Arthur Drews

“ Christianity recognises only one redemption through Christ; it makes the possibility of redemption dependent on belief in the reality and truth of the historical god-man. The religion of the future will either be a belief in the divine nature of the self, or will be nothing. And if there is no other redemption of man than redemption by himself, by the spiritual and divine nature of the self, no Christ is needed for it, and there is no ground for concern that religion may perish with the denial of the historicity of Jesus. ”

“ What was once the prerogative of Christianity—that it superseded the polytheism of pagan antiquity, and conceived the idea of the divine Saviour in the singular and historically—is to-day the greatest hindrance to faith. Modern humanity has, therefore, the task of again universalising the idea of divine redemption, or enlarging the idea of a god-man, which is common in Christendom, to the idea of a god-humanity. ”

“ In the chain of historical events the pious mind finds a guarantee of a pervading rational control and a purposive development of earthly life, however obscure the paths of this development may be, and however difficult it may be at times to recognise the sense in existence. The divinity lives in history, and reveals itself therein. History is, in union with nature, the sole place of divine activity. ”

“ If liberal theologians are really in earnest in attempts to attain a philosophical system, they can only realise their aim by a renewal of belief in reason in the universe, in a metaphysical “sense” of existence, in the defining and controlling power of the “idea,” and the co-ordination and subordination of human personality to the system of ends, the recognition of which is the essence and condition of all religious belief. The chief danger that has come to our time, especially to religion, under the influence of science is the denial of objective purpose in the universe. ”

“ The purely historical conception of Jesus cannot satisfy the religious consciousness of our age. It owes its prestige in reality to the effects of a way of thinking that is regarded by its adherents themselves as obsolete. A single historical personality can no longer be the redeeming principle of a humanity that has not merely broken with the geocentric and anthropocentric view of the origin of Christianity, but has seen through the superstitious nature of ecclesiastical Christology. ”

“ The question of the historicity of Jesus is, as things are, not merely an historical, but an eminently philosophical, question. In it is reflected the struggle of two hostile philosophical systems, which have stirred the human mind from the dawn of thought: on one side the belief in the idea as the ultimate determining principle of the world-process, to which the great personalities of history are related as the servants, instruments, and realisers of its content ”

“ Liberalism is content with the mere cult of the great historical personality, as if it had any value as such. But when we ask how the personality stands out from its environment, what it is that raises an individual to world-significance, whence its great influence and power over men come, we find that, as Hegel says, the world-spirit is especially active in such an individual, and leads his will. ”

“ Yet it is merely self-deception and confusion of ideas to say that in this way his relation to Christianity can be honestly maintained. It is precisely the aim of religion to free man from dependence on the world, and therefore from the dependence and relativeness of temporal existence. Hence a single historical fact, like the life and death of a man Jesus, cannot in any sense be made a ground of faith. In religion the individual avoids history ”

“ Let men be taught to believe again in ideas, and then Monism, in its idealistic form, will become the first principle of all deep religious life. From this point of view personality ceases, however great it may be, to claim an independent and unique significance in the world-process; even the great individuals of history sink to the condition of mere means and instruments; “agents,” as Hegel says, of a purpose that represents a stage in the advance of the general mind. ”

“ In other words, it is the idea that attains consciousness in such men and stirs them to action; they are what they are only by the living power of the divinity within them. In this sense it is true that in the last resort ideas, not personalities, rule the world; and this is the one really religious view, because we cannot see why Christianity, too, may not have come into being from the idea living in its adherents of a suffering, dying, and rising saviour. ”

“ We see how this idea created the religions of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysos, and similar gods; how Christian mysticism has at all times drawn fresh strength from it, and German speculative philosophy has derived from it a system that, by its depth, amplitude, and religious content, has thrown all previous systems into the shade, and which has only been prevented by its scientific form from exercising an uplifting and ennobling influence on life. ”

“ The divinity, however, does not chain itself to history in order to unite past and future to a single historical event; but one continuous stream of divine activity flows through time. Hence it cannot wish that men shall be bound up with some such single event ”

“ They support this position with the claim that a religion without Jesus would not do justice to the importance of the great personality and of history for religious life. In reply to this objection we hardly need to appeal to Hegel, the philosopher of historical development, to whom this high appreciation of the present above history may be traced, as well as this vindication of “personalities of world-history.” The great personality has clearly a value even in our own view: in it the unity of God and man, the God-humanity, attains a clearer expression. ”

“ The more progressive theologians would be ready to-day to accept this Monistic broadening and deepening of religion if they were not compelled by their clerical condition, and the connection of the Church with the State, to adhere to Jesus in some sense or other, no matter how slender it be. ”