An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's PhilosophyJones, W. Tudor (William Tudor)
Religion
An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy
Jones, W. Tudor (William Tudor)
Eucken, Rudolf, 1846-1926
Anything less than the spiritual nucleus of Love is lacking in strength
necessary to withstand the storms of the future.
We thus see that the essence of Christianity and its durability do not
lie in any kind of theology: it lies within the Spiritual Substance
which has abode within it throughout the centuries. Here will the world
find its peace and power; here will all social complexities be solved;
here will the meanings and blessings of the spiritual over-world of
goodness and love become the possession of man. This is what Eucken
means by contending that it is not the business of Christianity to deal
with social problems in any light but the light of Infinite Love.
Without an experience of this deepest source of Christianity, we do not
possess the equipment for doing anything more than patching and
re-patching the evils of the world. And all our patching, when but a
small span of time has passed away, will leave the situation just as it
was, or probably worse. Every solution will give birth to a new
complexity; the world may be incessantly active in connection with the
betterment of the social situation,'but we shall never heal the wounds
of individuals and of nations until they are [p.188] brought to the
depth of the spiritual life revealed in Christianity as Eternal Love. "A
warm love towards all humanity runs through Christianity; it longs to
redeem every individual; it gives man a value beyond all special
achievements and on the other side of all mental and moral deeds; it has
been the first to bring the pure inwardness of the soul to a clear
expression. But it has also, through the linking of the human to a
Divine and Eternal Order, raised life beyond all that is trivial and
merely human with its civic ordinances and social interests. He who,
with the best intention, views Christianity as a mere means for the
betterment of the social situation, draws it from the heights of its
nature, and deprives it of the main constituent of its greatness--the
emancipation from the petty-human within the depths of the human itself.
It is essentially the nature of Christianity that it transplants man
into a new world over against the world that is nearest to our hands; it
has planted the fundamental conviction of Platonism of the existence of
an Eternal Order over against the world of Time amongst a great portion
of the human race, and has given a mighty impetus to all effort. But it
has, though it separated the Eternal from Time, brought it back again
into Time; and through the presence of the Eternal it has, for the first
time, proposed to mankind and to each individual a fundamental inner
renewal, [p.189] and through this has inaugurated a genuine
history."[63]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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