Free Men Free MindsTowards an Essential Understanding of Classical Christianity
“But it is essential to an understanding of the classical interpretation of the Christian religion to realize that while the pattern is the construction of keen Christian thinkers, the materials for the pattern are believed by Chrisitians in the central tradition to be the gift of God and not the achievement of man. In other words Christianity is a religion of revelation. Essentially it represents God’s movement manward and not merely man’s wistful search for God. There is a conception of religion which sees the religious history of mankind as man’s march Godward and nothing more. That there is a human march Godward and that aspects of this movement are reflected in many if not all of the ethnic religions no one would care to deny. But definitively Christianity is the religion of God’s advance upon mankind. It is the saga of God’s search for man far more than it is the saga of man’s search for God. It has two great preliminary assertions: God has spoken, God has come. It is based upon the words of God and the acts of God.”
Lynn Harold Hough, Patterns of the Mind, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1942, pgs. 111 & 112
