The Religion of the New Age
By Ham Sok Hon
(Translated by Ha Poong Kim)

Translator's Note: This article, first published in Malssum (The Word), Second Series (1956), was originally delivered as a lecture at Choong-Ang Theological Seminary, Seoul, in March 1955. This translation contains some omissions, most of which involve short passages, often one or two sentences, in different places. The translator used the text contained in Ham-sokhon Jonjib (Complete Works of Ham Sok Hon), Vol. 3 (Seoul: Han-gil-ssa, 1983), pp. 193-241.

Table of Contents
The Changing World and the New Religion
Revelation and Historical Speculation
The Individual and History
The Spirit of the Age
History of Religion
The Meaning of the Present Age
Aging Religion
The Time
The Shape of the New Religion
Conclusion

THE RELIGION OF THE NEW AGE
Ham Sok Hon

The Changing World and the New Religion

Let us talk about the new religion that is coming.

Even the blindest and the most obstinate must be aware that the world has changed incredibly and that it will become more incredibly different in the future. "What will become of the world in the future?" This must be a question we can find in the bosom of everyone everywhere--something which we can detect without investigating it. In the midst of a frigid winter, under deep snow, we can declare not only that everyone is waiting for spring's arrival, but also that every heart indeed cherishes the unshakable, trusting thought that spring will at last arrive. With greater certainty can we declare that there exists a common thought in the minds of all people around the world--the waiting for a "different world." The world is changing. And it will undergo a change unprecedented in any period in the past, a "fundamental" change--one may say. This is one fact.

Next, we may ask, What will then become of religion? Will religion still exist when such a different age arrives? If it does, what kind of religion? These are the most urgent of all questions, since religion is the foundation as well as the end of human existence. One may, however, assert categorically that religion will stay. Whatever change may come in the future, religion will not disappear. One ought to recognize this, no matter how ignorant one may be. There is no doubt that the sun will continue to exist, even if stormy weather lasts for several days. In fact, there can be stormy weather only thanks to the sun. Similarly, religion will never disappear, whatever change history may undergo. Rather, the cause of every historical change is to be found in religion. This is then another certain fact.

People, however, disagree as to whether or not religion will change. The expression "new religion" arouses in us two opposite feelings: a feeling of contempt and a feeling of deep respect.

We despise a new religion, first on the basis of our past experience, for we have observed almost every self-styled originator of a new religion turn out to be a swindler. Also, we despise a new religion on account of reason, for it means a rebellion against God. Religion by nature seeks that which is unchanging. People, being unable to withstand impermanence, seek what is permanent, which is religion. Furthermore, every existing religion which teaches us how we ought to live owes its existence to the blessing of the eternal one: namely, God's recognition that it is in the right. To propose a new religion is, however, to deny all this and to presume to speak of what is new. Therefore, it is tantamount to impiety and blasphemy denying God's divine authority. In fact, Gautama, Confucius, Jesus, and all other great prophets could not avoid charges of impiety directed against them; such a charge was a potion due to each of them in the light of his time. Everyone who teaches a new religion must receive questions such as "Who are you?" "Under what authority do you teach a new religion?" Yet they possess no sufficient basis for answering such questions, to the satisfaction of the established religions.

In established religions what is "holy" is something visible and tangible, that is, material; it is thus what is completed. One can claim religious authority through one's blood relationship, or by receiving a robe, a bowl, or a staff, or thanks to the imposition of hands, or by vote or lot. By contrast, a new religion appears without anything of the kind. Accordingly, anyone who teaches a new religion must be a scoundrel, a heretic, a presumptuous one, an impudent one, an unclean one, a destroyer, a rebel, a crazy one, one who deceives people, and a child of a devil. Anyone who dare claim to have received a vision of a new religion is a foolish one, a wicked one, an arrogant one; accordingly, he deserves to be despised.

Strangely, however, there always appear in human history those who call for new religions--despite the fact that a new religion is such an object of scorn, something that ought not to exist.

This is the case, although everybody clearly sees all great religious teachers have suffered unbearable persecutions, often unnatural death. Why is that so? The reason is none other than that history always demands a new religion. There continue to appear those scoundrels who do evil in the name of jen-yi [humanness and righteousness, two cardinal virtues of Confucianism], because jen-yi is the way with which humankind cannot depart even for a moment. And there continue to appear those scoundrels who deceive people under the banner of a new religion, because a new religion is indeed that, inmost stuff which humanity seeks. False religious reformers are the precursors and announcers of true religious reformers. No age can be new, unless its religion is new. Therefore, those who cry for religious reform in the face of persecution and humiliation from all authorities are ones who are truly concerned with the future of humankind and thus worthy of respect. Religion is then something that is unchanging and yet ought to change: something that remains the same and yet ought to be ever new. This is also a certain fact.

Eternal and unchanging religion is absolute religion; religion that constantly renews itself is relative religion. Without what is relative, the Absolute would be a fiction which would find nothing to depend on for its manifestation. Without the Absolute, what is relative would be an illusion, which, having nothing to take root in, would gain no unifying meaning. History must meet the Absolute every moment, and thus it dies and resurrects every moment. Life can be gained only through self-denial. Religion concerns the meeting of the relative and the Absolute. Through religion all things return to God. All things have come into being in order to manifest the glory of God. But every being can manifest the glory of the Absolute only through its own denial. All sacrifices become offerings of sacred rites only when they are killed and put to fire. The moment they have been sacrificed, they turn into defiled objects, so that they must quickly be disposed of: they become things that are not just useless but obstructing. The fate of every religion is momentary. As in Thousand and One Nights, the new maiden of each age is allowed before God only a single night. Just like the Arabian ruler who asserted his absolute authority by allowing every maiden only a single night and killing her thereafter and who thus sought an eternal maiden, God kills every age the moment he meets it. Thus he stands as the being that is forever absolutely holy, and before him stands the maiden of the present who is forever new. For this reason, the moment a religion demands more than a single night before God, it turns into a devil's system and evokes a terrible anger from the Absolute--though religion is eternal and unchanging.

Until the present time every religion has implored God to recognize her absolute beauty. Every religion has begged him to install her as his eternal queen. So every religion has tried to monopolize God, keeping him inside her tent. But God has never permitted this. Every religion has thus become old and obsolete. Nothing relative is complete and pure enough to be a partner to God because of its relativity. God is not a being to be paired with something; he is the one who is forever alone without his equal. God created a "helping partner" for Adam, saying "It is not good for the man to be alone." God did this because Adam was an incomplete, relative being. He did it so that Adam would realize his incompleteness, his relativity.

Adam admired Eve, calling her "bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh." Thus began their life of husband and wife. But their first experience was the painful contradiction that the "helping partner" was also a temptress. This symbolizes the contradiction of the religion of human beings. Eve picked the fruit and ate it. It was beautiful to her eyes and good to her taste. So she gave it to Adam and he took it. And this was their mistake. They did what they did, thinking that the fruit would bring them good: that they would become God. If Eve had not given the fruit to Adam, she would have been a true wife. If Adam had refused to accept it, he would have been a true husband. However, one gave the fruit and the other accepted it, believing it to be an act of love. And that was their mistake. The fruit that looked so inviting and tasted so delicious to Eve was her religion. Adam trusted Eve, because he was a relative being, and because he regarded his spouse as a perfect helper. Because of this, he fell.

God is different. Although the human being comes from God, God does not trust him as "bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh; "nor does God accept fruits that human beings offer, as offerings from true love. God loves human beings, but he never trusts them; he treats them as relative beings. That is why Jesus lived without a spouse and did not trust those who wanted to serve him as their king. When Peter recognized him as the Christ, Jesus did acknowledge his faith as a rock. However, when Peter tried to dissuade him from dying on the cross, Jesus firmly told him, "Go away, Satan." By so doing, Jesus revealed God's absolute holiness and truth, and pointed to the fact that true religion exists only in complete denial. As is the case with every truth, religion, too, is true religion only through denial. One may have attained truth, but, however noble it may be, it becomes falsehood the moment one declares, "This is the absolute truth." However devout one's faith may seem to others, it becomes unfaith the moment one declares, "My faith is an absolute, true faith." Therefore, religion must continuously renew itself.

Religion is the manifestation of the eternal Word. Because the Word is infinite and absolute, it must be manifested anew every moment. The Word comes only from the Word; accordingly, it would be endless to trace its source upstream. Also, the Word calls forth the Word; accordingly, it would be endless to follow its course downstream. Religion is said to be eternal and unchanging. So some consider it as if it were a pearl to be kept in a hand. Jesus told the story of a foolish servant who buried the money entrusted to him by his master. When the servant returned the same amount to his master--thinking complacently that he had done the right thing--he only angered the master and was chased out into the dark, to his surprise. Those who cherish religion as if it were a pearl to be hidden away are like that foolish servant. The day will come when they will find it too late to regret. Just as money increases only when it is thrown away, so religion remains eternal only when its old structure is constantly discarded and it is made unceasingly new. Religion is not a pearl but a seed. It must decay so that it may put forth buds, grow up, bear fruits, and thus spread out. Those who open their eyes will recognize the green, tender leaves coming out, and when they see these leaves, they will know that summer is coming. Similarly, those who open their minds' eyes will recognize the changing of the time, and when they recognize the signs of this change,. they cannot but presage that a new religion will come.

Revelation and Historical Speculation

There are two ways of knowing the future. One is revelation. Revelation transcends the scope of the intellect; therefore, no one can know in advance what may be revealed. One must be passive toward revelation. It is something one must wait for, something one must receive when it comes. To say this is, however, not to imply that one does nothing. One can never receive a revelation with an attitude of simple inaction. No one can know the coming of a revelation through the intellect; nor can one induce it or postpone it. If, however, one wants to receive a revelation right when it comes--that is, without missing it--one needs some adequate preparation for it. Christianity rarely speaks of this fact explicitly, because it is mainly concerned with faith. But the fact is undeniable, though little is said of the fact. One may say that faith is an attitude prerequisite to the receiving of a revelation. Confucianism, on the other hand, stresses the preparation for the receiving of a revelation, as it teaches a great deal about learning, unlike Christianity. Briefly, this emphasis on preparation is expressed by the phrase: "Do your best and wait for the will of Heaven (Choen-myeong) [Chinese: T'ien-min]." Cheon-myeong means revelation. Myeong means God's command, the Word; it implies the future. History is nothing other than the self-unfolding of the Word. The Word is, to be sure, the Word of God, who is absolute and perfect; therefore, it is complete by itself. When it manifests itself as history in the phenomenal world, however, it cannot make itself be known without efforts on the part of those who are to receive it. What God gives us freely may be received by us only when we are prepared to do so. Thus there is a precondition for our receiving God's Word. The Absolute knows of neither "completion" nor "incompletion"; it knows of neither "coming" nor "waiting," since it is beyond time. From the standpoint of the Absolute, the kingdom of Heaven is already there fulfilled and the revelation is already there given. However, human history takes place in time; accordingly, there is the time for the kingdom of Heaven to come, and the season for the revelation to be received. Here is then the point at which faith and historical striving meet.

For a human being to "do the best" is then to "wait for the will of Heaven," and vice versa. One of the most important things that one ought to do "doing the best" is, however, to speculate on the future through the understanding of the past history. This undertaking is altogether a human work, namely the work of reason; it deals with the principle or rule underlying historical developments. One attempts to foresee the future by searching through the historical happenings of the past and discovering thereby the principle or rule which underlies them. To be sure, the future lies for us beyond the iron curtain of time, a curtain which it is impossible for the finite faculty of reason to penetrate--no matter how hard it may try to do so. Therefore, human speculation concerning the future cannot be more than speculation, and it cannot make any apodictic inference concerning the future from the past. Indeed, one may say that every historical speculation concerning the future fails. Precisely because it fails, we have after all history. Should our historical speculation succeed, we would have no history; there would only be a mechanical process. Accordingly, the point of historical speculation cannot be sought in the speculation's success as a prediction; the point should be found in the attempt to illuminate history rationally. Although we seek the historical principle in order to illuminate history, we cannot make the future history visible by the same principle. By attempting to illuminate history, however, we can prepare ourselves for the revelation that will illuminate the future. All activities of the human intellect are works of a "useless servant." His works "deserve no credit" before his master. However, he can be a devoted servant only by doing his best--though what he does is worthy of no merit--and by admitting that he is a "useless servant," all the while he is doing his best. For only by so doing can he remain awake.

