THEOLOGY, in the comprehensive sense of the name, em braces so much of philosophy as is concerned with explanation of the world in terms of a supreme mind or spirit, with the being and attributes of the Deity and His relation to Nature and man and with the grounds and the limits of knowledge or belief as to such matters. It also includes the comparative study of religions and the psychology of religious experience. Specifically Christian theology, which is often what is denoted by the word "theology," sets forth the contents and implications of the revelation in Christ. It consists of a systematic exposition of doctrine and of the course of its development (dogmatic theology or dogmatics), the histori cal, critical and exegetical study of the Bible, and the history of the Church, its institutions, etc. Thus theology is a science, or a group of connected sciences, that, on the one hand, is in touch with general philosophy--as is indicated by the name of the department called "philosophy of religion," or "philosophical theology"—and, on the other hand, is more or less isolable in that it deals with the deliverances of distinctively religious experience and its pre-eminent manifestations.
The Relation of Theology to Religious Experience.—It is commonly held that religious experience contains data other than those of natural knowledge, enabling it to possess insight into reality otherwise unattainable. And we may first note the implications of this belief in their bearing on the position of theology amongst other departments of thought such as natural science and philosophy. All natural knowledge, i.e., knowledge of the physical world and mankind, is now generally believed by philosophers to be derived originally from the impressions of sense, between which the understanding establishes relations. Out of these relations are constructed the body of common-sense knowledge, the sciences and metaphysics. Sensory perception in the first instance, and then ideas distilled from percepts, evoke the feelings, desires and valuations, of which aesthetic and ethical sentiments and principles are the outcome. According to this science or theory of knowledge, then, religious beliefs and theo logical doctrines can only be mediated by reflection on the sensi ble world, the mind of man and human history. On the other hand it is often claimed by theologians that religious experience is founded on apprehension of another species of the objective than the sensory or the sense-derived, and on- feelings, etc., induced thereby. This objective datum, evocative of unique emotional states and dispositions, is asserted to be apprehended with the same immediateness as is the sensory and so to afford a basis of knowledge about ultimate reality, independent of that on which the natural sciences are built.
If this view were beyond criticism, it would suffice to explain the uniqueness of religious experience and consequently the special characteristics of theology. And one ingredient in it certainly seems to be beyond reasonable doubt. This is that whatever there is, on the affective or emotional side of religious experience, that renders it an experience sui generis, or distinct from cognate kinds of experience, that peculiarity must be ac counted for by the distinctiveness of the object or objects elicit ing the subjective response. Religious experience, on its affective side, comprises sentiments such as loyalty and love, awe and adoration, none of which is peculiar to religion, but each of which differs somewhat from other instances of love, reverence, etc., solely in virtue of the object—deity—towards which the religious emotion is a response. Even those who incline to the opinion that
there is one kind of valuation, viz., appreciation of sacredness, that is peculiar to religion throughout all the stages of its de velopment, ascribe its peculiarity and its forthcomingness to the unique object that evokes it. But doubtfulness attaches to the further representations that this sacred, numinous or supernatural object is immediately apprehended as such; that it is irreducibly different in psychological nature from the sensory, or rather from the image or the idea which are derived from the sensory, and that its apprehension involves a special faculty, not included among those known to ordinary psychology. In the primitive stages of religion the supernatural object seems always to be lodged in some natural object or phenomer.on, which inspired. emotion such as awe, as is evinced in the notions of clean and unclean, worship of animals, the dead, etc. Thus the numinous, or divine, reality, devoid of the concrete particularity that characterizes an immediate sensation or percept, and capable of entering into di verse mythologies and religions, seems rather to be of the nature of the vague generic image, derived by human imagination and idealization from impressive phenomena. And it is not enough to point to the indubitable objectivity (in the psychological sense) of this alleged numinous reality. For images and ideas, as well as percepts, are also objective; and they are as potent as actuali ties or real things in eliciting valuation and emotional response, provided that belief in their reality is entertained. Immediacy is a conception which plays important parts in connection with religion and theology; and attention may here be called to the ambiguity which lurks in it and is wont to be overlooked. At the moment when a particular experience, such as perceiving a familiar thing, takes place, we are not aware of performing any synthetic activities ; the percept has the unity and the instantane ousness of a flash-photograph, and the whole act of perceiving seems as if unanalysable and unconditioned by previous ex periences. From the standpoint of such an experience, the per ception is immediate. But from the standpoint of subsequent reflection on that experience, especially if we happen to be versed in the science of psychology, the perception in question was not immediate. It was not a simple, unanalysable, unity nor uncon ditioned by previous mental processes and present interpretation. Its immediacy thus resolves into our unawareness, at the moment, of real mediation. Now in order to maintain that religious ex perience, as illustrated by the primitive instance that has been mentioned consists in immediate apprehension of a spiritual environment or a supernatural beyond, that is real or actual and not imaginal or ideal, it is essential that the immediacy involved be accounted such from the latter of the two points of view that have just been distinguished. Yet it is from the former of them alone that it can be vouched for by the religious experient, ap pealing only to his religious experience. Thus it is doubtful, on more than one ground, whether apprehension of the sacred and supernatural is essentially different from sensory knowledge, eked out with interpretative notions derived from human analogy, constructive imagination and idealization. It may be that the primitive notion of a god, precursor of the later conception of God, was derived by such processes from current knowledge of man, and read into some impressive natural object, constituting it numinous and capable of eliciting religious emotion.