[p. vii]
Religion is a fact of individual and social life. The philosophy of religion is an attempt to understand it. Understanding must begin with analysis, which distinguishes the various features that make up the fact and observes how they are related to form its strucure. But every fact is related to other facts, and the understanding of these further relations constitutes the interpretation of the fact. So the understanding of religion must involve analysis and interpretation.
The first part of this book is devoted almost exclusively to analysis. It endeavors to discover the distinctive features and essential structure of religion as a living personal and social phenomenon. The second and third parts are concerned with questions of interpretation. This falls into two parts because religion is practice as well as theory, and the practice of religion is at least as important as the theory. In practice religion seeks to be good. So the question here is first, what goodness is, and second, what constitutes good religious practice, both in relation to society in general and in the operation of a religious organization. In theory religion seeks to be true. So the question here is that of the validity of the ideas that enter into the structure of religion. In this section, chiefly for reasons of space, we have confined our attention to the ideas of God and immortality. In the epilogue one further religious idea is examined — the Christian concept of faith.
The primary purpose of this book is to present an original analysis and interpretation of religion which, as to both theory and practice, the author believes to be particularly pertinent to the distressing problems of our day. From the analysis of religious experience there issues the finding that what [p. viii] men have called God is a factor within themselves that they naturally distinguish from the familiar self of private desire. It is that within each of us that demands of us that we concern ourselves with the good of others besides ourselves. The history of religion is the story of man’s effort to understand and adjust himself to this element of the divine within him. Traditionally he has believed that the divine within comes from a divine being without, and religious communities have divided over their interpretation of that divinity. But it is the thesis of our interpretation of religious practice that, providing we rightly understand the nature of the divine within, as a will to universal good, we can and should co-operate as a religious community without insisting on further agreement in matters of religious theory. Here is the basis for a universal religion, maintaining the essence of Christianity, united in the faith and practice of human brotherhood, finding the basis of that faith and practice in a verified knowledge of the divine nature, and agreeing to differ on its further interpretation.
Yet these further questions are not unimportant. They are relevant to human hopes and affect the power of human faith. So in the third section of the book we attempt an interpretation of religious theory. And here we find in the moral nature of man empirical evidence that the human spirit is organic to a larger spiritual reality much as the human body is organic to a larger physical reality. In this organismic philosophy we find a conception of God and a hope for human destiny that are adequate to religious needs and aspirations and free from the fears, constraints and false hopes whereby religious beliefs have too often depressed, enslaved and deceived the human race.
In the presentation of this thesis alternative views have been duly considered and thus care has been taken to develop the discussion in a form suitable for use as a college textbook for courses in the philosophy of religion. It is hoped that [p. ix] many teachers may regard its central thesis as sufficiently important to select it for intensive study, gathering around it other reading material such as that suggested in the bibliography. Others may set it, or some part of it, for supplementary reading and discussion. The greater part of the book is nontechnical and will be found to be easy reading for any educated person. Chapters 8 to lo are necessarily philosophical and require more careful study. So, too, may parts of chapters 1 and 5. But no part of the book should be beyond the capacity of the average college student, even without previous training in philosophy.
The title of the book indicates its philosophical standpoint, temper and tone. It is realistic in its theory of knowledge and of values, in its acceptance of the reality of the physical world, and in its concepts of God and human mental life. In these respects it is in accord with the metaphysical argument presented by the author in Reality and Value. It is also realistic in its frank facing of the darker facts of life, of the problem of physical evil, of the sense of sin, and of the uglier features of religion. But its realism is not pessimism and does not end in skepticism. It finds instead, in known reality, the ground for a lively faith in God and man. This viewpoint was foreshadowed and outlined by the author in an article in the Hibbert Journal for October 1939 on “The Natural Form of Religious Experience.” The book is, in large part, based on lectures given in a course on the philosophy of religion at the University of Wisconsin during the past five years. Parts of chapter 6 have been published in an article, “Liberalism as a Theory of Human Nature,” which appeared in the Journal of Social Philosophy and Jurisprudence, January 1942.
A. Campbell Garnett
The University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin