Chapter 3. General Tendencies of Modern Christian Thought

(1) Rationalism and Mysticism

p. 108 The general characteristic of modern religious thought lies in its reaction against intellectualism.¹ Yet over the past several centuries, when Christianity came into contact with the new intellectual environment created by the development of science and the reconstruction of philosophy that followed the rise² of Enlightenment thought, it could not take an attitude of indifference.³ The rationalism of the eighteenth century was the first great expression that the modern spirit⁴ found in the realm of religion.

The rationalism of the eighteenth century revolted against the constraint of a tradition resting on every kind of external authority. It maintained that the standard of truth lies not in the decisions of the church or in inherited doctrine but in human rational judgment, and it demanded religious toleration and p. 109 freedom. This came about because, on the one hand, the church's authority had collapsed through religious disputes, and, on the other, confidence in human reason had grown with the advance of learning; and the ascendancy of the modern spirit sent grave ripples through traditional theology. When, at the end of the seventeenth century, the English church stood apart from the Roman Catholic Church and had Parliament pass the "Act of Toleration," this meant the victory of Protestantism and of its fundamental spirit.⁵ But the Protestant Reformation was in origin medieval in its spirit and content, and as conservative as the Roman Catholic Church, so that the authority of reason and the recognition of freedom bore a destructive character even within the Protestantism of the time.

Second, their rationalism strove to reconcile reason and revelation. John Tillotson⁶ opposed such things as the passion of mysticism or the intuitive faculty⁷ of the "Cambridge Platonists,"⁸ and maintained that religious truth must be established by rational proof. They also thought that revelation supplies what is lacking in natural religion⁹ and establishes the duties of natural religion. Revelation, therefore, must not contradict the principles of natural religion, and there must be sure grounds for regarding it as revelation. John Locke said that God's revelation may indeed give knowledge that our reason can also obtain, but that in such a case revelation is not only unnecessary: truth we have discovered by reflecting on our own ideas is even more certain than truth resting on traditional revelation. Yet he insisted that the knowledge of our reason alone is incomplete and that a revelation above reason is needed, and he said that revelation in turn can be judged true or false by reason.¹⁰

p. 110 Third, the rationalism of the eighteenth century on the whole emphasized that human beings have moral ability, and maintained that the fundamental purpose of religion lies in the moral life. Matthew Tindal said that the difference between religion and morality¹¹ is that the former consists in acting according to the reason of things regarded as the will of God, and the latter in acting according to the reason of things as conceived in itself.¹² Kant says that religion is recognizing one's own duties as the commands of God.¹³

Mysticism is one of the most distinctive currents among the many kinds of modern religious thought. What Herman said in The Meaning and Value of Mysticism, "The characteristic of modern religious thought lies in the revival of mysticism," is probably an observation close to the facts. (Herman, A., The Meaning and Value of Wysticism[sic] p. 2)¹⁴ It is a fact that in our time many people of religious spirit and zeal, dissatisfied with complicated theories and with institutions that drift into formalism, have turned their interest to religious mysticism.

Mysticism, first, makes immediate experience its chief concern. Immediate experience,¹⁵ according to mysticism, does not necessarily mean feeling or intuition. In mystical experience there are feeling and intuition, and at the same time the working of the intellect, and moral activity goes with it. Immediate experience might also be called, as a certain scholar has put it, the gaining of "knowledge by acquaintance."¹⁶ We are not satisfied with the descriptive knowledge of some object that observation gives us; only when we form a living relation with the object itself and can take a sympathetic attitude toward it does an inner observation of that object become possible.

Second, mysticism opposes materialist thought and formalism and longs for the spiritual, inner world. Mysticism believes that p. 111 the ideal kingdom is where our spiritual true self is realized. We are for the most part the products of our environment and subject to its control. When hardship bears down on me, my footing shakes; at times I curse the world, and at times I struggle to flatter the circumstances around me. But mysticism teaches that, though the environment changes and the surroundings shift, one builds an eternal house on the rock of the spirit,¹⁷ becomes master of one's own spirit, and rules over environment and selfish desire. Mystics therefore commonly despise the material world. If matter and the body become obstacles blocking the way to the ultimate purpose of the inner life, they do not hesitate even to curse matter and flesh. Especially now, when modern material civilization has developed to the extreme and everything has been made into an institution, so that even religion is in some quarters regarded as a means of satisfying our acquisitiveness, and doctrine and ritual alone, like the disguise of a corpse, are noisily dressed up apart from real life, a mystical reaction of this kind arises of necessity.

