We have traced through the main assertions of
the Christian Creed with the purpose of seeing whether this official statement
of the Christian faith is, as some say, a collection of 'outworn dogmas',
unworthy of the notice of educated and intelligent people, or whether it
provides an understandable and consistent explanation of the mysteries of
the universe.
It has been necessary, of course, in order to be short and clear, to deal
very baldly and crudely with questions which are both deep and complex.
It
would be useless to pretend that there are not objections
and objections which cannot be lightly skated over
to what has been put forward.
We have not been arguing points, still less claiming to 'prove' a theory,
but trying to find out what Christians believe and on what grounds they base
their belief.
The extraordinary thing about Christianity (yet
not so extraordinary, after all, if it happens to be true)
is that it is able to carry conviction on so many different levels.
It gives satisfaction not only to children and to those who are intellectually
in the position of children,
the simple and unlearned;
but to many whose intellects can pierce the deepest recesses of scientific
and philosophic thought.
We, perhaps, may feel that we are at neither of these extremes.
We are plain, workaday people with a fair general knowledge and, we are bold
to say, with a reasonable amount of common sense.
It is on this level that we have been discussing the matter, and it is fair
to say that we have found that there is a case to discuss.
What we now want to know is, whether there is
any alternative to the Christian system which can put forward an equally
reasonable case for our consideration.
Without in any way disparaging other peoples' beliefs, we can perhaps agree
that there is no other actual religious system that is likely to make
a serious bid for the assent of ordinary people whose education and intellectual
background are in the general tradition of European civilization.
For such people, the only real alternatives are the Christian religion or
some variety of what is often termed 'scientific humanism'.
This latter does not attempt to provide a final and authoritative picture
of the universe.
It does not claim to be a revelation vouchsafed to man from above, but to
interpret experience.
It is, in short, a body of theories, or speculations, which everyone is free
to accept, or reject, or improve upon, in the light of his own knowledge
and reasoning powers.
The general basis of these theories may perhaps
be fairly stated as follows.
The observations of scientists have furnished us with a very considerable
body of knowledge about the universe and how it works.
From this knowledge we can deduce certain broad principles.
First, the universe works according to certain physical laws.
We cannot account for this, and it is not much use trying to do so, since,
so far as we can tell at present, any ideas we may have about it are not
capable of being tested.
Secondly, so far as this planet is concerned, there is an evolutionary principle
at work.
At some remote time, what we call life was developed from non-living matter
(though the distinction between living and non-living is not so clearly drawn
as was once thought).
Since then, life has been progressing through ever more complex forms, the
highest point as yet reached being represented by man.
Thus, the world is in a constant state of transition
new forms develop out of old,
the simple becomes the complex.
Nature, or the life-force, call it what you will, tries, as it were, experiments
though to put it in this way carries a more personal implication than we
are entitled to attach to the force in question.
Some experiments fail.
Some creatures, like the prehistoric lizards, are unable to adapt themselves
to changing conditions and die out.
Others, and especially man, having greater
adaptability, survive and develop.
Whether all this can be said to have a purpose (which would imply the existence
of some outside creator whose purpose it would be) is a matter of opinion,
not a matter about which we can have certain scientific knowledge.
We can only take into account the data that come within our observation.
On this view, the obvious imperfections in the
world are simply due to the fact that perfection (that is, the complete adaptation
of everything to its environment) is only a mental conception of the goal
towards which the evolutionary process is striving.
With greater knowledge, both of the physical universe and of his own psychological
make-up, we may expect that man in course of time will eliminate many if
not all of the evils that now beset him;
that is to say, he will have adapted himself more successfully to his environment.
We have to play our part in the process by doing all that we can to improve
both ourselves and our environment, for the sake of ourselves, our fellows,
and his descendants.
The moral values which we perceive (truth, beauty, and goodness) are true
values, inasmuch as they express the conditions under which human life can
be lived at its best, and to which evolution is tending.
But there is no necessity to associate them with the idea of a personal God,
for which there is no scientific evidence.
Nor, again, in the judgement of most people who
hold these views, is there any clear scientific evidence for survival after
death.
There may be survival or there may not: we simply do not know.
We have no experience of life except in association with matter, and we are
not, therefore, entitled to assume anything about it.