There are two historical principles. One refers to what is recurrent, and the other to what is non-recurrent (unique) in history. On the one hand, history is clearly repetitive in some respects. Thanks to the repetitive nature of history, we attempt to conjecture about the future, by discovering from the past certain fundamental principles of history. The repetitive nature of history is relatively easy to comprehend. So it has been said from time immemorial that "history repeats itself." The same idea is expressed in such sayings as "one life, one death is the rule of human existence" and "those who rise must fall and those who flourish must decay." Taking these sayings as rules, we understand that all men and women must die, and infer that all nations and civilizations must come and go. That is why ancients called history a mirror. They meant that by looking into the past history one could foretell future events as if one could recognize one's face by looking into the mirror. Historical speculation in this sense is easy.

History would be no history, however, were it completely repetitive. Should a given condition invariably lead to a definite result again and again, this would be a mechanical, physical phenomenon. It would be a lifeless, inorganic phenomenon, but not a historical one. Historical events, unlike mechanical, physical happenings, are living, organic phenomena, which reflect the individuality of the actors. A historical event is a unique happening involving a particular person in a particular place, at a particular time. Therefore, it is a non-repetitive event. It is precisely this non-repetitive character of history that distinguishes it from all natural phenomena. And this non-repetitive character is not too easy to recognize for the eyes accustomed to seeing only repetitive events. The reason is that it concerns not so much the event in question as its meaning.

A historical event has a spiritual dimension; consequently, it is non-repetitive. And it is because of this fact that one speaks of revelations [with regard to the future]. One can fully understand repetitive phenomena through intellectual observation alone, but one cannot comprehend by the intellect alone non-recurrent, spiritual phenomena which take place completely by themselves. By knowing the rule of human life: "one life, one death," one can illuminate no one's future. Nor can one make a judgment determining one's own mission on the basis of one's past experience, however hard one may reason about it. The issue is not one of knowledge but of wisdom. One acquires knowledge by systematizing facts of experience according to certain principles, but one receives wisdom only when one's mind is illuminated through inspiration; that is, by receiving the spirit. With knowledge it is sufficient that I discover what already is the case, by using reason fully; this is, however, not sufficient with wisdom. Wisdom is possible only when certain self-transformation has taken place after something has supervened upon reason.

Wisdom is not to discover what already is the case, but to comprehend what has not yet taken place, that is, what belongs altogether to the future. To be precise, one creates rather than comprehends what is to come. When I mention what belongs altogether to the future, I mean the will of God. But in God willing is also doing, which is happening.

The will of God is none other than the Word mentioned in the Gospel of John. The Word was with God at the beginning; through it all things were created; and in it was life. To know this Word is wisdom. Wisdom is, however, not what may be acquired through the intellect; it may be gained only when one receives what comes from above. That is why, as John said, the light shone on in the dark but the darkness did not recognize it; "he entered his own realm, and his own would not receive him." Also John said that only those who believe in God would receive him and become children of God. That is why the Word is revelation. One foresees the future only when the Absolute reveals it. Jesus said that even the Son of God does not know about "dates and times which the Father has set within his own control." He also told his disciples that they would bear witness for him only when the Holy Spirit came upon them. A prophet or a seer is one who has received the revelation of the Word. A prophet is one who stands between God and human beings. That i's why he is also called a spokesman. In one sense, he is one who has participated in the Word, for he has seen the Word, which has been already fulfilled in Heaven.

But the Word itself cannot be history. In order for the Word to manifest itself in history, it must first be translated and interpreted in human language, i.e., in words. [It is the function of the prophet to do this translation and interpretation.] In this respect, a prophet is a philosopher of history who speculates on the course of history. Even in the East, sages have been regarded as participants in the creative process of the universe [in time]. However, the people of the East have been primarily concerned with the visible, phenomenal world, so that they have seen history ultimately as a repetitive process. Their understanding thus could not go beyond relative, practical knowledge. In this sense, the East has not had the future, and as a result it has not produced philosophers of history, in the strict sense of the term. By contrast, the Hebrews have been more concerned with the invisible than-with the visible, and they have attempted to grasp the Absolute--what belongs to the future--rather than what is recurrent. Because of this, prophesy has developed among the Hebrews, and they alone have produced true philosophers of history. No other people have devoted themselves to historical interpretation and speculation as much as the Hebrews have done. So the Hebrews have produced prophesies and, at last, eschatology, a unique view of history or world view which cannot be found among any other peoples. It is from this outlook that Christian faith has come into existence, as an attempt to fulfill history.

As I have shown here, two principles flow together in history. One finds history recurrent when one looks at it fragmentally and externally, whereas one finds it non-recurrent when one looks at it as a whole from within. The future that one knows fragmentally by observing recurrent phenomena is the relative future. On the other hand, the future that one understands as a non-recurrently developing whole, through revelation--this future is the absolute future. Living history is the product of the relative and the absolute future as they work together concretely and inseparably. Accordingly, our attitude toward this living history must be two-fold: first, historical speculation and second, waiting for revelation--namely, "doing the best" and "waiting for the will of Heaven." And this is the framework in which I will try to characterize the religion of the new age.

The Individual and History

The theory of evolution points to, among other things, phenomena of recapitulation as evidence for the evolution of organisms. It is said that the embryo inside the mother's womb briefly recapitulates within a short span of several months its species' entire evolutionary history of many hundreds of millions of years. This view is based on actual observations of the development of embryos. When one observes the growth of an embryo from the beginning, one discovers, even in the case of a highly developed animal, that it goes through every one of those lower forms of organisms (i.e., lower stages of evolution) which are no longer useful for the species. For instance, the human embryo inside the womb looks like a single-cell organism in the beginning; it has fins like a fish at some stage; and sometimes it resembles newborn mammals of other species. It comes to the world with human characteristics only after passing through all those necessary stages one after another.

The more one reflects on phenomena of recapitulation, the more one finds them interesting and even mysterious. The mystery of recapitulation arises from the nature of the individual. Every living being exists as an individual entity. What is an individual entity? It's a mystery. Why do living beings exist as individuals? No one can explain it. They exist according to the will of God, but this is beyond reason's comprehension. However, it is a fact that all kinds of biological and spiritual mysteries arise from this mysterious entitycalled an individual.

From a biological standpoint, there is no doubt about the evolution of living beings. Biological evolution has three elements: first, the life of the species (as a whole), second, the environment, and third, the individual. Life is by its very nature something that develops spontaneously and infinitely. Therefore, the biological species never remains the same in the same state: it changes. The environment refers to something lifeless and physical. This, too, constantly changes. The individual is life in its concrete form. It is an entity that is complete historically--that is, relatively. These three elements together bring about the evolutionary process. Of these the most important is the individual.

Let us now explore the historical significance of the individual in the light of the embryo's recapitulation process. From an evolutionary standpoint, one may understand a living individual in two ways. On the one hand, it is a parent body, an adult member of its species. On the other hand, it is a fetus. It is an adult member in the present, but it is a fetus for the future. As an adult member it is a complete being, but as a fetus it is an incomplete and, hence, free being. While inside the mother's body as a fetus, the individual recapitulates within a short span of time the entire evolutionary stages its species has passed through. At first glance, this process of recapitulation may seem an unnecessary labor, a troublesome burden of history. However, therein lies a profound truth. Through this process life prepares for its preservation and development most safely and most effectively. Had life existed as a single large entity like a gigantic single-cell organism, it would have probably perished or, if not, have seen a very limited development. The possibility of its interaction with the environment would have been fixed, and consequently it would have probably become extinct the moment it was exposed to a single challenge. Life, however, exists in innumerable individual entities, so that it has infinite existence, though it is one. Through the process of recapitulation, it also preserves the whole in each individual, so that the whole would be preserved in a single entity even if all the rest should be destroyed. In each individual there is the inertia of the entire history, and yet it possesses freedom, so that it develops every moment, without losing the inherited wealth of historical value. Also, no opportunity for life's development is lost when each of numerous individuals reacts to an identical challenge freely in its own way.

During its growth the fetus takes in all the nutrition from its mother's body, without any direct contact with the external world. This is a sort of self-digestion, as it were. The fetus grows by eating itself. In this way, it inherits fully all that history has to give. When it has completed this process and has no reason to stay in the womb any longer, the fetus abandons the mother's body and comes to the world. Heaven, i.e., the whole, has put in it the possibilities for development. When the fetus has reached its maturity, it now possess the past history and can advance a step further in history. It has received its capacity.

How this capacity is given--this cannot be known by reason. This process is the immediate work of the Absolute, a mystery.  It is "inspiration"--to put breath in.

At any rate, as the fetus leaves the womb and becomes a full member of the species, it has already in itself the placenta for the next generation--the future history. This process, the individuation of life, is the embodiment of the Word in the biological sphere. The embodied Word, the formed, concrete life, now acts on its environment in order to carry on the second creation. This process is evolution--namely, natural history from a biological standpoint; it is history from a cultural standpoint. To sum up what I have discussed, history advances thanks to the two opposite forces that are working together mysteriously in the individual. They are called heredity versus mutation in biology, while they are called synthesis versus freedom or conservation versus progress in history. There are no children who do not resemble their parents; nor are there children who are exactly like their parents. This fact is debated in theology under the topic of predestination and freedom. History is God's predestination, but it is at the same time the product of the work of the individual persons. All mysteries focus on the personality of the individual. Not even the greatest theological system can explain away the two opposite forces of the individual in terms of a monistic principle. The moment such a system is completed, life has already escaped from it. Personality is a product of history, but it is personality that produces history. Personality is the Word that speaks thus:

The Father loves me because I lay down my life to receive it back again. No one has robbed me of it; I am laying it down of my own free will. I have the right to receive it back again; this charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:17-18)

In the individuality of a person, history is old yet ever new; it is necessity yet freedom; also, it is God's predestination yet [the work of] human morality.

The Spirit of the Age

Let us now apply the idea of recapitulation to the spiritual history of humanity. To be sure, this involves a certain risk. For a human being is not a mere biological organism. What is important in him is not what he has in common with organisms in general but what he is beyond being an organism, namely, what makes him a human being. Accordingly, a human being cannot be understood simply in terms of the evolutionary principles of living beings in general, insofar as he is a spiritual being. This is true when one considers the human being from a relative standpoint; however, it is not necessarily the case when one considers him from the standpoint of the Absolute. From a relative standpoint [that is, in terms of the distinction between the human being and other organisms] an organism is an organism and a human being a human being; they must be distinguished from

each other. One has natural history, but the other has (human) history. From the absolute standpoint, however, the two are simply two aspects of one and the same history. Both arise from the Absolute will and make one, undifferentiated unity. _Though different, they derive ultimately from one and the same governing principle. They both tell the one identical story of the "One." For that reason, there can be allegories and inferences from one to the other.

When one compares the two [i.e., natural history and spiritual history], one can recognize the mysterious correspondence between them. There are three elements in the development of spiritual history, just as there are in the evolution of living beings. What appears as biological life in the latter now appears in the former as the Absolute spirit, logos; what constitutes the natural environment in the latter now constitutes the cultural environment of society in the former; what is the core of the evolutionary process in the latter is now the spirit or character of the age in the former. Logos is the original life from which all beings come into.existence. It is that active principle that develops infinitely in human existence as in biological existence (which is also ultimately one aspect of logos). That active principle is the way of Heaven, the principle of growth, in Eastern thought. Logos renews itself and changes unceasingly. The cultural environment of society, too, undergoes changes like the natural environment. Just as the evolutionary process ensues from the individual organism's attempt to adapt to its changing environment, so human history ensues from the individual person's attempt to adapt to its changing culture. The spirit of the age is the individual personality's understanding of its historical environment from the standpoint of self-completion.

Just as each individual organism has two dimensions, so each age has a two-fold significance. It is a link in the chain of history, and yet it is as such something independent. On the one hand, it is a mother's body, but it is a fetus, on the other. Each age considered as a mother's body is a complete spiritual system: it claims to be an all-inclusive whole that can answer for those who live in it all their problems ranging from earth to heaven. Each age seeks to stand on its own, claiming its self sufficiency. No country, no nation, regards itself as a means to serving another; it is its own purpose.