Lastly, religious mysticism strives above all to be conscious of the presence of God. What is commonly called "divine intoxication" is just this. Of course, the idea of God that mystics hold differs according to their environment, education and influences. In primitive religion, when people made the drinking of spirits or herbs and wild rhythmic dancing their means of reaching the gods, or else sought to enter a state of ecstasy¹⁸ through long fasting, self-restraint and austerities, their idea of God too was little more definite than the primitive idea of "mana." But the more religious thought develops,¹⁹ people come to regard natural objects as objects of worship and to believe that in God all the phenomena of the universe attain unity. Going on from here, p. 112 when the God we worship comes to have personality, we come to share joys, sorrows and purposes with him and to form a sympathetic friendship.

Christian mysticism has its first sprouts in the thought of Paul and John. The mystical thought of Paul and John was not wholly their own invention; it is a fact that it took up forms of thought current in their time. Yet such things as the meeting of the "Logos" and "Wisdom" in John, or Paul's "Christ-mysticism,"²⁰ cannot but be said to have come from their own deep inner lived experience.²¹

The religious thought of the early church was, broadly speaking, considerably influenced by "Neoplatonic philosophy," and the Christianity it interpreted has a strong tendency toward "Platonic mysticism."

In the Middle Ages the foundation of so-called "complete mysticism" was laid, and Christianity became mystical in the extreme. To name the mystics of this period: Hugh of St. Victor (Hugo of St. Victar[sic], 1097—1141), Bernard of Clairvaux (Bernard of Clarvaux[sic] 1091—1153), St. Francis of Assisi (Francis of Assisi, 1182—1226 Catherine of Genoa (Catherine of Genoa 1347—1380), St. John of the Cross (St. John of Crass[sic], 1542—1591), Santa Teresa (Santa Therasa[sic], 1515—1582), Madame Guyon (Mme Guyou[sic], 1648—1717), and others. (Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystic Religion, Macmillan, see)²²

After the eighteenth century, when German Protestantism had sunk into decline, the "longing for piety" arose around Philipp Jakob Spener and stirred up the religious spirit.²³ They held that the value of faith is decided wholly by its practical effects; they despised the theoretical side of religion and, demanding the simplest and freest faith, stressed p. 113 the piety of the individual. They centered on the doctrine of saving faith, which bears directly on the religious life, and insisted that we must be united with Christ in life and undergo a change of personality.

In modern times the study of mysticism within Christianity has grown still more intense. To introduce the chief literature on modern mysticism: first there is Professor Dean Inge's Christian Mysticism. (Dean Inge, Christian Mysticism, 1899)²⁴ Professor Inge maintains that "Platonic philosophy" is the heart of Christian mysticism. This is the opposite view to Wilhelm Herrmann's On Mysticism (Herrmann, Wm., The Communion of Christian with God), which declares that "Platonic mysticism" runs counter to the fundamental spirit of Christianity;²⁵ but it cannot but be called the representative work in the study of Christian mysticism. On the philosophical side there are²⁶ Professor Hocking's God as He Appears in Human Experience and A Philosophical Study of Mysticism by Bennett, one of his students (Hocking, Meaning of God in Human Experience; Bennett, Philosophical Study of Mysticism);²⁷ and on the practical side the most distinguished are Jones's Studies in Mystical Religion (1909), The Spiritual Revivalists of the Sixteenth Century (1914) and A Reconsideration of Mystical Religion (1927).²⁸ Jones's longing for the spiritual life and his appraisal of it have given a great impetus to a world of modern religious thought that is drunk on science and bound by institutions. According to him, mystical experience is religion in its keenest, most intense and most living state (Studies in Mystical Religion, Introduction, p. 15), and "mysticism is the assertion of a life in which, as an inner power, the invisible spirit p. 114 transcends this apparent and temporary world and conquers the causal and mechanical world" (ibid., p. 22).²⁹ Herman's The Meaning and Value of Mysticism opposed modern pragmatism and psychologism and set out clearly the essentials of religious mysticism. Philosophy forms the historical background of the religious life, and true religion rests on pure mystical experience: this is her main point. Besides these, the works most worth noting are such books as Underhill's The Way of Mysticism and The Essence of Mysticism, or von Hügel's The Philosophy of Mysticism and The Transcendent God of Mysticism.³⁰

