that in these cases there may be a simple taking over
of the supernatural birth of Jesus.[226]
225: "Die Jungfrauengeburt," 1906, p. 31.
226: "Die wunderbare Geburt des Heilandes," 1909, p. 41.
In the Græco-Roman myths there is always some fleshly or sensible
medium. Both the essential difference in the Gospel narratives, and the
lack of any proved avenue of influence leading to these narratives, with
their strongly Jewish colouring, from heathen sources, makes the theory
of derivation from these sources most improbable.
2. The famous Priene inscription, dated about the year 9 B. C., has
shown that the titles given to the Emperor Augustus were strikingly
similar to those addressed by Christians to Christ. The day of the
Emperor's birth was of great significance for the human race; he is
called Saviour of men, he is to abolish war and bring general happiness;
and the inscription declares that "the birthday of the god was for the
world the beginning of tidings of joy on his account."[227] Both
religions again, the worship of Christ and the Emperor-cult, were
universal religions, the essential difference being that the former
excluded, while the latter tolerated, other forms of worship. Did the
Christian Church derive its worship of Christ as Lord, or even such
titles as "Saviour" and "Lord," from the Emperor-worship of the time?
227: See Deissmann: "Light from the Ancient East," p. 371.
The deification of a king was by no means an unfamiliar thing in the
ancient and especially in the oriental world. The kings of Egypt are
said to have worshipped themselves. To the offer of Alexander the Great
to rebuild the burnt temple of Diana at Ephesus, the shrewd reply of the
priests, not wishing to offend either Persia or Greece, was that it was
not fitting for one deity to build the temple of another. The ascription
of divine honours to the Emperor was a victory of eastern influences
over Roman thought. Emperor worship was (1) a compliment to the ruler;
(2) a kind of personification of the genius of the Empire, as perhaps in
the case of the Mikado to-day; and (3) a convenient neutral religion,
since no existing cult could be universal, binding all peoples together
in a necessary religious bond. While not taken very seriously by the
astute rulers themselves, it may also have been to many minds "an actual
breaking out of religious longing," such as seems to be expressed in
Vergil's "Fourth Eclogue," for a heaven-sent deliverer and saviour.
To Jews and Christians alike, however, the idea of the worship of the
Emperor was in the highest degree abhorrent. This is shown by the fierce
opposition to the setting up of the statue of Caligula in the Temple, by
the refusal of the early Christians to worship the genius of the Cæsars
under pain of death, and by the parallel accounts in the Acts and
Josephus of the death of Herod, both Jewish and Christian authors
describing his sudden death as a judgment upon his impiety in accepting
divine honours. With Paul the "setting himself forth as God" was a mark
of the man of sin (2 Thess. ii. 3, 4). It is then improbable in the
highest degree that an idea so repellent alike to Jewish and Christian
thought could have been in any way responsible for the worship of Christ
as divine.
But was it not possible that such titles as "Lord" and "Saviour" should
on Gentile soil have been unconsciously taken over by the Christians,
suggested to them by the growing use of these terms as addressed to the
Emperor and their free ascription to heathen deities? This position has
been defended by Bousset, who says that "it was in the air that the
first Hellenistic Christian community should give to its cult-hero the
title Kyrios (Lord)."[228] Even this theory of an unconscious verbal
influence exerted on Gentile soil is full of difficulty. To maintain
that the title "Lord" originated in the Gentile-Christian church it is
necessary, of course, to discard the evidence of all the documents, the
Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles. It must be denied that Jesus called
Himself Lord, or that the title was given Him in the Jerusalem church.
Doubt must be thrown upon the whole record of the apostolic days in the
Acts; and the evidence, in Paul's allusion to "James, the Lord's
brother" (Gal. i. 19), of the use of the title in the Jerusalem church
must be ignored.
228: "Kyrios Christos," 1913, p. 119.
Bousset's theory is that Paul did not originate the title but found it
already in use by the Gentile church. But there is no evidence that at
the time of Paul's conversion there was any church on Gentile soil that
was not composed, in the main, of former Jews and of Jews who had come
from Jerusalem. When it is said that "between Paul and the primitive
church of Palestine stand the Hellenistic churches in Antioch, Damascus,
Tarsus,"[229] it must be remembered that the church at Damascus was
composed primarily of Jerusalem Christians who were persecuted to
foreign cities; that the church at Antioch was founded by those from
Judea, and grew under the leadership of Barnabas, a priest and leader of
the Jerusalem church (Acts xi. 19 f.; Gal. ii. 1, 12); and that there is
no evidence that there were any Christians at Tarsus until the time of
Paul's visit (Acts ix. 30; Gal. i. 21). It is hard to see how there can
be any question of an entirely new title spontaneously arising from the
heathen environment, and free from the influence of the church at
Jerusalem.
