Religion and the WarYale University. Divinity School
Religion
Religion and the War
Yale University. Divinity School
World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
In regard to the two ways in which this denial and correction were
chiefly undertaken, there can be no question where the greater value
and truth are to be found. The prophet's criticism of the national
hope and reinterpretation of it as the hope for righteousness really
struck at the heart of the materialism and selfishness of the
popular national hope, its false pride and its denial of trust and
of good will toward mankind. But the apocalyptic modification of the
older hope, though it fitted it for a wider view of the world and of
history and a deeper experience of the power of evil, did not
correct those moral and spiritual faults which were inherent in the
older hope. There is no generosity, no faith in human nature, no
sense of the present prevailing rule of God and power of good, no
thought of the "secret of inwardness" and "the method of
self-renouncement," in the religion of the apocalypse. The righteous
kernel of Judaism, the holy few who feared the Lord, expected an
invasion of divine forces on their behalf, the destruction of their
oppressors and their own elevation to angel-like natures and
God-like authority and blessedness. It could hardly be expected that
they would exhibit Isaiah's virtue of humility, or Jeremiah's of
inwardness and satisfaction in the communion of the soul with God,
or Deutero-Isaiah's impulse to turn their present lowliness to
greatness by ministry to those who persecuted them and even by death
for others' transgressions. The greatest of the apocalypses are no
doubt the canonical ones, Daniel and Revelation; and they are great
in their confidence in the divine government of the world, and in
its final vindication, and in their assertion of the martyr virtues.
But they do not believe in man, and in God in man, though their
belief in a God above is heroic. They do not hope for the world, or
find God in the world; nor do they feel that they are in any sense
responsible for the evil of the world and for its salvation from
evil. Righteousness and blessedness belong only to heaven, and can
come only from heaven to earth, and only by an act of God which will
bring the present world to a sudden end. The faults of materialism
and of self-interest which belong to the naïve nationalism of
Israel's beginnings are still present in the conscious and
sophisticated other-worldliness of the apocalyptic hopes, and reveal
the inner untruth of a supernaturalism which reckons in terms of
place and time, and looks above and ahead instead of about and
within for the Kingdom of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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