(2) Fundamentalism and Modernism

At the end of the nineteenth century the theological thought of Europe and America was commonly ranged in the two opposing camps of fundamentalism and modernism.³¹

Fundamentalism rests in origin on institutions or on doctrinal ideas. The fundamentalism of Roman Catholicism lays its weight on the church and on the privilege of a clergy ordained by apostolic succession; the fundamentalism of Protestantism rests on doctrine and the Bible. But in their fundamental spirit the two do not differ.

Fundamentalism believes that Christianity is a supernatural revelation. That is, Christianity is a truth long hidden, revealed to humanity once only, as a fact without precedent or sequel, through a special organ of God, at a certain fixed time and in a certain fixed place; and it has been kept without any change or loss. According to the Catholic Church the church is the repository of revelation; according to Protestantism the Bible is the repository of truth. Revelation happens once for all. The method of revelation is mechanical, and the essence of revelation is fixed. Included here are: the belief in human depravity, which holds that natural human reason cannot grasp religious truth; the intellectualist view that becoming a Christian means accepting wholly the content of revelation kept in the church or the Bible; and the historicism that holds fast to one particular tradition of Christianity as the "orthodox" thought of p. 115 Christianity. At times, in maintaining that the reason one must believe such a simple, concrete and supra-rational revelation unconditionally³² lies in stirring up the common people to practise their moral duties, it is not free of a tendency to treat orthodoxy as a means to an end.

Modernism is also called the "New Theology." The term "New Theology" was first used by Professor Mackintosh to name the "Ritschlian school";³³ afterwards its meaning gradually changed until it came to denote new teachings opposed to Christian tradition. Various adjectives were then attached to it, so that it was called "liberal theology," "modern theology" or "progressive theology," and the fundamentalists loathed it.

First, modernism holds that in order to approach religious facts with an unprejudiced attitude, and to search for and pursue true religious truth, we may use all modern knowledge: that is, the knowledge that natural science, history, psychology, sociology, philosophy, ethics, literature or aesthetics gives us. Modernism does not hold, as the English natural theologians of the eighteenth century did, that religious truth can be grasped only by the method of natural science. It accepts the view that human reason has the capacity to grasp religious truth, and that the most complete knowledge human beings achieve, if there is such a thing, will not contradict or oppose religious faith.

Second, modernism believes in the continuous development of life, and believes that religion, being one aspect of life, is likewise not fixed but must be dynamic. Religion must rest on divine authority. Therefore true religious truth is always p. 116 revelation, and the claim to true revelation is always orthodox. But the religious experience manifested in human experience cannot at any time be called flawless. Modernists therefore believe that God's revelation has appeared gradually, following the historical development of humanity and the changes of cultural life.

Third, modernism is said to have a tendency³⁴ to interpret the Bible and doctrine symbolically. It treated accounts that reason finds hard to settle as figures or parables, and maintained that the forms of religion are the artistic expression of the real in Christian experience.³⁵

(3) Humanism and Barthian Theology

If there is anything today that, from a religious standpoint, praises twentieth-century civilization wholeheartedly, it is humanism. The so-called "new humanism" of recent times seeks to idealize the spirit of modern civilization just as it is, and to make a religion of it.

But humanism is by no means something the twentieth century created for the first time. It has far too long a history to be called a product of modern times. Of course, the so-called "new humanism" or "atheistic humanism" of the present day differs somewhat in its details from the humanism of old; but if we would understand the fundamental meaning of "new humanism" thoroughly even now, there is no better way than to examine the historical forms in which humanism has developed.