229: "Kyrios Christos," p. 92.
If it be asked how Jews could dare to apply the name Kyrios, "the holy
cult-name of the Old Testament Jahwe," to Jesus, the answer is suggested
by Bousset himself when he says: "Therein lay a piece of monotheistic
feeling: God alone should be prayed to and worshipped. This powerful
religious feeling, free from all reflection, has once and again in the
history of Christological dogma asserted itself."[230] The essence of the
matter is that Christian converts both Jewish and Gentile called upon
the name of the Lord, and worshipped Him; but it is evident that Jesus
was first worshipped on Jewish soil as King of Israel, and Lord in the
sense made familiar in the Old Testament (Rom. x. 9-13; Acts ii. 17,
21), before He was worshipped on Gentile soil as King of Kings and Lord
of Lords.
230: "Kyrios Christos," p. 302.
Aside from all else it is highly improbable that in the time of Paul's
conversion the use of the title Lord (Kyrios, Dominus) as applied to the
Emperor was so wide-spread as to have exercised any appreciable
influence upon Christianity. "It would after all," Bousset himself
acknowledges, "in spite of all analogies in substance and words, be an
erroneous and over-hasty inference, were we to bring the Christian
Kyrios-cult and its origin into immediate connection with the cult of
the Cæsars. In the time and in the regions in which the Kyrios-Jesus
cult arose, the worship of the ruler scarcely as yet had possessed so
dominating a rôle that the worship of Jesus as Lord must be regarded as
having arisen in conscious opposition to it."[231]
231: "Kyrios Christos," p. 113.
The conscious opposition no doubt came later, as Deissmann has
suggested, when the cult of the Christ went forth into the Roman world
and endeavoured to reserve for itself words which had just been
transferred to the deified emperors, or had been invented for that
worship. "Thus there arises," he says, "a polemical parallelism between
the cult of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes itself felt
where ancient words derived by Christianity from the treasury of the
Septuagint and the Gospels happen to coincide with solemn concepts of
the Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar."[232] It was
inevitable that, as Paul preached Jesus Christ as Lord, the contrast
between the Christian worship and the worship of the Cæsars should
suggest itself, together with their irreconcilable antagonism. This
"polemical parallelism" is probably expressed in such titles as "our
only Master and Lord" (Jude 4), "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord" (Phil. ii. 11), and "King of Kings and Lord of Lords"
(Rev. xix. 16).
232: "Light from the Ancient East," p. 346.
3. The relation of Paul to the Mystery Religions of his time is a topic
which has of late been actively discussed. A thesis now widely
maintained has been expressed by Loisy in an epigrammatic form: "The
mystery of Paul's conversion is his conversion to the mysteries." To
discuss the question in all its bearings, one would need a general
acquaintance with classical literature, a special knowledge of religious
conditions in the early Roman Empire, and, most important of all, a
first-hand exegetical knowledge of Paul's epistles.
A marked feature of the age in which the Apostle lived was a merging of
deities, and the practice of oriental cults side by side with the
official Roman religion and the worship of the Cæsar. This syncretism
was promoted by the tolerance of an official religious indifferentism,
and by a pantheistic philosophy which was hospitable to the worship of a
multiplicity of deities as aspects of the One and the All. At a time
when the Orontes was pouring its waters into the Tiber, the mysteries of
the oriental religions were actively propagated in the West and
coalesced with the mysteries practiced among the Greeks.
In spite of the labours of philologists and archæologists, our knowledge
of the ritual of the various mysteries and even of the ideas symbolized
is comparatively slight. It can still be said with Cumont that, "shut
out from the sanctuary like profane outsiders, we hear only the
indistinct echo of the sacred songs and not even in imagination can we
attend the celebration of the mysteries."[233]
233: "Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain," 2d ed.,
1909, p. 17; E. T., "The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism,"
1911, p. 11.
The moral effect of the mystery cults is also a matter of some doubt.