Statism or nationalism--the ideology which regards the state or the nation as the supreme authority--is not an ideology we find in every country, every nation, or every age. However, no society can preserve itself unless there is, among its members, the consciousness of an all-inclusive whole. Historically, every so-called golden age or age of tranquility was a time when an age had grown to its full maturity as a mother's body, and thus the consciousness of being a member of the age (among its individual members) had reached its zenith. Such ages were the ages of Yao Shun, Chou, Han, T'ang, Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Athens, and the Roman Empire. These are especially outstanding cases, but the consciousness of an all-inclusive whole is present in every age-though it may not reach such a great height as in those so-called golden ages. No nation has ever acknowledged its final boundaries, and no sovereign has believed in the limit of its sovereignty.

There is a fact that is common to all ages--something one cannot overlook when one examines them.-- It is the fact-that every age has its own completed religion, its brain. No age, no culture, has been able to achieve unity without a complete, established religion; nor has any sovereign been able to govern all its subjects and keep everything under control without it. The Roman Catholic Church is the most conspicuous example of such a complete religion. It is a church that never admits of even the slightest defect or error, a church that is complete by itself for eternity. So it calls itself the mother church. With its objective (visible), ecclesiastical authority it reigns over the three realms of past, present and future. Claiming that nothing may be justified without its blessing, it concerns itself with all spheres of human life, and tries to take the place of honor in every sphere. In the meantime, the children of the age, acknowledging in such conduct of the holy mother church its absolute authority, bury themselves in its lap and finally fall asleep under the intoxicating influence of divine nectar served by it. In it they find infinite comfort and even pride. Just as every monarch is in his heart a Ch'in Shih Huang Ti (the first emperor of the unified China, r. 221-210), so every church is a catholic (universal) church in its heart. For without being catholic, no church can function as a church.

All this reveals one side of the age. Each age has another side: an age as a fetus. Every age is engaged in preparation for the future, as it asserts itself and strives for its self realization. This is tantamount to an act of self-destruction for each age (as a complete system). Every fruit must fall off the tree on which it grows, when it becomes ripe. This falling-off process is a process of dissemination in which the offspring appears, treading its mother underfoot, eats her up and rises above her. The more the mother church tries to bring its children under its protective wings, the more they will try to run away from it, finding its wings constraining. By necessity the mother church must raise such children, who will eventually deny it. Life is a process in which the mother must bear her offspring and the offspring must leave her. This is God's doing. Logos itself must detach itself from God's arms, so to speak. The children are grumblers: they grumble no matter how their parents may treat them. They leave home whether they are protected or not. Why? Because they seek freedom. If the mother may be called the embodiment of peace, the child is the embodiment of freedom. Jesus addressed his mother "woman" after leaving her. There is a deep meaning in this.

Religious reformation is inevitable. The Reformation did not come because of the fault of certain popes. It is a superficial judgment to say that it came because of their fault. The truth is that the Reformation took place because the Roman Catholic Church as the mother church had raised life (a child). The Reformation should be regarded as an event that brought to the Catholic Church a glory, not a shame or a source of resentment. Every mother must conceive a child and, having conceived it, she must give birth to it. A bride, with her selfish desire, may wish to keep her maiden beauty forever so that she may be loved by her husband. If, however, she has true love for her husband, she will conceive and bear a child, according to his wish. The beauty of the mother is eternal beauty. Doesn't her beauty increase as her hair becomes grayer and more lines appear on her face? If the mother church had the true spirit of the mother (that seeks the development of her child), it would be happy to see the reformation of the church rather than detest it. Though labor pains may be harder to bear than death, the mother bears them with joy. If she does not do so, that will prove that she is not a mother. Likewise, if the child insults his mother or treats her like an enemy, he is not her child.

If the Catholic and Protestant Churches became enemies through the Reformation, they both lost God. The Reformation should be a source of celebration for both. For it was a consequence of the just rule of history. The Catholic Church ought to regard the Protestant Church as its growing child, and the latter the former as its old mother. In this way they should be able to live together. How wonderful would this be? The mother is not to die after giving birth to her child. The longer she lives, the greater the child's joy must be. She herself died already at the time of labor pains; therefore, she recognizes herself in her child. This being the case, the child ought to regard her as a source of pride and take care of her lovingly, without hatred.

Religion has a crucial function in the development of history. It constantly undergoes a process of reformation, in which a religion as a mother church maintains peace, while as a "church militant"--the fetus of the new age--it continues to nurture freedom. That is why a religious reformation is at the same time both a consequence and a cause of historical development. Accordingly, we can speak of the religion of the new age. 

Religion pursues eternal truth, so that humanity may gain faith and thereby peace and tranquility. That is, religion seeks human salvation. In this sense, there cannot possibly be the religion of the new age. For no religion that changes following each age can possibly be a religion. However, there must be a religion that causes the age to change. There would be no change in history, unless religion itself changes. There must always be a new religion, as long as religion exists in a relative realm, and as long as human history exists. In each age the living spirit of history must be grasped by the self-conscious subject; that is, the new revelation of the eternal, living Word must be received. The Word that is forever unchanging in Heaven is the Word that is fulfilled through a constant sloughing process on Earth.

How will the church change? It will do so through self-digestion or self-criticism as in the case of an organism. The unity of an age is complete when the existing church completes its spiritual system as well as its institutional organization, so that it establishes itself with the consciousness of a mother church. When this happens, the church in Heaven and the church on Earth unite--as far as this church is concerned. Now the representatives of the church become holy messengers of God, and the imposition of human hands becomes God's appointment. At this very moment, however, the church begins to feel the movement of a new life in its own body, as did Mary after the Annunciation. This life then gradually grows; it grows independently of the mother church's will. The mother church, now experiencing a mixture of joy and anxiety, develops inside its own body a new living body which gradually becomes independent of it; the mother church nurtures this living body with its own body.

No external force can directly nurture this new church within the mother church. Every food must first be taken in and digested by the mother's body and become her blood and flesh, from which the fetus may grow. The same thing applies to the growth of the church within the church. When any external event in the changing history directly invades the church, this corrupts the church. Every external event must first be taken in and digested by the mother church and become an issue of faith. When this takes place, the church cultivates within the ability which it will need in order to lead the new age. The larger this new church becomes, the more pressure the mother church must experience. The latter can cherish and raise the former, not from an instinct of self-preservation, but from something altogether different, something that always fights against that instinct--namely, from a higher sense of moral responsibility. The mother church persuades itself from the standpoint of the greater self that its present pains are in fact a source of joy; it thus tries to conform the demand of its instinct to that of spiritual life, in order to maintain itself in the face of the approaching, onrushing current of the future. However, the day will at last come when its contradiction will explode--the day when it can no longer go on with the contradiction. This means the fetus has grown fully. The day has come when the mother and the child must separate. This is the time when the new church receives inspiration, when it experiences the new spirit descending from Heaven--so that it now comes on stage with the awareness of the spirit of freedom to create and lead the coming age.

The church is the engine for historical development. What is absolutely necessary for its working (as history's engine) is the spirit of freedom to lead the new age. Only with this spirit can the church live and grow in the new age and become the brain of this new age. This spirit is what produced all the great religious geniuses and saved their times. This means "the absolute freedom of faith." This spirit of freedom is expressed by such sayings as "In heaven and under heaven I am alone the honorable one" (Gautama); "Heaven has endowed me with to (spiritual power)" (Confucius); "Should the sage come again, he would surely follow my word" (Mencius); "The Son of Man is sovereign over the Sabbath;" "Before Abraham was born, I am;" "I am the way; I am the truth and I am life." One finds this spirit of freedom in Moses, Zoroaster, Ikhnaton, Asoka, the sages of the East, the prophets of Israel, and the religious reformers. What is tragic in human history is, however, the fact that the mother church persecutes its own children, whom it brings to the world. These are the ones whom the Father sends, the ones who come as the inheritors of the world, the ones who come to their own realm to rule their people as their king. But the mother church tries to expel them as impious ones; the ruling class rejects them as ones who disturb the peace; and the rulers try to kill them as rebels. Jesus said, "In this way they persecuted the prophets before you." Here Jesus was pointing out a painful historical truth. However, there must be the absolute freedom of faith if human history is to be saved. The church can fulfill its two-fold function as the mother's body and the fetus of the spirit of the new age only when it accepts the absolute freedom of faith. If the church denies this freedom out of excessive apprehensiveness, it is no different from a foolish bride who refuses child-bearing, or a wicked woman who secretly plans the miscarriage of the fetus in her body. In the end, such an act is tantamount to suicide.

History of Religion

The history of religion may be divided broadly into three periods:

first period: religion of blind will; 

second period: religion of emotion; 

third period: religion of reason.

Every division of history has the shortcoming of being mechanical, and the above division is no exception. I introduce this division for the sake of convenience in order to explain certain facts; I do not lay it down categorically. Human personality is one undifferentiated whole in which many elements are so blended that there can be no complete separation of the intellect, the emotion, and the will. So the working of every one of these three faculties is present in all things that we do, at all times; none of them works alone. This is particularly true in religion. However, human personality grows, and spiritual development takes place through stages. Therefore, it is also a fact that one can recognize the uniqueness of a particular period by considering which of the three faculties is predominant during that period. Differences among various religions may be due to the personality of each individual, the characteristics of each people, as well as the natural and cultural environment. When we consider the process of the spiritual development of human beings, however, we discover a certain common trend among them. In childhood they tend to act according to their instincts with the strong will to life which is not yet self-conscious. During young ages they act according to keen feelings and emotions with various interests. During the period of maturity their activities tend to become increasingly rational. We have already observed, in our discussion of recapitulation phenomena, the correspondence between the process of development in the individual and the historical process of the human species as a whole. We notice the same correspondence when we consider the process of the spiritual development of the human race. So we observe the predominance of the blind will during the primitive period, the predominance of the emotion in the succeeding ancient times, and the development of reason thereafter, as we approach modern times.

One finds primitive religion in what is known as animism, fetishism and totemism. All these practices are manifestations of the will to life which is not yet completely self-conscious. People at this stage are not yet concerned with such lofty questions of religion and ethics as "What is the goal of human life?" and "What is the origin, of the universe?" They only follow strong impulses of life. In them these impulses are seeking to rise to the level of self-consciousness only vaguely. [People of primitive religion are not yet self-conscious of their drives.] The manifestations of these impulses sometimes exhibit the brilliance of the rays that radiate through dark clouds at the dawn. However, the impulses lack a unified direction or a principle. The mind of those who are driven by the blind will to life is like the eye of a violent hurricane or the surface of a smelting furnace. Their religious psychology is dominated by the flame of life which is half human and half brute. Primitive religion contains a quality that is so sacred that it moves us also, but at the same time it involves practices that are so wild and cruel that they make us shudder. These practices are carried out without the slightest hesitation or compunction. Primitive religion has thus many aspects which are beyond our comprehension both rationally and emotionally. The object of worship in primitive religion is generally power, though the worshiper is faintly aware of this. What appears first in this primitive mind, which seeks (but never achieves) self-consciousness, is something that threatens the human being, along with his sense of impotence. What dominates the inner self of people of primitive religion is mainly a sense of fear and anxiety. For that reason, they sometimes pray, sometimes imitate, and sometimes try to resist. All this is directed toward power. This is what magic, incantation, or taboo is all about.

The spirit grows gradually until it becomes self-conscious. The moment it attains its self-consciousness, the spirit encounters the majestic "Thou." [So begins the religion of emotion.] Those who encounter the great Thou first are religious poets. They may discover this Thou in nature, as they did in ancient India; in ethical, social relations, as they did in ancient China or among ancient Semitic people; or in artistic feelings of life, as they did in ancient Greece. Although thus they encounter the Thou differently, they are all poetic; in this respect, they are the same. They still do not search beyond the phenomenal world in order to reach the Absolute Thou--the Thou as the eternal order. Rather, they marvel at transcendent beings that appear concretely in the phenomenal world; they extol them; and they seek to unite with them. This is their attitude. They may be sometimes polytheistic, sometimes pantheistic, and sometimes monotheistic. Although they may vary in this way, they are the same in that they are all emotional. Because they are emotional, they may seem very inward, but their kind of religion is in fact externally-oriented.

