CHRISTIANITY

It has been noticed how “Characteristic” or “Specific” religion means the carrying farther of the implications of “Universal” religion.  It is not only necessary to know the “grounds” of religion, as these reveal themselves within the conclusions of the intellect:  we have to plant ourselves upon these “grounds”; we must be what they mean.  Thus, religion becomes a personal task—­something that can never be realised until the whole nature comes to constant decisions of its own and acts upon those decisions in the light of what has expressed itself in the form of those over-personal norms which have further developed into a conception of, and communion with, the Godhead.  We have noticed further, how this essence of religion was realised in the lives of great personalities in history, as well as in the religions which they helped to found.

Eucken does not hesitate to affirm that the highest of these religions is the Christian [p.181] religion.  The core of the Christian religion consists, as we have already noticed, in its presentation of “a world-denial and world-renewal” in a far higher degree than any of the other religions, and also in the fact that it presents the union of the human and the Divine in a clearer light than before.  We have noticed, too, how the Indian religions had to condemn the world in order to penetrate to the very essence and bliss of religion.  Mohammedanism affirmed the world in too strong a manner, and its eternal world constituted a kind of replica of the present material world on an enlarged scale.  The Jewish religion evolved through a series of stages which finally culminated in Christianity.  The Roman and the Greek religions presented too many pluralistic aspects to be able ever to reach the highest synthesis whereby the Many found their meaning, interpretation, and value in the One.

Although the Christian religion cannot be designated as absolute religion, still it may be designated as the highest and most perfect manifestation of the Divine.  The meaning of the term “absolute religion” involves a conception impossible to maintain, on account of the fact that in all religions some spiritual truth is discerned and realised.  The term “absolute religion” is also false on account of the fact that no religion can contain the whole that is to be revealed and experienced.  Christianity [p.182] is best valued when it is seen, not as a completion of the revelation of the Divine to man, but as a revelation which has to be preserved, deepened, and carried farther.  In the soul of the Founder of Christianity there was doubtless present far more than is expressed in the Biblical records, and far more than actually filtered into the individual and collective consciousness of the earliest Christian communities.  But we cannot live on what has occurred in the life of any other individual or community except in so far as this enters also into our own individual