THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Good to these relations with him. His rule implies the blessing of his people with social and natural good things. But if any religion may be taken as having an eschatological conception of the Highest Good, it is the religion of the Bible, which understands the term of that which is really highest (" that which is perfect," I Cor. xiii. 10). Such passages as I Cor. viii. 6; Rom. xi. 36; Eph. iv. 6 imply that God, who directs all things toward himself, is the end of the world, or that the course of its history is to tend to his glory. The expressions of I Cor. xv. 28 and Rev. i. 8 have contributed to a metaphysical conception of God as the Highest Good in the sense of the ultimate end of all things. The maintenance of his glory in this sense is the devout purpose of those who desire his beneficent rule to prevail (Matt, v. 16; I Cor. x. 31; Eph. i. 12; Phil. i. 11, ii. 11; I Peter iv 11).
In the Church of the second century also, the expected kingdom of God was looked upon as the
Highest Good. It was a result of the
3. Augus- Hellenization of Christianity when an
tine's In- increasing influence was exerted, from
fluence. Clement of Rome (Ad Corinthios,
xxxvi. 2) to Clement of Alexandria (Strom., VI., xii.), by the formula " the most perfect good is knowledge, which is to be chosen for its own sake," without reference to anything else as in the quotation from Aristotle above. This knowledge (in the high sense given to the word gnosis, denoting a knowledge of the mysteries of God), since it has God for its highest object, in a sense deifies man, and makes him immortal. Augustine 's influence was epoch-making for the development of the idea here discussed. He removed it a considerable distance from the moralism, intellectualism, naturalism of the ancients, and returned to the Scriptural paths. In union with Paul, he departs most widely from moralistic naturalism. The ancient morality was capable of the religious interpretation that the natural powers were gifts of God; but Christian ethics presupposes new, supernatural powers, derived from the new creation by God's grace. The ancient philosopher expected, for perfect happiness, to become what he already was by nature, through the energetic cultivation of the higher or spiritual part of his being, in itself good and making it dominate the lower or sensual part. Augustine taught that man can become something quite other than he is by nature, through correspondence to the divine purpose. The period of Augustine's influence extends practically down to Schleiermacher. Even Kant's conception of the Highest Good is not really a new one. In the Kritik der jrraktisrhen Vernunft (Riga, 1788), he treats of two different elements of the Highest Good — virtue conceived as an incessant progression toward perfect happiness, he calls the highest (supremum) good; but it is not yet the perfect and complete (consummatum) good, since to become this it requires a happiness proportioned to it, which is the second element of the Highest Good. The ultimate end of the universe is to be sought not in the happiness of rational beings, but in the Highest Good, which adds the condition of its accordance with the laws of virtue.
After Augustine Schleiermacher's teaching marks
the next stage in the development.. In his two
treatises Veber den Begriff des hochsten
4. Schleier- Guts (1827, 18301, the term denotes
macher's the sum of the products of moral View. activity, in so far as this activity still includes them in itself and continues to develop them. The total result of the operations of reason in the world through the human organization is the Highest Good — a perfect and complete whole, expressed in the terms " golden age," " perpetual peace," " community of language," " kingdom of heaven." In this organism of results, virtue, their cause, is included as the powerful life of reason in the individuals. Schleiermacher's epochmaking character in regard to this question consists in his introduction into the concept of the Highest Good of two new elements, the dominion of man over the earth and the blessings of civilization.
The place where alone, if God is all in all, the absolute ultimate end exists is God's own personal spirit, that of his Son, and those of the angels and saints. The life of God and the " eternal life " of his perfect children is the highest reality which exists for its own sake and renders the question of a purpose absurd. But what is life? In the Scriptural conception of the life of God causation, activity, incessant energy predominates among its constituent factors. In the eternal life of spirits that are like him, causation of religious acts in relation to him and of social acts in relation to the world of blessed spirits is a similarly dominant factor. With this energy sensations of happiness are so inseparably connected that they can not be differentiated, as accidental consequences, from it as the end. To separate happiness as a subjective accident from the moral end is something only to be attempted by objectivism, which designates objective spiritual results, valuable in and for themselves, as the end. It calls them " good " because the object of life is their attainment, and disapproves of the ordinary meaning of the word " good," something which has the power to produce happiness in the individual consciousness. In opposition to this view, the Christian doctrine uses the term " Highest Good " in the old eudemonistic sense, and maintains that the happiness produced in the blessed spirits by their perfect acts of causation is necessarily included in the absolute ultimate end. Even when we call God himself the ' ' objective Highest Good," we do so only in distinction from the subjective eudaimonia (happiness) which he causes. And God is not a " good " in the abstract, but the Highest Good to himself, to the Son, and to the world. So far Schleiermacher is correct when he says in his Christliche Ethik : " The assertion that God is the Highest Good is not altogether justifiable, for a thing is only classed among our ' goods ' when we have or possess it; but if we say that the possession of God or union with God is the Highest Good, no objection can be raised." This possession is not an inactive possession. Schleiermacher insists that it is an essential property of what we call a " good " to arouse a living activity, and that an inactive condition, no matter how richly endowed, does not come under this head; and