Na edição de 22 de Julho de 1946 da revista Time, pp. 68-72, está uma secção de Religião, na qual se aborda o posicionamento católico sobre as questões laborais e a tolerância e, para contraponto protestante, apresentam-se as ideias do presbiteriano Dr. Ernest Findlay Scott (1868-1954), do Union Theology Seminary. Apresentado como anti-colectivista, é autor de Man & Society in the New Testament (Nova Iorque: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946, 299 p.), onde defende a ideia de que o ensinamento de Cristo não é um caminho para a Boa Sociedade, mas uma religião para os indivíduos. Vale a pena citar (pp. 70 e 72):
«The New Testament, says Dr. Scott, seems to “waver” between two basic ideas – that man is an individual soul who must know and obey the will of God; and that each man must submerge his individuality in the great human brotherhood of which he forms a part. The Roman Catholic Church emphasized the social concept of Christianity; the Protestant Reformation reasserted the right of the individual to justify himself, in Paul’s words, by faith alone. The truth, says Presbyterian Dr. Scott, is that Christ was never concerned with man-in-the-mass, but with showing individuals their proper relation to God. “For Jesus”, says Dr. Scott, “… religion was no mere shell, enclosing an ethic, which was the kernel. He thought of morality as growing out of religion, and existing for the sake of it. The idea that you may discard the religion of Jesus and still retain his pure morality is utterly mistaken, for without the religion you have nothing at all… Nothing, indeed, was further from the purpose of Jesus than to organize society on some new plan… He was not concerned with poverty as a social problem, for which some drastic solution must be found. He was seeking to create a new disposition in men… Our modern ideal of a society so organized that all would be obliged to aid each other would perhaps have had little attraction for Jesus. He might have doubted wether the world would be any better when no place was left for charity… [Jesus] saw clearly that if all kindness were embodied in some legal system, and nothing were left to individual pity and self-denial, it would be a miserable world. Men might secure more confort but they would miss the true end of life, which is to conform your own will to the will of God”.»
Esta cristologia faz muita falta aos cristãos dos nossos dias e é aquela que se tenta aprofundar aqui.
O CRISTÃO INDIVIDUALISTA
