Christianity for him is not a series of extraordinary
acts, but a voice from heaven. It is not the Christ of tradition before
whom he bows his knee, but the Christ of history, the Christ of faith,
the Christ of experience--the living and therefore the evolving Christ.
And for him, as for the great majority of searching men, the more the
mists of pious _aberglaube_ lift, the more real, the more fair, and the
more divine becomes the Face of that living Christ, the more close the
sense of His companionship.
A friend of mine once asked him, "Are you a Christian or a
Neoplatonist?" He smiled. "It would be difficult to say," he replied.
He was thinking, I am sure, of Troeltsch's significant prophecy, and
warning, that _the Future of Christian philosophy depends on the renewal
of its alliance with Neoplatonism_.
Let no man suppose that the intellectual virtues are outside the range
of religion. "Candour, moral courage, intellectual honesty, scrupulous
accuracy, chivalrous fairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested
collaboration, unconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly
renunciation of popularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and
strengthening solitude; these, and many other cognate qualities," says
Baron von Huegel, "bear upon them the impress of God and His Christ."
What Dr. Inge, who quotes these words, says of Plotinus declares his own
character.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54