Plato, as we know (_Phædo_, 69 D, 81 A), had a high opinion of the Greek
mysteries; but the cruel and sensual rites of the oriental religions
scandalized the Latin writers as well as the Christian apologists. Even
Cumont, who thinks that the mystery cults were superior in their
religious appeal and influence to the cold, prosaic and austere Roman
religion, admits that by the adoption of the mysteries "barbarous, cruel
and obscene practices were undoubtedly spread."[234] It is evident that
the oriental religions became spiritualized in course of time, and that
the various deities at least of Egypt and of Syria came to be conceived,
in accordance with the dominant philosophy, in a henotheistic or
pantheistic way. Uhlhorn thinks that oriental worship "with all its
distortions was more profound, and contained unconscious presages of the
Deity who has indeed in birth and death descended to redeem us."[235]
234: "Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain," 2d ed., p.
308; E. T., p. 208.
235: "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," p. 33.
When Paul preached "the mystery of God which is Christ" (Col. ii. 2), he
incorporated into Christianity, it is said, in adapting it to the
Gentile world, features which were common to the mystery brotherhoods of
the day, and virtually transformed it into a mystery religion. Pauline
Christianity, say the extreme advocates of this view, adopted its
vocabulary, its missionary methods, its philosophical and religious
ideas, its sacraments and symbolism, its mystical experiences and even
its organization, from the compound of oriental mysticism and Greek
philosophy which was popular in the cities which Paul visited.
The points in dispute will appear if we glance at the Pauline doctrine
of the sacraments, and of dying and rising with Christ, and then at the
Pauline vocabulary.
That the ritual of the mysteries had something in common with the
Christian sacraments is shown by the fact that the charge of borrowing
was made from both sides in early times. The Christian writers accuse
the heathen priests of a blasphemous parody of the Christian sacraments
inspired by the spirit of lies, and the priests retorted that the
sacraments were a plagiarism from the mysteries. Cumont believes that
both were much mistaken.
The material for comparison is somewhat meagre because baptism is not
prominent in Paul's epistles. He never mentions his own baptism, and,
aside from I Corinthians i., in which he says that he was not sent to
baptize, he uses the verb in but four passages (I Cor. x. 2; xii. 13;
xv. 29; Gal. iii. 27); the noun in two (Eph. iv. 5; Col. ii. 12); and
both verb and noun in one passage (Rom. vi. 3-4). In the mysteries there
were lustrations with salt water, water of the Nile and sacred water,
but little is known of the exact significance of the rituals. Kennedy is
not persuaded that it meant regeneration.[236] There was no baptizing "in
the name of" the gods.
236: "St. Paul and the Mystery Religions," 1913, pp. 229 ff.
On the other hand we know little of any sacrificial meal in the
mysteries corresponding to the Eucharist. Reitzenstein observes that
unless a happy chance sheds more light upon the use and meaning of the
mystery-meals common in most cults, a comparison with the sacraments
remains only "a play with possibilities."[237] Clemen thinks that both
the institution of the Lord's Supper by Jesus and its continued
observance are fully explained without bringing in foreign
influences.[238]
237: "Die Hellenistische Mysterienreligionen," 1910, p. 51.
238: "Primitive Christianity," p. 242.
It is probable that the mystery cults exerted an influence upon the
later development of sacramental doctrine, but this is aside from our
question. Thus Wendt would place the influence of the mystery religions
upon the Christian sacraments in the post-Pauline age, and thinks that
"to Acts we owe the undoubtedly correct tradition that these Christian
rites go back to a date preceding the Hellenistic mission of Paul, and
must be sought for in the very earliest practice of the Apostolic
community."[239] Hatch also believes that between apostolic and
post-apostolic times the sacraments were modified in important respects
under the influence of the mysteries. "The primitive 'see here is water,
what doth hinder me to be baptized?' passed into a ritual which at
every turn recalls the ritual of the mysteries."[240]
239: "Historical Trustworthiness of the Book of Acts," _Hibbert
Journal_, October, 1913, pp. 146, 147.
240: "Hibbert Lectures," 1888, p. 299.