In the fifth century before Christ, in Greece, the humanist movement of some of the "Sophists," who set themselves against "natural philosophy,"³⁶ p. 117 stood out with a distinctive brilliance in the history of Western philosophy. Before this, philosophy had meant a broad, speculative philosophy that sought out the fundamental elements of matter,³⁷ searched for eternal laws in this ever-changing world of phenomena, and pursued a universe of order and system in a world of multiplicity and chaos. But some philosophers grew weary of such broad theories and came to see them as the pastime of people with leisure, fruitless dreams and nothing more. Here they discovered a new field for philosophy, and this new field was the world of humanity. We must take as our object the human being itself, which we ourselves know well and must know in practical living, and bring philosophical evaluation and reflection to bear on it. When Socrates cried, "Know thyself,"³⁸ it was a revolutionary word in the thought of his time.

Afterwards, in the history of Western thought, the thought of Jesus and the religious movement that arose from it gave rise to a humanitarianism in the soundest sense. But the long shadow of the darkness of the Middle Ages kept human beings from recognizing their true value or bringing it to light. Then³⁹ came the age of the Renaissance, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The spirit of the "Renaissance"⁴⁰ resisted the church institutions of the Middle Ages and the tyrannical oppression of the popes, and asserted human freedom. Feudalism was broken and a new nationalism arose; the knowledge of science conquered nature more with every passing day; a new continent was discovered, and with new hope the drive to build an ideal temple for humanity rose to the heavens. Here people opposed the traditional doctrines of the church and insisted that every human being must have the right and the opportunity to enjoy the joy of life to the fullest.

p. 118 The most distinctive humanist movement that arose in eighteenth-century France was the work of the Encyclopedists.⁴¹ They pointed out that the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church had become utterly corrupt, attacked the church for defending a social order contrary to justice, on the whole rejected the church's traditional theology, and for the most part professed atheism. But their atheism rested on no philosophical ground; it was an atheism meant to stress the reform of society and the value and possibilities of human beings.

If we want to understand the "new humanism" that has arisen recently, with America as its centre, we must first examine the theory of religion that rests on the positivism of Auguste Comte.⁴² Of course, Comte's positivism and present-day "humanism" have come to differ not a little in the form and content of their thought, according to the differences of place, time and circumstance in which their systems were formed. But whether we look at their attempt to apply the methods and principles of modern science to religion just as they are, or at their insistence on the social nature of religion and the need for social adjustment, or at the value they set on the concrete facts of real life above theory, there is no essential difference between them.

Seen theologically, the "new humanism" does not have a long history. The so-called "new humanism" arose comparatively recently. The first use of the term was probably Pringle-Pattison's, when in 1938 he wrote The Place of Humanity in the Universe (Man's Place in the Cosmos) and spoke of an "anthropocentrism" set against naturalism.⁴³ Later the Englishman Schiller spoke of "humanism" as one variety of pragmatism.⁴⁴

p. 119 Recently Christianity has tended to stress the social nature of religion and its social adaptability, and has made much of the need for the so-called "social gospel." Walter Rauschenbusch's The Theory of the Social Gospel, Christianity and the Social Crisis and The Social Teaching of Jesus,⁴⁵ and Harry Ward's The Bible and Social Life, Religion and Democracy and The Social Creed of the Churches,⁴⁶ have already become classics of religious literature, and yet they are still fresh in our memory.

But here we must distinguish cultural humanism from theological humanism. Theological humanism on the one hand rejects traditional religious thought, and on the other holds in check⁴⁷ the anti-religious thought and movements that run to extremes. It is, so to speak, the proposal of a peculiar new religion that could be called half philosophy, half religion, half social science.

Religion believes that within this universe there is a world of reality that transcends the universe, and is convinced that human beings and human living must enter into a vital relation with this reality.⁴⁸ But no one in religion can boast of having known the whole of this reality completely. Everyone, as a religious person, strives with a faithful and humble heart to know reality a little more clearly and to enter into a closer relation with it. Therefore we must know the world of reality. The task that the religious person has taken on is not so much the question whether the existence of God is an absolutely necessary premise of religion, as the question what kind of God we can believe in. Two answers have been proposed to this question. One is that God first reveals himself by his own act of self-giving; the other is that human reason can know the reality and the essence of God. But the new humanism opposes both proposals. They p. 120 hold fast to the naturalist position that no knowledge is valid unless it is knowledge based on the methods and results of modern natural science, and toward the older ideas of a philosophical absolute, and the notions of revelation and miracle that go with them, they take an attitude of doubt or agnosticism.

