nian so rises rein tgieosta Mamie far, Till ark ge ates he St west BRIN etn on tori dg eletinth Mnrihighors SMO Retinal piiicieebv amt agente toe eee porAey aries aah Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/presenttendencieOOknud Present Tendencies, a ious: Thought BY ALBERT C. KNUDSON, Theol.D. Professor of Systematic Theology in Boston University THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1924, by ALBERT C. KNUDSON All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States of America DEDICATED TO THE THEOLOGICAL FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION OF THE HONORARY DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY CONFERRED UPON THE AUTHOR IN DECEMBER, 1923 CONTENTS CHAPTER I THe MODERN LHOUGHT WORLD! Shc es Science, ancient and modern, p. 15—Democracy, political and industrial, p. 16—Democracy, political, ethical, and dynamic, p. 19—Democracy and Chris- tianity, p. 22—The belief in social progress, p. 23— The socio-economic interest, p. 25—Science and reli- gion, p. 27—Science and materialism, p. 30—Science and positivism, p. 35—Criticism of positivism, p. 39 —The Copernican astronomy and Christianity, p. 43 —Darwinism and Christianity, p. 45—The scientific idea of the reign of law and its bearing on religion, p. 47 —The naturalistic and ethical conceptions of progress, p. 51—Relation of the modern idea of progress to Chris- tianity, p. 55—Origin of the modern socio-economic interest, p. 59—Sociology and religion, p. 62—Social- ism and religion, p. 64—The present problem confront- ing Christianity, p. 70. CHAPTER II THE PROBLEM OF BIBLICAL AUTHORITY.........+.-6% Modern thought autonomous, p. 74—Religion author- itarian in its tendency, p. 75—Definition of authority, p. 79—Authority, pedagogical, sociological, and episte- mological, p. 81—The conflict between science and biblical authoritarianism, p. 88—The doctrine of bibli- cal infallibility, p. 90—Metaphysical dualism and its relation to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, p. 93— Empiricism and its bearing on the doctrine of infalli- Z 74 8 CONTENTS PAGE bility, p. 95—-The allegorical method of interpretation, p. 97—The principle of ecclesiastical authority, p. 102 —The Protestant rejection of ecclesiastical infallibility and allegorism, p. 106—The Protestant conception of biblical infallibility and its relation to modern thought, p. 110—Natural science and its relation to the Bible, p. 114—Biblical criticism, p. 115—-The idea of evolution as applied to the Bible, p. 119—Bearing of the doctrine of the divine immanence and the Kantian idea of the creative activity of thought on our conception of inspira- tion, p. 121—Pragmatism and its bearing on the prob- lem of biblical authority, p. 124—The modern reinter- pretation of the idea of authority, p. 126—The true authority of Scripture, p. 128. CHAPTER III EXPERIENCE AS A Basis OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF........ 132 The relation of philosophical empiricism to religion, p. 132—Theological empiricism distinguished from tra- ditional empiricism, p. 137—The Ritschlian type of theological empiricism, p. 138—Theological empiricism as represented by D. C. Macintosh, p. 141—The appeal to experience in Roman Catholic apologetics, p. 147— Early Protestantism and its use of the evidence of Christian experience, p. 150—-Pietism and its appeal to Christian experience, p. 152—-Schleiermacher as the founder of empirical theology, p. 154—-Empirical theol- ogy and conservatism, p. 159—-Theological empiricism as represented by the ‘Erlanger School,” p. 161—The Ritschlian theology and its significance, p. 166—The psychology of religion and its bearing on the evidential value of Christian experience, p. 175—The relation of religious experience to faith, p. 179—The relation of faith to mysticism, p. 180—The self-verifying power of faith, p. 183—Experience as the norm of Christian belief, p. 186. CONTENTS CHAPTER IV REASON AS A BASIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The relation of rationalism and empiricism to each other, p. 190—The application of the empirical prin- ciple to religious belief, p. 192——Philosophical rational- ism and its relation to religion, p. 197—-Reasons for the religious antipathy to “rationalism,” p. 198—Dis- tinction between Kantian rationalism and the doctrine of inriate ideas, p. 201—Distinction between intellectual and ethical rationalism, p. 203—The place of reason in the authoritarian period of the church’s history, p. 205 —Deism, p. 207—‘German rationalism,” p. 21I— Hegelian rationalism, p. 214—The history-of-religion school, p. 219—Neo-rationalism and the question of miracle, p. 221—Neo-rationalism and its attitude toward philosophy, p. 225——Troeltsch’s conception of the nature of religion, p. 230—The neo-rationalistic attitude toward history, p. 232—Troeltsch’s view of Jesus, p. 235. Troeltsch’s doctrine of a religious a priori and its relation to philosophical relativism, p. 241—Reason as a ground of religious belief, p. 248. eenmernreerensee CHAPTER V THE SociAL GOSPEL AND Its THEOLOGICAL IMPLICA- Ries les 0.) 6) 0) ad ve VP oue, | wiis) 8) le) er er eeu itm. a \e\ 6) (a) wi e\ bites 6) o/f6 Lgl ve kei ce eT ®. Utility as a test of religious truth, p. 251—-Chatterton Hill’s theory of religion, p. 253—Karl Marx’s theory of religion, p. 254—Emile Durkheim’s view of religion, p. 258—T. N. Carver’s application of the principle of utility to religion, p. 262—-The place of individual sac- rifice in an ideal society, p. 267—-Theism and religion, p. 268—Utility transformed from an external to an inner test of religion, p. 269—The main elements in the social problem, p. 272—The belief in social progress, p. 272— The subordination of the individual to society, p. 274 —Prominence of the economic factor, p. 275--The 251 ike) CONTENTS PAGE revolt of the proletariat, p. 276—Capitalism, p. 277— Nationalism, p. 278—Bearing of the social problem upon religion, p. 281—The social gospel in its more general form, p. 282—The fundamental attitude in religion to-day as compared with that of the past, p. 288— The social gospel in its more radical form, p. 291—The complexity of the social problem, p. 296—No distinctive Christian social theory, p. 297—-The social ideal unreal- izable on earth, p. 299—Bearing of the social gospel on the conception of God, p. 302—The idea of a finite God, p. 305—The social gospel and the doctrine of sin, p. 308—Redemption from the standpoint of the social gospel, p. 311—Relation of the social gospel to the belief in the future life, p. 316—Conclusion, p. 320. FOREWORD Tuer Mendenhall Lectures of DePauw Univer- sity, to which this series of addresses belongs, was founded by the Reverend Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D., of the North Indiana Confer- ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The object of the donor was to found a perpetual lec- tureship which would bring to the University as lecturers “persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of lec- tures is to be published in book form by an emi- nent publishing house and sold at cost to the fac- ulty and students of the university.” Lectures thus far published under this founda- tion: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt Hughes. 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Buble, George Peck Eckman. 1917, Understanding the Scriptures, Francis John McConnell. 1918, Religion and War, William Herbert Perry Faunce. II 12 FOREWORD 1919, Some Aspects of International Christian- ity, John Keiman. 1920, What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? Ernest Fremont Tittle. 1921, Social Rebuilders, Charles Reynolds Brown. 1922, This Mind, William Fraser McDowell. 1924, Present Tendencies in Religious Thought, Albert C. Knudson. GEORGE R. GROSE, President DePauw University. PREFACE THESE lectures are partly historical and partly critical. They aim to give a general survey of the modern thought wérld in its relation to re- ligion and to show how Christianity has been and is adjusting itself to its new environment. The field is a broad one, and the treatment neces- sarily general. Chief attention is devoted to what may be called the crucial question of our day, the question of the truth of religion. Can Christianity, after renouncing its claim to an ob- / =~ jective and infallible authority, maintain its verity in our scientific age? In answering this ques- tion both friend and foe have appealed to ex- perience, reason, and utility as the ultimate tests of truth. The nature and cogency of these ap- peals form the main subject of inquiry in the present volume. No attempt at systematic com- pleteness has been made, but the more important tendencies in religious thought along the line in- dicated are expounded and discussed. I wish to express my thanks to President George R. Grose for the privilege of delivering these lectures on the Mendenhall Foundation. As here presented they differ considerably from the 13 14 PREFACE form in which they were delivered. They are about twice as long, and have for the most part the character of studies rather than addresses. My friends and colleagues, Dr. Edgar S. Brightman and Mr. Earl Marlatt, have kindly read the manuscript and given me the benefit of their highly valued judgment on many points having to do both with style and content. For this service I am deeply indebted to them and’ desire here to express my Ba and gratitude. Subsequent to their delivery on the Menten hall Foundation, these lectures, with President Grose’s kind permission, were also given before the faculty and students of Gammon Theological . Seminary; and it is my hope that in their printed ~ form they may serve a useful purpose among the friends of that important institution as well as among those of De Pauw University. The literature in the field I have covered is vast. From a number of representative works I have quoted briefly, and for permission to do so I wish to thank the various publishers. A detailed acknowledgment of my obligations in this respect will be found at the end of the book. ALBERT C. KNUDSON. CHART t Raet THE MODERN THOUGHT WORLD Ir is customary, in analyzing the modern thought world, to reduce its characteristic ele- ments to two outstanding and significant move- ments: science and democracy. The scientific movement is not peculiar to the modern age. It had its place in ancient Greece. Aristotle and many others emphasized the im- portance of the empirical method. But with them it led to no such extraordinary discoveries and inventions as it has in the modern world. It did not become a popular movement. It did not captivate the imagination of the people. It did not become a cult. To-day with many it is a religion. “My religion,” said Renan, “is now as ever the progress of reason; in other words, the progress of science.” Magic, religion, and sci- ence, according to Sir James Frazer, represent three successive stages in the development of the human spirit. As religion in the past displaced magic, so science to-day is displacing religion. More and more, we are told, men are actually, whatever may be their professions, placing their 15 | 16 PRESENT. TENDENCIES IN hope, not in God, but in science. It is the solid achievements of science rather than the unsub- stantial dreams of religion that now form the real ground of human confidence and the real stimulus to human endeavor. In any case it is the empirical method of natural science that is to-day the accepted standard by which all truth is to be tested. The age of metaphysics belongs to the past. Empirical science is now dominant. Its sway, whether we like it or not, is at present generally recognized in the field of theoretical knowledge. And there can be no doubt, as C. A. Ellwood says, that science has been “the main element disturbing the habits, standards, and beliefs of the past in the modern world.”! What science thus is to the theoretical reason of the modern man, that, it is said, is democracy to his practical reason. It is the norm and guid- ing star in the work of political and social re- construction. ‘The democratic movement, like the scientific, is not, it is true, wholly modern. It has its roots in the ancient past. But it has in modern times received such extraordinary accre- tions of strength, and has become to such a large extent a popular faith that it may properly be © regarded as characteristically modern. Like sci- ence democracy, too, has become a cult. Fifty to a hundred and fifty years ago it was ‘The Reconstruction of Religion, p. 11. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT =—_-7 ) chiefly political democracy that awakened the ardent hopes of the Western world. ‘To Maz- zini and his disciples,” says Bryce, “‘as to Jefferson and many another fifty years before, Democracy was a Religion, or the natural companion, of a religion, or a substitute for religion, from which effects on morals and life were hoped similar to those which the preachers of new creeds have so often seen with the eyes of faith.”2 Mazzini, for instance, said: “This yearning of the human mind toward an indefinite progress, this force that urges the generations. onward toward the future; this impulse of universal association; the banner of young Europe waving on every side; this varied, multiform, endless warfare every- where going on against tyranny; this cry of the nations arising from the dust to reclaim their rights, and call their rulers to account for the injustice and oppression of the ages; this crum- bling of ancient dynasties at the breath of the people; this anathema upon old creeds, this rest- less search after new; this youthful Europe _ springing from the old, like the moth from the chrysalis; this glowing life arising in the midst of death; this world in resurrection—is this not poetry?’ In such an utterance as this we mani- festly have all the glow of a religious faith. But powerful as this early faith in political democ- ‘Modern Democracies, ii, p. 533. 18 | PRESENT TENDENCIES IN racy was, it gradually lost its hold on the minds of men. As Hobhouse says, “the golden radiance of its morning hopes has long since in into the light of common day.” This does not mean, however, that the general idea of democracy has lost its power of appeal to the modern mind. “Democracy” is as much as ever a term to conjure with. To “make the world safe for democracy” was the battle cry of only a few years ago. But what is awakening popu- lar enthusiasm to-day is not political democracy; it is industrial or social democracy. Political democracy, it is claimed, has failed. It has not brought the nations of the world into more friendly relations with each other; it has not welded together the different strata of human society and created between them a mutual feel- ing of fellowship and good will; it has not satis- fied the yearnings of men for a better social order; it has not purified politics nor removed it from the sinister influences of the Money Power. Indeed, political democracy has become simply the tool of wealth. The capitalistic class still rules in the councils of state. And this, it is held, will necessarily continue to be the case until wealth itself is democratized. The hope of the world, therefore, lies in such a reconstruction of the industrial and social order as will put eco- nomic power as well as abstract political rights RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 19 into the hands of the people. Only in this way, we are told, can government become truly demo- cratic. Political democracy, if it is to be real, must be based on industrial democracy. _ The latter has, consequently, become the watchword of social reform and of socialism. To it the social hope is now pinning its faith; and this hope with multitudes has become a religion. It has displaced the political liberalism of fifty to a hundred and fifty years ago and is to-day the gospel of the proletariat. The democratic movement has thus undergone a marked change during the past fifty years; but faith in the essential principle of democracy still persists. For democracy, it is felt, is deeper than any particular expression of it. It is a spirit, an interest, an ideal. But what is this interest or ideal? Is it simple and definite? Or is it com- plex and variable? The latter would seem to be the case. At any rate the word ‘“‘democracy”’ has various meanings, and in the interest of clear thinking these should be distinguished. We have, to begin with, several different forms of democracy. In addition to political and indus- trial democracy we have religious democracy and democracy in personal and social relations. But these different forms are due simply to the dif- ferent fields in which the democratic principle is applied. They do not necessarily imply dif- 20 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ferent conceptions of the democratic principle it- self, though they naturally carry with them dif- ferent emphases. In democracy of a personal and social character stress is properly laid on the idea of “fraternity”; in religious and political democ- racy the emphasis by way of reaction against various forms of tyranny falls almost inevitably on the idea of “liberty”; and in industrial de- mocracy, concerned as it is with economic prob- lems, interest naturally gravitates toward the idea of “equality.” These different emphases, how- ever, are only incidental to the general idea of . democracy. It is with the latter that we are concerned. The term “democracy” is used in at least three different senses, and corresponding to these the democratic movement has three distinct aspects. The first may be termed the political or govern- mental, the second the ethical, and the third the dynamic. | It is in the first of these senses that the word “democracy” is commonly used, and the demo- cratic movement is commonly regarded as pri-. marily political. In this sense democracy means “the right of the majority to rule.” “What- ever else democracy may be,” says John Morley, “it means in our modern age government by pub- lic opinion—the public opinion of a majority armed with a political or social supremacy by RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 21 the electoral vote, from whatever social classes and strata that majority may be made up.’ In its ethical sense democracy means the sa- credness of the life of the individual. It means that every individual is to be treated as an end, not a means. It means, so far as social organiza- tion goes, that there should be an open road to talent, that is, an equal opportunity for all; and this in turn implies responsiveness on the part of those in authority to the just needs and desires of all. Or, as Dewey puts it, it means the resolve “that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribu- tion they make to the all-around growth of every member of society.” What I have termed the dynamic meaning of democracy is not so commonly recognized. Yet it is the basal and in a certain sense the most characteristic element in the modern democratic movement. I refer to the belief in social progress through man’s own initiative. G. P. Adams, in his able and suggestive work on Idealism and the Modern Age, puts the case thus: “Democracy as an idea and an attitude stands for man’s in- terest in mastering and molding his world rather than in participating in structures which are al- ready real” (p. 23). “The conscious conviction,” he says, “that the only social order fit for man to *Miscellanies (Fourth Series), p. 266. a 22 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN live in is one which he himself has made and can control—and which he can unmake if he so de- sires—this conviction is but democracy come to full consciousness of its meaning and its power” (p. 7). In ne with this is Mazzini’s definition of democracy as “the progress of all through all, under the leadership of the best and the wisest,” and also Morley’s statement that “what guides, in- spires, and sustains democracy is conviction of upward and onward progress in the destinies of mankind.’ These three meanings of democracy sustain a certain relation to each other, and they all repre- sent aspects of the modern democratic movement. But in its political and ethical sense democracy is not from the religious point of view characteris- tically modern. It does not stand opposed to tra- ditional Christian thought. Rather does it con- stitute a bond of union between the modern world and the ancient Christian world. The ultimate basis and the historic root of ethical democracy _ are to be found in the Christian conception of the direct and equal relationship of all men to God. In this sense Ludwig Stein is right in saying that “the Bible of the Old and New Testaments is and will continue to be the world’s most democratic book.” The political consequences of biblical “Miscellanies (Fourth Series), p. 2grf. "Die Soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie, p. 505. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 23 democracy were not, it is true, worked out in the ancient world. Conditions rendered that virtually impossible. But the modern movement toward democracy is, as C. A. Ellwood says, “the political counterpart” of Christianity. “With its em- phasis upon fraternity,” he adds, “and upon the equality and liberty which are necessary for fra- ! ternity, democracy is evidently the same move- ment in the social and political realm as Chris- tianity in the ethical and religious realm.” “The Protestant Reformation,” he further says, “pre- pared the way for the individual freedom of the modern world. The Methodist movement among English-speaking peoples again undoubtedly was a forerunner of nineteenth-century democracy in Britain and America.’’®. Democracy, therefore, in its common political and ethical meaning does not from the religious standpoint constitute a differentiating feature of the modern thought _ world. we The situation, however, is different with de- mocracy in its dynamic sense. Here we come upon a characteristic modern idea. The belief in social progress as a law of human life is of comparatively recent origin., A quite different view prevailed in antiquity fort ati thes the Middle Ages. The Christian tradition did not look for- ward to an indefinite period of progress for man- *The Reconstruction of Religion, pp. 70, 248, 76. ee 24 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN kind on this planet, and least of all did it con- template any such progress as du€ to man’s own initiative. The latter idea grew up in connection with and as a result of the development of mod- ern science, and is manifestly one of the outstand- ing as well as distinctive beliefs of our day. “The Siena of all modern ideas,” says R. B. Perry, “in its originality, in its widespread adoption and in its far-reaching importance is, I believe, the idea that man can make his own way through all the difficulties and dangers that beset him by means of applied science or technology.’” It is this idea that is the driving force back of the democratic movement and that constitutes what I call dynamic democracy. G. P. Adams goes so far as to identify “democracy” with this par- ticular interpretation of it; but the political and ethical associations of the term are so natural and inevitable that its unqualified use in the above dynamic sense is likely to lead to confusion. It seems better, therefore, to substitute for the word “democracy,” as used by Adams, its specific and essential meaning, which is that of belief in social progress through human effort. - It is this belief rather than democracy in the general sense of the term that constitutes the second great character- istic factor in the modern thought world, science being the first. ‘The Present Conflict of Ideals, p. 58. ” RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 25 But science and the belief in social progress are not the only great and distinctive elements in the modern “idea-system.” There is at least one other that must be added if we are to under- stand the age in which we live. This third fac- tor may be termed the socio-economic interest. As the name indicates, this interest is double: it is both social and economic. But it is also single in the sense that its two constituent elements in- volve each other. The effort, for instance, is be- ing made in our day to solve the social problem through economic means and the economic prob- lem through social means.. The two interests are thus fused into a single socio-economic interest. This interest, like the belief in social progress, stands related to the democratic movement, espe- cially in its more recent ‘industrial’ form. The modern age taken as a whole has, it is true, laid much stress on the rights of the individual, but _ during the past century its tendency has been strongly toward the social emphasis. The indi- vidual, it is held, cannot be redeemed apart from society; and the redemption alike of the indi- vidual and of society, it is contended, is impossible without the improvement of economic