Those who push back the influence of the mysteries upon the sacraments
to the teaching of Paul himself are compelled to interpret the Apostle's
language, contrary, we believe, to the best exegetical tradition, in a
physical or what is called an _ex opere operato_ sense. It is
significant that when the sacraments are so interpreted they appear to
be a foreign element in Paul's system. "It is no wonder that
interpreters like Heitmüller and Weinel, who attribute a magical view of
the sacraments to Paul, are concerned to point out that his
sacramentalism is a sort of erratic boulder in his system as a
whole."[241] We are reminded of Clemen's principle that the sense of the
New Testament passage should be fully ascertained before dependence is
assumed.
241: Kennedy: "St. Paul and the Mystery Religions," p. 283.
When von Dobschütz says that "the unique sacramental conception of the
Early Church, which has no analogy in the history of religion because it
belongs essentially to the Christian religion, has its origin solely in
Christian faith and Christian experience,"[242] the same may be said of
Paul's doctrine of dying and rising again with Christ. When Paul says
"buried with him in baptism" (Rom. vi. 4 and Col. ii. 12), he speaks of
no pantheistic or magical union with the deity such as seemed to
dominate the thought of the mysteries, so far as their meaning can be
ascertained. In both contexts Paul immediately goes on to exhortation.
"Let not sin reign" (Rom. vi. 12), "Seek the things above; mortify your
members" (Col. iii. 1-5). It should further be noticed that the passage
most relied upon to prove Paul's borrowing from the mysteries (Rom. vi.)
was addressed to a church which Paul did not found, composed of both
Jewish and Gentile Christians. The doctrine in question was not put
forth as a novelty, but is assumed to be known to them: "Are ye
ignorant, etc.?" (Rom. vi. 3).
242: Kennedy: "St. Paul and the Mystery Religions," quoted, p. 279.
Paul's doctrine of dying and rising with Christ is ethical rather than
"metaphysical" or magical or sacramental. It is surprising to find how
little sacramental it is. With no allusion to his own baptism or to the
Lord's Supper he says, "I have been crucified with Christ. The world is
crucified to me and I to the world" (Gal. ii. 20; vi. 14). "Christ died
for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. v. 14). "To know Christ, to be
found in him, to be transformed into his death" (Phil. iii. 8 f.). His
doctrine is based upon a personal experience of grace, and this is
associated with the Cross rather than with the sacraments. The bond
which mediated his union with Christ in His death was faith. It was
through faith that the Spirit is to be received (Gal. iii. 14), and
even when he says, "Christ liveth in me," he adds, "I live in the faith
of the Son of God" (Gal. ii. 20, and see Eph. iii. 17). He would gain
Christ that he might have "the righteousness of God through faith"
(Phil. iii. 9). The Cross and not the sacraments was central alike in
the Apostle's experience and in his doctrine of dying and rising with
Christ, and the bond of union between him and Christ was faith. There
was no mystical absorption of personality as in the Hermetic prayers:
"Thou art I, and I am thou."
Finally the Pauline mystery was distinguished from the heathen mysteries
by its connection with an historical Person. In the Pauline mystery, it
has been said, the divine appeared in a "concrete and comprehensible
guise," and "this connection of a religious principle with a Person who
had walked upon earth and suffered death was a phenomenon of singular
power and originality."[243] There is a world of difference between the
nature-myths, underlying the mysteries, of the annually dying and rising
vegetation gods, without historical reality, and promising to the
initiated release from transitoriness and mortality, and the record of
Christ who died for our sins, and who being raised from the dead dieth
no more. To say that Paul not only conformed the Lord's Supper to the
heathen mysteries, but invented it in imitation of the mysteries, is to
accuse him of deliberate misstatement; for in a passage of unusual
solemnity (I Cor. xi. 23 ff.), he says that he received it of the Lord,
and relates the circumstances of the institution of the Supper by Jesus
Himself.
243: Bousset: "Kyrios Christos," p. 148.
The argument from vocabulary is relied upon by Reitzenstein to prove the
influence of heathen ideas upon the thought of the Apostle. It is his
theory that Paul spent the two years of inner disturbance, in part at
least, in the study of Hellenistic religion and philosophy, and that
this influence helped him in the construction of a new religion. In
substance Reitzenstein's argument is that Paul shows the use of
technical religious terms found in the Hermetic writings, especially in
the "Poimandres"; and that the "Poimandres" is to be dated earlier than
the "Shepherd" of Hermas; and that the conceptions it embodies were
current in the Roman Empire, and in a literary form, in the time of
Paul. The argument is twofold, first, that the Hermetic writings were
current in the time of Paul, and, second, that Paul shows their
influence in his vocabulary. As the date of the "Poimandres," the most
important of the Hermetic writings, is in dispute, the latter point may
be considered first.
