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The Catholic welcomes these evidences of the duality of Christ's intellectual life. On the theoretical side, they confirm the central dogma of orthodox Christology. On the practical side, they give him authority for seeking Christ's sympathy in matters intellectual.
This was the first stage, but another quickly and naturally followed, and dread took the place of confidence. With the deepening sense of human individuality, came a deepening conviction of the boundless capacities of the human soul. Not as a theological dogma, but as a human fact man knew himself to be an all but infinite power, whether for good or for ill.
The pre-existence cannot be thought of except as ideal. The two natures we assert for every man, only not in such a manner as to destroy unity in the personality. The heart of the dogma is not in these.
But already within the Church there had been rumors and disturbances; and now suddenly a bishop arose and voiced his protest against this attempt "to drag the Church into the mire of political controversy." It must be made perfectly clear, said the bishop, that Christianity was a religion, and not a dietetic dogma.
The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism do against such Christianity as this?
God waiting to be gracious—God not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance—God swearing by himself that he has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but rather that all should come unto him and live—God beseeching men to enter into reconciliation, and this not as elect, but simply and generally as men and sinners;—these are the attitudes in which the Father of the human family sets himself forth unto the world—these the terms in which he speaks to us from heaven.” It is precisely in this sublime attitude, and in this transporting light, that we rejoice to contemplate the Father of mercies; and this view, it must be confessed, is wholly “untinged with the dogma of predestination.”
Truly, here was a fundamental law which largely, roundly, and reasonably recognized the existence of a people with hearts, heads, and hands of their own. It was a vast step in advance of natural servitude, the dogma of the dark ages. It was a noble and temperate vindication of natural liberty, the doctrine of more enlightened days.
It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that a man "in that position" would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper?
But he had no substitute. Hegel, much as he prided himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as only relative, good in the making. Schleiermacher made a beginning of construing the thought of sin from the point of view of the Christian consciousness.
All that eclipsed it having been taken away, you will see the light of day direct. Orisons, rites, bibles, formulas, refract and decompose the sacred light. A dogma is a dark chamber. Through a religion you see the solar spectre of God, but not God. Desuetude and crumbling enhance the grandeur of a temple.
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