Thoughts on Life and Religion - Friedrich Max Müller 2 стр.

Small as may be the emphasis that we now lay on the Logos doctrine, in that period (i.e. of the Fourth Gospel) it was the centre, the vital germ, of the whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them begin with the word (Logos) as a fixed point of departure, and then proceed to prove that the Word is the Son of God, and finally that the Son of God is Jesus of Nazareth. Religion and philosophy are here closely related.

What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the true sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point where the two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was recognised as the Logos, the true Son of God, and that He opened or revealed to every man the possibility to become what he had always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought, the Word, the Logos, the Son of God.

Eternal life consists in knowing that men have their Father and their true being in the only true God, and that as sons of this same Father, they are of like nature with God and Christ.

Why should the belief in the Son give everlasting life? Because Jesus has through His own sonship in God declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of God, the Son whom He hath sent. Jesus Himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men, and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentiallysons of God.

We make the fullest allowance for those who, from reverence for God and for Christ, and from the purest motives, protest against claiming for man the full brotherhood of Christ. But when they say that the difference between Christ and mankind is one of kind, and not of degree, they know not what they do, they nullify the whole of Christ's teaching, and they deny the Incarnation which they pretend to teach.

The Ammergau play must be very powerful. And I feel sure just now nothing is more wanted than to be powerfully impressed with the truly human character of Christ; it has almost vanished under the extravagant phraseology of hymns and creeds, and yet how much greater is the simple story of His unselfish life than all the superlatives of later Theology. If one knows what it is to lose a human soul whom one has lovedhow one forgets all that was human, and only clings to what was eternal in it, one can understand the feelings of Christ's friends and disciples when they saw Him crucified and sacrificed, the innocent for those whom He wished to guide and save.

Jesus destroyed the barrier between man and God, the veil that hid the Holiest was withdrawn. Man was taught to see what the prophets had seen dimly, that he was near to God, that God was near to every one of us, that the old Jewish view of a distant Jehovah had arisen from an excess of reverence, had filled the heart of man with fear, but not with love. Jesus did not teach a new doctrine, but He removed an old error, and that error, that slavish fear of God, once removed, the human heart would recover the old trust in Godman would return like a lost son to his lost father, he would feel that if he was anything, he could only be what his God had made him, and wished him to be. And if a name was wanted for that intimate relation between God and man, what better name was there than Father and Son?

Those who deprived Jesus of His real humanity in order to exalt Him above all humanity were really undoing His work. Christ came to teach us, not what He was, but what we are. He had seen that man, unless he learnt himself to be the child of God, was lost. All his aspirations were vain unless they all sprang from one deep aspiration, love of God. And how can we love what is totally different from ourselves? If there is in us a likeness, however small, of God, then we can love our God, feel ourselves drawn towards Him, have our true being in Him. That is the essence of Christianity, that is what distinguishes the Christian from all other religions. And yet that very kernel and seed of Christianity is constantly disregarded, is even looked upon with distrust. Was not Christ, who died for us, more than we ourselves? it is said. Or again, Are we to make ourselves gods? Christ never says that He is different from ourselves; He never taught as a God might teach. His constant teaching is, that we are His brethren, and that we ought to follow His example, to become like Him, because we were meant to be like Him. In that He has come near to God, as near as a son can be to His father; He is what He was meant to be. We are not, and hence the deep difference between Him and us.

Then it is said, Is not Christ God? Yes, He is, but in His own sense, not in the Jewish nor in the Greek sense, nor in the sense which so many Christians attach to that article of their faith. Christ's teaching is that we are of God, that there is in us something divine, that we are nothing if we are not that. He also teaches that through our own fault we are now widely separated from God, as a son may be entirely separated and alienated from his father. But God is a perfect and loving FatherHe knows that we can be weak, and yet be good, and when His lost sons return to Him He receives them and forgives them as only a father can forgive. Let us bestow all praise and glory on Christ as the best son of God. Let us feel how unworthy we are to be called His brothers, and the children of God, but let us not lose Christ, and lose our Father whom He came to show us, by exalting Jesus beyond the place which He claimed Himself. Christ never calls Himself the Father, He speaks of His Father with love, but always with humility and reverence. All attempts to find in human language a better expression than that of son have failed. Theologians and philosophers have tried in vain to define more accurately the relation of Christ to the Father, of man to God. They have called Christ another person of the Godhead. Is that better than Christ's own simple human language, I go to my Father?

Christ has been made so unreal to us, He has been spoken of in such unmeasured terms that it is very difficult to gain Him back, such as He was, without a fear of showing less reverence and love of Him than others. And yet, unreal expressions are always false expressionsnothing is so bad as if we do not fully mean what we say. Of course we know Christ through His friends only, they tell us what He told themthey represent Him as He appeared to them. What fallible judges they often were they do not disguise, and that, no doubt, raises the value of their testimony, but we can only see Him as they saw Him; the fact remains we know very little of Him. Still, enough remains to show that Christ was full of love, that He loved not only His friends, but His enemies. Christ's whole life seems to have been one of love, not of coldness. He perceived our common brotherhood, and what it was based on, our common Father beyond this world, in heaven, as He said.

