The problem of human life as viewed by the great thinkers from Plato to the present time
by
Rudolf Eucken
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 Excerpt: ... beginning (initium) of the future life. "It is not yet done and finished, but it is in progress; it is not the goal but the way. Everything does not glow and shine, but everything is being swept." The power of initiative at work in this development of life is re-enforced by the distinct consciousness of opposition to the traditional forms in which the divine truth of Christianity seems to be distorted and obscured by human additions. There are two foes to combat: Romish arrogance and justification by works, and Greek speculation and subjectivity. The contest with the Romish influence is consciously the more important, yet the opposition to Hellenism is in reality not much less prominent. In Luther's opinion, Hellenism had flooded Christianity with foreign systems of thought, chiefly the Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic, and, in consequence, not only distorted it in detail, but transformed it as a whole too much into a mere theory or view of the world. Speculation, he thought, had here taken the place of religion; human reason had settled the principal facts to suit itself, now one way, now another: and the matter of chief concern is in danger of becoming a mere subject of sport, when allegorical interpretation is allowed to make anything of anything. This interpreting, with its various meanings, roused to bitter antagonism the simple sense for truth of Luther's German nature; with irresistible force, he opposed to it the simple facts, the plain literal sense. It is the recourse to history which would here fain exclude all philosophical speculation; and it is the acceptance of the fundamentally ethical character of Christianity which would exclude all intellectualism. Accordingly, the characteristic peculiarity of Christianity appears to be worked ou...
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