time: the refreshing river 



England and the west of Europe to the socialisation of the world 

 must involve. In this connection there are two considerations which 

 seem relevant, but which have not often been discussed. In the first 

 place, it is a historical coincidence that the early marxists adopted 

 the anthropological and psychological arguments against religion 

 which were fashionable at the time. These arguments are insufficient 

 ground for condemning one of the greatest forms of human experience. 

 The anthropological arguments all confuse origin with value, as if 

 primitive barbarism were not in the end responsible for science, art, 

 and literature just as much as for religion. To say that the concept 

 of God is derived from, or modelled on, the relation of primitive 

 exploiting lord to primitive exploited slave is to say nothing about 

 the religious value of the concept in a society where exploitation has 

 been abolished (should it continue to exist there); still less about 

 religion itself as opposed to theology or philosophy. For religion 

 does not know what God is; it only knows him if he exists to be 

 worthy of worship — a God comprehended would be no God — and 

 it does not know why the universe is as it is, but only that there is 

 holiness in it. An excess of mystical religion may indeed engender an 

 attitude of inactivity against the external world, but we need it as a 

 salt, not a whole diet. Must we have prohibition in the classless State 

 because some men drink too deeply to-day.^ In the end, there is but 

 one end, and communism can overcome the last enemy no more 

 than any other of man's devices. It is difficult, no doubt, to combine 

 scientific "pride" with religious "humility," but the best things often 

 are difficult. 



In the second place, the Byzantine nature of eastern Christianity 

 is relevant. From the very beginning the Byzantine Church showed a 

 speculative rather than a practical tendency.^ The east enacted creeds, 

 the west discipline. The first decree of an eastern council was to 

 determine the relations of the Godhead; the first decree of the Bishop 

 of Rome was to prohibit the marriage of the clergy. Eastern theology 

 was rhetorical in form and based on philosophy; western theology 

 was logical in form and based on law. The Byzantine divine succeeded 

 to the place of the Greek sophist; the Latin divine to the place of the 

 Roman advocate. The eastern Church, therefore, occupied with 

 philosophy and theology, made little or no pretensions to control of 

 economic affairs, no attempt to subordinate the secular power to 



^ See Milman, H. H., History of Latin Christianity (Murray, London, 1867); and 

 Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church (Dent, Everyman edition). 



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