The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 10

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d is not transcendent in time, for we cannot conceive G.o.d without the world. He is not transcendent as being in His existence independent of the world, for a G.o.d 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 a.n.a.logy 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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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. x.x.xviii.

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 a.s.serts 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 G.o.d,"[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 G.o.d is Love is, then, the same as to say that G.o.d is, or has been, or will be incarnate, perhaps once, perhaps--for so Browning's always monistic intuitions about the relation of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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.