An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant — Kant — John Shaqi
An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant
Kant · en
When James's thesis shall have been fully worked out, much supposed
investigation of primitive religions, which is really nothing but
imagination concerning primitive religions, will be shown in its true
worthlessness. We know very little about primitive man. What we learn as
to primitive man, on the side of his religion, we must learn in part
from the psychology of the matured and civilised, the present living,
thinking, feeling man in contact with his religion. Matured religion is
not to be judged by the primitive, but the reverse. The real study of
the history of religions, the study of the objective phenomena, from
earliest to latest times, has its place. But the history of religions is
perverted when it takes for fact in the life of primitive man that which
never existed save in the imagination of twentieth century students.
Early Christianity, on its inner and spiritual side, is to be judged by
later Christianity, by present Christianity, by the Christian experience
which we see and know to-day, and not conversely, as men have always
claimed. The modern man is not to be converted after the pattern which
it is alleged that his grandfather followed. For, first, there is the
question as to whether his grandfather did conform to this pattern. And
beyond that, it is safer to try to understand the experience of the
grandfather, whom we do not know, by the psychology and experience of
the grandson, whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture of
knowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which would occasion
characteristic differences. The modern saint is not asked to be a saint
like Francis. In the first place, how do we know what Francis was like?
In the second place, the experience of Francis may be most easily
understood by the aid of modern experience of true revolt from
worldliness and of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist among
us, with, of course, the proper background furnished by the history of
the thirteenth century. Souls are one. Our souls may be, at least in
some measure, known to ourselves. Even the souls of some of our fellows
may be measurably known to us. What are the facts of the religious
experience? How do souls react in face of the eternal? The experience of
religion, the experience of the fatherhood of God, of the sonship of
man, of the moving of the spirit, is surely one experience. How did even
Christ's great soul react, experience, work, will, and suffer? By what
possible means can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed,
suffered? In the literature we learn only how men thought that he
reacted. We must inquire of our own souls. To be sure, Christ belonged
to the first century, and we live in the twentieth. It is possible for
us to learn something of the first century and of the concrete outward
conditions which caused his life to take the shape which it did. We
learn this by strict historical research. Assuredly the supreme measure