1958. A Universal Religion. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 30 Apr.
A Universal Religion
By Gordon H. Clark, Ph.D.
Every devout Christian hopes that Christianity may become a universal
religion — universal in the sense of a geographical expansion throughout all the
world. To some minds this can occur only if Christianity discards its concrete
particularity and becomes universal in the philosophic sense of a generic universal.
Such, for example, is the opinion of Professor William Ernest Hocking in his recent
volume The Coming World Civilization.
"The day of private and local religions is over," he
says (p. 80) . "Jealous gods and chosen people are normal chiefly within an
accepted polytheism no longer thinkable." Although the word local in
the first sentence seems to have as its antithesis a geographical universality,
the second sentence shows clearly that a generic universality is his desideratum.
This becomes entirely clear ten pages later. It might seem that
Christianity is definitely committed to the historic person of Christ. The Scriptures
teach, "He that loseth his life for my sake, the same shall save it."
But Dr. Hocking rids us of the particularity by a reinterpretation: "In this
expression, the words, for my sake, indicate an essential factor of the thought;
namely, the affirmative power of a purposeful devotion" (p. 90). It cannot
be denied that 'the affirmative power of a purposeful devotion" is a universal,
a universal so abstract and so general that it can well cover the devotion of Khrushchev
in purposefully working himself up to undisputed dictatorship. Or if this is too
strong a reply, at least it may be said that nothing of Christ's original meaning
remains.
In fact, nothing of Christ remains. For the prophesied, virgin-born,
miracle-working, and risen Christ there has been substituted a merely human teacher.
Read the following quotation carefully. "The good faith of a religion will
then appear in its appeal to experience, first that of its prophet as an example
of his own teaching, then that of each believer. For Christianity this means that
God's work and love are perceivable by each human being — not as past history-
— but in his own way and context and time. 'Behold I stand at the door and knock:
if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup
with him, and he with me.' The 'any man' is significant. To make these words good,
the being who speaks them — here called 'the Spirit' — must be, as the man of Nazareth
could not be, omnipresent in space and time" (p-98). This removal of Christ
from Christianity — the Christ of the New Testament — becomes still clearer as we
proceed.
The reduction of Christ to a teacher and the denial of his omnipresence
would seem to imply a rejection of the Incarnation. But Dr. Hocking does not reject
doctrines: he generalizes them. "The doctrine of Incarnation (note the omission
of the definite article) could be defined as a generality whose role it is to escape
from generality, accepting the responsibility of the universal for realization in
the particular" (p. 180-181). What a beautiful Christmas theme this makes!
Faith in a universal religion, that is, faith in a common quality
that can be found in all particular religions, requires considerable alteration
in the idea of God as well as of Christ. It requires a different view of faith also.
"The deep naturalness of Christianity grows on me as I write... To much of
the modern spirit, and indeed to the robust self-confidence of normal humanity,
Christianity has seemed, and seems, unnaturally preoccupied with the ideas of sin.
And I would stand with the firm human sense of right in the cosmos, ready to call
God to account as well as to be called to account: whoever and whatever is responsible
for my existence must respond to my just demand that existence-as-aspiring-being
shall not be a condemnation to futility" (p. 104).
But far from being natural to robust self-confidence, the Christian
view of man is that of a lost and miserable sinner who has no ground on which to
call God to account for anything. "Thou wilt say unto me, Why doth he yet find
fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest
against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made
me thus?"
However, if one accepts the ideal of a universal religion, a
religion of the generic quality in all religions, one must accept a natural religion.
Therefore Dr. Hocking says, "The faith of the Christian is continuous with
the nature-faith by which all men live" (p. 113). It is by this idea of continuity
that the author is able to identify the essence of Buddhism with the essence of
Christianity. The historical particularities of the two religions are relatively
unimportant in contrast with their essential identity.
"Thus understood, the Only Way, so far as its essence has
by valid induction achieved finality, is no longer the Way that marks one religion
from all others: it is the Way already present in all, either explicitly
or in ovo. The several universal religions are already fused together,
so to speak, as the top... The religions of mankind — Buddhism not excluded
— are already one religion" (ital his; p. 149).
To justify this merging of all particular religions into an empty
abstraction, Professor Hocking asserts that "Affirmation is not exclusion...
Christian faith does not present itself as an hypothesis competing with other hypotheses...
'This Way is a way of peace.' As affirmative, it is not exclusive" (p. 138)
. But when Jesus said, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me," his
affirmation was completely exclusive.
What then can such a universal religion offer us. On this point
Dr. Hocking is definite. This religion, he says, "will promise him no escape
from pain and ill fortune; it will offer him the Cross — his own" (p.188).
Thus it turns out that the universal religion teaches that each man must bear his
own sins in his own body on the tree. It is indeed a religion of despair.
But Christianity is a religion of salvation and has nothing in
common with this Buddhism.
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