In the Pauline vocabulary Reitzenstein believes that we have "an
absolutely certain proof of the immediate influence of Hellenism upon
the Apostle, and at the same time a measure of its strength."[244] "Only
when the existence and meaning of a religious literature in Hellenism is
assured and the sort of linguistic dependence is seen to depend on
literary mediation is the opportunity of an explanation afforded."[245]
Many words thought to be characteristically Pauline are said to have
been technical terms in the popular mystery cults of the day, before the
Apostle adopted them as the expression of his own religious teaching.
244: "Die Hellenistische Mysterienreligionen," p. 58. (Afterward
referred to for convenience as "H. M. R.")
245: "H. M. R.," p. 209.
Without attempting to follow the argument in detail, we may observe
(_a_) that Paul uses many of these terms in a different sense from that
of the Hermetic literature. Compare, for example, Paul's use of familiar
words such as "salvation," "glory," "grace," with that of the Magic
Papyri. In "Hermes-Prayer I," the petition is for "health, salvation,
prosperity, glory, victory, power, loveliness."[246] So in "Prayer II,"
"Give me grace, food, victory, good luck, loveliness, etc."[247] Again in
"Hermes-Prayer III," we read, "Save me always from drugs and deceit, and
all witchcraft and evil tongues and all trouble, from all hate both of
Gods and men. Give me grace and victory and business and success; for
Thou art I, and I am Thou.... I am thy image."[248] In these prayers from
the later Hermes-Thot religion, the Pauline terms are evidently used in
a worldly sense, contrasting strongly with their use by Paul.
246: Reitzenstein: "Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen
und frühchristlichen Literatur," 1904, p. 18.
247: _Ibid._, p. 20.
248: Reitzenstein: "Poimandres," p. 21.
(_b_) Much of the technical phraseology common to Paul and the Hermetic
literature is current in the Old Testament; and with the language of the
Old Testament we know that Paul's mind was saturated. Clemen's maxim
should be observed, and we should seek the source of an idea (or word)
in the native religion before going farther afield. Thus before Paul's
doctrine of the Spirit is assigned with confidence to Hellenistic
sources, the use of the term Spirit both in the Old Testament and in
pre-Pauline Christianity should be studied. Paul quotes the passage from
Joel which promises the outpouring of the Spirit (Rom. x. 13 f.; see
Acts ii. 21). He brings the Spirit into connection with the blessing of
Abraham (Gal. iii. 14). The Spirit is also mentioned in the introduction
to the ministry of Jesus alike by Mark and by the non-Markan source. A
sufficient and natural explanation of Paul's doctrine of the Spirit is
to be found in the Old Testament, in Evangelical tradition and in the
experience of the church at Pentecost, and in his own experience. When
Paul speaks of "the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba, Father'"
(Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 6), we have to do not with remote literary
influences nor with the dry bones of any technical theology, Hebraic or
Hermetic, but with the heart-throb of personal experience.
Reitzenstein believes that the Pauline vocabulary is best explained by
the Hellenistic parallels, but he recognizes that the parallelism with
the Old Testament should be considered. Thus while he thinks that he has
shown parallels for all the Pauline uses of the word _pneuma_, he says
"whether with equal ease all may be explained from the Hebraic use of
_ruach_ and _nephesh_ or the use of _pneuma_ in the Septuagint the
theologian must decide."[249] Harnack, with some irony, advises
Reitzenstein and his school to gain a clearer knowledge of Paul the Jew
and Paul the Christian before they take account of secondary elements
which he borrowed from the Greek mysteries. A conscious acceptance, he
thinks, of such elements is out of the question.[250]
249: "H. M. R.," p. 140.
250: "Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels," p. 61 n.
Kennedy believes that the vocabulary of Paul is to be explained from
the Old Testament, while much of it was current among the mystery
brotherhoods (_Op. cit._, p. 198). Bousset acknowledges that Paul's
terminology may perhaps in part be derived from the Old Testament,
which would be the most natural source of his use of _pneuma_
instead of _nous_ to describe the spiritual part of man, and of the
opposition in words between _pneuma_ and _sarx_ (_Op. cit._, p. 141,
note 2). Clemen ("Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das
älteste Christentums," 1913, p. 61) says that "looked at broadly,
Paul remains in verbal and much more in actual relationships
untouched by the mystery religions."
