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The Essence of Christianity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

S. W. Sykes
S. W. Sykes
Affiliation:
Fellow and Dean of St John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The phrase ‘essence of Christianity’ is ambiguous. The basic reason for this is that the word ‘essence’ has a more natural, though by no means uncomplicated, reference to substances, whether in philosophical or pharmacological discussion. Outside such contexts the use of phrases like ‘the heart of the matter’, or ‘the essence of happiness’ sound like earnest, but rhetorical devices to commend the depth or fundamental character of a specific investigation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 291 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

page 291 note 2 The Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, etc. (from Edwards's, J. reflections). By the author of the Reasonableness of Christianity etc. (London, 1967), p. 178.Google Scholar

page 291 note 3 Smith's, W. Cantwell attempt to connect the quest for the essence of Christianity solely with the Enlightenment in The Meaning and End of Religion (New York, 1964), chs. 1–3, overlooks this important aspect of the debate.Google Scholar

page 292 note 1 Harnack, Adolf, What is Christianity? (3rd rev.; London, 1904), p. 274.Google Scholar

page 293 note 1 Das Wesen des Christentums (Stuttgart, 1950), p. viii.Google Scholar

page 294 note 1 Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, II (Tübingen, 1913), pp. 386–451. See also Trceltsch, E., ‘The Dogmatics of the “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”’, American Journal of Theology, XVII (Chicago, 1913), pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 294 note 2 Gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 408.

page 295 note 1 There are elements of this view in W. Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion. Compare his statement, ‘Neither religion in general nor any one of the religions, I will contend, is in itself an intelligible entity, a valid object of enquiry or of concern either for the scholar or for the man of faith’, p. 16. Yet he also states that one may enquire historically into ‘the Christian tradition’ and ‘the personal faith of Christians’, p. 177. Confusion as to the sense in which the term ‘Christianity’ denotes ‘an intelligible entity’ doubtless lies behind these apparently contradictory assertions.

page 297 note 1 See especially the forthcoming may by Stanton, G. N., ‘The Gospel Tradition and Early Christological Reflection’ in Christ, Faith and History, Sykes, S. W. and Clayton, J. P. (eds.).: The Historian and Character (Cambridge, 1963), p. 9.Google Scholar

page 298 note 1 The Historian and Character (Cambridge, 1963), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 301 note 1 This is not, in my view, either an accident or an oversight. I have argued for the existence of a fundamental unity of viewpoint betweeen Schleiermacher's On Religion and his Christian Faith, in Friedrich Schleiermacher (Makers of Contemporary Theology Series) (London and Richmond, Virginia, 1971).