By nature the emotion does not constitute the core of personality. To be sure, complex sentiments do arise from the depth of personality, but this is possible only as a consequence of some amount of sublimation of naive feelings due to intellectual development. Simple emotions exist on the surface of personality, since they rise according to sensations. What develops first in the child is not reason but the emotion. This is the case because the child encounters concretely whatever comes directly from outside, in view of its present state. Emotions are self-assertions toward external stimuli. That is why the less cultured a person is the more self-assertive he is. To be cultured is nothing other than to have the truth appropriated in oneself. Of course, that needs also the cultivation of the will and the emotion; however, all this is possible only under the tutelage of reason. One becomes cultured when reason, through the process of abstraction from phenomenal experiences, attains the truth, i.e., the fundamental, universal and unifying principle of reality, and it thus controls one's concrete response to every particular event. In this way it is culture that orients human personality more toward eternity and makes it more ethical. Because of this, those religions in which the emotion is predominant are externally-oriented. The emotion, however, should not be the core of religion. When it becomes the core of a religion, the religion cannot avoid its decaying and hardening Superstition and fanaticism arise from faith rooted in emotionalism.

Religion of emotion is religion of ceremonies, institutions and sacrificial rites. We can briefly characterize the religion of antiquity as a religion of sacrificial rites, because it is a religion of emotion. Because it sought to approach gods emotionally, it brought about sacrifices which involved the performance of rituals; because its concern was sacrifices, it needed priests, who had to preside over the rites. The religion of antiquity was a religion of sacrifices and institutions. It was not concerned with inward spirituality but with outward expressions. That is why it created hymns and formula-like prayers, and developed the practice of incense burning and a strict, complicated system of sacrificial offerings. What rose accompanying all this was the privilege of the priestly class. All priests of antiquity, both of the East and the West, used hymns and solemn sacrificial rites, in order methodically to enhance the holiness and majesty of gods to a height where gods would be beyond everybody's approach. Thus they assigned an inviolable privilege to themselves and monopolized the mediation between gods and humans. This further invited a thisworldly or spiritual class system which was maintained by the resulting shrunken, benumbed and perverted conscience. With such a class system, the priests of antiquity sought to rule over the individual souls and maintain the order of society. Under this shrewd scheme humankind was deceived immensely, although its religious sense of awe was nurtured and its arts were developed as by-products.

Living in a half-drunken state among idols and phantoms, the human race spent several thousand years, the time of antiquity, generally under the alliance of cruel political rulers and astute priests--although benevolent kings and teachers sometimes did appear. Then about twenty-five centuries ago, the human race suddenly began to awake; there appeared many great religious teachers both in the East and the West. The common characteristics of these teachers was their rationality. They all founded religions of reason: they replaced religions of mythology, ceremonies and class distinctions of the previous period by religions that were philosophical, ethical and, accordingly, universal and based on the brotherhood of all humanity.  This shows the fact that humankind began its self-examination. History, however, does not move along a straight line, and the historical process is not irrevertible. So, even now, there are, of course, people who try to communicate with spirits by offering them incense and by worshiping them, and people who, seeing visions during their state of concentration, enter a state of rupture, fancying that they had encountered God, and also people who perform even magical rites.

But the time for religions of emotion is already past, when we look at the human race as a whole; that is, when we consider the general direction of history. Ours is an epoch of reason, after all. No longer does the human being leap and scream, driven by those subconscious impulses, or simply marvel at the overwhelming outside world and be fascinated by it, or become a slave to mere subjective, fragmentary feelings. Now the human being enters the realm of reason, transcending the phenomenal world. He becomes self-conscious of his rational existence and seeks to approach the Absolute in accordance with the truth. My relation with the Absolute is no longer an issue of power, nor an issue of capacity. Also, it is no longer an issue of emotions or feelings as was the case in antiquity. Ours is the problem of the ultimate principle and that of meaning. How the human race approaches the Absolute reflects its stage of self-development--that is, how much it knows itself. After a long process of search, the human being understands himself as a rational being rather than as a functioning agent or a subject of feelings.

Reason is the center and the spearhead of personality. Self-conscious reason is light in the human being. In the past the human will pursued its objects without a clear sense of purpose, but reason now illuminates the meaning of that pursuit in view of the human being's relation with the Absolute and with his environment. In the past the human being determined what was good or bad, what was pleasant or unpleasant, fragmentally dealing with each external object, merely according to his feelings; however, he, now, recognizing his all-inclusive, unifying self both in time and space, attempts to regulate and control his values from the standpoint of this self, so that they may realize the harmony of the whole. This possibility derives from reason's capacity for transcendence. Reason transcends time, space, and the ego; this transcendence is raison d'etre of reason. Thanks to reason, human beings are capable of knowing the absolute nature of the Absolute, its infinity and eternity. Reason is extremely important in the spiritual history of the universe. For the universe may be comprehended as an order by reason. Yun in yun-li (Chinese: Lunli, meaning ethics) means order. An ethical conception of the universe comes into existence when the human being becomes conscious of himself in contradistinction from his environment and encounters the Absolute with reason, which is the center of his personality. Religion means an ethical outlook toward the universe, insofar as we speak of religion in general--irrespective of the differences among various religious traditions.

We have so far considered the outline of the development of spiritual life since the primitive period. There may be disagreements among those who reflect on history, depending on their viewpoints. Generally, however, it is undeniable that the front line in the history of the evolution of life is personality and the summit of personality is reason, and that reason will develop further and further in the future. This being the case, one can tell reasonably the future direction of religion--that is, according to the judgment of reason. As I said above, of course, one cannot know what the future will be. This is something that one can never know without direct revelation from the absolute will which reigns over history itself. Reason can merely tell what it understands; so we use it in order to prepare for revelation. We may now state that the future direction of religion is a rational one; we say this from the standpoint of "doing the best" [in preparation for revelation].

One may understand this also in the light of the modern trend in theological thinking. The major current in recent theological thinking has been so far dialectical theology--although we don't know how it will develop next. I say this, to be sure, from a standpoint of Christian theology. However, it is generally true that world views and historical outlooks, even outside Christianity, have been developing along dialectical thinking. Dialectical thinking is the thinking of the modern time. To consider the circumstances which made this thinking popular, it appeared as a reaction to rationalism which had flourished for some time until the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century people superficially believed in the omnipotence of reason, as they saw the rapid advancement in science. They believed that there would be no problem which human reason would be unable to solve, that humankind would be able to know the origin of the universe, and that it would be able to build a perfect, ideal world by controlling nature by human hands. They believed in the natural progress of history toward its goal. But this dream was shuttered when World War I broke out. People came to realize that science was not the savior of humanity, that historical progress was not something it could grant optimistically without qualification, and that the origin of the universe was something beyond the comprehension of human wisdom. This realization deepened further when World War II came. Dialectical theology came to rise from these circumstances.

Briefly, dialectical theology acknowledges that the human being is incapable of direct approach to the Absolute. In this respect, it is a denial of rationalism. This is, however, not the whole story. Dialectical theology speaks of critical existence, discontinuous continuity, neo-orthodoxy, etc., not because it denies reason, but because it seeks to be rational. Humankind cannot believe in the omnipotence of reason, but it cannot possibly give up being rational. Consequently, it tries to be truly rational by recognizing its own limits. Now reason acknowledges the fault of believing in its own omnipotence and admits its limitation. This is evident from the fact that romanticism had risen briefly and disappeared. Romanticism had risen earlier in protest against rationalism and asserted a philosophy of life which stressed feelings, but it had to fail because it could not resist the rational direction of the main current of history. So it became popular for a short while and passed. Because dialectical theology knows this, it does not emphasize feelings; it is not to restore old faith by returning to the emotion. Therefore, dialectical theology seeks to draw a limit to reason and thereby leave room for faith, though it remains rational as far as possible. In this respect, it is fundamentally rationalistic. The name "neo-orthodoxy" tells this well. In it reason frankly admits its limitation. And to do so is truly rational. The belief in the omnipotence of reason is indeed the denial of reason.

The Meaning of the Present Age

By the present age I mean here the time since World War I, which was the beginning of our historical present. Since World War II, all people around the globe have been living with the same historical consciousness, the same spiritual character. This is a fact that we all know, although we don't know how long this will last from now on. Earlier I said that we must look at the universe as a living whole which embodies a certain ethical order. When one holds such a world view, history becomes one active life-process. It is no longer an endless chain of causes and effects as believed before; it is something living, which grows. One may call this view of history the philosophy of living history. Strictly speaking, however, it may be correct to call it a personalistic philosophy of history, since we find in the center or in the forefront of this cosmic living process the human personality which is conscious of itself as a subject of ethical order.

Let us now consider what kind of meaning our present age has in this personal, growing process of history. One cannot understand the future without comprehending the present, for when history leaps into the future world, it necessarily uses the present as its stepping-stone. Of course, we cannot comprehend the present completely, because it is defined not only by the past but also by the future, at the same time. In fact, the meaning of the present depends more importantly on the future. Therefore, we cannot comprehend the present without understanding the future. Thus one ends up in a circular reasoning. The truth is that we come to understand the present truly only when we make a leap forward from the present and land in the new continent of the future; that is, the moment the future no longer belongs to the future, and the present already belongs to the past. There is a saying: "You know a person only after closing his coffin." This is the reason why the understanding of contemporary history is always risky.

However, we can perceive our own future with some degrees of clarity when our present historical epoch approaches its end, Just as even a fool who never thinks of the future realizes intuitively what is coming--though vaguely--when the final moment of his life draws near. In our present age, many people have been sensing what is coming. Oswald Spengler cried out "the decline of the West." Through him and others the present age has-been listening., to its own condition, putting a stethoscope on its chest, as it were. One may say this had started even before Spengler. Since then we have received various diagnoses, but generally they are all in agreement in viewing the present epoch as a period of great chaos or as a period of transition. Diagnosing our age in this way is perhaps correct.

In some sense, every age is a period of transition. However, there are times when the current of history makes especially large turns, causing maelstroms. Such times may be called specially periods of transition. One outstanding example of such a period was the period of Warring States in ancient China. During that period of five hundred years, China was in a constant chaotic state of war, unable to accomplish its unity. Preceding it, the Chou dynasty had enjoyed a unified culture; following it, there appeared in the reunified Middle Kingdom the cultures of Han and T'ang in succession. When one observes such a process, one comes to hold the view of history as a recurrent, as we considered earlier: history does seem to repeat itself. But there is absolutely no repetition in history; there is only a spiral motion. No two periods of transition are exactly alike; to some extent, however, they do permit comparison.

There have been many transitional periods in the past. Which of them is like the present age as a period of transition more than any other? Perhaps it was the first century. In ancient time Hellenic culture came into existence in Greece as the great synthesis of the two civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, on the one hand, and. Hebraic and Cretan civilizations, on the other. Hellenic culture reached its peak during the time of Alexander the Great, and then, having attained its maturity, it began to decay, plunging the world into a great confusion. The West of the first century belonged to this time of confusion. Roman civilization was what followed this period of transition. The present age, too, is in the midst of transition. European civilization unified the world in the modern period, but it has now fallen to the ground as a system of order. And now a new order is about to rise.

During the first century there were two spiritual orders: Hellenism and Hebraism. However, they had both lost their vitality, so that it was futile when a few attempted to arrest their historical process of disintegration and restore unity by upholding them. Thus confusion steadily increased everywhere, and this led to the rampant growth of all kinds of paganism concocted from the residues of religions of antiquity. Then there arrived Christianity, in a climate of cosmopolitanism and individualism, with its lofty new ethics. And thanks to this a new culture came on stage to unify the world anew. Christianity became the backbone of this new culture. Today, too, we have two old spiritual systems: Western and Eastern world outlooks. As was the case in the first century, in the present age, too, we will probably be unable to establish the world order with either of the two existing systems--despite the efforts of a few zealous traditionalists. There no longer exists any spiritual system that may serve as the mainstay of the present age; it must be due to this fact that all kinds of opinions now assert themselves.

Today, too, the spiritual climate that sweeps the world is cosmopolitan as well as individualistic. If our comparison of this age with the first century takes us this far in their agreement, may we not go one step further to make an inference regarding their agreement with respect to the historical agent that will bring about a new order? What we may expect to be this agent is none other than a new religion which will prescribe a new ethics.