If the Hermetic writings are to be dated later than the time of Paul,
then the question of literary influence is reversed. Similarity in words
will then be due to coincidence or to the prevalence of a common
religious vocabulary, or else, as has recently been said, "if it is
necessary to suppose literary connection, the artificial literary
composition of 'Poimandres' makes it more probable that the borrowing
was on that side."[251] The question hinges upon the date of the
"Poimandres," which it has been usual, at least since the middle of the
seventeenth century, to assign to the age of Porphyry. Hermes has been
regarded as "a convenient pseudonym to place at the head of the numerous
syncretic writings in which it was sought to combine Neo-Platonic
philosophy, Philonic Judaism and cabalistic theosophy, and so provide
the world with some acceptable substitute for Christianity."[252]
251: J. M. Creed: "The Hermetic Writings," _Journal of Theological
Studies_, July, 1914, p. 529.
252: Art. "Hermes Trismegistus," Encycl. Britt., 10th ed. For a
history of the evolution of opinion, see G. R. S. Mead:
"Thrice-Greatest Hermes," 1906, Vol. I, pp. 17 ff.
By a brilliant _tour de force_ and with great learning Reitzenstein has
sought to reverse this relationship, and to show that the original form
of these writings, or at least the fixed religious ideas, vocabulary and
ritual which they presuppose, antedated Pauline Christianity and
profoundly influenced the writings of Paul and of John. He argues that
the "Shepherd" of Hermas is dependent upon the "Poimandres," relying
mainly upon two points: the similarity between the two writings in their
introductions, and the fact that in the "Shepherd" the divine messenger
appears on a mountain, Arcadia, which was the alleged birthplace of
Hermes and a centre of the Hermes cult. The significant points of the
introduction may thus be shown:
"POIMANDRES" "SHEPHERD" OF HERMAS
2. And I do say: "Who art Revelation 5. As I prayed in
thou?" He saith: "I am the house, and sat on the couch,
Man-Shepherd, Mind of all there entered a man glorious in
master-hood; I know what thou his visage in the garb of a
desirest and I'm with thee shepherd, and with a wallet on his
everywhere." shoulders, and a staff in his
hand. And he saluted me,
3. and I saluted him in return. And he
immediately sat down by my side,
and he saith unto me, "I was sent
by the most holy angel, that I
might dwell with thee the
remaining days of thy life."
4. E'n with these words His "I," saith he, "am the shepherd,
aspect changed, and unto whom thou wast delivered."
straightway, in the twinkling While he was speaking,
of an eye, all things were his form was changed, and I
opened to me, and I see a recognized him as being the same,
Vision limitless, etc. to whom I was delivered.[253]
253: For the Greek text of both passages see "Poimandres," pp. 11,
12; and for the translation see Mead: _Op. cit._, ii, pp. 3, 4, and
Lightfoot: "Apostolic Fathers," p. 421.
The decisive thing in the comparison is said to be not the change of
form nor the assurance that the revealing spirit would always be with
the prophet, "but that he revealed himself, to the heathen as the
Shepherd of men (_Menschenhirten_), to the Christian as the Shepherd of
this man."[254] The comparison leads Reitzenstein to the twofold
conclusion that the "Shepherd" of Hermas has taken over awkwardly a type
foreign to Christian revelation literature, and that "the Christian
borrowed that description of the shepherd from an originally fuller
text."[255]
254: "Poimandres," p. 12.
255: _Ibid._, pp. 13, 32.
The argument for borrowing is obviously weakened by the admission that
Hermas did not borrow from the extant "Poimandres" but from an assumed
earlier form of the text; and, further, it is by no means clear why the
figure of the shepherd, familiar in the Old Testament and in the Gospel
parables, should be a foreign type in Christian literature. Nor is the
case materially strengthened by the argument that a later mention of a
mountain in Arcadia, in the "Shepherd," implies an acquaintance with the
"Poimandres" where no mention of Arcadia, but simply of descent from a
mountain, is made. It is admitted that the leading up upon a mountain is
a current form of Christian literature, but it is said that "the exact
choice of Arcadia is more than surprising, since the author lived in
Rome, and besides saw his visions at Rome or Cumæ."[256]