conditions. Interest, consequently, tends to center in political and economic measures. It is to them that the people are looking for relief, rather than to any form of moral or spiritual regeneration. The & 26 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN socio-economic interest is thus most distinctly a this-worldly interest, and so stands more or less _ opposed to the traditional Christian attitude. Science, the belief in progress, and the socio- economic interest—these, then, are the great out- standing characteristics of the modern thought world. Together they tend to form a unified system. The dynamic of the system is found in the belief in progress through human effort; the goal is determined by the socio-economic interest ; and the means of its attainment are furnished by science. This is the logical relation of the three factors when viewed as an organic whole. But actually and historically the scientific movement is and has been basal and primary. It is the achievements of science more than anything else that have given rise to the belief in social prog-~ ress and that have stimulated the modern eco- nomic interest. No doubt the economic interest and the belief in social progress have in turn con- tributed to the development of science. But as a characteristic modern movement science came first. It is science also that is theoretically most important and that has most profoundly affected traditional Christian belief. It is with it, therefore, that we must take our start in the study of the modern thought world from the religious point of view. Science is the center from which radiate) \ the great characteristic features of the modern RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 27 age. But science, it is to be borne in mind, is not simply a theoretical movement. It is a prac- tical attitude, a spiritual impulse, and as such 1s linked up with the belief in progress and with the socio-economic interest. These three forces con- stitute a kind of religion or substitute for re- ligion. What Christianity consequently confronts in the modern world is not simply certain intel- lectual divergences from its own doctrinal stand- point, but a more or less alien and hostile faith. This faith we must understand, if we are really to comprehend the task that faces the Christian Church to-day; and to understand it we need to study more in detail its component elements. We begin with science, the basal and central element. SCIENCE In the abstract there is no conflict between science and religion. Each has its own distinc- tive field. Science in its purity is strictly empir- ical. It is concerned simply with facts, with their classification and the laws that govern their appearance. The question of cause in the eff- cient or metaphysical sense of the term lies be- yond its domain. Science has nothing to do with the first cause or the final cause of things. The ultimate explanation of the world belongs to re- ligion and to philosophy. What religion is inter- ested in and asserts, is the dependence of the 28 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN world upon God and its adaptability to his pur- poses. It has no vital concern in any particular view concerning the history of the world and the history of man. To settle questions of this kind is the task of science. Its function is. to ascer- tain the order and sequence of phenomena in the space and time world. What religion, on the other hand, is concerned with is the power world, the world of efficient cause and purpose. So long as it is able to find back of the phenomenal order the power and purpose of God, it is content. Science may reconstruct the popular and tradi- tional notions relative to that order as it Wishes ; religion in its essential nature is unaffected by it. Between pure science and pure religion there - is, therefore, no conflict. One does not exclude the other, and neither necessarily implies the other. They sustain to each other a relation of complete neutrality. But while this is true in the ideal, the actual relation of modern science and religion to each other has been very different. Between the two there has been a long warfare.® This is due to the fact that neither has existed in its purity. Religion has come down to us with a large ad- mixture of extraneous material, scientific, histori- cal, and philosophical. Much of this extraneous “See Andrew D. White, 4 History of the Warfare of Science with Theology. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 29 material was at the beginning of the modern era so closely interwoven with the strands of genuine religious faith that together they seemed to form a necessary unity. To attempt to detach the re- ligious element from its traditional theology and its traditional intellectual associations seemed de- structive of the religious element itself. Hence religion has at times been misled into opposing modern science in its own field because of its divergences from the traditions of the past. On the other hand, science has seldom recognized its own limitations. It has constantly been tempted to take itself too seriously. It has regarded it- self as competent to pronounce upon questions that lie beyond its proper domain. The result is that much that has passed for science has really belonged to philosophy and theology, and has been anti-religious in its tendency. The so-called scientific philosophies have also usually been un- favorable to religion. There has thus been mutual aggression on the part both of religion and science. Science has invaded the realm of religion, and religion the realm of science. The consequence has been a long-drawn-out struggle between them. Fach side has had its victories and its defeats. Some issues between them have been settled, but complete peace has not yet been attained. The general tendency has been, as the struggle progressed, to establish a modus vivendi 30 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN by purging each side of its extraneous elements. Religion has been more and more divested of its traditional and obsolete science; and science has been gradually relieved of its unwarranted metaphysical “assumptions. The movement has thus been gradually in the direction of a mutual understanding. But in this process of adjustment Christian thought has undergone marked changes, and in order to be prepared to understand these changes we need to consider a little more fully the main points involved in the past struggle. In what particular respects, we consequently ask, has the scientific movement been actually or apparently hostile to historic Christianity? In answer to this question three different specifications may be made and briefly discussed. First, science has tended to eliminate the idea of God from human thought. It has been the breeder of materialistic and positivistic philos- ophies and so the ally of atheism and agnosticism. In this rdle it has, to be sure, transgressed its own limits and been untrue to its own distinctive nature. But that as an historical movement it has actually had these anti-religious effects, can hard- ly be questioned. For a considerable time natural science was interpreted or, rather, misinterpreted, in a materialistic sense. It did not itself give rise to materialism, Materialism is an ancient RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 31 type of thought. It is, as Lange says in begin- ning his famous History of Materialism, “as old as philosophy, but no older.’’ That is, material- ism is not an immediate datum of experience. It is as much a theoretical construction as is any philosophy. But it is a theory into which the human mind almost instinctively falls. For the mind goes directly to its sense objects. These are apparently the real things in experience, and they seem to exist in lumpish externality to all thought. Materiality, consequently, comes with many people to be the mark and test of reality. This was the case in early Greek thought. The first Greek philosophers were materialists. But they regarded matter as living; they were hylo- zoists. It was Democritus who in the form of atomism. first introduced a consistent and thor- oughgoing materialism. He did not originate the atomic theory, but it was he who first brought it to full development. “Only in opinion,” he said, “consists sweetness, bitterness, warmth, cold, color; in truth, there is nothing but atoms and empty space.”’® This theory was later given con- siderable currency by Lucretius. But on the whole it was the idealistic reaction under Soc- rates, Plato, and Aristotle that gave direction to later Greek thought; and with the triumph of Christianity this type of philosophy naturally be- "Quoted in Lange’s History of Materialism, i, p. 23. 32 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN came dominant, remaining such till the dawn of the modern era. With the rise of modern science we have a revival of materialism. The atomic theory of Democritus lent itself readily to the purposes of natural science, and hence the two seemed natu- rally leagued together. The scientists did not as a rule draw the full metaphysical implications of atomism, and hence cannot in strict accuracy be called materialists. They were rather dualists, acknowledging a spiritual reality alongside of the physical; practical considerations led them to take this position. But modern materialism has al- ways asserted its alliance with science. It regards itself as implicit in natural science. Materialism, it is claimed, is “a simple extension of science”; it is “the philosophical generalization of science’; it is “the scientific philosophy.” And if we accept the common scientific distinction between primary and secondary qualities as expressing respectively the self-subsisting world and the world of passing appearance, we practically, as Pringle-Pattison says, “adopt the fundamental presupposition of materialism.’’ The path from natural science to a materialistic philosophy is thus an easy one, and to many it seems the only logical path. Enrico Ferri, for instance, the distinguished Italian so- cialist, says: “It is not socialism that develops atheism. . . . The struggle for atheism is the RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 33 business of science.”!° His idea apparently, like that of many others, is that natural science is able to explain the world without appealing to a spir- itual principle of any kind, and hence is now pre- pared, as Comte said, to conduct God to the bor- der of the universe and there bow him out with thanks for past services. But easy and inevitable as materialistic atheism seems to many a mind trained in natural science, it has not been able to stand the test of modern criticism. Psychological analysis since the time of Berkeley and Hume has made it clear that the “things” of materialistic theory are not given in immediate experience; they are intellectual con- structs. Logic with its sharper definition of “matter” and “spirit” has shown that there is an impassable gulf between these two kinds of being, and that the psychical cannot be deduced from the physical. Epistemology has pointed out the fact that a necessitarian system, such as materialism, overthrows the distinction between truth and error and involves reason in complete collapse. Ethics has made it evident that such a system also undermines the logical basis of responsibility and thus destroys morality altogether. Meta- physics, furthermore, has shown that material or impersonal reality cannot be construed in thought without inner contradiction. It is only on the “Socialism and Modern Science, pp. 65f. 34 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN personal plane that the change and identity and the unity and plurality involved in the concep- tion of reality can be brought into harmony with each other. | | eke: - These different lines of criticism. have grad- ually had their effect on thoughtful people, and the result is that at least in professional philo- sophical circles materialism has fallen into dis- repute. If men still hold essentially the material-_ istic position, they usually camouflage it by re- pudiating the term “materialism” and calling their system “‘monism’” or “naturalism” or “ag- nosticism.” But under whatever name it may be known, materialism has undergone a marked de- cline in favor during the past fifty years. Men have gradually come to see that Comte was right when he said that materialists or atheists are “the most illogical of theologists, because they occupy themselves with theological problems, and yet reject the only appropriate method of han- dling them.”** As a matter of fact, “to think clearly about materialism is,” as Lange says, “to refute it.” “It is,’ says Eucken, “precisely the sharper modern definition of the conception of body and soul,,a precision vital to exact science, which has made materialism impossible as a cos- mic philosophy.” Bowne is, then, but stating a simple fact when he characterizes materialism or “A General View of Positivism, p. 50. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT A AS atheism as “philosophical illiteracy.” It is only among the uncritical that it still has a certain vogue. Natural science, consequently, is not so com- monly interpreted i in.a materialistic sense as was “once the case. But this does not mean that it has ceased to be a disturber of our religious peace. The tendency now is to interpret science in a positivistic sense, and this is hardly less inimical to religion than materialism and atheism. For- mally the positivistic interpretation of science marks a retreat on the part of anti-religious thinkers. It is a virtual confession on their part that in the field of metaphysics they have met de- feat. The truth is that metaphysics must either be idealistic and personalistic or cease to be a subject of scholarly investigation. And this is practically admitted by positivism. For the anti- religious thinker, therefore, to become a positivist is to surrender his first-line trenches. It means that he no longer has a metaphysic to oppose to that of religion. But this does not mean that he has relented in his opposition to religion, nor does it mean that he regards the second-line trenches to which he has withdrawn as any less secure or as any less advantageous for purposes of attack. Rather does he insist that it was only in ignor- ance that the first-line trenches were ever con- structed. They properly belong to no-man’s land. 36 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN Metaphysics is not a region in which the human intellect can move safely about; indeed, it is not a region that the human intellect can even pene- trate. ‘Whether there is such a thing as meta- physical reality at all, it is claimed, is very doubt- ful. Substance and cause, as commonly under- stood, are misleading categories. They have no place in science. There is no real existence cor- responding to them. And even if there is, it is absolutely unknowable. So theism is as unten- able as materialism. What the positivistic inter- pretation of science does, therefore, is simply to change the line of attack upon religion. It is not now claimed that materialism is a more satisfac- tory metaphysics than theism. What is claimed is that both theism and materialism represent completely mistaken efforts of the human intel- lect. Knowledge is limited to the phenomenal world; it is exhausted in empirical science. Sci- ence, then, does not necessarily favor materialism as over against theism. It, rather, excludes both. And this is as fatal to religion as is materialism itself; it stamps all religion as illusion. For re- ligion has no second-line trenches to which it can retreat. It must maintain its belief in a meta- physical reality and a knowable metaphysical reality or surrender its own existence. A _ re- ligion without God and a knowable God is no religion. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 37 It is, of course, possible to combine philosoph- ical skepticism with religious faith and in this way apparently to effect a reconciliation between positivistic science and religion. But this at best is but a halfway measure, and as a matter of fact is true neither to the distinctive nature of religion nor to that of positivism. Strict positivism denies all knowledge of ultimate reality from whatever source it may come; and religion just as distinctly implies such knowledge. The fact that religion ascribes its knowledge of God to “revelation” or “faith” or some mystical expe- rience rather than to philosophical or scientific speculation does not in the least degree affect its fundamental claim to knowledge. It has recently been argued that if all religion requires 1s ig- norance, there is no danger of its being put out of business by science.'? But religion cannot live on ignorance. However distrustful religion may at times have been of human reason, it has never weakened in the confidence with which it has asserted the reality of God. Consistent posi- tivism and true religion thus stand fundamentally opposed to each other. But positivism has not, as a rule, taken the | form of a self-consistent system; it has, rather, represented a philosophical tendency. This ten- *See R. B. Perry, The Present Conflict of Ideals, DP. 57: 38 PRESENT. TENDENCIESGEN _ dency received its first clear modern expression in the sensationalistic idealism of David Hume. Since his time it has manifested itself in at least six other forms. We may distinguish the Posi- tivism of Auguste Comte, the Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer, Neo-Kantianism as represented by Albert Lange and the Marburg School, Prag- matism both of the James-Schiller and Dewey types, Empirio-criticism or the Philosophy of Pure Experience as expounded by Avenarius and Mach, and Neo-realism in both its English and American casts. Of these seven positivistic move- ments only two are thoroughgoing in their posi- tivism, and exclude altogether the religious idea of God. These are the Positivism of Comte and the Empirio-criticism of Avenarius and Mach. The other movements to some degree qualify their positivism, and hence are less dogmatic in their attitude toward religion. Pragmatism of the James-Schiller type has even been used as an apologetic for traditional religious faith; and Neo-Kantianism has not been altogether un- friendly to religion in its historical form. Some of the new realists leave a place for a finite God, and Spencer gave us a metaphysical Deity in the Unknowable. David Hume held to what has been termed an “attenuated theism.” He thought “that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 39 intelligence” ; but this conclusion, he said, “affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance.’ Such a position is, of course, equivalent to practical atheism; and at times Hume was ready to commit all books on divinity and metaphysics to the flames on the ground that they contained “noth- ing but sophistry and illusion.” In this respect he represents the general as well as the logical tendency of the positivistic philosophies. What- ever concessions some of these philosophies may have made to religious faith, they incline as a. whole toward complete agnosticism and the theory of illusionism. Religion from their standpoint may be a useful and even a necessary factor in human life, but it is an illusion nevertheless. There is for them no knowable reality beyond that which is revealed in empirical science. This is the form which anti-religious philosophy com- monly takes to-day; and in some respects it is more insidious and more difficult to meet than the materialistic science of three quarters of a cen- tury ago. In dealing with the positivistic interpretation of science three points have been emphasized by _ idealistic critics. First, it has been pointed out that positivism is not science but an assertion about science. To limit knowledge to science is to transcend sci- 40 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ence; and to base such a limitation of knowledge upon science is as much a dogmatic misinterpreta- tion of science as is materialism. In the second place, it has been shown that positivism isa reaction against a mistaken con- ception of metaphysics and that to a large extent it derives its strength from this misconception. It is supposed by many that metaphysics implies the existence of a back-lying substance, a core of being, distinct from the qualities and phenom- ena that constitute the world of our experience. This metaphysical reality is supposed to have a thing-like existence; indeed, it is spoken of as “the thing-in-itself.” And metaphysics, it is thought, is concerned solely with this hidden essence of things. But inquiry of this kind is bootless. Not only has history proved it such, but the most searching analysis of the structure of the human reason has shown that the thing-in- itself lies beyond the range of human knowledge. SO positivism rejects metaphysics altogether, and in doing so apparently falls in line with common sense. There is a popular gibe to the effect that “the metaphysician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat that isn’t there’; and even a distinguished philosopher has humorously said that metaphysics is “the systematic misuse of a terminology expressly invented for that pur- pose.” But as a matter of fact the idea of the RELIGIOUS THOUGHT Al thing-in-itself is the product of crude realism. Critical metaphysics finds no place for it. It sees in it simply “a phantom created by a misguided logic,” and the resulting agnosticism it attributes to a “perfectly gratuitous mystification.” Posi- tivism, then, is right in rejecting what some one has called “the great German fog-generator, the _thing-in-itself”’; but it is totally mistaken in sup- posing that this idea is essential to metaphysics and that the only alternative to its acceptance is the positivistic position. True metaphysics is concerned simply with the causal ground and connection of things. It recognizes no back-lying reality trying to peer through the masking phe- nomena of experience. This notion is a pure fiction, a mere shadow of the mind’s own throw- ing. But there is nevertheless an unpicturable bond of union between things; and the function of metaphysics is to lay bare this bond, to reduce the apparently disconnected facts of experience to a coherent system, and thus to disclose the causal ground of the whole. This is a line of inquiry distinct from and transcending the field of the special sciences. A third criticism passed on positivism is that it fails to provide for that ground and connection of things which the human mind demands. This demand is not confined to metaphysical spectla- tion; it is implicit in all science. Science assumes 42 PRESENT (LENDENGIPS is a real connection between things; and to deny this connection, to rule out the ideas of cause and substance, is to undermine science itself. Science need not concern itself with the nature of this causal bond; that problem belongs to meta- physics. But that there is such a causal bond is implicit in all scientific thinking. Wauthout it we would have a groundless becoming, existence would be reduced to a Heraclitic flow; and this is a conception in which the human mind cannot rest. “Causal inquiry,’ as Bowne says, “though driven out with a fork, has always come running back and always will.’*3 Nature is too strong for the positivist. Positivism, indeed, is only a form of intellectual asceticism or mortification resorted to now and then by the human spirit as a kind of penitence for the occasional over- indulgence of its cognitive impulse. As a re- action, for instance, against absolute idealism it is quite intelligible; but it constitutes no per- manent resting place for the human spirit. It is at best a half-way house, and must even- tually give way again to metaphysics. For the present, however, it represents the dominant secu- lar mood, and its apparent alliance with science gives to it great influence and prestige. It is positivistic science that is to-day the great intel- lectual foe of religion. Agnosticism and atheism “Personalism, Preface, p. vii, RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 43 follow in its train. For this science itself is not directly responsible, but that the modern scien- tific movement has encouraged the rise of the positivistic type of thought is manifest. The second respect in which modern science has come into conflict with religion is in tending to dethrone man from that central place in the universe which he had previously been supposed to occupy. The traditional Christian view of the world was both geocentric and anthropocentric. The earth was regarded not only as the center and main part of the universe but as having its end and explanation in man. “Just as man,” said Peter Lombard, “is made for the sake of God—that is, that he may serve him—so the universe is made for the sake of man—that is, that it may serve him; therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve and be served.” The geocentric and anthropocentric standpoint was thus wrought in- to the very structure of Christian thought. In- deed, it formed the background of the whole divine drama of creation and redemption. It came, then, as a rude shock to Christian faith, when at the very beginning of the modern era science promulgated what is known as the Coper- nican astronomy. The very foundations of Christian theology seemed to be undermined by the new theory. For if the earth is not the center 44 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN of the universe but simply a comparatively small body revolving around the sun, and if there are countless other solar systems as large as ours. what reasonable ground can there be for believ- ing that man occupies any such central place in the divine thought and plan as is implied in the Christian system? Would it not seem that on this theory man as well as the earth is reduced to utter instgnificance? At the very outset there was thus a sharp clash between modern science and religion. The two seemed to be at complete variance in their esti- mate of man. And the sense of disparity between them on this point has not yet completely van- ished. But the initial tension created by the pro- mulgation of the Copernican astronomy gradu- ally relaxed. Christian theology slowly adjusted itself to the new theory. It did so by stressing the fact that it is not mere bulk or size that con- stitutes worth. From the spatial point of view man may be an altogether insignificant being, but from the standpoint of value the situation is en- tirely different. No matter what may be said in the Copernican astronomy about the immensi- ties of space, “in the world there is nothing great but man, and in man there is nothing great but mind.” Man’s possession of mind, of intelli- gence, sets him on high above those “two great intimidating phantoms’’—space and time—and RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 45 restores to him again that primacy which he had enjoyed in earlier times. , But hardly had this line of thought brought - about a fairly comfortable modus vivendi between modern science and religion, when the Christian estimate of man received another rude shock. This time it came from the field of biology. The Darwinian theory of man’s descent seemed at first to destroy that very claim to spiritual pre- eminence and unique worth which had made pos- sible a reconciliation between Christian faith and the Copernican astronomy. For man, we were now told, is genealogically related to the lower animals. There is no such gulf separating the human from the animal world as was formerly supposed. The magic word “evolution” has bound them together. Man now comes into the world trailing, not clouds of glory, but a brute ancestry. There is in him no divine spark that assures to him a unique destiny. His entire ~ nature is of the earth earthy. This “second degradation” that man has suf- fered at the hands of modern science seemed at the outset even more serious than the first, and another clash between faith and science resulted. At first Christian apologists thought it their duty to dispute the new scientific theory, and some still operate on that basis. But on the whole wiser counsels have prevailed. Philosophie criti- 46 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN cism has shown that it is not the scientific doc- trine of evolution that faith has to fear but only a materialistic interpretation of it. Evolution may be regarded as either causal or modal. In the former sense it is simply a materialistic philos- ophy, and as such is exposed to all those criti- cisms which have justly brought that type of thought into disrepute. In the latter sense it is merely a mode or law of operation, and as such is perfectly consistent with a theistic and Christian view of the world. Evolution as such creates nothing. The question as to the origin and des- tiny of man’s soul is, therefore, quite independent of the question as to his pedigree. Souls in any case are not actually transmitted from parents to children. If real at all, they owe their origin to the divine power that maintains the present world order; they come from God who is their home. It is then a matter of indifference whether the Darwinian theory of man’s descent is correct or not. There is in the theory nothing that neces- sarily conflicts with the Christian faith. Such is the line of thought adopted by our current apolo- getics, and that it is logically sound can hardly be gainsaid. But, on the other hand, it can hardly be denied that the modern scientific atmosphere is not altogether favorable to the religious and Christian estimate of man. “For a hundred and fifty years past,” as William James says, “the RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, | © 47 progress of science has seemed to mean the en- largement of the material universe and the dimi- nution of man’s importance. The result is what one may call the growth of naturalistic and posi- tivistic feeling. . . . Ideals appear as inert by- products of physiology.”'4 So, whatever logic may say, the Christian faith in the unique dignity and immortal destiny of man, though able to maintain itself in the modern thought world, is nevertheless forced to struggle against adverse — conditions. The third point of conflict between modern science and religion is found in the idea of the reign of law. By its stress on this idea science has tended to discredit the biblical miracles and to destroy faith in Providence and in answers to prayer. There was, of course, in the ancient and Christian world some notion of the uni- formity of nature. But people of that day had no conception of a fixed system of natural law. Miracles were regarded as not uncommon events ; at least they created no problem for thought. Even the greatest of the church Fathers, such as Origen and Augustine, credited the most fan- tastic stories of magical and demonic agency in the world. But all this was changed with the advent of modern natural science. Law and necessity now became supreme. Nature was “Pragmatism, p. 16. 45 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN erected into a vast mechanical system operating by virtue of forces resident within itself. These forces were regarded as absolutely fixed and de- termined by law. They moved with unerring precision, and left no place for miracles and answers to prayer. If such events actually oc- curred, they were due to violations of natural law, to direct divine interpositions. And with the progress of science such interpositions were less and less needed to explain the known facts of life. Hence there was an inevitable tendency to discredit all reports of miracles, whether bibli- cal or extrabiblical, and to see in nature a fixed order with which no will can interfere. This rigid and dogmatic view of nature is es- sentially materialistic, and so has gradually succumbed to the criticisms that have under- mined materialism itself. But while the neces- sitarian and dogmatic element is less prominent in the current scientific view of nature, and while less stress is laid on the rationality and systematic totality of the physical universe than heretofore, the belief in the reign of law is as firmly estab- lished as ever. Law is not regarded as a neces- sity of the constitution of things in the way it was. Under the influence of the positivistic ten- dency of recent times nature has lost something of its rigidity. Itthas in the thought of our day become more plastic. It is viewed as to some RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 49 extent a living and growing thing. New ele- ments and new departures are not necessarily ex- cluded from it. This holds true even of the view held by naturalistic thinkers, and fits in, of course, harmoniously with the current theistic conception of the divine immanence. God does not need to change the course of nature in order to answer prayer. Nature is no longer regarded as a self-running mechanism. God can intro- duce new factors into it and work out his own purposes through it without interfering with the essential uniformity of its laws. Miracles, too, from this point of view cease to be interposi- tions from without. They represent simply the unusual in the divine procedure. The natural is the familiar, and the miraculous the unfamiliar. One is as dependent on the divine causality as the other. There is, then, nothing impossible or ir- rational in the idea of miracle. Even the posi- tivist would admit this. The reign of law, therefore, contains no neces- sary obstacle to faith. Rather has it become one of the great evidences of the intelligence of the world ground. Order is the natural and neces- sary form under which the divine reason ex- presses itself. So generally has this idea come to be accepted that it is possible for one of our most distinguished Christian thinkers to say that “the undivineness of the natural and the un- 50 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN naturalness of the divine is the great heresy of popular thought respecting religion.’® But while the mechanical view of nature has thus been weakened, and while the abstract possi- bility of miracle is more widely conceded than was the case a generation ago, the question still remains open as to whether miracles actually do occur or ever did occur. And under the pressure of scientific teaching the manifest tendency in re- ligious thought is to lay less stress than heretofore on the fact of miracle. Whether miracles occur in our time or not, has clearly no vital relation to our religious faith. If God is the ever-present cause of the existing world order, that is all we need. The only respect in which the question of miracles has any serious significance for us is in its bearing on the historicity of the Gospels. And here the tendency is to detach the essential truth of Christianity from all necessary de- pendence upon the gospel miracles. Indeed, many Christian thinkers reject altogether the miraculous element in Scripture. They may ad- mit that Jesus in a marvelous way healed the sick, but these acts they do not regard as strictly miraculous. The real miracles—the so-called nature-miracles—such as the raising of the dead, the walking on the water, and the feeding of the five thousand, they regard as mythical or “B. P. Bowne, The Immanence of God, Preface. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT Pe legendary. Now,'this tendency is manifestly hav- ing a serious effect on traditional Christian be- lief; and the full consequences of it have not yet been wrought out. Our conception of the divin- ity and authority of Christ will necessarily be profoundly affected by it. It is, then, evident that the modern scientific movement has had a very important bearing on religious faith. It has encouraged the rise of materialistic and positivistic philosophies which by their very nature have sought to eliminate the idea of God; it has by its astronomical and bio- logical theories tended to dethrone man from that central place of dignity and worth ascribed to him by the Christian faith; and by its stress on the reign of law it has in no small measure tended to destroy the credibility of scriptural history. These are in the main the consequences of science in its theoretical aspect. But science has also its practical character. It is a faith as well as a theory. And as a faith it manifests it- self, as we have seen, in the belief in social progress and in the dominant socio-economic in- terest of our day. We pass, therefore, to a con- sideration of these other factors in our modern thought world. THE BELIEF IN SOCIAL PROGRESS The belief in social progress stands in a double 52 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ' relation to science, and this double relation rep- resents two different conceptions of progress. The first of these conceptions is naturalistic. According to it social progress is a law of nature, and as such is simply a specification under the more general law of cosmic and biological evo- lution. Evolution is one of the great ideas of modern times. Correctly understood, it has to do only with the phenomenal order. It is purely descriptive in nature. But, like other scientific laws, it has been interpreted causally as a neces- sity inherent in the constitution of things. Ac- cording to this interpretation, development be- longs to the very structure of reality, and social progress as a part of the general evolutionary movement is unavoidable. It has about it all the certainty and inevitableness of a scientific law. Herbert Spencer, for instance, says: “Progress is not an accident but a necessity. What we call evil and immorality must disappear. It is cer- tain that man must become perfect.’ Again he says: ‘“‘The ultimate development of the ideal man is certain—as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for in- stance, that all men will die.” And J. B. Bury declares that “the process must be the necessary outcome of the psychical and social nature of man; it must not be at the mercy of any external will; otherwise there would be no guarantee of RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 53 its continuance and its issue, and the idea of Progress would lapse into the idea of Provi- dence.’’*® But this idea of progress as a certainty and a necessity is, as John Morley says, a “super- stition—the most splendid and animated supersti- tion, if we will, yet a superstition after all.” “It often deepens,” he adds, “into a kind of fatalism, radiant, confident, and infinitely hopeful, yet fatal- ism still, and, like fatalism in all its forms, fraught with inevitable peril, first to the effective sense of individual responsibilty, and then to the successful working of principles and institutions of which that responsibility is the vital sap.’??7 There is then no warrant for the view that social progress is an objective law, a scientific certainty. This conception of progress is a conclusion drawn from a naturalistic and necessitarian philosophy, and would, if generally accepted, destroy the very conditions of progress. Yet for a century and a half past it has been current and has exercised a wide influence. It has been regarded as a sub- stitute both for the doctrine of providence and the hope of a future life) The other conception of progress may be desig- nated as ethical. According to it social progress is a conquest, not a bequest; it is a task, not a *The Idea of Progress, p. 5. "Miscellanies (Fourth Series), p. 293. See also A. J. Todd, Theories of Social Progress, p. 105. 54 PRESENT TENDENCIES *IN gift; it is contingent, not necessary. What guar- antees it is not the truth but the utility of science. Science does not reveal progress as a law of nature; it furnishes the means by which it may be achieved. The ethical conception of progress thus differs from the naturalistic in that it is based on the practical rather than the theoretical side of modern science. It is linked with prag- matism, not with dogmatic necessitarianism. But it is not on that account held with any less con- fidence and enthusiasm. A. J. Balfour is no doubt right in saying that progressive civilization “fs a tender habit, difficult to propagate, not diffi- cult to destroy, that refuses to flourish except in a soil which is not to be fouhfd everywhere, nor at all times, nor even, so far as we can see, neces- sarily to be found at all.’1® But difficult as it may be to achieve, there is the utmost confidence that modern science has placed indefinite social progress within our grasp. This confidence has been, as Morley says, “the mainspring of Liber- alism in all its schools and branches,” and is, as Bury says, “the animating and controlling idea of Western civilization.” “That the control of nature,” says, R. B. Perry, “through the advance- ment of knowledge is the instrument of progress and the chief ground of hope, is the axiom of modern civilization. ... The good is to be won “Essays and Addresses, p. 244. reat i ht ie RELIGIOUS THOUGHT ee by the race and for the race; it lies in the future, and can result only from prolonged and collective endeavor; and the power to achieve it lies in the progressive knowledge and control of nature.” The result is that “man now greets the future with a new and unbounded hopefulness. Indeed, this faith in the power of life to establish and magnify itself through the progressive mastery of its environment, is the most significant religious idea of modern times.’’?” Such is the nature and temper of the modern belief in social progress. The belief itself 1n its ethical form does not contain anything that is necessarily at variance with the fundamental doc- trines of historic Christianity. The gradual improvement of the external conditions of life through science and human initiative is not neces- sarily inconsistent with the belief in providence, nor is the expectation that a terrestrial millen- nium will ultimately be established in this way, necessarily out of harmony with the belief in a life to come. Doctrinally the theological and the modern social standpoints can be adjusted to each other; the idea of the divine immanence makes this possible. But while this is true, the tone and temper of the two standpoints is manifestly quite different. The current belief in social progress is largely secular in character, and stresses the *Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 4f., 47. 56 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN human factor to the neglect, if not the exclusion, of the divine. Its interest thus moves in a dif- ferent groove from the distinctively religious, and, insofar as it tends to regard itself as self- sufficient, it encourages human pride and self- satisfaction. It also emphasizes external and this-worldly considerations, and so comes into conflict with the inwardness of Christianity and its stress on the eternal and the ideal. Then, too, the modern outlook into the future is quite different from that of historical Chris- tianity. In order properly to appreciate this dif- ference it may be well to direct attention to the fact that as regards the future there have been three different and successive world-views. First, there was the ancient belief in a series of world-cycles. According to this belief the universe passes through one cycle after another. Each cycle is an exact repetition of those that have preceded. There is, therefore, no progress, no development. “That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is nothing new under the sun’ (Eccles. 1. 9). This was the prevailing view in the ancient heathen world, and it was by way of contrast with it that the apocalyptic hope of the Jews arose. According to this hope the present cycle would come to an end, would come to an end sooner RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 37 than the heathen expected, but when it came to an end, there would not be another cycle similar to it. Instead there would be a mighty divine interven- tion. An altogether new world-order would be established. ‘“‘Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa. 65. 17). This outlook formed the intellectual background of both the Old and New Testaments, and by way of contrast with the belief in a series of world-cycles represented a distinct advance. It was optimistic, it asserted the moral government of the world, it predicted the final triumph of the right. But while this is true, it remained essen- tially pessimistic with reference to the present world-order. It did not look forward to the gradual improvement of existing social condi- tions. At first the end was regarded as too immi- nent to leave time for such improvement, and after the belief in the imminence of Christ’s re- turn was generally given up, conditions did not favor the rise of the social hope. The earlier pes- simistic view consequently continued. Not until modern times did the third world-view, the be- lief in social progress, arise. This view is now dominant. People generally to-day look forward to an indefinite period of de- velopment for mankind on earth. In this out- look there is, as has already been pointed out, 538 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN nothing that contradicts any fundamental Chris- tian doctrine, but there is in it a rather sharp divergence from the traditional Christian escha- tology. And some people see here a radical difference of standpoint. Franz Overbeck, for instance, declares that “the contradiction be- tween the old Christian eschatology and the present attitude toward the future is fundamen- tal and probably the ultimate cause of the fact that the present is at complete variance with Christianity.”*° This statement is mani- festly too strong. The modern world and Christianity are not at complete variance with each other. The old Christian eschatology, at least so far as it has to do with the apocalyptic hope, is not to be identified with the Christian faith. The Christian faith in its essential nature is independent of it. Hence it is quite possible to adjust Christianity to the modern social hope. Indeed, on the part of scholars the adjustment has been to a large degree effected. But while | this is true, there is an undeniable disparity be- tween the New-Testament outlook into the future and that of to-day. To say with Schweitzer that because of his apocalyptic viewpoint the historical Jesus is “to our time a stranger and an enigma,” is, of course, an extravagance. But that there is a real difficulty for faith at this point is evident | *Christentum und Kultur, p. 66. ee ee ee RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 59 to all. Historic Christianity and the modern be- lief in social progress are not altogether har- monious with each other. There is still more or less of conscious tension between them, and in the process of adjusting the one to the other both Christian belief and the Christian life are under- going significant modifications. What these modifications are will come up for discussion in a later chapter. THE Socro-EcoNOMIC INTEREST We now pass to a consideration of the third distinctive factor in the modern thought world, the socio-economic interest. This interest in its characteristic modern form arose somewhat later than the belief in progress. The immediate cause of its rise is to be found in two revolu-— tions, namely, the industrial revolution in Eng- land and the contemporaneous political and in- tellectual revolution in France. The latter stimulated social interest in several different ways. First, it set before the world a new political and social ideal, embodied in the famous watchword, “Liberty, Equality, Frater- nity.’ Secondly, the great changes wrought by the French Revolution impressed men with the plasticity of society. Society is not an external fatality to which men must submit, as had pre- viously been supposed; it is something that can 60 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN be shaped and reshaped by human volition. In the third place, the terrible destruction occasioned by the Revolution awakened in men the feeling that society must be studied and its laws mastered so that in the future it will be possible to avoid a repetition of such a catastrophe. The English industrial revolution, on the other hand, brought about by the introduction of machinery, resulted in an enormous increase in production. This naturally led men to place a new emphasis on the economic factor in human life, and at the same time encouraged the hope that a new age of ease and comfort was about to be ushered in through man’s inventive genius. But this hope soon received a rude shock. The factory system gave rise to great evils. The workmen found themselves in a new bondage. They had less economic security and less oppor- tunity for self-expression than even serfs had been accustomed to. Often they were treated as mere tools, to be cast aside whenever convenience or caprice might so dictate; and the wealth, which they were producing, they shared in only meager- ly. The inevitable result was a growing con- viction that there was something wrong with the existing economic and social order. Political liberty was seen to be of little value without a more equitable distribution of the products of in- dustry. Interest thus began to center in economic RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 61 conditions. Economic ills came to be regarded as fundamental in human society; if they were removed, most of the other social ills would vanish also. And that these socio-economic evils can be removed has gradually become the faith of multitudes. The existing economic system, they believe, has nothing final about it. Men made it, and what they have made they can un- make. So to-day to an unprecedented degree men are devoting their attention to social and economic problems. This does not mean that in earlier times—in antiquity, for instance—there was no “social” or “economic” interest. Economic matters have al- ways to some extent engaged the attention of men. The very conditions