Thus considered, we should say--as many have already pointed out--that the present age is a time of impending childbirth. Earlier I discussed the two-fold meaning of every age. While each age is a spiritual system complete by itself, it nurtures in itself a fetus for the next age. I pointed out that we recognize this most clearly in religion. If so, do the existing religions show any symptom of pregnancy? Yes, they do. The symptom is so evident that one can tell it even at first glance. When the time for delivery comes, the mother's body and the fetus, which have been in a happy union so far, can no longer remain in a peaceful state of unity; they reveal a contradiction of mutual conflict and separation. The present church is precisely in such a condition, so that it experiences anxiety and vacillation because of the quickening fetal movement within it. The mother church feels the fear of death because of the new church that has grown within.

The fetus rebels against the mother's body, though this is its own mother. All this is due to the principle of life, of which neither the fetus nor the mother's body is aware--that means, because of the command of the Absolute. The fetus and the mother's body are at variance and yet in agreement in their interests. They are engaged in a movement seeking separation and independence from each other. A moment ago it was good that they formed one body; but now it is right that they separate. The mother pushes the baby out with all the strength she can muster up, and the baby comes out with a new life-force. Although the immediate cause of the mother's rejection of the baby is her self-preservation, her rejection is indirectly her contribution to the life of the whole.

That there have been rising, within the church, movements of faith which deny church authority--this is a fact no one can conceal any more. The mother church is apprehensive, hateful and fearful as if all this were its misfortune which might destroy it. This is a foolish attitude which may be likened to that of a young mother who, unable to endure terrible labor pains, regrets her marriage and pregnancy. Momentarily losing her balance of mind because of the pains, the mother may express such a regret; all the same, she gives birth to a baby by necessity. And giving birth to a baby is the original meaning of being a mother. She must give birth to a child, even if this should result in her own death. The life of the child to be born cannot be exchanged for the life of the mother. Even if the mother were to die after delivery, she would continue to live in the life of her child; on the other hand, should the child die, the string of history would be broken. In the case of an individual, we may save the life of the mother at the sacrifice of the fetus when the delivery threatens her life. In the case of history, however, the opposite is true: in this case, we must save the child even at the sacrifice of the mother. This is evidence that the work of heaven and the work of earth are different.

When the mother church denies and interferes with free faith in order to preserve itself, it is a great act of sin contrary to the universal law of life in history. The mother church has no authority to do so. The child is not the mother's; it is the child of the Holy Spirit. She merely lends her body to the nurturing of the child. In truth there exists no mother church. The church which suppresses the freedom of faith commits a historical murder; this is not an ordinary murder but a murder that kills the heir to the history of creation. In fact, the mother is dead the moment she conceives her child; through her death, however, she lives forever in the child. To realize this fact is to realize the revelation and to understand history. Just as the child that brings death to the mother and rebels against her is in fact the same child that brings her an everlasting life, so the free faith that denies the church is indeed the true life that saves the church. Faith is the refusal to be restrained by all man-made authorities or institutions in order to submit to God completely. Faith is the immediate relation between the soul and God; it cannot permit any intermediary between them. In spite of this, if the church interferes with the faith of an individual, it violates the principle of life, however well-meaning it may be. Its complaint would be no more than the expression of agony that a mother in labor utters from her abnormal state of mind. When one sees the fresh branches of a fig tree, one knows the arrival of summer. So when the church interferes with faith, one must know that the time has arrived for the church to bear a child and go into the trash-can of history.

Aging Religion

To say that the present age is a period of transition is to say that the church has become old. This age may be regarded as a period of impending childbirth, insofar as it is considered as progressing toward the next age. But this means that the church has stopped growing and is already old, insofar as it is considered as a mature, established church. What unifies the age is a religion. As long as a religion itself grows, history, too, advances. The moment the church, having attained its self-completion as a mother's body, ceases to be an open church and becomes a closed one, it loses its ability to unify the age. This means a spiritual stagnation. A church officially approved by the law of the state is a church that has already grown obsolete. When a church receives the state's approval, it is a victory of sorts for the church, but it is at the same time the church's loss of spiritual leadership and the beginning of secular power's interference with it. Through the state's approval of the church, the state and religion come to a complete compromise and realize a unified culture for a while; however, the unity is then already shattered within and a new kingdom grows inside the state. The church grows old when it compromises with secular culture; that is, when it becomes drunk on Babylonian wine. A culture may rise thanks to a religion, but the latter must not be intoxicated by the former, for religion is the spiritual movement of life that seeks eternity. The church ought to stand constantly in a posture of combat vis-a-vis culture; it falls the moment it accepts a particular culture. Culture seeks to be everlasting, but it cannot be so. Since every culture falls, every religion must also fall, insofar as it attaches itself to a particular culture. Culture and religion are two different things. The former is earth-bound through and through; the latter is a movement that aims at heaven. Therefore, they should not attach themselves to each other.

Culture must be denied by faith unceasingly. Only then can they both avoid degeneration. The compromise between religion and culture is an illicit union; it is a sort of incest. As Genesis teaches us, culture is the half-breed from the marriage between "the sons of gods" and "the daughters of men." Every religion perishes when it commits an incest [with the culture which it has brought about]. Modern Christianity is not an exception. Capitalist civilization was brought into existence by Christianity, but it is itself not Christianity in any sense. The church has found, however, its own daughter attractive, and it has committed an incest. Among the churches existing now there is none that is not capitalistic. While existing in capitalist society, they blindly believe that whatever takes place in that society is in accordance with the will of God. Consequently, they do not consider whether or not the offerings they receive come through processes of social justice; instead, they call whatever they receive divine grace. But the money placed on the altar is stained with blood. Those magnificent church buildings are, strictly speaking, structures built by Mammon and maintained by the power of Mammon; they do not stand there by the spirit of God. They would have to enter immediately into a relation of combat with every political and economic power, if they really wanted to cleanse their clothes bloodstained by capitalism and soiled by adulterous acts with the blood of the crucified little lamb. The robe that the pope or any priest wears, and the bread that every clergyman eats--all come through the laundering process of capitalism; none is clean. That is why the church possesses no authority to check the corruption of the present age.

What I have said about the church's relation with capitalism may be said, on an ideological plane, about its relation to liberalism (an ideology of liberty). Liberalism was a cultural product of Christianity; however, Christianity should not have approved,of it. Liberalism is concerned with the earthly kingdom, not with the kingdom of Heaven. It is not something Christianity ought to defend, as if it were an ally of Christianity. But the Christian church has favored liberalism, so that it now finds itself clinging to the exteriors of liberalism, whose interiors have already been rejected. The error of liberalism lies in the claim of relative reason to its absolute freedom. This is its contradiction, from which derives today's intellectual world. However, the church has not been able to purge its life outlook from this contradiction. To be. sure, Christians may deny this_ fact as far as their confession goes; however, they have been unable to liquidate the residual:, influence of liberal thinking from their life outlook, which determines their actual life. Even if Christianity joined liberalism in the beginning, the former should have abandoned the latter the moment this exposed its contradiction, and should have been advancing at the forefront of history without falling behind. Instead, Christianity has been unable to take resolute steps toward this because of its attachment to liberalism. This is the reason why Christianity in fact has been lagging behind the time, in dealing with world problems.

Religion ought to watch, teach and judge the age; it should not accept an invitation to a feast given by the age, go and sit there, eating and drinking. The moment it enters the worldly market, abandoning its authority endowed by heaven--what Mencius called t'ien-chueh--it becomes salt that has lost its taste, so that it must only be trodden underfoot. People debate whether or not there will be the Third World War. Aside from this question, there is one task that must be carried out: namely, the renewal of religion. Humanity will have to undergo probably a most trying baptism until a new religion appears before its eyes, like the glowing "pillar of fire and. cloud.'' It is always difficult to liquidate what is old; this is particularly the case when one has to liquidate an old religion. For "old wine always tastes good"-as the saying goes. However, a new religion must come. When we look back on the remote past when people killed humans and animals for sacrificial offerings, we are amazed by the state of human conscience of the past, as though we were looking at museum pieces. There will be a time when people will feel the same way remembering our present religious practices. That time is coming now.

Let us now examine more in detail the aging symptoms of the existing church as a religion. The first symptom is the completion of its doctrines. When the church was in ascendancy with its exuberant vitality, its doctrines were rather incomplete. Because of its exuberance in vitality, the church had a transforming power toward every personality that came in contact with it--a power which was in fact beyond explanation. For the working of this power it was important that the church had a direct personal contact with people; but it needed no doctrinal interpretation. Church doctrines were developed when the church, already at an advanced stage, had to defend itself against other ideas which were attacking it from outside; in self-defense, it had to systematize what had been experienced spiritually. Church doctrines are products of the church during its defensive, rather than offensive, period. Already the Christian doctrines are complete; so in the church there is no more room for anything new to come out. This means that the present church has stopped its growth. Consequently, in its fight with Communism, it is not the church but Communism that is offensive. For Communism has originally risen after the defects of the church began to come to light.

The second aging symptom of the church is its increasing institutionalization. The church is no longer concerned with conquering the world; it is concerned with defending the territories that it has already acquired. So administration has become an important matter. For this reason, the church has gradually perfected itself institutionally and turned itself into a sort of administrative system.

The third symptom is the church's defensiveness rather than offensiveness. In fact, the church is now no longer concerned with the salvation of the world; it is preoccupied with its self preservation as an organization. For this reason it engages so readily in diplomatic dealings with political powers, seeking compromises.

Fourth, the church is now becoming more and more otherworldly. Religion originally arises from the present condition. Every great religion came into existence when people were suffering in a society that had sunken in a state of extreme chaos; it rose in order to deliver people from such a condition. A living religion never represses problems or postpones seeking their solution. Therefore, for a rising, new religion, there exists no separation between problems of present reality and problems of the next life. It is always a unique feature of such a religion that it provides a new morality which solves all problems of both the present and the next world; in it the next world penetrates the present one. When, however, a religion gains power among a populace, professional religionists acquire social privilege as their social status naturally arises. And that entails a process of social differentiation. Those privileged religionists make conscious efforts to avoid any collision with the existing system by transferring gradually the central issues of religion from present reality to the next world; they do so out of necessity in order to maintain the power of the church. Accordingly, they emphasize that no problems can be solved until we go to the next world. One hears them speak loudly only of heaven and hell. This is evidence that they are gradually losing their interest in living humanity.

Fifth, the church is now full of internal conflicts. When it was gaining its new territories one by one, there was no reason for internal fighting within the church. Religion is by nature missionary; it has the spirit of world conquest. The church has lost this spirit. This loss is indicative of the aging of the church. Particularly, the motive behind recent conflicts within the church has been entirely secular and material. Power struggles and property struggles are such conflicts. They are evidence that the church has completely ceased to grow spiritually and is aging and fading.

We observe here even in Christianity, the youngest of all major religions--not to speak of others--the fact that the church as an established organization has fallen into decay with its diminishing vitality. The present church, as it is today, would not be able to solve the urgent problems of the world.

The Time

What kind of religion is the new religion that coming?  Although nothing arouses more curiosity than this, by the nature of the case, little can be known about it. The new religion will come, but no one can know it until it arrives. For it is not human beings but the Absolute itself that will bring about the new religion. Religion is a thing of God, not of humanity, in every respect. In this sense, all manufacturers of religions are imposters. Religion is something one receives, not something one manufactures. It is not an artifact that one can produce consciously. It comes into existence when the fetal spirit, expelled from the established church, challenges the existing culture and society. In fact, history shows us that all man-made religions must inevitably perish. Expelling or challenging does not come about through the small human will; it is the work of the Absolute which uses the human mind at will.

