Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative TheologyClarke, James Freeman
Islamic
Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology
Clarke, James Freeman
Christianity and other religions; Religions
Thus Christianity meets and accepts the truth of Brahmanism. But how does
it fulfil Brahmanism? The deficiencies of Brahmanism are these,--that
holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore is
incapable of progress, for progress takes place in time. Believing in
spirit, or infinite unlimited substance, it loses person, or definite
substance, whether infinite or finite. The Christian God is the infinite,
definite substance, self-limited or defined by his essential nature. He is
good and not bad, righteous and not the opposite, perfect love, not
perfect self-love. Christianity, therefore, gives us God as a person, and
man also as a person, and so makes it possible to consider the universe as
order, kosmos, method, beauty, and providence. For, unless we can conceive
the Infinite Substance as definite, and not undefined; that is, as a
person with positive characters; there is no difference between good and
bad, right and wrong, to-day and to-morrow, this and that, but all is one
immense chaos of indefinite spirit. The moment that creation begins, that
the spirit of the Lord moves on the face of the waters, and says, "Let
there be light," and so divides light from darkness, God becomes a person,
and man can also be a person. Things then become "separate and divisible"
which before were "huddled and lumped."
Christianity, therefore, fulfils Brahmanism by adding to eternity time, to
the infinite the finite, to God as spirit God as nature and providence.
God in himself is the unlimited, unknown, dwelling in the light which no
man can approach unto; hidden, not by darkness, but by light. But God, as
turned toward us in nature and providence, is the infinite definite
substance, that is, having certain defined characters, though these have
no bounds as regards extent. This last view of God Christianity shares
with other religions, which differ from Brahmanism in the opposite
direction. For example, the religion of Greece and of the Greek
philosophers never loses the definite God, however high it may soar. While
Brahmanism, seeing eternity and infinity, loses time and the finite, the
Greek religion, dwelling in time, often loses the eternal and the
spiritual. Christianity is the mediator, able to mediate, not by standing
between both, but by standing beside both. It can lead the Hindoos to an
Infinite Friend, a perfect Father, a Divine Providence, and so make the
possibility for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and
highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently
moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effeminate
quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years
will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they
come to see God as law and love,--perfect law and perfect love,--and to
see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and
inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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