While, therefore, there is much that is of real biological
and social value in the moral teaching of Christianity, the Christian religion
itself is in the main a blend of ignorance and wishful thinking.
In less enlightened days, people used to ascribe to the agency of gods or
demons or fairies all kinds of happenings that we now know to be due to purely
natural causes.
There are still gaps in our knowledge.
We cannot, for instance, account precisely for the origin of life, nor can
we supply all the evolutionary links between man and his animal ancestors.
But it is not necessary for this reason to suppose that there is a personal
Creator who intervenes in the affairs of the world.
As in other cases, no doubt the solution of these problems will be found
in course of time, and will be seen to be in accordance with natural processes.
As for those features of Christianity which are its distinctive
characteristics, the study of comparative religion has shown that the ideas
of a divine man, of his birth from a virgin (or rather from a woman visited
by a god), of his death, and resurrection, are paralleled in many religious
systems;
though admittedly these ideas are not commonly attached to historical
personages living in civilized communities, but take the form of mythological
stories.
The belief in the possibility of redemption from sin by means of a vicarious
sacrifice is also quite common.
These primitive delusions have evidently been attached by ignorant and credulous
people to the person of Jesus, who was undoubtedly a man of exceptional genius
and insight, possessed of a very impressive personality and very possibly
able to exercise exceptional (but not supernatural) powers of faith-healing
which profoundly influenced those who saw him at work and predisposed them
to listen to his moral teaching.
He would, however, have been the last man to wish that his memory should
have been associated with a mass of gross superstition.
That this happened was due largely to the innate desire of mankind to believe
in some outside agency which will put things right, and make up to them,
in some fairyland after death, for all the pains and injustices which they
have to suffer in this life.
It was no accident that Christianity spread in the earliest stage largely
amongst slaves and the depressed classes of society in the Roman Empire.
It would be foolish to pretend that there is not a case for
the kind of view thus briefly sketched.
But it would be equally foolish to pretend that there is not also a case
for Christianity.
There is often talk of a conflict between science and religion;
but there cannot really be such a conflict, though there may be a conflict
between scientists and religious people, which is a different matter.
Christians are no more bound than anyone else to accept all scientific theories, but
if Christianity cannot be squared with scientifically ascertained facts, it
cannot claim to be regarded as the truth.
The Inquisitors who forced Galileo to declare that the sun revolves round
the earth, the fundamentalists who refused to acknowledge the geological
evidence for evolution, were wrong;
but the points of view that they were defending had nothing to do with Christianity.
It may possibly be significant that science has so far been defeated at just
those points at which religious people would be disposed to feel that God
had specially intervened in the course of the earth's developmen -
the introduction
of life and the introduction of man.
But if the scientists should manage to-morrow to make life in the laboratory,
or to discover every 'missing link' in the evolutionary chain, it would not
make the slightest difference to Christianity.
There is nothing in Christianity that is capable of being disproved by any
scientific discovery whatsoever.
The conflict, then, is not (with one extremely important
exception) about facts, but about the interpretation of facts.
We have seen that Christianity claims to provide a consistent interpretation
that covers all the facts known to us.
The opponents of Christianity provide a variety of interpretations that admittedly
cover a part only of the facts.
They do not take this line out of perversity, but because they feel that
the Christian explanation involves bringing in certain things that are either
untrue or unknowable.
If we go to the root of the matter we shall find that the real question at
issue is concerned with what has just been referred to as the important exception,
namely whether the facts to be taken into account include the Christian assertions
as to the historical birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
If these assertions are true, these are amongst the facts to be accounted
for, and they can be accounted for only in the Christian way.
Further, if they are true, then a number of important things, which would
not otherwise be knowable about the working of the universe and the nature
of God, must be regarded as knowable.
We have already gone over the grounds on which Christians
rely in support of their assertions, and we need not do so again;
but before
the matter is left to the final judgement of the reader there are a few comments
that should be added.
In comparing the Christian and the 'scientific' interpretations
of the world, we are bound to notice one outstanding deficiency in the latter.
The scientific method, whether 'materialist' or 'humanist', has so far failed
to produce any completely satisfying explanation of the undoubted fact of
the existence of moral values.
Put baldly, it can give no clear reason why anyone should pay any attention
to the interests of any other person.
The non-Christian is, in practice, often at least as decent a citizen as
the Christian, and has much the same notions of right and wrong conduct.