"The science of religion begins from phenomena we already know, that is, from the religious experience of human beings, and inquires⁴⁹ into regions not yet known. The new science of religion admits that God is not yet known to us. In fact, when we first set out to begin a science of religion, we must be skeptical about the problem of God."

These are the words of Potter, a "Unitarian" minister, on the first page of his book Humanism.⁵⁰ He goes on to say this:

"The humanist, in this age of science, can take no path but a logical position. So we are skeptics about God. We do not say that there is a God, nor do we say that there is no God. We say only that we cannot know God." (Potter, C. F., Humanism, p. 8)

In other words, rather than making the skeptical position the starting point of inquiry, as the method of a science of religion, he suggests that even with God left in doubt some kind of faith is possible and religion can stand.

But Professor Ames distinguishes "God" from "the God of religion." Toward "God," that is, the philosophical absolute, one may take an attitude of doubt or p. 121 refusal; but "the God of religion" can have its true nature laid bare by scientific analysis.⁵¹ Professor Ames says that "the God of religion," whom people have believed in and experienced in religion to this day, can be found in the universality of the values drawn from human experience.

"God is the spirit of the world in which living real beings live, drawn out of social and ideal experience. God is the stage of life's activity and includes the so-called material world that is the condition of existence; God also means life, intellect and action. God is the vast whole that is the process of life, within which life lives and moves and has its being. Here human beings must lead the most fitting life. Here they sing of it in praise, worship it in ritual, and gain in spirit the consciousness of an ideal fellowship. God is the world idealized and personified by the deepest and most spiritual effort of insight." (Ams[sic], E,S., Religion, p. 124)⁵²

For this reason religion, in the end, is centred on making human life more complete. The human duty lies in this world. They say that the fundamental purpose of religion is to make this world a place fit to live in and to create an environment in which a more complete life can be enjoyed. So religion has no leisure to wrestle with broad metaphysical problems. Perhaps an answer to these problems may be found some day; and even if none is found, it is no concern of religion. The task of religion is to bring stability to life. Human beings always seek food to eat, look for a safe dwelling that shelters them from wind and rain, and strive to preserve the peace and harmony of the group. They seek freedom of the will and long for peace p. 122 of mind.⁵³ "In this world there are many troubles and sorrows that human power cannot overcome; yet birth and the grave, an eternal sea, changing human life, glowing life: so, on the loom of time, the living garment of God is being woven."⁵⁴ When at times the established institutions and ideas fail to give full satisfaction to the ideals of life, we reject the whole past and set out to open a new path. In the arena of life human beings thus laugh together, rejoice together, comfort one another and learn from one another. To enjoy the joy of life in this way is the privilege of human life. What is religion? The forms of religion vary with the circumstances of the age, but their fundamental purpose comes down to one thing: how⁵⁵ we may live a little better. No age has been better fitted or more pressed to achieve this purpose than the present. We have scientific knowledge that the people of old did not possess. We have abundant goods. We have efficient machines. We have rapid means of transport. We have the experience of humanity in the past. Here we need a religion that will be praise, encouragement and power for life. The mission of religion is to strive for the highest development of life. So the new humanism maintains.

Therefore they think that religion can be changed at any time to suit people's convenience, so that it may bring us as much benefit as possible. Haydon's The Question of the Age (The Quest of the Ages)⁵⁶ points out that religion has changed with historical structures, and maintains that religious action arose as the impulse of life took forms suited to each age. In other words, he does not try to judge the essence and validity of human desire itself by religion; he accepts desire as something prior to religion, and then treats religion as a means of attaining this desire. The "new humanism" never parts from the idea of a religion that brings benefit. They p. 123 commonly use such phrases as "a religion of the age" or "a social religion." The phrase "a religion of the age" means that religion, being a product of its age, must conform to the demands of its age. The phrase "a social religion" means that religion, being one form of the social spirit, must contribute in substance to the welfare of society. Here the American brand of utilitarianism is at work. The new humanism is, so to speak, a religious instrumentalism.

