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Page 22
A religion of law assumes that man is capable of himself of obeying the
law, and is responsible for his mode of life; it assumes that man is
capable through his own energy of conquering the world of sin, and of
leading the higher life.
Religions of this type possess of course the merit of simplicity,
transparency, and finality. The decrees, the punishments and rewards are
given with some clearness and are easily understood; there is no appeal
and little equivocation. They served a useful purpose in the earlier
ages of civilisation, but cannot solve the problem for the complex
civilisation and advanced culture of the present age. They place God too
far from man, and attribute to man powers which he cannot of himself
possess. The conceptions of the Deity involved in them are too
anthropomorphic in character--too much coloured by human frailties.
The religions of law have had to give place to those of a superior
type--the religions of redemption. These religions appreciate the
difficulty there exists for humankind of itself to transcend the world
of sin, and are of two types--one type expressing a merely negative
element, the other a negative and positive element.
The typical negative redemptive religion is that of Buddhism. Buddhism
teaches us that the world is a sham and an evil; and the duty of man is
to appreciate this fact, and to deny the world, but here the matter
ends--it ends with world-renunciation and self-renunciation. There is
only a negative element in such a religion, no inspiration to live and
fight for gaining a higher world. This, of course, cannot provide a
satisfactory solution to the problem, for no new life with new values is
presented to us. It is a religion devoid of hope, for it does not point
to a higher life. "A wisdom of world-denial, a calm composure of the
nature, an entire serenity in the midst of the changing scenes of life,
constitute the summit of life."
Christianity teaches us that the world is full of misery and suffering,
but the world in itself is really a perfect work of Divine wisdom and
goodness. "The root of evil is not in the nature of the world, but in
moral wrong--in a desertion from God." Sin and wickedness arise from the
misuse and perversion of things which are not in themselves evil.
Christianity calls for a break from the wickedness of the world. It
calls upon man to give up his sin, to deny, or break with, the evil of
which he is guilty. But it does not expect man to do this in his own
strength alone--God Himself comes to his rescue. Unlike Buddhism, it
does not stay at the denial of the world, but calls upon man to become a
citizen of a higher world. This gives a new impetus to the higher life;
man finds a great task--he has to build a kingdom of God upon the earth.
This demands the highest efforts--he must fight to gain the new world,
and must keep up the struggle to retain what he has gained. The
inferiority of Buddhism as contrasted with Christianity is well
described by Eucken in the following words: "In the former an
emancipation from semblance becomes necessary; in the latter an
overcoming of evil is the one thing needful. In the former the very
basis of the world seems evil; in the latter it is the perversion of
this basis which seems evil. In the former, the impulses of life are to
be entirely eradicated; in the latter, on the contrary, they are to be
ennobled, or rather to be transformed. In the former, no higher world of
a positive kind dawns on man, so that life finally reaches a seemingly
valid point of rest, whilst upon Christian ground life ever anew ascends
beyond itself."
From such considerations as these, Eucken comes to the conclusion that
of the redemptive religions, which are themselves the highest type,
Christianity is the highest and noblest form, hence his main criticism
is concerned with the Christian religion. This does not mean that he
finds neither value nor truth in any other form of religion. His general
conclusion with regard to the historical religions is that they "contain
too much that is merely human to be valued as a pure work of God, and
yet too much that is spiritual and divine to be considered as a mere
product of man." He finds in them all some kernel of truth, or at least
a pathway to some part of truth, but contends that no religion contains
the whole truth and nothing but the truth. "As certainly," he says, "as
there is only one sole truth, there can be only one absolute religion,
and this religion coincides entirely in no way with any one of the
historical religions."
Eucken's great endeavour in his discussion of the Christian religion is
to bring out the distinction between the eternal substance that resides
in it and the human additions that have been made to it in different
ages, between the elements in Christianity that are essentially divine
and those essentially human. Divested of its human colourings and
accretions, Christianity presents a basis of Divine and eternal truth,
and this regarded in itself, can well claim to be the final and absolute
religion.
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