Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

So the eternal is present within the process of History, revealing itself in judgements which are not interventions but are the manifestation of what is always there. For the individual, if not for the nation, there is also this impact of the eternal upon the temporal -that so soon as a man has done anything at all, he is to all eternity the man who did that thing. His choice becomes part of the eternal fact. Its value may be affected by later events; its occurrence is fixed.

4. Thus at every point the Eternal impinges on the Temporal and revolutionises its values. There remains the question of finality. Is the judgement which we see at work in History ever completed in a final Judgement wherein the meaning of History for men and for mankind is gathered up? The question is rather of speculative than of practical importance. We may discuss it under three heads.

First, it is clear that judgement on a nation may be final; a nation may be wiped out; or its history may be so broken that no restoration can set that same history again in process. No "restoration of the Jews to Palestine can now affect the finality of the judgement. of which the armies of Titus were the instrument.1

Secondly, if it is true that the free response of each individual is necessary to his entry into that fellowship with God which is "salvation "as it must be if the meaning of this fellowship is revealed in Christ-it must be possible for the individual to persist in refusal, and that persistence may become final. If it does, that is " perdition"; and there is nothing left that Almighty Love can do with such a soul except to bring it to an end. That, no doubt, constitutes a failure in God; and the argument for "universalism" rests on this consideration. But to deny the possibility of failure in God is also to deny the freedom of man to

1 There is a singularly vivid and impressive instance of a national choice involving a final national judgement in Trevelyan's Manin and the Venetian Revolution, pp. 198, 199. It is inconceivable that the old Austrian Empire will ever exist again.

repudiate God, and therefore also the freedom of his self-devotion when he offers it. As we know more about the reality of human responsibility than we do about the mode of Divine Omnipotence, it is wiser to insist on the possibility that men may involve themselves in perdition than on the difficulty of reconciling this with something that anyhow transcends our comprehension. After all it is the rather abstract notion of Omnipotence that makes us hesitate to affirm the possibility of perdition; it is the concrete and selfmanifested quality of Love which leads us to believe that God so longs for a freely offered life that He risks the loss involved in a choice which brings perdition. Because He is love, He made us free; because we are free, we may choose to perish; it is belief in His Love which leads us to believe in the possibility of "eternal loss."

But of course this does not mean "eternal torment." Love cannot inflict that. The doctrine of the Church has suffered at this point from the introduction of a belief in the inherent indestructibility of every individual soul, which has its origin in Greek rather than in Palestinian sources.1 The New Testament certainly implies that all men survive physical death; but it equally implies that not all men attain to eternal life.3 But whether in the form of "eternal torment" or of "annihilation" the New Testament certainly teaches. that on the choice of every will an infinite issue hangs. The question at stake is not one of less or more, nor one of sooner or later; it is one of life or death. And it is good for us that it should be so. It is bracing to the will that it should have real responsibility; and of this a dogmatic universalism would deprive it.

1 Cf. Gore, Belief in God, pp. 130, 131 footnote.

2 Cf. 2 Corinthians ii. 10.

3 Cf. St. Luke xx. 35. The "fire" is everlasting, but not necessarily or even probably that which is cast into it; and it is not even clear that airios means everlasting."

[ocr errors]

I have considerably modified my emphasis in this whole matter since I wrote Mens Creatrix-cf. pp. 290, 357.

Р

Thirdly, we have the question whether there is a future event in which all the history of mankind is gathered up the traditional Day of Judgement. This is simply the religious form of the question whether Time has a temporal end. It is impossible to satisfy the mind or imagination with either answer. What happens after the Day of Judgement? Can static perfection or attainment be interesting? Or will there be further tasks for the souls of just men made perfect to essay? No answer can be given. But perhaps the last question suggests the nearest approach that we can make to a solution. There are many relative ends of the world; there was an end of the ancient world, and an end of the mediaeval world, perhaps there will be an end of the "modern European world-in 1924 it looks as if that end were not far off. Such phrases are not remote from the suggestion of apostolic language, for the phrase in the New Testament is "the end of the age. Moreover, there must be an end to such human life as we know on this planet, either by a dramatic finale or by the gradual depopulation of the earth through cold. There may be no end of History, if by History we mean successive events. But there must be an end to human History-to the series of events which arises from that struggle or balance of spiritual and animal which is called Human Nature. And the end must be the fully established Kingdom of God, wherein all living souls respond to the Divine Love, and for love's sake are obedient to the Divine Will. Whether at that stage all who have ever lived will so respond, or some will have lost their life through love of it cannot be foretold. But the end of History is the complete coming of the Kingdom.

[ocr errors]

Whether, or how fully, that Kingdom can come on earth is unimportant. It can come more than it is come yet; and here or elsewhere it will be established in perfection in the souls of men. For it is ready to

come now.

From the beginning of the Gospel it is at hand. The only condition of its coming is that men should "repent," that is that they should cease to look at or value experience as temporal only, and begin to look at and value it as constitutive of eternity. The Kingdom of God will come when men conduct their History as citizens of Eternity. In the Eternal are the foundations of that outward unity for which all History is the search; but only they can build a civilisation on those foundations who are also building on the same foundations that inward unity which is the goal of every individual soul.

One word must be added. The revelation of the Eternal in Jesus Christ forbids us to find the meaning of man's life only, or even chiefly, within the process of successive events which make up man's terrestrial history. It is to be found in a new creation; not only in a fuller apprehension of the facts of this worldorder, but in resurrection to a new order of being and of experience, of which we can only say that so far as we here and now become partakers of the fruits of the Spirit, we are in our degree already realising our citizenship in Heaven.

CHAPTER XII

[ocr errors]

MAN IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION

'If a Divine Being chose to become incarnate for the sake of sinners, it is impossible to regard our earthly lives either as an unworthy choice or as a punishment. They are rather the means by which Divine love may be brought down into an imperfect world, as the rest of nature is the means by which the wisdom and beauty of the Divine mind are made manifest."-W. R. INGE.

BEETHOVEN Composed his Mass in D major while Napoleon was advancing on Vienna; when he came to the last chorus-" Dona nobis pacem "-he wrote above his score, "Prayer for inward and outward peace." 1 It is seldom that the nature of man's utmost need is presented to him in a manner so vivid; but at all times it is true that the need of man is for inward and outward peace. With the achievement of outward peace or unity we were concerned in the last chapter; but one of the elements in the problem was there omitted. Why is it that nations and societies fail to order their conduct in accordance with the eternal principles? They have no organs of choice or purpose other than the wills of the citizens. It is in the last resort because individual men misunderstand their own nature and their own true good that Politics and Political History present such a dismal spectacle. As Plato saw quite clearly, all political actions and institutions have their origin in the char

1 Incidentally, also, he set the words to a fugue on a theme familiar in Handel's Messiah, where it goes with the words " He shall reign for ever and ever." Beethoven was far too enthusiastic an admirer of Handel for this to be accidental; just then, at any rate, he knew what is the one condition of human peace.

« EdellinenJatka »