Author: Albert C. Knudson
PART I
INTRODUCTION: THE PROVINCE OF THEOLOGY
[p. 19]
THEOLOGY may be defined as the systematic exposition and rational justification of the intellectual content of religion.
In this definition it is assumed that religion has an intellectual content and it is also assumed that this content is capable of rational justification. Both of these assumptions have been and are called in question, and never more so than at present. It is claimed by some that religion is purely a practical affair and that it has nothing to do with knowledge in the objective and theoretical sense. There is, therefore, no place for theology. Theology is mythology. By others it is admitted that religion has an objective intellectual content, but this content, it is maintained, takes the form of faith and as such is altogether distinct from reasoned knowledge. It stands in its own right and neither needs nor admits of rational justification. It may be systematically expounded, and in this sense we may properly have a theology. But a theology like that of the past, which seeks not only to expound religious belief but to establish its truth, has no legitimate standing. It is “the bastard child of faith and reason.”
In view of this skeptical attitude toward theology, as above denned, it is necessary for us to consider at [p. 20] some length the relation of theology to religion, on the one hand and to science and philosophy on the other. Not until we have done so, not until we have differentiated the field of theology and established its legitimacy are we prepared to enter upon our main task, that of expounding and justifying the Christian doctrine of God. We begin, therefore, with an inquiry into the nature of religion and particularly into the question as to whether religion has or can have a distinct and valid intellectual content.
That religion in its spontaneous and positive forms has always had an intellectual content of some kind would generally be conceded. The history of religion furnishes decisive evidence on this point. No religion has ever taken a subjectivistic view of itself. [1] Every religion has had beliefs of one sort or another, and to these it has always ascribed a measure at least of objective validity. But all these beliefs, it may be argued, have been mistaken. Hence we must conclude either that they form no essential part of religion or that religion itself is an illusion. The latter conclusion is drawn by those who, for one reason or another, reject religion altogether; the former by those who see in religion something of permanent value, but who deny to it any intellectual content or reduce this content to a minimum, to an extreme of vagueness and plasticity. The distinction between these two viewpoints is not always sharply drawn. [p. 21] The difference between them is one only of degree and to a large extent one of words. Both are opposed to religion in its traditional and positive form, regarding it as an illusion. But the opposition is less pronounced in one case than in the other. Then, too, some discard the word “religion” altogether as applied to their own position, [2] while others insist on retaining it and still others vacillate in their use of it. To distinguish between these two tendencies is not, therefore, easy and may in some instances seem arbitrary. But the difference between them is nevertheless clear enough to be worth noting.
The more extreme theory, which seems to regard religion as a complete illusion and to point logically to its eventual extinction from human life, has taken various forms. These may, perhaps, be reduced to three fundamental types, all of which are genetic in character. The first finds the source of religion in some unworthy or pathological or misguided element in human nature. This may be called “psychological” illusionism. The second derives religion from the unjust structure of human society and the evils that result from it. To this type of illusionism the term “sociological” may be applied. The third type is the “intellectualistic.” It identifies religion with primitive science or deduces it from some baseless fancy or superstitious belief of early man.
Of these three types of illusionism the first, or psychological type, is represented by such men as Lucretius (99-55 B. C.), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1928). Lucretius emphasized [p. 22] the element of fear in religion, fear of the gods and of death. It was to this fear, he held, that historical religion owed its origin. But fear in both these respects, he argued, was irrational, and with its disappearance religion itself would naturally and logically vanish. This view in more or less modified form has appeared again and again in the history of skeptical thought. It reduces religion to the objectification of our fears, and this stamps it as illusory. It tells us that but for ignorance and timidity there would have been no such thing as religion in the traditional sense of the term.
Feuerbach is the most significant and influential representative of illusionism in the modern world. In his account of the nature of religion special stress was laid upon the objectification of human desire. The driving force that, according to his view, lies back of religion is the instinct of self-preservation, the quest after life, after happiness. “The end of religion,” he says, “is the welfare, the salvation, the ultimate felicity of man; the relation of man to God is nothing else than his relation to his own spiritual good; God is the realized salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the salvation, the bliss of man.” Religion has thus a natural and not unworthy source. [3] But its utilitarian and egoistic aim renders its objective affirmations entirely untrustworthy. In it the wish is father to the thought, and the “thought” is consequently illusory. There is no transcendent Divine Being. God is nothing else than a product and reflex of the supernatural [p. 23] human mind and theology is simply a web of contradiction and delusions. [4] This is a truth which, according to Feuerbach, religion itself ought to recognize. If it did, it would only be opening its own eyes and coming to self-consciousness. To help it to do so was the professed aim that he set himself. There was thus a humanistic sense in which he accepted the truth or validity of religion. But his polemic was directed so sharply and persistently against religion, as commonly understood, that he is properly classed with the more extreme illusionists, despite his occasional protests to the contrary.
Freud and his disciples have, perhaps, given the most systematic and thoroughgoing expression to what is called “medical materialism,” the theory that religion and the higher spiritual life of man owe their origin to physical and psychological causes of a pathological nature. More particularly, in their psychoanalysis they have found the roots of religion in perverted sexuality. It was the incestuous desires of primitive men that led to the rise of totemism, and it was the deification of the totem-animal that led to the belief in God. No proof of such a theory is, of course, possible. The whole “Oedipus-complex” of which we hear so much in psychoanalytic literature with its incestuous sons and its slain and later mourned and reverenced father, is a fanciful construction that could hardly be taken seriously as a transcript of reality. Yet the idea that religion has some direct connection with sexuality has considerable currency, and still more widespread is the view that it grew up [p. 24] out of abnormal mental and physical states. A number of serious attempts have been made to explain Jesus as a psychopath, [5] and similar explanations of other religious geniuses are not uncommon. Such explanations start with the assumption that religion is false and derive whatever plausibility they may have from this assumption. So far as the interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality is concerned, William James [6] is quite right in saying that we might almost as well interpret it as an aberration of the digestive or respiratory function. Conversion, it is true, is most common during the period of adolescence, but so, also, is the awakening of the entire higher mental life; and to ascribe the latter to a perversion of the sexual instinct would be hardly more absurd than to ascribe the religious life to this source. The same may also be said of the supposed connection between religion and abnormality in general. This connection is probably not much closer than that of the other phases of man’s higher life with abnormal mental states. In none of these cases is abnormality the determining cause. Pathology can account for theology no better than it can for philosophy and art.
The three methods of discrediting religion that we have thus far considered have been predominantly psychological in nature. They have consisted in deducing religion from fear or from the desire for happiness or from some pathological state such as a perverted [p. 25] sexuality. We now pass to two methods that may be classed as sociological. Of these, the first is the ancient view, revived in the eighteenth century, that religion is a device of state and priestcraft. It was early observed that religion is not infrequently utilized by those in authority to promote their own selfish interests. So this fact was seized upon by unfriendly critics as indicating the very source and essence of religion. It was said that people were deceived into believing in the existence of gods in order that they might be led to accept the existing social and political order as one having divine sanction, no matter how inequitable it might be. In this theory it was assumed that fictitious and purely adventitious ideas might be imposed upon the mind from without in such a way that they would seem to be spontaneous convictions. But this assumption runs counter to all sound psychology. One might as well suppose that a man could be deceived into believing that the wig he wore was his own hair. Settled convictions must have some direct rootage in the human mind and must spring up out of inner need. Insight into this truth has rendered obsolete the theory that religion owed its origin to fraud.
