CONCLUSION with His Belief in the Superiority of Faith Over

CONCLUSION With his belief in the superiority of faith over negation, the aged Emer- son could stand up to the threat of atheism and pessimism. His early dreams of God-like greatness, when he identified self-consciousness with God-consciousness, had leveled off to a point where he accepted the realities of man struggling with pragmatic givens. But in spite of a more chastened view of the potential of mysticism, Emerson arrived at an optimistic acquiescence that had no place for atheism as an option. Throughout his career, Emerson claimed that his “philosophy [was] affirmative” (CW, 2:90). He did not doubt “the conviction that All is Well, that Good & God is at the centre” (JMN, 7:136). To some extent, Emerson’s work—in fact Transcendentalism itself— constituted a refutation of atheism. A central counterargument stemmed from the “discovery that God must be sought within, not without” (JMN, 5:5). On this rock, the primary experience of divinity, Emerson found a faith that persisted even in confrontations with atheism and skepticism. Emerson might have come close to anthro- potheism, as critics of his extreme idealism charged, but he did not doubt the integrity of the soul’s intuitions as the final proof of God’s presence. Emerson was aware that the discovery of the God “within” was the “discovery of Jesus” (JMN 5:5). A messianic Emerson would ask his audience in the “Divinity School Address” to go alone and refuse great models. But Emerson’s insistence on a “first hand” revelation of divinity never accepted the atheistic “rhetoric” of a “fabulous Christ” (CW, 1:90). In the end, Emerson’s adherence to the superiority of faith over negation was also an affirmation of “a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of man” (CW, 1:89). When Emerson condemned the “Monster” of historical Christianity in his “Address,” he undermined the once rock-solid religious convic- tions of many who in turn branded him an infidel and atheist (CW, 1:81). Yet Emerson was actually a theist in that he did believe that there is a divine reality. With his rejection of the supernatural God of historical Christianity, Emerson sought to establish his theism on more solid foundations. Above all, he sought to establish faith in the divine as a 202 conclusion postulate of daily moral life. At this juncture, both Parker and Emerson agreed that the real threat of the time was not the “speculative atheism” of Feuerbach but rather a “practical atheism” in which man may believe that a supreme being exists but lives as though there were no God. Today practical atheism has developed into religious indifference. Religious faith is not so much rejected as judged to be without con- sequences. Emerson fought against the supernatural God of historical Christianity, but he still arrived at a faith in the “God within.” In a culture of religious indifference, people no longer fight against God, the question is simply of no interest any more or is often no longer even posed. If one follows the argument of one of Emerson’s sharpest critics, Orestes Brownson, then the culture of unbelief has one historical root in the Transcendentalists’ attempt to base religion on religious senti- ments of the heart. The Emersonian insistence on the “God within” paved the way for a non-religious interpretation of religious consciousness, transforming theology into anthropology—a transformation final- ly made explicit by Feuerbach. Brownson acutely sensed in Emerson’s Transcendentalism the danger of an anthropological account of Chris- tianity. To eliminate all transcendence and believe in a spiritual God operative in man was to follow the road to a “religion without God.” If the Emersonian “God within” with its anthropocentric strain is a precursor of a secularized culture of unbelief, so is Emerson’s view of Christ. For the Christian, Jesus Christ is a witness of God. The existence of God is evidenced by the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus thus makes claims about God. For Emerson, Jesus makes claims about man. Jesus, Emerson held, “preaches the greatness of Man” (JMN, 5:459). But precisely by defining the significance of Christ primarily with regard to his significance for man, Emerson sowed the seeds for what Barth called the “apotheosis of man” with its “inversion” of heaven and earth. Yet Emerson’s Transcendentalist gospel also contains a cure for religious indifference and unbelief. What theologians have to confront today is an indifference to the nearness of God. The Transcendentalist Emerson always interpreted his existence with reference to a primary experience of the Deity. In contrast to Feuerbach’s projection theory of religion, Emerson’s God is not just a disguised way in which man talks about himself; Emerson’s God is near, immediate, present, and signif- icant in human life. He enters the soul and endows it with a sanctity.

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