Christ and Western Mind; Love and Belief

75 Pages·1930·1.338 MB·English

by  Karl Adam

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THE WESTERNM IND
CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
The subject "Christ and the Western Mind" is in
theairandclaimsattention. Yetitsoundsbombastic,
aggressive, even impertinent. Ithas thestilted sound
of high-brow literature and strikes anyone anxious
for lucid phrases and assured data as repellent and
otiose. What does it mean, "East and West," seeing
that, besides, there is America, Africa and Australia?
And what does "the Western Mind" mean? Is it
possible nowadays to speak in all seriousness, with
Houston S. Chamberlain and Spengler, of the
"WesternMind" as a unitary thing?
The ideas "West," "Western Mind," must, evid-
ently, be used only with great caution; and if, in
such circumstances, the subject is to yield any sense,
it should perhaps be formulated in the question:
Why does Western Europe need Christ and His
message? Theanswer to thisquestionwould have to
consider thewestern soul in its make-up, itsamis,its
needs and necessities, and in view of these to show
that these aims and needs can find their ultimate
fulfilmentandsatisfactiononlyin the beliefin Christ.
But I must confess that even this form ofthe ques-
tion repels me. It is typical in its western presump-
tion. For if Christ is, as our Faith proclaims, God
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CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
made Man, the creative Cause, the decisive sense
and the only great aim of our existence; if He is
the Kyrios, the King, to whom we are in the very
nature of our being subject, who moreover has
redeemed us afresh by His blood then He and His
message cannot be made dependent on western
needs in any way, as if He were fulfilling a merely
complementary function for Western Europe and its
welfare, and as if He, the Logos, were there for no
other purpose than to make up for the futilities and
stupidities of the western mind; in short, as
if He existed for Western Europe and not rather
Western Europe for His sake. In point of
fact, the situation is this: even if the western
mind had no inner needs, if it were still pure
nature, unspoilt by philosophy, economics and
mechanisation, Christ would still confront it with
the peremptory command: "Sequere me follow Me"!
Europe stands in relation to Christ, not because it
needs Him, but because He gives the order, because
He stands before it as a Command. This relation is
apriori, i.e. it depends in no wise on the approval or
good-will of the West, but is imposed before any
personal decision, by Christ Himself. Imposed in
mercy, certainly; nevertheless imposed! Imposed
as earlyasthatwhitenightwhentheLogosdescended
upon earth and the light shone from Bethlehem.
Ifour subject is to bear a Christian meaning and
stand the test ofour Faith, its question must be, not:
"Does the West need Christ and His message?" but:
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CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
"Whyis His message in its full sense addressed pre-
cisely to us ofthe West?" Why are we under a quite
specialobligationto Him, an obligation such that we
destroy not only our supernatural but even our
natural life ifwe abandon Him? Whereinlies, there-
fore, our peculiar western responsibility towards
Christ? Where is the talent that we have to account
for until the Master comes? What is ourvocation?
When the Logos, the second Divine Person,
entered this world ofspace and tune, Hewas,accord-
ing to the flesh, the son ofDavid, that is, ofJewish
descent. Bethlehem, Nazareth,Jerusalem, Golgotha,
are allJewish names. The miracle ofChrist was ful-
filled within the narrow space of the Jewish world,
and thefirstmessengers ofHis teaching, theApostles,
they too wereJews, Semites, children of the Orient.
The Church arose first on Jewish soil; the central
point ofirradiation ofthe primitive Christian move-
mentwas theJewish capital,Jerusalem.
Seen from outside, the first Christian community
was then a thoroughly Semitic-Jewish product, the
fruit ofthe oriental mind. Yet it was not the East
thatwas the fieldwhere theyoung shoot was to grow
into thestrong plant, but the West. Here, ofcourse,
we must remember that in those days ofthe growing
Christendom the limits of East and West did not
wholly coincide with these geographical terms.
CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
Since Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt formed
partsoftheRomanEmpire, these countries werein a
large measure under the influence of the western,
GraeovRoman civilisation. The frontier ofthe West
was accordingly pushed considerably further East ;
orratherasortofintermediatezonehad beenformed
between the pure East and the pure West, in which
eastern and western peculiarities permeated each
other and produceda newcivilisation,the Hellenistic
culture. Its characteristic feature was the union of
the western logos and the eastern eros, of western
sense ofform and eastern In the West was
vitality.
the home of rationalism, metaphysics, philosophy;
the East was the home of irrationalism, mysticism,
revelation. But theleadingr61e belonged, even in
thissphereofHellenistic culture,to thewesternmind.
Now, it is characteristic of Christianity that it
planted its first cuttingsjustin this Hellenisticworld,
this oriental world informed by the western spirit.
The first blood spilt for the sake of Christwas that
of the Hellenist, St. Stephen. The new honourable
name, Christians, came into being through the bold
witness to "our Lord Christ," not inJerusalem, but
inAntioch. The strongest, mostvital churches ofthe
East, those of Asia Minor, of Syria and of Egypt,
were without exception Hellenistic. The purely
Jewish communities of Palestine and the Diaspora
soondied orseparated themselves offasvarioussects.
It seemed as ifthe new pjant, obeying some instinct
ofitsprimitivenature, needed asoilwhichhadsome-
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CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
how had some western cultivation. We know that
thisnaturalinstinctoftheyoungChristendom,leading
We
it to the West, was part of God's providence.
therefore know also that the first great mission-
field of Christianity was this same West. The new
creation gravitated westwards with such force that
even the Primate of the Apostles, though destined
for the mission among the circumcised, transferred
his action fromJerusalem to Rome, and Paul risked
his life to cast outJewish customs from Christianity
and became the Apostle ofthe Greeks. By the time
the Apostles died and the inspiration of the New
Testament revelation was completed, Christianity
had its centre of gravity no longer in the East but
in theWest.
The fact must, of course, not be overlooked that,
just because the first Hellenistic communities grew
up ina soil enriched equally by eastern and western
civilisations, the East too took its fan: share in the
spread of Christianity. Perhaps we might say that
those who spread it during the first five centuries
in the East were most ofthem men whose head was
western, but whose heart was eastern. We shall see
later that this oriental element became effective in
the special developments ofeastern Christianity also.
Still, thefactremainsthatwecanspeaknolongerofa
purely oriental Christianity and that even in its
eastern form the western traits persisted as predomi-
nant. Forthatreason, too, easternChristianity began
to stagnate and even to decay, the moment western
CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
influence was curtailed or completely cut out. It
is certain, at any rate, that Christianity was able to
give effect to its peculiar impulses, its vivifying
creative powers, its leaven, only in the West, which
thus remained for two thousand years the real fertile
sowing ground of the Christian missions. Ifat first
the harvestwas but small, was threatened again and
again bythewildstormsofpersecutions andtrampled
down, yet it was there. "Sanguis martyrum semen
Christianorum." The Christian Faith, even though
massacred over and over again, was the only vital
thinginthe decaying Roman Empire ; and when the
Germanictribesbrokeintothefrontiersandcombined
their youthful vitality and spirit ofheroism with the
the spirit ofJesus, the dawn of a new day broke for
Christendom. Itwasnotlongbeforethecrosssparkled
on the crown of the Prankish king and soon also
onthediademofthe Roman Emperor ofthe German
nation. And at last came the daywhen the whole of
Europe apart from a few heathenish corners had
become Christian, and the West, however divided
initstongues andsplitintonations, unitedinasingle
sublime sanctity, in the confession ofChrist. It was
in ChristthattheWesthadfoundits trueunity, more
intimate and more subtle than all the ties of blood,
strongerand more lasting than any unityimposed by
common fate: the unity of the same faith and the
same worship. It was only then that the western
soul cameinto being. It was born from the common
possession of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. He
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CHRIST AND THE WESTERN MIND
became then for centuries the heart of the West,
itshome, itswealth, itsall: HeadandBodywereone
Christ.
Thefruitfulresultsoftheoutwardcontacts between
the message of Christ and the spirit of the West
founditscorrespondenceintheirinnerrelations. The
call of Christ went out to the West not only in the
sense that it was obediently to accept His word,
butalso thatitwas to help activelyin the building of
thenewtempleofGodthatwasrisingfromitsfounda-
tions. Itwas a call to placeits peculiar geniusat the
serviceoGhrist.
These relations must, ofcourse, not be misunder-
stood as meaning that thereby the message of
Christ hadbeen given a newsubstance,or implyinga
fusion between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of
the West. The word of Christ, on the contrary,
remained identically the same throughout the cen-
turies, the word of the Logos, strictly supernatural,
transcendent, a message from on high, protected
against all error by the Apostolic office and the
power of the Holy Ghost which had been promised
to that office. What gave Christianity its immense
driving-force, though also its stigma of blood and
wounds, was precisely that it entered and passed
through the world not as a piece ofhuman wisdom,
but as something utterly different, as the tremendous
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