A modification of the theory, however, has arisen which is at present widely held in socialistic circles. The theory in its new form retains the idea that religion was established or “invented” in the interest of the propertied or ruling class, the lords of society. But its establishment was not due to direct deception. No doubt deception was practiced to some extent by the privileged classes; the “laws of thought” were [p. 26] violated. But it was a case of self-deception on the part of the poor quite as much as of deliberate deception on the part of others, and both forms of deception arose more or less naturally out of the social situation. The rich were threatened by the discontent of the poor and so encouraged them to seek satisfaction in a way that would not disturb the existing social order. The poor, on the other hand, in their ignorance saw no other way of attaining happiness than in an imaginary realm of bliss which they mistook for real. It was thus that religion arose, out of dishonest self-interest on the part of the rich and out of a misguided quest after happiness on the part of the poor. At this point the new theory attached itself to Feuerbach, who, as we have seen, found the source of religion in an unwarranted objectification of human desire.
The wide prevalence of the theory is due largely to the influence of Karl Marx, who said of religion that it “is the striving of the people for an imaginary happiness; it springs from a state of society that requires an illusion, but disappears when the recognition of true happiness and the possibility of its realization penetrates the masses.” The elaboration of the theory, however, and the most thoroughgoing attempt to ground it historically were the work of Otto Gruppe, [7] a man little known in America and England. Gruppe gives to the theory the name of “adaptionism.” According to it the wide dissemination of [p. 27] religion is due to the fact that people generally “adapted” themselves to it. It originated as a matter of fact or was “invented” at a definite point of time, and only in one place probably Western Asia. It did not, then, spring up spontaneously in human life everywhere. Men. have no “active impulse” toward religion; they simply have a “passive potency” as over against it, a capacity to receive it from others. There was a time when there was no religion, and there will be a time when this fortunate state will return. It was the strained relation between the rich and the poor that gave rise to religion, and when this strained relation is removed, as it will be in the new communistic social order, religion will vanish from human life. Men will lay it aside as they do an outworn garment.
Unfortunately for this interesting theory, the two main pillars on which it rests are quite insecure. The assumption that men at first had no religion is without adequate warrant. Even if it should be discovered, as it has not been, that there are human tribes without religion of any kind, it would not follow that this was also true of primitive men. It is quite possible, and indeed probable, that they would represent a departure from the normal and original human type. The assumption also that man has a “passive potency” and not an “active impulse” toward religion is entirely arbitrary and a begging of the whole question as to the validity of religion. Apart from an initial anti-religious prejudice it has no standing. History as a whole is against it.
In addition to the “sociological” and “psychological [p. 28] theories” we have briefly outlined, there is, as we have already noted, a third type of illusionism to which the term “intellectualistic” may be applied. Theories of this type differ from those already dealt with in that they lay stress upon the primitive ideas or beliefs underlying religion, rather than upon the psychological or sociological conditions that are supposed to have given rise to it. They, for instance, derive religion from the primitive belief in the animation of all nature or from the still more primitive belief in an impersonal power known as mana. Or they interpret it as a primitive method of explaining phenomena by referring them to personal wills. To each of these three theories a brief word may be devoted.
Since the publication of E. B. Tylor’s famous work on Primitive Culture in 1871, animism has probably been the most widely accepted theory with reference to the origin of religion. It is closely connected with the dream or trance theory and also with the theory of ancestor worship. In its simplest form the theory runs like this: Men, as a result of dreams and trances, came to believe that they had souls distinct from, and more or less independent of their bodies. This conception they extended to natural objects in general. They also deduced from it the belief that there are pure spirits or souls, unconnected with bodies, and that the human soul survives death. The result was that there arose a special reverence for the souls of ancestors amounting to deification, and this, together with the personifying tendency of the primitive human mind, led to the belief in gods. Such, in a nutshell, is the animistic account of the origin of religion. [p. 29] That there is considerable truth in the theory from the historical point of view, is generally conceded, though it is in less favor now than it was some years ago. But what we are here concerned with is its view of the nature and truth of religion. It is possible to allow that dreams, trances, the belief in ghosts, and ancestor worship played an important part in early religion without allowing that they express the essence of religion or compromise its truth. But animism has not infrequently been interpreted in an illusionistic sense. It has been assumed and maintained that the true essence of religion is to be found in the “primitive philosophy” above outlined and that all religion, consequently, is illusory.
In its earlier form, animism, as an historical theory, did not distinguish clearly between the aliveness or animation of nature and its ensoulment in the stricter sense of the term. Tylor emphasized the latter, and the term “animism” is now often used in that restricted sense. To the theory of a vaguer and more impersonal kind of animation, advocated by Spencer and others, the term “animatism” is applied. Animatism does not exclude animism, but points to an earlier and more rudimentary form of religion, a “preanimistic” stage. The general sense of an all aliveness of nature, it is claimed, preceded the attribution of souls to things.
But even animatism, it is now maintained, does not go far enough back. Earlier than the belief in the animation of nature was the belief in mana, a non-personal but supernatural force, which manifested itself in various objects that, for one reason or an [p. 30] other, were supposed to be possessed of an extraordinary power or character. Mana stood closely related to tabu and may be regarded as its positive counterpart. By Durkheim it is identified with the principle of totemism. [8] Everything sacred had mana, and so also every object that might be called “supernatural” in an evil as well as a good sense. Mana is itself impersonal, but, according to Durkheim, it was regarded as incarnated in individuals, and in this way the belief in souls arose. The principle of animism was thus secondary to the totemic principle; and the totemic principle, Durkheim holds, is to be identified with society. There is no objective or metaphysical mana. The only real mana is that embodied in society. It is society that constitutes the true reality of the mana-istic or totemistic religion and of all religion. If interpreted in a more-than-human or transcendent sense, mana is as fictitious as is the animistic world of souls and spirits. To identify religion with mana-ism in this form is, therefore, to reduce religion to an illusion. Such is Durkheim’s view; and it may be added that his own sociological theory also deprives religion of any valid intellectual content. But to this we shall recur a little later. Mana-ism, as commonly understood, might, of course, be accepted as a valid account of the earliest stage of religion without any reference to the question of the validity of religion in general, and many, no doubt, do so accept it. But not a few regard it as necessarily illusionistic in its implications.
The third form of “intellectualistic” illusionism, [p. 31] above referred to, is represented by Auguste Comte and James G. Frazer. Comte distinguished three stages in man’s intellectual development: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positivistic. Religion in its traditional sense he referred to the first stage. Events were then explained by referring them to personal wills that was the essence of historical religion but the method was one that is now discredited. Hence, religion in this form, has no future. Such, essentially, is also Frazer’s view. He holds that religion was preceded by an age of magic and represents a higher standpoint. Magic was based upon the principled of natural causation as understood by the savage mind, but it proved unsuccessful in attaining the practical ends of life. Hence it was superseded by religion which rests on the belief that the course of nature is controlled by personal beings superior to man, who may be entreated on man’s behalf. This belief, however, has also proven mistaken, and consequently religion is destined to disappear as did magic. Science has rendered it obsolete.