of human existence make this necessary. But among the ancients the economic sphere was not valued in principle as it is with us. Wealth was not regarded as a necessary condition of civilization; no special im- portance was attributed to it in the cultural life of men, nor was it looked upon as a determining factor in human history. To-day, however, it occupies a significant and worthy place in the life and thought of men. Poverty is no longer idealized, the value of the acquisitive instinct is generally recognized, and the importance of pro- ductive labor is emphasized. The economic in- terest has thus received a recognition in modern 62 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN times that it did not have in antiquity. And the same is also true of the “social’’ interest. The ancients were, of course, aware of the social aspects of htman life. They knew that men live in necessary relations with each other. But they viewed this fact chiefly from the ethical stand- point. They regarded it as man’s duty to be so- cial; they did not fully realize that he by nature is such. It is the latter idea that is character- istic of our day. “If there is one truth,” says W. H. Sheldon, “which may be called peculiarly modern, it is the truth that man is a socius.”21 The social factor is constitutive in human life. Man would not be man without it. It is in this sense that society may be said to be a modern dis- covery. It is now recognized, as it was not here- tofore, that man is essentially a social being, that his life is largely determined by this fact, and that the proper organization of society is, therefore, a matter of paramount importance. The social and economic interests, which have thus been developed in a unique way in modern times, do not necessarily imply each other. The economic interest might exist without the social, and often does; and the social interest might exist without special stress on the economic. That the two have been to such a large extent com- bined in our day is more or less of an accident, “Strife of Systems and Productive Duality, p. 16. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT - 63 due to the peculiar conditions created by the French Revolution, on the one hand, and the in- dustrial revolution on the other. Then, too, the modern capitalistic system both by its stress on profits and by the social evils incident thereto has tended to keep the two interests together. These interests are at present pervasive. Vir- tually every class of society is affected one way or the other by them. But they have received their most highly specialized expression in two movements, namely, socialism and the science of sociology. The latter, founded by Auguste Comte, is still in a more or less amorphous state. It has no established doctrines. But its most typical and influential representatives tend to make society in a certain sense the supreme reality. It is soci- ety, according to their theory, that creates the categories of, thought; it is society that imposes on men moral obligations; it is society that gen- erates those ideals or eternal values that con- stitute the essence of religion. Religion, moral- ity, and reason itself are inexplicable apart from society. It is within society and only within it that they find their meaning and explanation.. Everything, according to this sociological theory, is thus subordinated to the social concept. The individual as such, his reason, his conscience, his religious faith have no independent worth or sig- 64 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN nificance. And since society is at best a tem- poral being, all individuals with their hopes and their ideals will eventually sink into nothingness. Sociological speculation thus ends in irreligion, in atheism, or agnosticism. Socialism in its dominant form, as represented by Karl Marx, claims to be “scientific”; but as a matter fact it is primarly an organized political and economic movement. It is a faith, a pro- gram, a dogma, and is more closely akin to re- ligion than to science. It agrees in a general way with sociology in the dominant influence assigned to society.2?_ But it emphasizes, as general soci- ology does not, the theory of class-struggle. For Marx and Engels this theory was “the master key of human history.”?3 ‘The whole history of mankind,” said Engels, “has been a history of class-struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes,” and “the history of these class-struggles forms a series of evolution in which nowadays a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class cannot attain its emancipation without, at the same “Marx, for instance, says, “It is not the conscious- ness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their con- sciousness.” “See J. E. Le Rossignol, What is Socialism? pp. 182ff. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 6s time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class dis- tinctions, and class-struggles.’’?4 This theory, it is manifest, is not an induction based on an ob- jective study of historical facts; it is simply an attempt to justify and promote the expected pro- letarian revolution. It is not, then, a sociological theory in the strict scientific sense of the term; it is, rather, a preamble to a political platform. The same is also to be said of the materialistic Or economic interpretation of history which is basal in the Marxian system. Of this doctrine Enrico Ferri says that it “is truly the most scien- tific and the most prolific sociological theory that has ever been discovered by the genius of man. ... Just as psychology is an effect of phys- iology, so the moral phenomena are effects of economic facts... . This is the sublime concep- tion, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian the- ory, which fears no criticism, resting, as it does, on the best-established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.’”?5 The fact, however, is that this theory involves a gross exaggeration of the importance of the economic factor in human history. To make morality and religion mere by-products of the struggle for class supremacy, a struggle that is fundamentally “Preface to Communist Manifesto, p. 8. *Socialism and Modern Science, pp. 1636. 66 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN economic in character, is to belie the manifest facts of life. Such a theory has no place in sci- entific sociology. It is simply a partisan creed designed to release the proletariat from all re- straints of conscience and religion in their struggle to achieve their political and economic ends. But whatever may have been the primary motive of the theory and however inadequate may be its scientific basis, it is orthodox socialist doc- trine; and as such it is intimately connected with an aggressive political and economic propaganda. This fact gives to it a significance that it might not otherwise have. The theory is, of course, based on a materialistic philosophy, and implies that all religion is an illusion. “Religion,” says Marx, “‘is the striving of the people for an imag- inary 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.’’*® Socialism, it is no doubt true, is not neces- sarily tied up to the materialism of Marx, and sociology likewise has no necessary connection with the positivism of Comte. The theories held by these men and their followers relative to the dominant influence of society and the economic factor in human life are extreme. Socialists and “Quoted by August Bebel, Woman*and Socialism, pp. 4371. RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 67 sociologists as a whole by no means accept them. But in a more moderate form they are widely held. They are not confined to any group or groups of people, but represent the common thought of our day. That the life of the indi- vidual is largely determined by his social environ- ment has become almost axiomatic; and so al- so is the idea that economic considerations are usually the most powerful factors in determining the conduct of nations, of social groups, and of individuals. The result is that the appeal of re- ligion to the individual does not carry the weight that it once did. It is the group idea that is now attractng the attention of men. We talk about “classes” and “forces” and “‘movements,” but what becomes of the individual, his worth, and his destiny are to a large extent left out of account. And that this means a weakening and impover- ishment of the religious life is painfully evident to every one who has been accustomed to breath- ing the atmosphere of the New Testament. Then, too, the economic emphasis of our time has tended to depress that ethical idealism that constitutes the very essence of spiritual religion. Ideal motives are on every hand discounted. ‘Either their existence or their effectiveness and adap- tability to mundane conditions is denied, We are witnessing about us a decay of life, and this decay is due in no small measure to the fact that 68 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN people have adopted what Bertrand Russell calls “the religion of material goods.” They worship money and find in the outside world the one great source of happiness. The inevitable consequence is that the inner life is undergoing disintegra- tion, and there is a decline of faith in the immor- tal destiny of the spirit and in its power to triumph over the world. In the socio-economic interest of our day there is, then, a grave peril to true religion. In its more extreme form this interest is entirely subversive of religious faith; and in its more moderate form it acts as a devitalizing influence on it. Both Christian belief and the Christian life are pro- foundly affected by it; and only the future can tell what its permanent effects on historic Chris- tianity will be. In the analysis and survey of the modern thought world, to which this chapter has been devoted, we have observed that there are cer- tain powerful tendencies that are hostile to religion and that aim at destroying its fundamental beliefs. These tendencies are represented by the material- istic philosophies, the positivistic philosophies, and those sociological theories that treat religion as an illusion created by society in its own interest. Materialism denies the existence of God, posi- tivism denies the possibility of knowing him even RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 69 if he exists, and the anti-religious forms of so- ciology and socialism seek to show how such illusory beliefs as those in God and immortality arose. Along with these anti-religious theories and philosophies there are also in the modern thought world, as we have seen, other theories and beliefs that have had at least a disturbing effect on the Christian faith in its traditional form. Here we may mention the Copernican as- tronomy, the Darwinian theory of man’s descent, the universal reign of law, and the idea of social progress. These ideas are not necessarily incon- sistent with the basal conceptions of religion, but they have profoundly affected the Christian conception of the authority and historicity of Scripture, and by many they have been re- garded as subversive of the Christian faith altogether. Then, in addition to these forces in the modern thought world that are either hostile to religion or that have had a seriously disturbing effect upon religious thought, there is, as we have pointed out, the positive fact that in modern times the effort has been and is being made to find a sub- stitute for religion. Instead of the belief in God and immortality we are told to place our faith in science, in social progress, and in the material welfare of men. We are not to look forward to a future heaven, but stake our all on the estab- 70 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN lishment of an earthly paradise. That some such goal is possible as the result of the scientific con- trol of nature is, we are told, “the most signifi- cant religious idea of modern times.” But this idea, accepted as a finality, manifestly implies the surrender of religion in its historic form. _So Christianity 1s to-day confronted not only with hostile and disturbing theories and philosophies but also with a rival faith. And how to meet. these alien currents in the modern thought world is a problem that will tax to the utmost the re- sources of Christianity. ‘ Not since the first three or four centuries of our era has Christianity faced so grave a crisis as at the present time. Then it was necessary to transplant the Christian faith from Hebraic to Gentile soil, to make what had been a religion of Syrian peasants the religion of Greek philos- ophers. The process was an extremely difficult and perilous one. That the transplanting was effected without radically injuring Christianity itself is almost a miracle of history. Marvelously those early Christian thinkers, taken as a whole, appropriated what was of value in the dominant philosophy of the time, and thus accommodated Christianity to its new intellectual environment without surrendering its distinctive character. To-day the situation is equally difficult and equally perilous. Christianity at present is being ee RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 71 transplanted from the medizval to the modern thought world. With us the standard of truth is found, not in Greek philosophy, but in modern science. Science is anti-authoritarian; it is both empirical and rationalistic; and it is also utili- tarian. These, then, are the scientific tests of truth: experience, reason, utility. To these tests religion must submit, if it is to orient itself in the modern world. But can it successfully meet these tests? In view of the complexity of the situation and the complexity of Christianity itself it is not sur- prising that the most diverse answers to this ques- tion should be given. Some think that there is a radical and necessary antithesis between re- ligion and science; so in this group some reject religion and some science. Others hold that re- ligion and science can be brought into accord with each other, but they follow the same method as did the Gnostics of old. They surrender the dis- tinctive character of Christianity to what they regard as the demands of contemporary thought, or they so radically modify its nature as to de- prive it of its pristine power. These people talk much about the “religious revolution” through which we are supposed to be passing. Even so sober a thinker as ‘C. A. Ellwood tells us that “a New Reformation is necessary within the Chris- tian Church if it is to survive, beside which the pe 72 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN Protestant Reformation will seem insignificant.”?7 The actual change that he proposes does not turn out to be so serious as this preliminary announce- ment might lead one to expect. But others go so far as to transform Christianity into a mere humanitarianism; in deference to positivistic science they surrender both God and immortality. Then there are others, less radical, who are trying to assure Christianity a place in the modern world by means of various foreign alliances, alliances with sociology, with politics, with therapeutics. “Silly doves, without understanding,” the prophet Hosea would have called them. We cannot to- day sustain a decaying faith, any more than the ancient Israelites could a decaying state, by ex- ternal props. Christianity must maintain its own integrity and find its justification in itself, or cease to be. And that in the present crisis it will in this respect prove no less successful than in its ancient conflict with Greek philosophy, we have every reason to believe. Instead of itself yielding to the adverse influences of our time it will yet show itself strong enough to take the modern thought world by the rims, shake out of it its naturalism and its heathenism, and then make of the residuum a foundation on which to build its own conquering faith. Exactly how this will be done no one can say in detail. But the “The Reconstruction of Religion, p. 1, RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 73 main lines along which the Christian religion has been and is adjusting itself to modern science and at the same time making science tributary to its own purposes, will be pointed out and discussed in the following chapters. 74 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN CHAPTER ‘II THE PROBLEM OF -BIBLIGAL AUTHORITY MopeERN thought is autonomous. It is a law unto itself. It recognizes no supernatural stand- ard of truth, no external authority superior to the human mind. It finds in experience, reason, and utility the sole sources of truth. What lies beyond them or contradicts them is devoid of all claim to verity. It is an illusory product of the imagination, no matter how hoary it may be with age and how well attested it may be by tradition. Mere age and tradition guarantee nothing. Everything old as well as everything new must stand the acid test either of logic or of observa- tion and experiment before it can be accepted as irue. No belief can be validated by appeal to the authority of an institution or a book. The ultimate test of truth must be found within the mind itself. Experience and reason are self- verifying. They stand in their own right. They acknowledge no masters. On the contrary, they claim authority over all the sacred beliefs and institutions of the past. None of these are im- mune from criticism and skepticism. Descartes, RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 76 for instance, the founder of modern philosophy, began his search after truth by doubting every- thing that he could. He found it possible to doubt the existence of God and that of the ma- terial world. Finally, however, he came upon one indubitable reality—the fact of his own ex- istence; and then upon this as a basis he pro- ceeded by logical processes to erect his own sys- tem of thought. The completed structure had its serious defects, but the method employed has been commonly regarded as valid. Modern thought begins, as did Descartes, with faith in man’s unfettered reason; it holds to the auton- omy of the human spirit; it is anti-authoritarian. — Religion, on the other hand, in its historical form is authoritarian in its tendency. For this ~ there are two or three manifest reasons. First, religion by its very nature is “theonomous” rather than autonomous. It finds its source and law in God, not in man. It is God-given, not man-made. At least this is the conviction of the religious consciousness. Religious experience assumes the reality of revelation. Without revelation there would be no religion. All re- ligion is founded on revelation, either real or supposed. It is only as the Divine Being or beings reveal themselves that we can enter into relation with them. Only through revelation can we ascertain their will. A real God, a living God, 76 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN must reveal himself. An wunrevealed God, a “Veiled Being,’ would be a nonentity. He could not be the basis of a religion. Religion implies divine revelation; and divine revelation carries with it the idea of authority. When God speaks, it is as the voice of Truth and Law. From it there is no appeal; nor is there any desire to appeal from it on the part of the devout heart. The truly devout soul accepts the revealed Word of God and bows submissively before his re- vealed will. This attitude is inherent in the very nature of religion. Religion involves the idea of divine authority. In the next place religion as an institution re- quires the principle of authority. No political ~ or social organization would be possible without a superindividual or authoritative bond. The nature of this bond may be differently conceived and the seat of authority may be differently lo- cated. Some may be democratic, others aristo- cratic, and still others monarchic in their concep- tion of authority. But authority there must be somewhere. The very idea of social organiza- tion and of government implies it. No institu- tion could exist on an anarchic basis. An atom- istic individualism would mean the dissolution of all social groups and of society as a whole. The very fact, therefore, that religion is social in character and that it inevitably tends to take on RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 77 an organized form, links it up with the authori- tarian principle in human life. Cne may, it is true, distinguish between re- ligion and organized religion, and try to retain the former without the latter. This is a favorite idea at present with socialists and other radicals. H. G. Wells, for instance, in spite of his apos- tolic zeal for the new gospel of the finite God, has no place for organized religion. “Religion,” he says, “cannot be organized. . . . The Chris- tian precedent of a church is particularly mis- leading. The church with its sacraments and its sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. . Even such organization as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living faith coagu- lates as you phrase it. . . . Organization for worship and collective exaltation also. . . is of little manifest good. . . . God deals only with the individual for the individual’s surrender.”* But this extreme individualism does violence to the true nature of religion. Religion is social. _ It is no mere amorphous sentiment. It seeks and demands organized expression. All history testi- fies to this fact. Unorganized religion is a trun- cated and mutilated religion, devoid of vitality and propagating power. It is one of the many contradictions of our superficial and self-contra- dictory age that many of those who emphasize God the Invisible King, pp. 162-169. 78 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN most strongly the need of solidarity and organi- zation in life as a whole, deny to them a place in the field of religion. This denial is due partly to hostility to religion in its traditional form and partly to ignorance of what religion really is. It manifestly does not grow out of the religious im- pulse itself. This impulse, when vigorous and vi- tal, inevitably tends toward organization and soli- darity. True religion cannot be separated from organized religion. The two go together; and organized religion, like all other forms of or- ganization, implies and requires the exercise of authority. Then, in the third place, religion has age on its _ side, and age creates authority. It is so in the life of individuals, and it is so likewise in the life of society. The old becomes sacred and authoritative. Habit and mental inertia are partly responsible for this, but it is due also to the weight justly ascribed to experience. Ex- perience is constantly. sifting practices and be- liefs, and those that last longest presumably have something in their favor. At least the average mind so argues, and the result is that religion by virtue of its age comes to be endowed with an altogether unique authority. This authority comes to be attached to religious beliefs and practices in general, and thus there arises a re- ligious tradition that perpetuates itself simply RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 70 because it is tradition. The authority of tradi- tion tends consequently to become a part of re- ligi n itself, Religion, we thus see, by virtue of its age, its social or institutional character, and its claim to divine origin, has a natural leaning toward - authoritarianism. Science, on the other hand, leans quite as naturally in the opposite direction, for it is in large part a comparatively recent development; it is also individualistic, and it is, furthermore, humanistic as distinguished from theistic. Hence it is not strange that the conflict between religion and science at first centered in the problem of authority. Christianity regarded it as a question of life and death to maintain either the authority of the church or that of the Bible; and many still hold this view. Of the two forms of authority it is that of the Bible with which we in Protestant lands are chiefly concerned, and consequently it is it to which our attention will for the most part here be directed. But before we proceed to its discussion we need to inquire briefly into the meaning of authority and its different forms. “Authority,” says J. W. Sterrett, “may be de- fined as the power or influence through which one does or believes what he- would not of his own unaided powers.”? In this definition noth- *The Freedom of Authority, p. 6. 80 PRESENT TENDENCIES IN ing is said about the nature of “the power or influence” exercised by authority, whether it be rational or coercive. This feature is added by Professor Gwatkin, who defines authority as “all weight allowed to the beliefs of persons or the teachings of institutions beyond their reasonable value as personal testimony.”* The expression “reasonable value’ suggests a contrast between reason and authority. Authority lies’ beyond reason and is in a sense opposed to it. This is a common view.