CHRISTIANITY

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity is Christianity by this one fundamental truth, that as God is the father of man, so truly, and not poetically, or metaphorically only, man is the son of God, participating in God's very essence and nature, though separated from God by self and sin. This oneness of nature between the Divine and the human does not lower the concept of God by bringing it nearer to the level of humanity; on the contrary, it raises the old concept of man and brings it nearer to its true ideal. The true relation between God and man had been dimly foreseen by many prophets and poets, but Christ was the first to proclaim that relation in clear and simple language. He called Himself the Son of God, and He was the firstborn son of God in the fullest sense of that word. But He never made Himself equal with the Father in whom He lived and moved and had His being. He was man in the new and true sense of the word, and in the new and true sense of the word He was God. To my mind man is nothing if He does not participate in the Divine.

True Christianity lives, not in our belief, but in our love, in our love of God, and in our love of man founded on our love of God.

True Christianity, I mean the religion of Christ, seems to me to become more and more exalted the more we know and the more we appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the world. But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction unless he uses honestly the same measure for all religions.

The position which Christianity from the very beginning took up with regard to Judaism served as the first lesson in comparative theology, and directed the attention even of the unlearned to a comparison of two religions, differing in their conception of the Deity, in their estimate of humanity, in their motives of morality, and in their hope of immortality, yet sharing so much in common that there are but few of the psalms and prayers in the Old Testament in which a Christian cannot heartily join even now, and but few rules of morality which he ought not even now to obey.

It was exactly because the doctrine of Christ, more than that of the founders of any other religion, offered in the beginning an expression of the highest truths in which Jewish carpenters, Roman publicans, and Greek philosophers could join without dishonesty, that it has conquered the best part of the world. It was because attempts were made from very early times to narrow and stiffen the outward expression of our faith, to put narrow dogma in the place of trust and love, that the Christian Church often lost those who might have been its best defenders, and that the religion of Christ has almost ceased to be what, before all things, it was meant to be, a religion of world-wide love and charity.

The founder of Christianity insisted again and again on the fact that He came to fulfil, and not to destroy; and we know how impossible it would be to understand the true position of Christianity in the history of the world, the true purport of the 'fullness of time,' unless we always remember that its founder was born and lived and died an Israelite. Many of the parables and sayings of the New Testament have now been traced back, not only to the Old Testament, but to the Talmud also; and we know how difficult it was at first for any but a Jew to understand the true meaning of the new Christian doctrine.

There is no religion in the whole world which in simplicity, in purity of purpose, in charity, and true humanity, comes near to that religion which Christ taught to His disciples. And yet that very religion, we are told, is being attacked on all sides. The principal reason for this omnipresent unbelief is, I believe, the neglect of our foundations, the disregard of our own bookless religion, the almost disdain of Natural Religion. Even bishops will curl their lips when you speak to them of that natural and universal religion which existed before the advent of our historical religions, nay, without which all historical religions would have been as impossible as poetry is without language. Natural religion may exist and does exist without revealed religionrevealed religion without natural religion is an utter impossibility.

There can be no doubt that free inquiry has swept away, and will sweep away, many things which have been highly valued, nay, which were considered essential by many honest and pious minds. And yet who will say that true Christianity, Christianity which is known by its fruits, is less vigorous now than it has ever been before? There have been discussions in the Christian Church from the time of the Apostles to our own times. We have passed through them ourselves, we are passing through them now.

When we think of the exalted character of Christ's teaching, may we not ask ourselves once more, What would He have said if He had seen the fabulous stories of His birth and childhood, or if He had thought that His Divine character would ever be made to depend on the historical truth of the Evangelia Infantiae?

Much of the mere outworks of Christianity cannot hold the ground on which they have been planted, they have to be given up by force at last, when they ought to have been given up long before; and when given up at last, they often tear away with them part of the strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only the buttress outside, but a part of the living framework.

What we call Christianity embraces several fundamental doctrines, but the most important of them all is the recognition of the Divine in man, or, as we call it, the belief in the Divinity of the Son. The belief in God, let us say in God the Father, or the Creator and Ruler of the world, had been elaborated by the Jews, and most of the civilised and uncivilised nations of the world had arrived at it. But when the Founder of Christianity called God His Father, and not only His Father, but the Father of all mankind, He did no longer speak the language of either Jews or Greeks. To the Jews, to claim Divine sonship for man would have been blasphemy. To the Greeks, Divine sonship would have meant no more than a miraculous, a mythological event. Christ spoke a new language, a language liable, no doubt, to be misunderstood, as all language is; but a language which to those who understood it has imparted a new glory to the face of the whole world. It is well known how this event, the discovery of the Divine in man, which involves a complete change in the spiritual condition of mankind, and marks the great turning-point in the history of the world, has been surrounded by a legendary halo, has been obscured, has been changed into mere mythology, so that its real meaning has often been quite forgotten, and has to be discovered again by honest and fearless seeking. Christ had to speak the language of His time, but He gave a new meaning to it, and yet that language has often retained its old discarded meaning in the minds of His earliest, nay sometimes of His latest disciples also. The Divine sonship of which He speaks was not blasphemy as the Jews thought, nor mythology as so many of His own followers imagined, and still imagine. Father and Son, divine and human, were like the old bottles that could hardly hold the new wine; and yet how often have the old broken bottles been preferred to the new wine that was to give new life to the world.