The forms of illusionism which we have thus far considered I have characterized as extreme because they take a negative attitude toward religion as a whole. Not only theology but religion itself comes under their ban. They hold that it has had its day, and that with the growth of enlightenment and the improvement of social conditions it will vanish from human life. As distinguished from these illusionistic theories, there are others that are more positive in their appraisal of religion. The theologies of the past they emphatically reject and also the theological [p. 32] world-view in general. But religion, they feel, has persisted so long that there must be something of permanent worth in it, and this something they seek to salvage. They reveal, therefore, a more sympathetic attitude toward historical religion than the theories already discussed.
Of these less extreme illusionistic theories perhaps the most interesting is that represented by Emile Durkheim. It is his contention that religion is an essential and permanent aspect of humanity. It is not the outgrowth of social inequality and injustice. It is structural within society itself. No society can exist without ideals, and faith in the ideal is the essence of religion. Without this faith society could neither create nor recreate itself. The idealizing faculty is the very condition of man’s existence as a social being. Without it man would not be man. Religion, then, is a human necessity, and in its essence is eternal. Man will never outgrow it.
But this is true of religion only in its essence, and its essence is wholly practical in nature. It helps us to act, to live, but not to think. Thinking is the business of science. Religion, insofar as it has assumed this role and has become speculative and dogmatic, has gone astray and become “scarcely more than a fabric of errors.” There is no such transcendent order of reality as theology assumes. Viewed as a system of doctrine, religion is an “inexplicable hallucination.” But this does not mean that religion in its essential nature is false. All religions are true in the sense that they serve an indispensable practical purpose. They have, however, in their purity no [p. 33] intellectual content, no cognitive function. Their doctrines are mythical objectifications of the tribal or communal sentiment. They represent nothing metaphysically real. A sharp distinction must thus be drawn between religion and theology. The latter is illusion and may be sloughed off without loss, but the former is a necessary and permanent factor of human society. It may later express itself in a new theology, but, if so, the new theology will be no more essential to its nature than the old. Only social or practical religion will abide.
Akin to this form of illusionism is that represented by such neo-Kantians as F. A. Lange [9] and Paul Natorp. [10] Both of these men took a positive and favorable attitude toward religion. Indeed, Natorp before his death set aside his earlier positivistic position and adopted the transcendental or metaphysical standpoint. But he is best known by his earlier view and it is to this that I here refer. He and Lange ascribed permanence to religion, as did Durkheim, but they grounded] it somewhat differently. Instead of finding its basis in sociology they found it, rather, in psychology, in the subjective nature of the individual. Religion, according to Natorp, consists in feeling, and feeling is subjective. It cannot transcend the limits of humanity, but within these limits as a bond of union between man and man it is structural in human nature and has an abiding function. Lange likened religion to poetry. As such it has to do with an ideal world, a world that is not metaphysically real, but a [p. 34] world nevertheless that stands higher than all objects of scientific knowledge and which is, at the same time, essential to all human progress. The time will, therefore, never come when men will not need and have a religion. But the religion of the future will be a religion of humanity, a religion of pure symbolism, not a theistic religion in the realistic sense of the term.
This conception of a religion without God has, in recent years, come to be known as “Humanism,” [11] and under this name has become the professed creed not only of a considerable number who have broken with organized religion, but also of a few radical spirits occupying pulpits in American churches. These people, especially the latter group, profess with a good deal of unction that they believe in religion. Religion, however, they stoutly insist, does not necessarily involve belief in God. Indeed, the idea of a personal God is their pet hostility. They emphatically reject it and not only it, but also the very word “God,” which they think has become contaminated by its personalistic associations in the past. In the place of God they put the idea of “the sacred,” and to the sacred they give whatever content happens to satisfy their idealizing mood. Of the world they take a thoroughly naturalistic view, which they confuse with that of current science. Nature for them is entirely impersonal. There is no such thing as Providence. [p. 35] Providentialism, we are told, is the direct antithesis of humanism. [12] What humanism preaches is self-help, not dependence on Providence. “Human control by human effort in accordance with human ideals” such is the program of the new humanistic religion. God and theology have no place in it.
The foregoing survey of illusionistic theories is not exhaustive, but it is sufficiently comprehensive to give a fairly adequate view of current illusionism. All of these theories agree in denying the objective validity of religious belief, insofar as the latter implies a theistic and in this sense supernatural world-view. In other words, they all rest upon a naturalistic philosophy. This philosophy may be materialistic or positivistic. It may be Epicurean, Humian, or Kantian in its historical affiliations. It may be individualistic or socialistic. It may find its support in anthropology or pathology or sociology or in science in general. In any case, it starts with the assumption that the natural order, whether viewed metaphysically or positivistically, is all that there is, or at least all that can be known. No proof of this assumption is offered, for the very good reason that no such proof is possible. The assumption grows out of crude sense prejudice, and this prejudice is relied upon to be strong enough to float the assumption and any theory [p. 36] based upon it. [13] It is here that the fatal logical weakness of all illusionistic theories is to be found. They presuppose what they pretend to prove. They profess to give purely scientific accounts of the origin of religion which exclude its validity. But the illusionistic conclusion is already contained in the naturalistic premise upon which the theories are based, and apart from this premise would be wholly unwarranted. This fact deprives such theories of a genuinely scientific character. For pure science is not “naturalistic.” Only a materialistic or positivistic misinterpretation of it makes it such. The illusionistic theories are, then, defective both from a philosophical and a scientific standpoint.
Another criticism to be passed upon them is that they involve a mistaken conception of the nature of religion and of its place in human life. Here, however, the situation is more complex. All the illusionistic theories agree that faith in a superworld is no inherent and essential need of the human mind. This faith, they all hold, is destined to disappear from the world. As such a faith religion is an illusion. It has no future. But they differ on the point as to whether religion is to be identified with faith of this kind. The more extreme illusionistic theories assume that the two are identical, while those which I have classed as less extreme confidently affirm the contrary. The latter have a deeper appreciation of the value of religion [p. 37] and its practical significance in human life. They cannot envisage human life without it. For them religion is a human necessity. Men will never outgrow it. But the religion of the future, they maintain, will be a religion without belief in a supernatural and spiritual world, a kind of decapitated religion, which will still manage somehow to keep alive through the beating of the heart.
The less extreme illusionistic theories thus reveal a deeper and truer insight into the essentially religious nature of man than do those that we have termed more extreme. The latter, however, imply a truer grasp of the distinctive nature of religion. Religion is, no doubt, primarily a matter of life, of feeling, of will. In stressing this fact the less extreme illusionistic theories are right. But they are mistaken insofar as they fail to see that the peculiar type of life or feeling or will represented by religion is indissolubly bound up with faith in a superworld. To renounce this faith, to deny the existence of God, or of superterrestrial beings in general, is to renounce religion itself. Philosophical naturalism and religion negate each other. All genuine religion has an intellectual content, a content that lays hold of a supernatural and superhuman reality. Without such a content, without at least an implicit theology, there is no religion. And if this intellectual or theological content is a vain dream, so also is religion. In taking this position, the more extreme illusionistic theories are right. Religion is either “true” in the Platonic sense of the term or it is a complete illusion. To attempt to save religion at the expense of its truth is a [p. 38] hopeless endeavor. Religion without “faith” is a contradiction in terms. There is and can be no such thing as a purely scientific or this-wordly religion. A religion of this kind would be such only in name. Belief in a superworld is essential to religion.
But while this differentiates religion from philosophic naturalism and makes a synthesis of the two impossible, it leaves the relation of religion to magic and mythology undefined. Both magic and mythology imply the existence of supernatural or transcendent powers that affect, if they do not control, human life, and in this respect they resemble religion. [14] But they differ from it in that they are both completely discredited by modern thought. There are no “magical” powers, and “mythological” objects are simply free creations of the fancy. The very words “magic” and “myth” are synonyms for unreality. Religion, on the other hand, still commands to a large extent the assent of men. The objects of its faith are regarded as real and living. Illusionists, it is true, relegate religion in its theistic form to essentially the same level as that of magic and myth. For them theology is mythology, and religion is a modified form of magic. At bottom, the intellectual content of one is no more tenable than that of the other. Men in general, however, take a different view. Religion persists in a way that magic and myth do not. It continues to enjoy the favor of thinking men and women. There must, then, [p. 39] be an important difference between it and the “magical” or “mythological” types of thought.
Much has been written on this subject, and there are still wide differences of opinion. It is probable that originally there was no clear distinction between religion, magic, and mythology. All mingled together in a more or less indiscriminate whole. There were, however, implicit differences between them, and these gradually began to manifest themselves until eventually a sharp antithesis came to exist between religion and theology on the one hand, and magic and mythology, on the other. One, however, did not supplant the other. Both continued to coexist. This fact alone renders highly improbable Frazer’s theory that an age of magic preceded that of religion. History knows no such succession of aeons. So far as our knowledge goes, magic and religion have always existed side by side. But time has tended to bring out more and more clearly the contrast between them.
What, then, is the differentia of religion? It has been maintained that religion is social, while magic is anti-social. But this is not always the case. Therapeutic magic is not anti-social. Again, it has been held that religion refers extraordinary events to personal wills, while magic attributes them to impersonal powers or spirits. But this also is not true in all cases. Magic does not necessarily exclude the idea of personal powers or spirits back of or in nature. More satisfactory than either of these theories is the one which finds the distinction between magic and religion in the coercive character of the one and the [p. 40] conciliatory character of the other. Magic says, “My will be done.” It seeks to compel the supernatural power or spirit to do its bidding. Religion, on the other hand, says, “Thy will be done.” It teaches submission, trust, a conciliatory and personal attitude toward the transcendent Being or beings back of nature. Such an attitude would naturally lead to a more personal conception of the supernatural powers dealt with, and would also naturally lead to a more social and ethical relation with one’s fellow men. But these are the results of the religious attitude rather than its essence. A submissive, trustful, conciliatory feeling toward the powers-that-be in the universe is primary in religion. And here it is that we have the reason for the survival of religion and the decay of magic. It was not, as Frazer tells us, the failure of magic to provide men with food that led to the rise and growth of religion. In that respect it is doubtful if religion has been more successful than magic. The real reason for the persistence and development of religion is to be found in the sense, that it implies, of friendly communion with the supernatural and in the comfort, strength, and inspiration that this has brought to men. In other words, it was man’s capacity for an inward and spiritual experience that led to the triumph of religion over magic. This capacity religion awakened and developed in a way that magic with its coercive method could not. Furthermore, the consciousness of man’s imperfection involved in his relation to the divine became a mighty motive power to progress. [15] Religion thus stands for a distinctly [p. 41] different attitude toward the universe and toward human life from that of magic.
An equally significant difference also exists between religion and mythology. The origin of mythology is commonly traced to the personifying tendency of the human mind, and this, it is said, is also one of the chief factors in the rise of religion. Primitive men, like children, conceive natural objects and events after the analogy of human and animal life. They ascribe to them will and personality. The sun and wind, mountains and springs are represented as living beings. An anthropomorphic or theromorphic view of the world thus arises. This view we call mythology. It grows entirely -out of the poetic fancy, and hence has no claim to credence. But between this and the religious view of the world there is an important difference. The personality attributed by mythology to material objects has no ethical or spiritual character. It is itself in a sense a thing of nature, something purely metaphysical. The personified objects of mythology do not evoke the feelings of dependence, of hope and trust. They are merely existential facts, variable in value. In a word, they lack religious quality, they do not call forth faith. What differentiates religion from mythology is the fact that the personal Power or powers which it finds operative in the world are powers that can be trusted. They have character; and this means that the world at bottom is an ethical, a rational world. It has meaning, a purpose. There may be mythological elements in the religious world-view; there usually are. But religion is religion only insofar as it transcends mythology, [p. 42] only insofar as it ascribes to the Personality or personalities regnant in the world a rational and moral nature and so makes them objects of a living human faith.
Magic and mythology may prepare the ground for religion. By assuming the reality of a superworld, personal or impersonal, they may make religious faith easier. But they are not themselves religion. They sustain logically about the same relation to religion that alchemy does to chemistry, or astrology to astronomy. Between magic and mythology on the one hand, and the essence of religion on the other, there is all the difference that there is between irrationality and rationality. Keligion in its essential nature means faith in the rationality and purposiveness of the world. It thus stands heaven-high above magic and mythology; and no attempt to reduce it to the plane of the latter can succeed. In its inmost nature it differs radically from them, and occupies a place by itself.
The view is not infrequently expressed that religion owes its uniqueness to the fact that it is a fusion of mythology with morality. [16] In this view it is assumed that religion becomes purer the more dominant the ethical element becomes and the more completely the mythological element is sloughed off. It is in its ethical content, we are told, that the true nature of religion is to be found. But what, then, becomes of its uniqueness? If pure religion is identical with morality, it manifestly has no distinctive character of [p. 43] its own, and the very theory that its essence consists in its being a synthesis of morality and mythology, lapses. The view under consideration thus turns out to be self-contradictory. Nevertheless, it is widely held. Indeed, it is in principle essentially the same as that represented by the less extreme illusionistic theories above discussed. The assumption underlying it is that religion, in its traditional form, is mythology, but that it has in it an ethical kernel which is of permanent worth and that this kernel will constitute the religion of the future, a religion devoid of faith in a superworld. Such a view, however, misses the true genius of religion. Religion is not identical with either mythology or morality. It never has been and never will be. In its essential nature it is unique, and this uniqueness consists in a personal relationship to the Divine, a vital experience which links the believer to the higher realm of spirit.
Our study thus far has brought out the unsatisfactory character of all illusionistic theories. These theories have a double defect. They are based both upon a mistaken philosophy and upon a mistaken conception of the nature of religion. The philosophy is naturalism, a type of thought that is peculiarly vulnerable to criticism, but one which, in this instance, seems to be accepted as self-evident. This philosophy involves the conclusion which the illusionistic theories seek to establish. It is the major premise of one and all of them. Without it their argument would have no cogency, and with it the argument is a petitio principii. The idea that these theories offer a scientific proof of the illusory character of religion is itself an illusion. [p. 44] The other defect in them appears most clearly in those theories that I have classed as less extreme. Here the attempt is made to salvage religion by redefining it. All relation to God and a supernatural world is eliminated and what is left is a religion without Providence and without a deep and permanent hope. But such a religion is unworthy of the name. It is really an effort to get the ethical benefits of religion without religion. The more extreme illusionists see this and so reject religion altogether. They recognize the fact that religion implies belief in a higher world of spirit, but they make the mistake of supposing that this belief belongs to the same level as that of magic and mythology. They fail to recognize the unique ethical and rational elements that are involved in religious experience and in the religious world-view. Religion affirms a superworld, but it does so in response to the deepest emotional, moral, and intellectual needs of the soul, and not as a mere play of fancy.
Accepting this view of religion we are warranted in saying that it contains in its essential nature a unique intellectual content and that this content furnishes a valid basis for theology. But in order to understand adequately the relation of theology and religion to each other, there are several other phases of the subject that need to be considered more fully. We need to analyze and define more precisely the nature of religion; we need to determine more exactly what is involved in the superworld affirmed by religion; and we need to bring out more clearly the practical function of theology in the field of religion.
[p. 45]
One significant point with reference to the nature of religion has thus far been established. It is that religion is not purely subjective; it involves a personal attitude toward an objective realm of values. But this personal attitude is complex. There are in it at least three essential elements. One is that of trustful dependence upon a Higher Power. We might, with Schleiermacher, call it the feeling of absolute dependence. But the term “absolute” is not altogether satisfactory. It differentiates religion from the ordinary limited feelings of dependence with which our secular life is filled, but it does not bring out what is unique and distinctive within religion itself. Indeed, “absolute dependence,” taken strictly, suggests fatalism rather than religion. The feeling of dependence becomes truly religious only when the element of trust is included. The same may also be said of the consciousness of being “in relation with God” which Schleiefmacher adds as the equivalent of the feeling of absolute dependence. Conscious relation to God is religious only in case the relation is one of trust. This also applies to the “creature-feeling” which Eudolf Otto substitutes for that of absolute dependence. [17] The mere feeling of creatureliness, of self-abasement, of awe, of stupefying fear before the “Wholly Other” is not religion, unless it implies that the Wholly Other is a Being which, despite its unapproachableness and overpowering might, is one that in its essential nature can be trusted. Trust, [p. 46] or, in other words, the belief in Providence, is inherent in religion. To eliminate it and to stigmatize providentialism as a “vice,” as some of our neo-religionists do, [18] is to mutilate religion and to deprive it of its most fundamental characteristic.
Another essential element in religion is the longing after life or redemption. This longing stands closely related to the feeling of trustful dependence, but it has a more specific object in view. It looks to the goal of life rather than to its ordinary experiences. Its keynote is consequently hope, but hope based upon faith in some superhuman power or order. Mere hope or a mere longing after something better is not religious. It becomes such only through faith. And faith is to be viewed as something more than a mere product of unsatisfied desire. It is not simply man’s inability to carry to a successful conclusion his quest after life that leads to the belief in a superworld. No doubt this inability has accentuated and strengthened the belief. But the belief itself is something deeper and more immediate than such an inferential process. It is rooted in elementary experience and in the very structure of reason. There is such a thing as a religious apriori, [19] and there is such a thing as a “numinous” experience, a direct awareness of the Divine, both of which antedate the inference from human defeat to supernatural aid. It was not simply the quest after happiness that led to the assumption of a more-than-human power or world-order. Religion is something [p. 47] more than the valid or invalid objectification of desire. [20] But desire nevertheless plays an essential part in it. Without the longing for salvation or for a larger and fuller life, there would hardly be such a thing as religion. It is in this longing that religion comes to its sharpest focus.
A third characteristic of religion is its implicit alliance with the moral ideal. Much has been written on the relation of morality and religion to each other. Some have argued that morality is independent of religion, others that religion is independent of morality, and still others that one is dependent upon the other. The fact, of course, is that historically the two have stood in a close relation to each other. Religion has inspired morality, and morality has humanized religion. Yet each has its own specific character and stands in its own right so that it is possible to define one without taking account of the other. But such a definition, at least in the case of religion, would give us an abstraction rather than concrete experience. For if religion involves trust, it is evident that the object of its trust must be regarded as having something akin to an ethical character. And if religion is a yearning after a redeemed life, this life must be conceived of as including more or less of the ethical. Then, too, both religious trust and the quest [p. 48] after life imply that certain conditions must be met if divine aid is to be secured. In other words, they involve the sense of obligation.
Furthermore, the sense of obligation inherent in religion 1 5 not exhausted in the saying of prayers and the offering of sacrifices duties that have to do directly with the superworld. It extends also to duties to our fellow men. Here, however, the relationship has not always been so self-evident, and hence there has at times been an apparent divorce between religion and morality in the purely human sense of the term. The former has seemed to exist without the latter. But when once the inclusiveness of the religious obligation has been pointed out, it has presented itself to the human mind as a self-evident truth. The recognition of it has been immediate and imperative, so much so that Rudolf Otto asserts an apriori relation between religion and morality. 21 Duty to God involves duty to man. There is no escaping this interlocking of obligation on the part of the religious conscience. When the prophetic word of moral obedience is spoken, it carries conviction within itself. The religious believer instinctively recognizes its binding authority. Between religion and morality there is, therefore, an alliance which religion at least cannot break without renouncing its own true nature.
The foregoing analysis has brought out what seem to me the fundamental and indispensable elements in the religious attitude toward the superworld. They are the feeling of trustful dependence, the longing [p. 49] after salvation and the sense of obligation to man as well as God. These elements correspond roughly to the faith, hope, and love which Paul singled out as the things in religion that abide. They appear in different degrees and different forms in different religions. But there is no religion worthy of the name in which they do not manifest themselves to some extent.
Buddhism is the classical illustration of a religion defying the ordinary notions of what a religion should be, and it is not infrequently cited as evidence that the feeling of trustful dependence is no essential ingredient of religious experience. But this appeal to Buddhism is of doubtful validity. For one thing, it is a question whether original or Hinayana Buddhism was a religion in the strict sense of the term. Much could be said in favor of its being rather a philosophy. Certainly, it was predominantly theoretical in character a school rather than a church. And the fact that in the process of becoming a popular faith it was transformed into a polytheistic system is a strong indication that in its earlier form it was at least defective as a religion. Furthermore, even in that earlier form the element of dependence and of trust was not altogether lacking. “I take refuge in the Buddha,” ran the ancient confession of faith, “I take refuge in the Doctrine, I take refuge in the Order.”[21] Here the feeling of trustful dependence is emphatically expressed, only it is directed toward a human object, and hence was not truly religious. Beyond the Buddha and his doctrine, however, there was a supernatural world-order, which conditioned the appearance [p. 50] of the Buddha and also conditioned the attainment of Nirvana. In this superworld the Buddhist from the beginning had an implicit faith. He did not dwell much upon it nor did he worship it, but it was nevertheless the presupposition of the whole system, and in this indirect way might be said to be an object of trust. The feeling of absolute dependence was not, then, entirely absent from early Buddhism; but even if it were, this fact would not require a change in our definition or analysis of religion.
Wherever religion manifests itself spontaneously and vigorously, it does so in the threefold way above described. These manifestations are subjective in the sense that they are states of the mind, attitudes of the soul. But they have an objective reference, they imply belief in a superworld. This belief religion shares with magic, mythology, and certain philosophies, but it holds it in a unique form. It conceives the superworld in a distinctive way and has its own unique responses to it. These responses are matters of feeling and will. They are the “first” things in our religious consciousness and with them an empirical theology naturally takes its start. Doctrines are secondary; they are, as Schleiermacher says, “accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech.” [22] But they are not arbitrary additions to them nor are they mere descriptions of them. The religious affections have a doctrinal content, they profess to grasp an objective reality, and their very character and worth are determined by their upward reach. In and of [p. 51] themselves they are of little consequence. It is what they apprehend that gives them their significance. The psychologist may be interested in them merely as facts of experience, but not so the theologian and religious believer. What interests them is the truth of religious experience. They are concerned with God and the superworld, not with religion as a purely human phenomenon.
From the study of the subjective nature of religion we turn, then, to its objective content. We have already seen that religion differs from magic and mythology in that it ascribes to the world of spirit more or less of a rational and ethical character. It also differs from them and from speculative philosophy in that it holds that the spiritual world can be truly grasped only by one who stands in a living personal relationship to it. In other words, it maintains that faith, hope, and love are themselves conditions of religious knowledge. But while religion thus has its own unique approach to the problem of the superworld and a more or less distinctive conception of its nature, it leaves us in uncertainty at one very important point. It is unequivocal in attributing supreme worth to the spiritual realm, but whether the transcendent Reality is to be conceived as personal or not is left undecided. Opinions on the subject are numerous and definite, but they contradict each other so that one is not warranted 4 in saying offhand that the cause of religion requires one view rather than the other. A deep cleavage here runs through the religious world. Most people perhaps would subscribe to a personalistic theism, but many lean toward an [p. 52] impersonal pantheism. The question as to which of the two is right is the profoundest problem of religious thought. There is only one other comparable in significance to it, and that is the question whether both may not be wrong. The latter is the question of illusionism which we have already considered.
One need but read the history of religion in order to realize how ancient and deep-seated is the cleavage between the theistic and the pantheistic types of thought. We can trace it back almost to the beginnings of religion, if we accept the interesting and impressive theory outlined by Archbishop Soderblom, [23] the belief in God had its source in three primitive and originally independent ideas: the idea of mana, the idea of soul or spirit, and the idea of creators or “high gods,” as Andrew Lang termed them. [24] Each of these ideas has been treated by different anthropologists as the sole original source of religion, but the resulting theories have been one-sided. All three probably co-operated in the production of the idea of God. The first contributed the sense of a supernatural power, the second the idea of personal will, and the third the thought of creatorship; and together they thus gave rise to the belief in a supreme and transcendent spiritual Being. [25]
What we are particularly concerned with here, however, is the relation of these primitive ideas to that of personality. Mana was thought of as impersonal, souls or spirits as personal, and the creators or [p. 53] “high gods” probably also as personal though less clearly and definitely so. Primitive thought thus anticipated some of the important differences found in the later historical religions. Indeed, it may be said to have projected itself into them. Soderblom, for instance, points out that the mana-idea has been dominant in India, the “creator”-idea in China, and the animistic or soul-idea in the Western world. In India the most characteristic religious term is Brahman. It denoted originally a power akin to that of mana and later was used to designate the fundamental reality of the universe, a kind of impersonal power-substance, that manifests itself in the multitudinous forms of the phenomenal order. In Chinese culture the outstanding and most significant divine figure is Shang-ti, “Heaven” or “Supreme Ruler,” who has usually been conceived of as a personal but distant deity. In the Western world the personality of God under Christian influence has as a rule been clearly defined and accentuated. But in none of these geographical divisions has there been complete unity and uniformity of belief. In India personal conceptions of the Brahman have struggled against the impersonal, in China there have been impersonal as well as personal interpretations of Shang-ti, and the same holds also, though in a less pronounced degree, of Western thought relative to the Deity.
The long continuance and wide prevalence of this conflict between the personal and the impersonal or agnostic points of view suggests that we have here to do not simply with a speculative or theological difference, but with a deep-seated difference in religious [p. 54] experience itself. The general marks or tests of religion we have already pointed out, but within the circle of these marks or tests there are important differences, and of these differences the most fundamental is that between the mystical and the prophetic type of piety. These two do not necessarily exclude each other, but they represent distinct tendencies, and when developed in a thoroughgoing way they naturally lead to or ally themselves with different conceptions of the Deity. [26]
The mystical [27] type of piety seeks immediate union with its transcendent object, and this it professes to achieve through ecstasy or some other form of ineffable experience. The result is that the object comes to partake of the vagueness and indefiniteness of the experience by means of which it is apprehended. It is defined as the One that transcends all the multiplicity of finite existence. It is the ultimate reality that has no analogue in the world of phenomena. No definite character can, therefore, be ascribed to it. It is pure negativity; its essential nature is completely hidden from us. Yet it is of infinite worth. In it the soul finds its deepest satisfaction.
But the satisfaction thus attained is entirely different from that which the world yields. Indeed, it is [p. 55] the very negation of all worldly satisfaction. From the standpoint of the Infinite, both the world and the self are condemned to the phenomenal plane. They have no abiding being and no abiding worth. The soul is destined to be absorbed in the Infinite. This is at once its goal and its glory. For it to desire to continue its existence as a separate entity is to remain in sin and to close the door to its own highest good. Nothing of real or permanent value is to be found in the realm of the finite. Man’s only hope lies in release from the finitude both of the world and of his own individual existence. A world-denying and a soul-denying pessimism thus is associated with the mystical quest after oneness with the Infinite. The great historical representatives of this type of piety are the religion of the Upanishads in India, to which the Buddhistic type of piety stands related, Taoism in China, and Neoplatonism in the Greco-Roman world.
Over against this form of religious experience we have the prophetic type, represented chiefly by Zoroastrianism, Mosaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism. Here stress is laid upon the personality both of God and man and upon the eternal distinction between them. Not absorption in God, but loving fellowship with him is man’s goal. Not ecstasy, not Nirvana, not monastic flight from the world, but faith, activity, the transformation of the world are the ends toward which men should struggle. For the knowledge of God we must turn, not to passive contemplation or to a vague mystical feeling, but to history, to revelation, and to that illumination which [p. 56] comes through moral obedience. Not the extinction of self, but its redemption and permanent preservation is man’s hope, and no basis for this hope can be found except in the personality, the concrete, individual will of the Infinite. With such a conception of God the prophetic type of piety both begins and ends.
Between these two types of religious life and thought, there are many of a mediating character. Mysticism is not infrequently associated with a more or less personal view of God, and prophetism with a more or less agnostic philosophy or theology. But these are composite forms that fail to carry out in a consequential way the inner logic of either of the two fundamental types. They do, however, testify to this important fact that religion embraces both types, and that these types, while they represent opposite poles of the religious life, nevertheless have a positive attraction for each other. Mysticism has an affection for prophetism and prophetism for mysticism. Between the two there is an underlying kinship. But the differences that we have pointed out between them are still so deep that if we are to have unity in our religious life and thought, one must be subordinated to the other. Either the personal or the impersonal point of view must be made controlling. And when both of these are tried out, a considerable, advantage is seen to attach to the personalistic or prophetic viewpoint.
There is, first, a practical advantage. The prophetic type of experience is more “healthy minded” than the mystical. It stands closer to the normal life of men. [p. 57] It is optimistic. It finds value and the possibility of increasing value in the world and in human life as a whole. Not negation, but affirmation is its watch-word. What it aims at is not the extinction of the natural, but its transfiguration. It thus takes its stand on the common ground of human need and human hope. It links itself up with the instinctive quest after life and thus has a universality of appeal which would hardly be possible to mysticism with its pessimistic, transcendental, and ecstatic type of experience. The latter may serve as a valuable supplement to prophetism, as a purging or sublimating factor in it; but made central and controlling it upsets the balance of human life and leads to asceticism and monasticism with their inner contradictions. Only a religious life, unified by an ethical and prophetic outlook, can meet the practical needs of mankind as a whole.
It is but another phase of the same general idea when, in the next place, we point out that the fundamental and distinctive elements in religion come to a clearer and more consistent expression in personalistic prophetism than in an impersonal mysticism. Both types of piety imply trustful dependence, the yearning after redemption, arid more or less of ethical idealism. But the first and last do not receive adequate expression in mysticism. Interest there centers in the second, in the quest after salvation, and this takes on an almost unhuman form so that it runs counter to rational trust and obedience. The fundamental pathos of mysticism is wonder, awe, mystery, and these emotions belong to the threshold [p. 58] of religion rather than to religion itself. Mystical religion is, then, undeveloped and onesided. Only in prophetic religion do the elementary religious interests come to a well-rounded and complete fruition.
A further advantage in the prophetic type of religion is its clearer, more adequate and more rational conception of Deity. A personal God in the plenitude of his perfections is a Being whom we at least in principle understand. He stands related to the selves that we experience. He is no airy abstraction, but a concrete individual. He performs an intelligible function in the universe. He fits into a rational view of the world. And he furnishes an adequate ground for religious faith. In him both trust and hope can repose with perfect security. Not so, however, the impersonal Being of pantheistic mysticism. Its nature is both unknown and unknowable. We can form no clear or rational conception of it. It is itself superrational or irrational and ineffable. The only proper attitude toward it is one of silence. If faith be extended to it, there is no rational warrant for so doing. It is all a matter of feeling, and feeling that soars above the plane of reason into the realm of ecstasy. Such a vague and agnostic view of the ultimate ^reality may have its value in certain esoteric circles, but history offers convincing evidence that it cannot be made the basis of a popular and vital religious faith.
In recent years the feeling seems to have arisen that the mystical world-view is more consonant with modern science than the prophetic, and hence the effort is being made to detach religion from its theistic [p. 59] basis. The idea is that if religion would only renounce its personalism and consent to be reduced to a sense of awe or to reverence for the “sacred,” whatever that may be, it would be more acceptable to the modern mind. One could in that case accept the current philosophical naturalism and yet be religious. For religion in its mystical form does not require faith in a personal God. Its world-view is impersonal and agnostic, as is that of naturalistic science. A fusion of the two is, therefore, possible, and when this is accomplished we may expect that the modern world will again become religious. But this is a delusive hope. No real synthesis of mysticism and philosophic naturalism is possible.
For one thing, the mystical Absolute is a very different Being from the naturalistic absolute. The latter offers no basis for faith and hope and no incentive to idealism. The former, on the other hand, is enshrouded in a veil of sanctity. Though unknowable in its inmost being, it is an object of veneration and of trust as no naturalistic absolute could be. Again, the spirit of modern naturalism is entirely different from that of mysticism. The latter is pessimistic and other-worldly, the former optimistic and secular. One is idealistic, the other realistic; one aims at the suppression of desire, the other at its gratification. The two in spirit run directly counter to each other. No real union of the two can be effected. Indeed, the realism and optimism of modern naturalism stand closer to the prophetic than the mystical type of religion. If religion in any form is to persist in the modern world, it must be of the prophetic type. Theistic [p. 60] personalism, and it alone, makes possible a spiritual interpretation of the universe which conserves the truth both of religion and of science. To renounce the personality of God is to deprive religion of its rational basis and transform it into a vague arid futile mysticism; on the other hand, to make the still further renunciation that philosophic naturalism would require of us, would be to reduce religion to a vacuous ejaculation of wonder.
Our argument in this chapter has in the main consisted in showing, first, that religion implies vital faith in a superworld and, secondly, that while its view of the superworld may be either personal or impersonal, the former is the one in which it comes to its highest and truest expression. If there is no superworld, religion has no valid intellectual content; its theology is mythology. As such it might be treated as a kind of symbolic sociology or as a poetic interpretation of nature, [28] but it would have no scientific standing. If religion under these circumstances should continue to exist, it would be as a purely practical affair without any cognitive significance. It would be regarded as throwing no light whatsoever upon the structure of the universe and hence would have no power from above either to command the conscience or to console the heart. It would be a religion without faith, and a faithless religion is a contradiction in terms.
[p. 61]
Assuming that this is so, that faith is indispensable to religion and that it is also valid so far as its affirmation of a superworld is concerned, we have a basis for theology as well as for religion. But the nature of our theology will vary greatly according to the view we have of the superworld. If we, in mystical fashion, regard it as essentially impersonal and unknowable, our theology will be largely negative in character. It will take the form of an attempt to show that ultimate reality transcends human knowledge and that it is only as the antithesis or negation of the sensible world that we can be said to know it. Indeed, it presents itself to us as hardly more than a deification of the word “not.” What it is in any positive sense lies completely beyond us. There is no divine revelation upon which we can draw for knowledge. The only way that any positive insight can come to us is through a mystical or ecstatic experience. And this experience is of an ineffable nature so that its content cannot be communicated to others and hence cannot become the subject matter of theology. It may give to him who has the experience, the assurance that God is, but what he is remains a mystery. All that theology can do as over against such an experience is to try to provide a place for it and, if possible, to validate it. No positive theological material can be drawn from it. Theology from this point of view exhausts itself in a largely negative metaphysics and epistemology.
