The Next Step in Religion: An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance

by Roy Wood Sellars

CHAPTER V

THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY

Let us now pass from the study of the general features of the ancient outlook upon nature to a study of the Christian view of the world. Is the Christian view of the world inseparably bound up with this ancient outlook, or can it be purged of it? Is the moral fervor and idealism of Christianity its essential and permanent contribution, a contribution to a rational appreciation of human life? Probing still deeper, let us not be afraid to ask ourselves whether the surgery which this thesis implies does not involve the daring of a break with theism as only a developed form of primitive animism? In ethical monotheism, may not the monotheism be the protecting envelope from which the butterfly has already flown?

The part played by Christianity in the development of Western civilization and its position as chief representative of the religious interpretation of the universe makes our selection of it for study natural. To identify traditional religion with a low stage of its development, in which it is inextricably bound up with crude myth and ritualistic magic, is not a fair procedure. We must take theology at its best and place it over against science and philosophy before we can rightly judge it. Only then can we be certain whether it stands for anything vital, significant and true. For the Western world, at least, Christian theology is generally acknowledged to represent the high-water mark of theology. If it is intrinsically inadequate and untrue to modern experience, the only course open to a morally and intellectually courageous man is to resign it as a view outgrown. No matter how much pain may arise from a break with old associations and from the relinquishment of false hopes, intellectual morality permits only one course. It may be that social morality will gain new life when the old forms are broken, for the letter killeth. I mean that Christian ethics will operate more freely and creatively in the world when it is given an entirely humanistic setting. In dreaming of a super-mundane god, man has only too often forgotten his fellow man. In yearning for the coming of the divine kingdom, he has allowed his hands and feet to be idle, or has even stepped unheeding over the prostrate forms of men and children broken in the mart. To remove theology from Christianity is to make the kingdom of this world.

The content of Christianity cannot be separated from its origin. To do so is to open the door to private interpretations of all sorts and to facilitate duplicity and self-deception. Christianity is an historical fact, and has meant various pretty definite things. If we have outgrown certain of these things and re-interpreted others in a fundamental way, we are not making for clearness of thought by trying to read our own outlook into the past. Continuity of a spiritual kind there has been, but there is also newness of a basic import. The knowledge and atmosphere which confront it to-day are vastly different from the theosophy in which it was born and nourished.

I think we all feel that Christianity stood for an ethical stimulus of a very fruitful sort whose effect can hardly be overestimated. Yet, if we wish to gain a proper perspective, we must not neglect to put in the other balance the tendency to dogmatism and the persecuting zeal which accompanied it. There have been other than Christian martyrs. Something was faulty with a movement which contained so much obscurantism and bigotry. There was not enough of sweet reason in its composition, and too much of the old terrors which accompanied primitive ignorance and cruelty. It needed a saner and more wholesome perspective and more trust in human reason. For instance, the differences between the various sects, which have sprung up from period to period with such clamor and death-defying energy, have been differences of stress and of formulation whose importance was grossly exaggerated. To the modern student nothing is more tragic and pitiful than this zeal of ignorance. So much to be done in the world to make it sweeter and more beautiful and more livable, so much need for sanity and charity; and yet so much of human energy wasted and, more than wasted, turned to evil results. The only way to overcome this sectarian mal-adjustment is to know the past as it was and to cherish no distorting and blinding illusions in regard to it. Man is so prone to see the golden age in the past that it is necessary to have a searchlight directed upon it. An historical approach is such a searchlight.

There is another psychological advantage in an historical approach. The reason is often unconsciously bound by the authority of a supposed past. For the philosopher with his confidence in experimental reason, perhaps, this inhibition does not exist; but even people who have every inclination to bring their total experience to bear, in a free way, upon doctrines and beliefs are restrained by what they have been taught, and lose audacity. The spirit of acquiescence is always at work in the world, and nothing reënforces this spirit more powerfully than a traditionally-accepted book of sacred writings. Confronted by these with their unhesitating affirmations and claims, the minds of the majority are intimidated, and such reflections as they allow themselves work within the prescribed boundaries or wander little beyond them. Nothing is better suited to unbind the mind and to lead it to think boldly than a study of origins. The individual gains perspective as he sees ideas and sentiments rise and fall and give way to others. He can no longer be intimidated by the shadow of a compact and seemingly impregnable tradition. We must remember, however, that such an historical and comparative approach can, at its best, only break up the mythical simplicity of a sentimentalized past and reveal the complexity of the many-channeled forces at work; it cannot prove any particular doctrine. The creation must come from the spirit of the present, as it carries the stimulus of the past and adds to it its own energies.