But, if he is pressed as to why he tries to do 'right', even if it is against
his own selfish interests, he can only answer that he does it as a biological
duty in the wider interests of the community or the human race.
If he is pressed still further as to why he should worry about the community
or the race, he has no real reply.
In the long run, if we think the thing through to a conclusion, the acceptance
of moral principles must imply recognition of the existence of God, and moreover
of a God whose nature is that which Christians claim it to be.
Nor, again, can a materialist view of the universe really
account for the undoubted fact that man possesses a religious instinct.
According to this view, 'the idea of God is simply a device of the human
mind for explaining to its own satisfaction various experiences which its
knowledge is insufficient to cover.
When men are very ignorant, they attach deities to all sorts of natural objects
and occurrences.
With the progress of knowledge, these deities have become 'rationalized'
into a single God, and ideas about his interference in everyday affairs have
been largely transferred from the material to the spiritual sphere.
But he still remains a convenient symbol and no more.
When he is no longer convenient, he will go the way of the other deities.
Christianity in particular has taken over and 'rationalized' not only the
Jewish belief in a single God, but a quantity of other assorted material
to be found in the Greek 'mystery' religions, in Oriental cults, and in primitive
paganism.
To this the Christian would reply that the arguments based
on comparative religion rather strengthen than weaken his case.
What science finds it so difficult to explain is why men in all ages and
at all stages should have felt the need of some external object to worship.
It is all very well to say that it is part of our make-up, but why are we
made up in this particular way?
If there is a God, if he made us, and if he wants us to know about him, it
is natural that he should have given us the desire and the capacity to know
about him.
If there is a God, it is clear that evolution is the method by which he has
chosen to work.
It is natural, therefore, that he should so arrange matters that man's opportunities
of knowing him should develop progressively with man's evolution.
The full revelation could not usefully be given until man was ready to receive
it.
There is, then, truth in all religions, but truth mingled with imperfections
due to man's incapacity to understand.
Yet God is always there, whether men call him Jehovah, Jupiter, Odin, Allah,
or Old Man Coyote.
On the other hand, we could not expect less of God than that
he should make the full revelation of himself available to man at the earliest
possible moment of history.
At what historical point earlier than the establishment of the Roman Empire
under Augustus, and in what surroundings other than the Palestine of that
day with its unique religious tradition and its close connection with Greek
culture, could God usefully have intervened in human life?
If, then, we believe in God at all, the fact that the pre-Christian
religions contain much that is in common both with each other and with Christianity
can be very simply explained.
The earlier religions were 'types and shadows', partial revelations corresponding
to the capacity of men to absorb the truth, but guided by God to take a form
which would prepare men to receive the full truth when they were ready for
it.
Such an explanation is far more natural and more convincing than the theory
that the early Christians collected an assortment of beliefs from various
religions and combined them into a new religion.
Some more will have to be said about this when we come
to consider 'sacraments'.
For the moment the point is that, if Christianity represents fundamental
reality, it, is natural both that other religions should have their share
of contact with that reality, and that Christianity should (as we know that
in fact it does) find ready acceptance when it is brought to the notice of
religiously minded people of all sorts of beliefs and traditions all over
the world.
But if Christianity is not fundamental reality, neither the common ground
of other religions nor the general appeal of Christianity is easy to account
for.
Lastly, there are strong grounds for holding that the
present appalling condition of human affairs is directly traceable to the
development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of liberal and progressive
ideas divorced from religious belief.
Hitler and his like owe their power not chiefly to the support of criminals
and murderers but to the support of ordinary, decent citizens.
It was been well pointed out that there are no bad things:
there are only
good things that have gone wrong.
The excesses of the French Revolution began with a perfectly laudable and
genuine (but humanitarian and not Christian) endeavour to redress the grievances
of the underdog.
In our own day we have seen plenty of examples of how a reforming movement
based on non-Christian ideas of progress and the perfectibility of human
life leads by inevitable stages to the taking of short cuts, and in the end
to tyranny and oppression.
Loving one's neighbour may have frightful consequences if one does not remember
that the first commandment is to love God;
and Christians are as liable as
others to forget this, as the scandals of the Inquisition and the religious
wars testify.
The most destructive battles are not fought between those who want to dominate
the world for their own sakes, but between those who want to dominate the
world for the world's sake.
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