One may, it is true, from the mystical standpoint, have what might be called a secondary theology, a theology dealing with the gods of the popular religions. [p. 62] But such a theology would be mythology. At the best, it would be a symbolical or allegorical expression of truths contained in the higher negative theology. In itself it would represent nothing final. It would assume that the truth of polytheism is to be found in pantheism.
Pantheistic mysticism is, in one way, more favorable to theological development than theistic prophetism, but in another way less so. It is more favorable insofar as its world-view involves a more radical reconstruction of common-sense experience. Prophetism is compatible with ordinary dualism, and with more or less of secular optimism. But mysticism is monistic and pessimistic. It holds to the phenomenality of the world both in the metaphysical and the valuational sense of the term. And this viewpoint is one that cannot be attained without considerable intellectual effort. Profound reflection is necessary to make it one’s own. Philosophy and theology would thus seem to inhere in the very blood of mysticism. And to a large extent this is true. Mysticism is rationalistic and theological. It moves on a different plane from that of ordinary experience.
But, on the other hand, mysticism tends also to restrict theological activity. It does so by ascribing to theology a function that is largely negative and by emphasizing ecstasy as the one great source of religious illumination. If the ecstatic experience were itself capable of theological explication, we might have in it an additional and fruitful source of theological development. But, according to mysticism, this is not the case. The ecstatic state has no comunicable [p. 63] content and hence is theologically sterile. Furthermore, rational theology yields no insight into ultimate reality. It affirms a transcendent Being, but enshrouds him or it in an impenetrable veil so that a positive or constructive theology is hardly possible.
For the most fruitful development of theology we must, therefore, turn to the prophetic type of religion. Religion in this form does not require such a radical intellectual reconstruction of our common experience as does mysticism. It stands closer to the ordinary life and thought of men, and in this sense is less intellectualistic. But in contrast with mysticism, it finds both in reason and in revelation or religious experience positive sources of Religious knowledge, and hence gives to theological activity an encouragement that it could not otherwise have. The result is that theology has received on_prophetic soil a development far transcending in significance that which it has received at the hands of mystics.
This development has not been without its peril to religion. There has always been a danger that theology might become the master of religion rather than its servant. And whenever this has occurred, religion has lost its pristine power, it has become a doctrine instead of a life. This is the error or evil in scholasticism. What theology needs to learn is that its function is regulative, not creative. The religious impulse is native to man. It springs up spontaneously in human life. It is not created by theological reflection nor, as a rule, even evoked by it. Religion is something other and deeper than a doctrinal system. It [p. 64] is a profound personal attitude, a vital experience. It was this fact that Schleiermacher brought out in his famous definition of religion as “the feeling of absolute dependence.” This feeling is prior to conceptual knowledge, but it does not exclude it. Indeed, it has in its simplest form an implicit intellectual content. And the function of theology is to clarify, systematize, and logically justify this content. The content itself is ultimate and, in a sense, self-justifying, but imperfectly self-conscious and self-directive. What theology has to do is to bring it to self-consciousness, to guide it and to supplement it with rational grounds of belief. Its task is thus regulative, not constitutive.
But while we need to recognize the subordinate and instrumental relation of theology to religion, we need also to recognize the importance of the service it renders. The religious instinct easily goes astray both in the field of thought and practice. Superstition and mythology have dogged its steps from the beginning and have often made of primitive and historical religion a scandal alike to reason and conscience. To remove these excrescences is, then, a task of the utmost significance; and this is the chief function of theology. Its duty is to define the nature of true religion, to eliminate what is out of harmony with it, to systematize its teaching, and to present it to the world in a way that will appeal to the common intelligence. Such a task as this is manifestly integral to religion itself. Without it, without a theology, religion would not rise above the blind, instinctive stage.
For this not even Buddhism is an exception, as will be seen from the later discussion of it. ↩︎
Cf . J. M. Guyau, The Irreligion of the Future. ↩︎
The Essence of Christianity, p. 185. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. xv, x. ↩︎
See The Psychic Health of Jesus, by Walter E. Bundy, for an excellent review and criticism of these theories. ↩︎
The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 9-18. ↩︎
Die griechiscJien Kulte und Mythen in iJiren Beziefiungen zu den orientalischen Religionen, 1877; Griechische Hythologie uml Religionsgeschichte, 1906. ↩︎
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, pp. 188ff. ↩︎
History of Materialism. ↩︎
Religion innerhalo der grenzen der Humanitat. ↩︎
To be distinguished from the literary “Humanism” represented by Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt. For a clear exposition of the latter movement in its relation to theology see P. B. More’s article on “A Revival of Humanism” in The Book-man for March, 1930. ↩︎
J. S. Huxley, Religion without Revelation, p. 18. Among other recent books representative of essentially the same standpoint the following may be mentioned: Things and Ideals, by M. C. Otto; Religion and the Modern World, by J. H. Randall and J. H. Randall, Jr.; Religion in an Age of Science, by Edwin A. Burtt; A Preface to Morals, by Walter Lippmann; The Quest of the Ages, by A. E. Haydon; _The Twilight of Christianit_y, by H. E. Barnes. For a sympathetic criticism of humanism see Theism and the Modern Mood, by W. M. Horton. ↩︎
It is this obscurantist tendency in current naturalistic humanism, this uncritical reliance on sense dogmatism, this failure to justify its own metaphysics, that makes the movement so profoundly unsatisfactory from the intellectual as well as the religious point of view. ↩︎
See Georg Wobbermin, Systematische Theologie, Bd. II, “Das Wesen der Religion,” pp. 327-73. ↩︎
See Eric S. Water-house, The Philosophy of Religious Experience, pp. 51, 58. ↩︎
See Paul Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic-. Mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Religionen. ↩︎
The Idea of the Holy, pp. 10ff. ↩︎
J. S. Huxley, Religion Without Revelation, p. 18. ↩︎
See my article on “Religious Apriorism” in Studies in Philosophy and Theology, edited by E. C. Wilm. ↩︎
The classic expositions of this theory of religion are to be found, from the standpoint of belief, in J. Kaftan’s Das Wesen tier Christlichen Religion, and from the unbelieving standpoint, in L. Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. The fact would seem to be that religion is primarily an experience of the divine, an experience, however, that stands in the relation both of cause and effect to man’s persistent quest after life. It is not a wishphilosophy, but an ought-philosophy that grounds religion. ↩︎
See G. F. Moore, History of Religions, I, p. 297. ↩︎
Der Christliche Glaube, Par. 15. ↩︎
Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, 1916. ↩︎
The Making of Religion, 1898; Myth, Ritual and Religion, ↩︎
N. Soderblom ibid., pp. 190, 318. ↩︎
See W. P. Paterson, The Nature of Religion, pp. 54-56; Friedrich Heiler, Das Gebet, pp. 248-83. ↩︎
The term “mystical” is here used in its more extreme and abstract sense as antithetical to “prophetic.” There is also a prophetic type of mysticism, of which account will be taken in the next chapter. ↩︎
See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, and J. S. Huxley, Religion Without Revelation, pp. 61ff. Compare the “civil theology” and the “poetic theology” of Varro. ↩︎