One can know the new religion only when "the time" comes. All the prophets of the Old Testament spoke of "the time," without an exception. Jesus, too, said that "the time" is known only by God, not known even by his son; he taught that "the time" is absolutely beyond our reach. It is something about which no one can conjecture by the power of reason. The time of the new religion is its element that is absolutely important and critical; however, we cannot know it. Only when the time arrives, is the baby complete. The reason why the time is an important element for the new religion is that it signals at the same time the salvation and the judgment of the world. For that reason, the time is completely in the hands of the Absolute. Were it something one could guess or something one could know by divination, it would be absolutely impossible for the time to perform its double function of bringing the salvation and the judgment of the world. No one can tell the face of the child in advance, for the time is completely hidden from us and can be known only through revelation. That is why those self-appointed prophets who claimed to know the new religion all turned out to be imposters. Jesus would say, "My hour has not come." This was evidence that what he was about to bring was the true new religion to which he was truthful, as the one who had been sent to the world, and as the Word of God. In this way, history flows from mystery to mystery, and thus God's throne remains forever holy. As one age succeeds another, no one can interpose his private idea in the process. Historical success takes place in the most proper way, as it comes to the child who follows the will of the Father most faithfully, at the most appropriate time. No one knows until the moment heaven opens and a voice is heard from above: "This is my Son, my Beloved." At this moment the new religion reveals its face. The mother church, too, does not know this, although it gives birth to the baby. The mother church struggles desperately only for its own preservation. 

But this struggle is at the same time the process of delivering the baby, fulfilling God's will. This is what happened when the High Priest Caiaphas had Jesus arrested and condemned him; this episode confirms well that historical process. Caiaphas did his utmost, using every means possible, in order to protect his place; he struggled to save the entire church by sacrificing one man. Contrary to his intention, however, his act turned out to be a condemnation of the old church and the childbirth of the new one. For the fetus, its expulsion was really its entry into the kingdom and its death was its life.

The future religion is thus something one cannot possibly know; one must simply wait for its arrival. However, one may roughly determine the date of the delivery and, accordingly, prepare for the childbirth--although neither the mother nor the child can tell the hour, which comes like a thief. Similarly, in history, too, one can roughly determine when the new religion will arrive, and one can accordingly prepare to receive the new Word that is coming--although no one can tell what this new religion will be, and when and where it will appear.

There are a few facts which indicate that "the time" for the arrival of the new religion is not far off from now. The first sign is that the nature of warfare in the present time is completely different from that of the past. Wars exist in every age; indeed, they reveal best the working of human minds and capacities. Now the nature of warfare has become completely different from the past. In the present age, in every field, we can apply nothing from the past without modification, and we find it necessary to look at everything altogether differently, from a new angle. The demand for such a change was felt first in warfare. With the change in warfare, however, other things have also had to undergo tremendous changes. In the past a war was fought by people of a particular vocation called "combatants" when the interests of two countries came in conflict, and the war came to an end when, the victor and loser having been decided, the latter surrendered a territory or pay indemnities to the former. This is, however, no longer the case today. First of all, no distinction can be made between combatants and noncombatants. And fighting is no longer simply military; it involves the total power of the warring nations; it is, above all, ideological. It is all but impossible to decide the victor and the loser. Wherever a war may break out, there is now always the danger of its becoming global, with the accompanying fear that it might lead to the total extinction of the human race. What particularly complicates modern warfare is the fact that one can no longer make a distinction between friends and enemies in terms of nations. A nation finds friends in its enemy nation and its enemies within, so that warfare has become indescribably complex and difficult. What has then brought about all this change? The cause is the radical changes in social relations. Today's politics or economy is altogether different from the politics or economy of the past. It is becoming impossible to solve today's problems with the political brain of the past. Herein lies the agony of the modern state. It is now no longer possible to live on with the old ideology of the state--although the nation state has not dissolved yet.

War is representative of the suffering of human existence. Human life is suffering. All religions, all philosophies and sciences arise from attempts to alleviate human sufferings. Of these sufferings the greatest and the most profound is war. There are indeed many kinds of suffering, from such natural sufferings of old age, disease and death (which tormented the young Gautama), to the most conscious kind like the agony, of sin. War, however, visits humanity with all of these sufferings in toto. To think about it, nothing is as absurd as war. Although no one likes it, human history till the present time has been one of wars. In ancient religions one finds gods of war--gods who go to war themselves in order to deliver human beings from calamities of war. One gets the strong impression that Yahweh was also such a god in the beginning. (As the Father of Jesus, however, he did later become altogether a different god, the god of absolute peace.) At any rate, war concerns the root misery of human existence. The fact that war has become more inclusive in method and more profound in implication indicates that human life has now become much more complex and much deeper than in the past. If this is the case, religion, too, cannot remain the same as before. For the purpose of religion is the deliverance of humanity from suffering.

A second indication of the approaching of the new religion is the development of atomic science. Everybody is aware that war has now ceased to be what it was in the past--thanks to the atomic bomb. As we move further ahead, atomic science will invite more and more tremendous changes in various areas. But we must realize that beyond atomic power there exists in the universe infinite power, which atomic power barely hints at--although it is impossible for us to guess what it is. Atomic power has changed the relation between nature and the human being altogether. In the past, nature was understood as consisting of such things as mountains, rivers and plants, and was viewed primarily as something we could utilize as we pleased, according to our needs. Such a view is now completely obsolete. We must face nature with a new vision, after washing our eyes,--no, indeed, with a new mind. Religions have blundered in the past they will do so also in the future. Will not the church now repeat its demand to the summoned Galileo that he retract his statement about the revolution of the earth around the sun? Probably the church will not be so stubborn as before. However, is it not still clinging to its outmoded view of nature, in order to defend the same old dogmas? The atom is no more than one of the storages of mystery. One cannot tell what will appear when the other doors open. I say this, not because anything terrible may befall us when something new appears, but because when it appears, those who see it will cease to be the way they have been. Knowledge is power. When knowledge opens a certain door of nature, the power that comes out of it necessitates a new relation between nature and the human being. A religion of humanity fifty thousand years ago--a religion of cave-dwellers who trembled before thunders, lightings and fierce beasts--cannot be today's religion. If so, today's religion cannot be tomorrow's religion. The blast of the atomic bomb was a phenomenon of that labor which is about to deliver a new" religion.

A third sign concerns our world view. Every religious tradition has been developed within the framework of a particular world view. Judaism was developed ultimately within the world view formed by the astronomy and mythology of Mesopotamia, the Nile, the science and magic of Egypt, the Sinai Mountains, and the Arabian Desert with_ its stars in the night sky; it could not leave this framework. John's revelation was also a picture depicted within the world frame known in his time--the world whose center was the Mediterranean, and whose history was centered around wars on horseback and trade by sea; it could not leave this framework.

To be sure, all this concerns the exterior shell of religion; it has nothing to do with what is truly religious, the inner. God has been and is always the eternal and infinite God; he cannot be otherwise. However, human problems concern not the inner but the exterior. Should we be concerned with the inner, there would be no problems. By its very nature, religion ought to deal with the inner; the inner alone should be its concern. However, strangely enough, it is always a human habit to be preoccupied with the exterior shell. One may say that every religion deals with the inner through the exterior [thereby taking the latter more seriously than the former]. In this sense, all visible religions are cults of idols, false religions. Because visible things are at issue, new religions appear, and indeed must they. Every religious reform tells us to return to the roots, and it does so rightly. But a new religion that returns to the roots wears also an exterior shell. And there has never been a true religion. The exterior has been the issue since the first day in Eden. Nothing can be done about it. Had Adam and Eve known that it is the mind that encounters God, they would not have suddenly hidden from him, covering themselves with fig leaves. For human beings it is all important to cover themselves and hide. This is all they do. Is not every religious institution or dogma a means by which the human being tries to cover himself? What should really concern him is, however, that he, as a human being in his original simplicity, penetrates to the essence of the universe with his pure, original mind.

At any rate, the human being is concerned with what is visible, and his visible existence cannot help being conditioned by the world view of a particular time. Whatever comes to the human mind--whether through revelation or through thinking--puts on a particular frame when it enters the mind. Every religionist repeats the word "directly," claiming that he has encountered God directly. But there is no direct encounter with God. The moment I experience the Absolute or meditate on it, I already relies on the mediation of thought or language; my immediate encounter with the Absolute is impossible. (In this respect, Christ, who is the Word, is the eternal intermediary.) Even if someone had seen the Absolute, he would never be able to convey his experience directly. An immediate relation is particularly impossible between human beings. I send off myself to another person through sound waves by mediation of speech, and this other person receives it and converts it in his own way. Nothing can go immediately from one individual to another. Thus there exists a gap that is forever unbridgeable, between an individual and an individual, and between an individual and the Absolute. And this is the sorrow of human. existence.

Religion is an attempt to relieve this sorrow; it is the longing for uniting with the other and with the Absolute. The Word is that which mediates this bridging between the self and the other or between the self and the Absolute. What is then the- Word? It is the eternal Christ, but his visible body is "the world." Of course, the Word is something spiritual and infinite, and the world is the maximum extent of the Word as knowable by us through experience. This relation between the Word and the world is expressed by the statement that all things came to being through the Word. The world view means the maximum totality or the maximum limit of human comprehension. This means our spiritual horizon as well as the zenith of our spiritual world. Every existing religion is a temple structure constructed within this totality.

The structure called "religion" changes as the structure and extent of the known world undergoes changes. This world is a world that embodies the Word; it is a world that speaks. An established religion produces its vestment by cutting up the Word as its material. Now our world view is about to change. Our world view affects our spiritual life like the way in which air and sunlight affect our bodies; we inhale it, and run, think and live in it. Because the world view is a unity, we live in it in perfect peace as long as its unity is complete. However, there comes a time when its unity breaks down. Ours is also a world that grows. While we live by inhaling our world view, our life also demolishes it, so that it may grow.

A tremendous change is coming to our world view. Whenever in the past the fence of the world was expanding, those religionists who were enjoying their magnificent temples, were reluctant to give them up and, in the end, failed to participate in the building of new temples. Probably, this time the world will expand far more than ever. But what is our spiritual bourgeoisie going to do? Statesmen now gather in order to propose the creation of one world. They should have done so already. But strangely the religionists are lagging even behind those statesmen. What is far more astonishing is the fact that, while statesmen try to make this planet one world, scientists are announcing that an interplanetary travel is no longer a dream. When the fence of the world extends beyond this planet, it should no longer concern us whether there would be the Third World War or whatever. We don't know how many more world wars we will have. But the day will come when the boundaries of the world will expand beyond the extent we can now imagine. What can we now say of the world that will come? Even in that world will a priest sit back, receiving kisses on his feet from those pitiful good souls who come to him, calling him "Father, Father"? Will we still look toward clerics and elders? Even then should we still speak of our religion, our church, orthodoxy or heresy, and condemn each other and excommunicate those who disagree? Will we even then teach people by threat and praise, separating heaven and hell-as if we were teaching school children before hanging charts? While space ships are traveling from star to star, will we still sit inside the church, overcome by stale sentiments, crying and laughing, unable to be free from archaic emotionalism? The world speaks the Word; the Word echoes from the church altar to the galaxies; and the universe is growing. While this is taking place, will the human being alone, religion alone, grow old, shrinking like a ninety-year-old woman? A great change is now coming. "The time" is coming.

The Shape of the New Religion

Can one know the new religion that is coming? No, one cannot-absolutely not. The new religion will be a revelation, something that will come by grace. It is something we must receive when it comes; it is not something we can know in advance. One must not lift the curtain to see what is behind. Even if one sees something behind the curtain, it is not the play that will be shown. Therefore, one must not be impatient. I say this from the standpoint of faith. But it is a different matter to speak of the new religion from the standpoint of knowledge. From this standpoint, one ought to do his utmost to understand it as far as possible. I may sound self-contradictory, but I am not. We gain faith only after we have grasped what may be grasped. Faith so gained alone is true faith: that is, living faith that can open the new world. Faith that refuses to understand what may be known by the intellect is superstition; it is laziness and greed. Only when one exercises fully one's endowed abilities, will one gain freedom, while being obedient at the same time. One becomes qualified as a son only when one has done one's best as a servant. I seek to know the new religion, not because it can be known by the intellect, but because there is no other way of receiving what may be revealed to me.