The new humanism has exalted the value of humanity and the glory of life. But on the other side it has come to abandon the most important teaching that the Christian tradition seeks to impart: it does not know the lived experience of regeneration,⁵⁷ which comes with a life of trust and awe, and with gratitude and wonder at the grace of redemption.

The new humanism rests on the practical philosophy of naturalism and bears a pragmatist tendency. But here they have fallen into a theoretical impasse no less than that of the absolutism they curse. As Knudson has said, they hold a "cuttlefish philosophy." The new humanism, it is said, "like the cuttlefish that squirts black ink when it meets an enemy and hides itself," tries to hide its true nature in a fog of words.⁵⁸

The theological current that collides head-on with the new humanism is "Barthian theology." "Barthian theology" is giving a great impetus to the religious thought of the world today.

Barth and his disciple Brunner were strongly influenced by "Kantian philosophy." The naturalism of the seventeenth century took an interest in the independent existence of external things and their mechanical laws. The empiricism of the eighteenth century doubted that the reality of things-in-themselves⁵⁹ in the external world could be known, p. 124 and attended to impressions and ideas, which are the content of our experience. At this point Kant, stirred by British empiricism,⁶⁰ examined the process by which knowledge is acquired, and made clear the unknowable thing-in-itself and the determination of meaning by forms of thought prior to experience and by ideas of value. Barth adopted Kant's dualism in the strict sense, opposed the monism of idealism, and sought to argue for this by a revision of Hegel's dialectic. Hegel's stages of dialectical development have a continuity that cannot be cut.

But Barth finds the moment of truth in the absolute origin that is the background of conflict before thesis and antithesis are synthesized. So, according to Barth, God is a transcendent Creator unknown to us. At the pure origin of all our being and action, God is "the wholly other,"⁶¹ distinct in kind from everything human and all that is human. Therefore he rejects the rationalist orthodox theology that equates the knowledge of God with other human knowledge, makes God one object of knowledge, and tries to prove faith by theory; and he says that God's meaning cannot be known except by revelation through God's own act of self-giving.

Barth's dualistic opposition of God and humanity seeks to bring even the place and value of humanity back to the evangelical view. Barth is a man who felt most keenly the finitude and sinfulness of human life. He saw the ivory tower of modern civilization shattered mercilessly by the European War, and realized how small and fleeting the works of human beings are. Dostoevsky's view of human life and Kierkegaard's philosophy stirred him with a strange fascination.⁶²

p. 125 Here he came to know the world of grace more deeply than anyone. "The Word of God comes to humanity as reconciler, demands humility, and reveals itself as the authority that gives the gift of love." "In this world of grace the Holy Spirit, as reconciler, contends against the rebellion in the human spirit and the righteousness of works, that is, against the sin that no thought or deed can remove, and by the Spirit brings it forth as the fruit of faith, joy and certainty." So he said.⁶³

Since, as has been said, the transcendent God grants redeeming grace through God's own self-revelation, what is humanity to do in its place of responsibility? Here Barth follows again the line of thought of Paul, Luther and Herrmann.⁶⁴ Faith, according to him, is "a will that fills an empty space, a leaping decision that goes out toward the void."⁶⁵ This leaves behind the subjective view that interprets faith as a human intellectual process, or takes it as dogmatic assent to fixed creeds, and seeks to understand it as a purely passive response to God's grace. "Faith, seen in its substance, is knowledge and recognition; it is the affirming of the word that God has spoken to me; it is the act by which I receive it and make it my own." But in its essence, he says, faith is "the human answer to the Word of God in the vital moment," a gift of the grace of God, who calls us and at the same time gives us the power to answer.⁶⁶

Barthian theology fulfilled the mission of its age in rescuing religion from subjective relativism. It stressed that what is needed above all is to reach out beyond the self, to entrust the self to God, and to have a reverent spirit. But Barthian p. 126 theology, in recognizing a qualitative difference between God and humanity, created a theoretical impasse in which it could hardly avoid falling into agnosticism; and to overcome this impasse it could only repeat the theory of mechanical revelation as it stood.⁶⁷