In this respect, the pursuit of knowledge is prayer. To seek to know the new religion is to draw a picture of it with a waiting attitude, not with the intention of creating a new religion; it is to stay awake without falling asleep. Indeed, the picturing mind, the dreaming mind, alone stays awake. Only the bride who stays awake will get up and meet the bridegroom when he comes--throwing away all the pictures of him she has been drawing. A lover draws a picture of her beloved one, not because she believes that the beloved one will be exactly like her picture, nor because she wishes that the beloved one be like it; she draws simply because of her longing mind. The longing can grow only through picturing, and when it reaches its end, the beloved one arrives. The lover draws a picture of her beloved one merely according to her ideal of perfect truth, of perfect beauty, and of perfect goodness; she knows well that the beloved one, when he arrives, will turn out to be more than she imagines. The longing mind is the mind of one who expects his beloved one to be more than he pictures. It is a believing mind, not the mind of one who wants his picture to be confirmed by fact, so that he may boast his (drawing) talent. One may criticize those who draw pictures of the new religion, by attributing to them such a complacent state of mind. Such a criticism comes from the cold jealousy of a person who has no desire of picturing the new religion and no understanding of the picturing mind. Let us then picture the new religion freely, though we are more than willing to throw away our picture of it when it arrives--without grudge and without shame. Let us draw a picture of it with the spontaneity and seriousness of children who play house.

If we are to outline the face of the new religion, it will be round. This means that it will be one. There cannot possibly be sectarian issues in a religion that seeks to make the world one. The religion of the future will be one, although this may sound disappointing to the ears of established religions. Isn't this inevitable? For God is one and accordingly religion must be one. In the past, religions appeared different from one another, because they were seen from a distance. Once you come to them face to face, they must all be alike; they should be so. It is the child's mind that thinks that its perception alone is correct and all the others' is wrong. Such a mind is not the mind of God, who is one. Children grow through rivalry. So mutual contention and pride among religions may be advantageous to the growth of religion. But such things will disappear among religions when they gradually grow and come to know the mind of the Father. Is it wrong to assert that the human race has reached this level of maturity? Must the Christians still send Gautama and Confucius to hell, and the Buddhists send Jesus to hell? Can they feel happy only after doing so? Between heaven and earth there exists only one Word. The Word is one, whether spoken in Korean, in English, or in Eskimo. The God whom cannibals seek while gnawing the flesh of their dead parents is the same God whom Christians worship, of children who receiving bread and wine at the Holy Communion with the blessing statement: "This is my flesh and my blood." They cannot be two different gods. Were they different, they would be both false gods. The Holy Spirit that raised Isaiah also raised Mencius and the sages of ancient Greece. Who else would have done it? The East could also accept Christian truth. Had only the Jewish people and no other people known God, Christianity would not have been accepted by the rest of the world--even if it were the only religion available. The fact that all people of the world have been able to communicate to each other--which has made missionary work possible--is evidence that the God whom different people have sought has been one and the same God. All religions that deny their mutual identity will fall in the future. Will not a stream that rejects the sea dry up? Jesus said that anyone who did not oppose him was a person who helped him.

It is also a foolish ambition to try to unify all religions of the world under one existing religion. It is an obsolete thinking, which is a remnant of imperialist mentality. It is also a foolish idea to try to unify all religious denominations under a sort of federalism. This kind of thinking always comes from that minority class which belongs to the tail end of the passing age; it is a form of anachronism. In a new age there is a new religion. This will be the case in the future as it was in the past. What is new must also be loftier than what has preceded it. Put together all things that exist now, but you will not produce anything loftier than they are now. Haven't all new religions been brought about by those "wretched ones''? God has always saved the world in the past by choosing the humble, the despised, and the poor, while rejecting the prosperous; he will do the same in the future. He will give us the Word that will make the world one complete family.

When we say that all religions are one, we do not mean that it makes no difference which religion one chooses, nor that all religions are perfect as they are. Nor do we deny the different degrees in which they express the truth. Did not Jesus say, "The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem"? For from now on we worship the Father through truth and spirit. Is not such a religion higher than the existing religions? Why is it offensive to the ear when someone speaks of Lao Tzu and Confucius? Because it sounds intruding? Because one fears that people might abandon the more perfect Christianity for Lao Tzu and Confucius? One should never be concerned with such things. When one learns that the teaching of Jesus is also found--however faintly--in the words of the natives on the South Sea Islands, one ought to be pleased-realizing that his teaching is truly the Word of God. Why should one be alarmed by that discovery? We must eradicate from the established church its false doctrine of the election by God and its loyalist mentality. They are nothing but the self-centered perversion of religiosity. Until now religions have taken the role of guiding the minds of people. But have they not also made history, so miserable? The source of all miseries is sectarianism. It was that narrow-minded, arrogant sectarianism which made feudal aristocrats oppressors, made national consciousness chauvinistic, and permitted dictators to rationalize. Did not humankind go to war because of sectarianism-in the name of this or that ism?

In the future the world will become one. In order to bring about the one world, there will be one religion, not many. No one can guess what would happen to the world if the one world, with one religion, were not to be realized. If one is truly concerned with the future of the world, one must pray for the one new religion. In this respect, the world is hopeful. We hear about those earnest souls who, dissatisfied with their own established religions, gradually approach other religions with a broad understanding, transcending their national or sectarian differences. After a while, all churches will move into human hearts, and all of them, large or small, will disappear from the surface of earth altogether.

Next, if we are to describe the complexion of the new religion, it will have no color. That means it will become more rational. Up until now, every religion has put on a thick makeup, because it has tried to appeal to the emotion. As stated above, however, history advances seeking greater rationality, so that religion, too, becomes increasingly rational. This is a fact. We do not speak of rationality in order to expel the emotion; nor do we speak of it out of ignorance of spirituality. Rather, we speak of rationality because of the emotion's critical function, which must be illumined by the light of reason. It is undeniable that the realm of spirituality exists, and we must not foolishly and hastily mistake a heightened state of emotion for the presence of spirituality. That is why we speak of rationality. Reason is the faculty that transcends particular phenomena. It is thanks to this faculty that life conscious of its personal identity develops.. We: classify human acts into three kinds: the rational, the emotional, and the conative (i.e., acts of the will). It is, however, the rationality of the human being that makes him a human person; it is not his emotional or conative nature. To be sure, the human will or the human emotion is not the same as that of an animal. But it is the power of reason which sublimates the human will and the human emotion, refines them and unifies them.

Jesus said, "If then the only light you have in you is darkness, how dark the darkness must be." The inner light he spoke of was the light of reason. It must be noted that reason is not complete by itself. Reason illumines only when it receives the light of the spirit coming from above. It is reason that receives the light from above; no other faculty can do it. Paul said that when gentiles--though they have no law--act according to the light of conscience, their conscience is indeed the law. Also, he said that all that we ought to discover by seeking God is revealed in everything in nature. What Paul had in mind was reason. Insofar as reason receives the light from above, it is limitless, while the human will and emotion are limited. The will is by nature so strong that it may be described as blind; it has no direction. By the emotion one attaches oneself to whatever one likes, but one cannot control it--as one's emotion may develop into passion or fanaticism. Thus, the emotion, too, knows no direction; it easily turns one into a servant of an object. Only thanks to the power of reason can one transcend phenomena and reach the ultimate, and thereby control phenomena.

Accordingly, the horizon toward which humanity ought to advance lies in what is rational. This direction cannot possibly change even with the arrival of the new religion in the future. The history of religion manifests the fact that religion gradually frees itself from what is emotional, and becomes rational. Reason is none other than that faculty which recognizes the existence of the other outside the self, the existence of the spirit beyond the material, the existence of the past and the future beyond the present, and the existence of the Absolute beyond the phenomenal beings. This being the case, religion is inconceivable apart from reason.

However, one tends to think as if faith were necessarily opposed to reason, and even believe that faith would be possible only when reason is denied. The denial of reason comes from the faculty of emotion which, lacking judgment, always seeks something to cling to. The opposition between reason and faith arises originally from the nature of human existence, which has two aspects. Humanity is finite yet infinite; while living in a relative sphere, it longs for the Absolute. Life is power.  It comes from two sources: knowledge and faith. One needs knowledge in order to live in a relative sphere: one must know. The knowing subject is reason. However, a human being does not live only in a relative sphere. He is aware of his mortal nature, but he aspires to live forever. He realizes that human reason has its limits, but he refuses to be contented until he knows the origin of the universe and all that is in it. Thus the human subject inevitably runs against a wall. This is the problem of human life. When one comes to this limit, reason withdraws and admits its impotence. At reason's withdrawal, the living subject intuits the world beyond the wall, thanks to its innate spirituality. This is faith. Faith does not arise from human reason itself; it is given by the spirit which unites the self and the world beyond. Thus, one who receives faith experiences its strength coming from above.

In this way the world of the intellect and the world of faith are connected vertically. The latter world opens up when reason has gone as far as it could. For this reason it may seem as if knowledge and faith were opposed to each other. But it so appears to those who have not gained their self-awareness as unified persons. When one gains this self-awareness as a fully unified person thanks to true faith, there disappears self-division, as one comes to realize that one has reached that faith only after the work of the intellect. (To be sure, one is aware that the intellect and faith are not the same.) Religion should not oppose reason; rather, it should grant reason a free domain so that reason may grow fully. When reason has investigated and mastered its own domain and rules it, faith will recognize the greater spiritual domain opening outside the boundaries of the domain of reason. The intellect rules over the world that faith has received through the spirit. The intellect is an administrator. Religion rejects reason because reason, as an administrator, at times acts as it pleases and. plots against religion. However, religion cannot expel its administrator and rule over its world; it needs an administrator. Reason rebels or plots against religion, because faith falls asleep, hearing the sweet songs of the emotion or because faith interferes with reason listening to the slanderous emotion. Reason is a loyal administrator as long as it is given its own domain and handled with a trusting mind. In fact, the greater portion of responsibility for the past quarrel between the intellect and faith lies with religion; their antagonism has risen because, while reason has widened its new territories, religion has refused to recognize them.

Finally, there is another item to discuss concerning the religion of the new age. What is the impression of the new religion when we look at its face? I speak of its "impression" for lack of a better expression; it is somewhat difficult to find the right word for what I have in mind here. At any rate, I have in mind what concerns the internal disposition or character of the new religion. If we regard the two conditions of the new religion considered so far, as its attitude toward God and its attitude toward the world, then we may regard what we are considering here as its attitude toward the human being. We are concerned with how the human being will think of himself in the new religion. This is the most central of all three questions. How are we to relate to God? How are we to relate to the natural world? The answers to these questions depend on the answer to the question: what attitude should the human being have toward himself? If we consider low a particular religion understands a human being, we can infer about its character. For this reason, I used the word "impression" above figuratively.

How can we then describe the impression of the religion that is to come? We may do well to describe it by saying: The new religion will shine through [the human being]. That is, in the new religion there will be no separation between spirit and flesh, no division between the inner and the outer. The separation between spirit and flesh has been the ultimate source of all religious problems in the past. After making this separation between spirit and flesh, between the inner and the outer, that is between two selves, religions have developed all kinds of doctrines, laws, and commandments, in order to harmonize those separated selves. It has been said that human nature is good. It has been said that human nature is evil. It has been said that the flesh is evil. It has been said that the flesh is not evil. You sometimes hear that the soul exists, but sometimes that the soul does not exist. Sometimes you are told to seek pleasure as much as possible, and sometimes to suffer pain as much as possible. You are sometimes raised to heaven as if you were a god but then dropped to the bottom of hell all of a sudden. So you pray crying as you are told; you fast "bowing [your] head like a bulrush and making [your] bed on sackcloth and ashes;" you become intoxicated after drinking nectar; you practice yoga to enter a state of samadhi; you go through acts of self-mortification, tearing off or slashing your own flesh; you cut the throat of your own child and burn him. All this is so many different attempts to reunify the two separated selves, spirit and flesh. The same is true of the seeking of the ultimate deliverance and of the rite of atonement. Human existence is truly merciless. Religions exist in order to deliver humanity from bondage, but they tell human beings to do this, to do that, and drag them hither and thither. As if all this weren't enough, they even fight against each other, so that humanity is torn between them and completely exhausted by them.

One may say that it is due to the frustration and reaction of religion-weary humanity that the extreme forms of materialism, atheism and hedonism have become so popular in recent times. However, humanity is an existence that must rise from such a condition of decadence again and again. Accordingly, the religion of the future will have to be a religion that will raise this exhausted humanity again. In order to fulfill this task, the new religion must have a new attitude toward the human being, an attitude which will reunify his divided personality. Earlier I said that the new religion would shine through. By this I meant its reunifying character. In the new humanity the flesh will cease to be a stumbling block for the spirit, and the spirit will no longer reject the flesh.

Whenever a new religion appears, it reunifies humanity. Jesus said, "I did not come to invite virtuous people, but sinners." "Come to me, all whose work is hard, whose load is heavy; and I will give you relief.'' Clearly Jesus called humanity, out of his pity on the spiritual condition of religion-weary humanity. At that time, humanity was completely divided by Judaism. On one side, there were the Pharisees who believed in their extremely orthodox legalism; on the other side, there were the reactionary Sadducees who denied the life after death and everything else that the Pharisees held. Those so-called sinners such as tax-gatherers and prostitutes were social phenomena in which the wretchedness of the inner condition of the time manifested itself. The secret of Jesus the Savior was his compassion--the understanding mind of one who had a pity on those souls tormented by the cruel, pious condemnations. It is only such an understanding, compassionate mind, not a creed or law, which reunifies and revives the divided humanity.

Whenever a religion becomes obsolete, it is its characteristic to become extremely concerned with its institutions and rules, and, consequently, to become judgmental toward sins. This is inevitable because it no longer possesses that vitality which comes through a living personality. When it becomes old, a religion is no longer concerned with the salvation of humanity but with its own survival as an organized religion; it no longer seeks to bear a cross for humanity, instead tries to sacrifice humanity in order to save itself. Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for the sake of man and not man for the Sabbath," because he wanted to rescue the humanity wounded under the yoke of a rigidified religion. Jesus felt an infinite compassion for this humanity. His aim was' not to establish an organized religion, but to comfort and encourage that pitiful humanity that was falling with its split personality. That is why he spoke in this way and in that way depending on the circumstances in order only to save the souls; he never tried to develop a doctrine or philosophy of life. Humanity was always living in his words. That is why one who heard Jesus said, "The eternal Word resides in the Lord."

When humanity stood before Jesus, it was shone through in complete brilliance. Just as even a wrecked boat shines gold under the bright stars, so, to his eyes, even prostitutes and drunkards were souls that manifested the glory of God. Meeting sick ones, Jesus said, "Set your troubled hearts at rest," for, to him, all human beings were perfect, no one was crippled, before God the Father. Even toward those who were most depraved, Jesus said, "I do not condemn you." He did not condemn them, because before God all are children, none sinners. Insofar as God is life, our bodies were for Jesus God's sanctuaries; each of us was one living being, undivided. Because of this, he could give a living unity to the heart of the human being that had been shipwrecked going aground in that age of chaos, and thus he could make humanity resume its voyage (history) on a new course.

But the church has now reified the doctrines it produced through its secretive process, and in them it has aged and become obsolete. The church may be likened to a shellfish which confines itself in its hardened skin, the material which it secretes. Just as a shellfish produces its own confinement on a strand where a tide comes in and out, so the church has created its own confinement on the strand where the historical tide flows in and out. The higher the church steeple rises, the more discrimination it introduces between the inside and the outside of the church. When Jesus spoke by the seashore or on a mountainside, there was no distinction between Christians and non-Christians, and everyone who had ears heard him. Now, however, the question of believer and nonbeliever is determined in view of whether one is inside or outside the church door. The division between the inside and the outside of the church is indicative of the separation between the inner and the outer in human existence. The church has cut human existence into two halves by the sword of its hardened doctrines. Jesus unified humanity by descending to its bottom, while being called a bedfellow of sinners. But the church members have once again divided it, assuming the position of the self-righteous. When Jesus said that spirit is spirit and flesh is flesh, he said it from a higher level, in order to reunify and thus save the humanity split by the sword of the Judaic doctrines. In Jesus spirit and flesh were vertically unified like a tree and its blossom. At present, the church may seem to be teaching the same word of Jesus, but it treats it horizontally, dividing humanity into two halves: the right and the left. Thus the word which was originally intended to save the human being has now become the word that kills him, although its sound remains the same. As a consequence, the division of human personality has deepened more and more, so that sinners have multiplied outside the church in self-abandonment. Because flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit, now a minority of believers has become a privileged class, while the common masses have come to adopt a licentious attitude toward life, out of desperation. It is the church that has brought about this condition. Because one half of humanity has been given wings lighter than those of angels and sent up to heaven, the other half has had to carry bodies heavier than those of pigs and roll over in the mud. The church has been merciless.

Today the world is divided into two political blocs, and everybody acknowledges this division to be the cause of the misfortune of the present world. But the confrontation between these two blocs is in fact a manifestation of the divided human personality, of the opposition between spirit and flesh. Although we cannot prophesy anything else, we can predict categorically that the world will never see its unity and peace unless the modern conception of life gains its unity, through the unity of human personality. The one who unifies human personality will unify the world.

One can save the mind, only by healing the self-division of human personality. Mencius was once asked how order would be brought to China, which was then in a state of continuous turmoil (the period of Warring States). His reply was that order would come about through one. When asked "Who will achieve one?" he said, "One who loathes killing human beings will be able to achieve one." In this statement, Mencius conveyed the Word from heaven. One does not kill people only with weapons or in battlefields. Worse, one kills human beings by means of religions which divide human personality. Because of this, I say that the religion of the future must be one that shines through. Insofar as the human being remains human, he cannot avoid the opposition between spirit and flesh. This opposition will not be eliminated by whatever new interpretation we may offer. The issue is whether or not we approach it as an issue of human personality.

Compassion is the attitude of meeting other human beings as persons. The law is not human personality; it is an institution. Institutions multiply when the strength of personality diminishes.What penetrates to the personality of another individual is neither a rule nor a teaching; it is one's personality,. Only a unified personality can give unity to another personality; no one can do so by mechanical methods. It's fine to speak of samadhi or deliverance; it's fine to speak of atonement or rebirth. They refer to eternal truth. But when they come to us merely as doctrines, they divide us, our personality, but never save us. This is the reason why the doctrine of the cross today has no authority over the modern mind, though it is stressed as strongly as ever. What is absolutely needed is the contact between living personalities. The religion of the future will become more and more a religion of personality. It will stress that we must encounter God in ethical terms; it will not regard faith as a secret means, as a precondition, or as a technique.

One separates faith from one's present life when one regards it as a secret method or a precondition for something. Related to this separation is the naive preoccupation with power of performance or the futile reliance on external power [for faith]. Both are wrong attitudes that ruin human life. Religion is not altogether devoid of concern for power of performance; however, this should not be its central matter. Those who have not yet developed ethical consciousness seek miracles and visions. The more primitive a religion is, the more it seeks and worships such things. This is the mentality of the past which regarded human problems not as ethical but as technical matters. It is evident that human history has grown out of that mentality and is now moving in the direction of development of morality and personality. The human mind cannot be transformed through miracles; historical problems cannot be solved through spiritual medium. To believe in the possibility of such things is a superstition, which comes from avarice. Ours is a century of science, an age of reason, in which humanity should be free of such a superstition. In the future neither miracles nor visions will attract people's curiosity; they will cease to be taken as matters of religious concern.

Whether faith comes from one's own power or from external power--this is an age-old question. If salvation ultimately comes from outside, then faith must also depend on power outside oneself. But all this is merely argument, which is characteristic of those religions which have abandoned the present life. Whether from oneself or from outside--this is no real issue. One speaks of "pure faith." But this is an abstract concept; such a thing does not exist in real life. The cross exists in order to raise human existence. Grace also exists in order to enhance human life ethically. Were religion to exempt humanity from ethical striving and make the human being merely gaze into the blue sky as if under the influence of morphine, it would be something that would lead humanity to its fall; it would not be the way of salvation. However, some people think that having faith means making no human effort at all. This kind of thinking is particularly strong among those zealous so-called "pure believers." This is a symptom of an old religion at its final, dying stage. A religion in full vitality is quite different. Look at Jesus. He prayed till dawn, avoiding people, and helped others whenever he saw them in distress. He said, "No one who sets his hand, to the plough and then keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." How could anyone say that Jesus was a man who just believed, doing nothing else? Did he choose the dregs of humanity such as tax-gatherers and prostitutes, in order to get food from them? Did he want to carry those dregs to heaven the way they were? He chose them in order to raise them. That is why he said, "You may go, do not sin again."

The religion of the future is a religion of personality. Because it is an ethical religion, it is a religion of mind. Because it is a religion of mind, it is a religion that calls for awakening. Accordingly, it is no longer concerned with power of performance or doctrines. It seeks the conversion of the heart through awakening. There is no faith without conversion. For this reason, the religion of the future will be a religion that demands striving. The believers of the future will not regard striving as disobedience to God--unlike today's believers, who possess that slave mentality which is susceptible to special favor. The humanity of the future will value the act of striving rather than its consequence; it will seek truth rather than religious ecstasy. When that psychology which celebrates successes is removed, striving is in itself gratitude and prayer. There will be neither heaven nor hell in tomorrow's religion. One will no longer believe out of fear or in anticipation of a reward; one will believe because one ought to, that is, because faith arises from the original nature of humanity. Accordingly, faith will be life itself.

To say that faith will be life itself does not mean that the earth will turn into a paradise in the future. The religion of the future will become increasingly spiritual. "Who would believe in what is visible?" Religion by nature does not seek to become a judge adjudicating on earthly matters. There will always be someone who will take charge of this domain. Religion is in charge of the higher domain, the domain of the spirit and of truth. Jesus said, "My kingdom does not belong to this world." "My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this was I born; for this I came into the world." The human being is a being that aims at spirituality. Human personality seeks to rise infinitely. The domain of the spirit is an invisible world. Religion is that which takes humanity to that invisible world. What it does is always an adventure, always a forward thrust, always a leap. That is why it has committed so many mistakes repeatedly. It goes down to a municipal market, where it shouldn't go; it looks in at a political club, where it shouldn't be. Each time a religion does such a thing, humanity cannot but fall. The human being can live only when he soars above clouds like an eagle. Now, humankind has come to see more clearly and more broadly than ever before the boundaries of its world and the direction of its historical process. Unmistakably, the compass needle of history points in the direction of spiritualization. So the religion of the future will strive for its own spiritualization and purification.

Only two to three thousand years ago there came into existence religions that were authentic. (But they are still far from perfect.) It is too shallow a kind of thinking to be conservative about those religions as if they were perfect and finished, and to wait for the Day of Judgment, counting days on one's fingers. With such a shallow view, the human race cannot become the inheritor of the world. Humanity will develop much more; history will advance further than we can imagine. The spiritual world is infinite. So far the human being has made only the preparation for his voyage, with the earth as his stage, but he will set out on his infinite voyage into the spiritual realm, in the future.

Conclusion

Jesus left this world, leaving behind problems for humanity. To be sure, he came in order to solve problems of humanity and did solve many of them, but he also left new problems behind when he departed. He did not monopolize human existence; it was not his aim to become an eternal dictator for humanity. Therefore, Jesus did not speak as if humanity would achieve its final completion through him. Although he said, "If you knew me you would know my Father too," he also left behind parts that were still unknown and were thus yet to be fulfilled. This shows that he was truly life. Though he solved problems, by so doing he also gave new problems; his giving of problems was his solving of problems.

Jesus presented the religion of the future by bundling it together in the statement "I will return." No one knows what the religion of the future will be. One will know it when it is revealed. We are those who, having received the problems Jesus left behind for us, draw all kinds of pictures of the new religion, keeping awake throughout the night, waiting for the arrival of the dawn. The religion of the new age we are describing is one of such pictures. When the Pharisees brought an adulteress to Jesus and asked him whether she should be stoned, he quietly bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger, erasing again and again what he had written. Like what he wrote then, this picture of the new religion is also something that I have drawn in order to keep my spirit awake, while hearing the remarks of my critics; it is a picture that I repeatedly draw and erase for myself, not something that I would want to carve on something for eternity. Indeed, no one should remember this picture. It should be a picture to be erased so that only the mind that drew it would know it. The purpose of this drawing is not to describe its object accurately. Who would do such a thing, which even Jesus did not do? Who would know what the new religion would be? One only dreams of the new religion. Indeed, the new religion cannot be other than the dreaming of it. Did not Canaan exist in the dreams of Abraham; Egypt in the dreams of Canaan; Mt. Sinai in the dreams of the shore of the Nile; the Sea of Galilee in the dreams of the flames of Mt. Sinai; and the new heaven and the new land in the dreams dreamt in the fishing boats of the Sea of Galilee?

Let us then draw a dream of the religion of the new age! Therein exists infinity.

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