Theology

The office of philosophy within the sphere of theology, with which we have thus far been concerned, may be described as that of interpreting to the reason the contents of religious experience. The philosophy of religion seeks to show that the fundamental ideas of religion, so far from being contrary to reason or from being ideas begotten of faith indifferent to knowledge, are capable of receiving a rational, or at least a reasonable, justification in terms of philosophical principles. Philosophy, or even theology, is no substitute for religion, and, of course, does not profess to be. It professes, rather, to show the compatibility of faith with reason and knowledge and to interpret the contents of faith to the reason.

Another function of philosophy is the undertaking of a critical examination of the processes involved in what we call knowing and of the various conceptions that enter into the knowledge claimed either by common sense or the sciences, with a view to disclosing the nature, validity and limits of human knowledge. And this function has a necessary place also in the sphere of theology. There we require to understand the precise relations between what are respectively called knowledge and faith; and it is necessary to pursue the "critical regress" within the field of dogmatic theology because, as history shows, the legitimate de sire for completeness of system and knowledge and for definite ness of dogmatic expression is apt to become the wish to know more than, perhaps, can be known and to know too definitely. In the middle ages, when theology was more ambitious than critical, fulness and precision were claimed in so inordinate a degree that, as a sympathetic historian has observed, an agnostic reaction was necessary in the interests of reverence. And it is always natural for theologians to betake themselves too ex clusively to the drawing of inferences when more attention might profitably be devoted to the sifting of premisses. Thus it is that the word "dogmatic," which technically indicates one province of theology, has come sometimes to bear a less noble signification; and dogmatic theology has been distrusted as requiring assent to doctrines that are not self-evident and for which no proof can be supplied.

But while philosophy, as a critical method, is a corrective of dogmatism in the foregoing sense, philosophical theology is not necessarily hostile to dogma. Individual philosophers have doubt less tended to set up empty abstractions, as will presently be seen, in place of positive facts and concrete existents ; but that is no necessity inherent in philosophy itself, as a pursuit.

Hegel observes in his Philosophy of Religion that in his day an anti-dogmatic spirit was abroad among dogmatic theologians, who at the same time charged philosophy with merely negative or destructive tendencies. These, he said, have thrust dogmas into the background, pronouncing them unimportant and extraneous definitions or mere phenomena of past history. Christ's work of redemption had received a very prosaic and merely psychologi cal significance and the doctrines of the Trinity, etc., were neg lected as matters of indifference, even by pious theologians. This spirit was by no means confined to Hegel's day. It might be called the temper of indefiniteness. It is met with in the sup posed antitheses between kernel and husk—as if kernels ever grew without husks—and between the life and the creed—as if Chris tianity were not a life based on a creed, and Christian ethic did not owe its distinctiveness to its dependence on Christian doc trines. In recoiling from dogmatism such as would be over-pre cise, it distrusts precision of expression as such.

The necessary and intimate connection of theology, even dog matic theology, with philosophy now having been illustrated from several sides, the two main types of method that have been em ployed in philosophical theology may in turn be described : they are respectively called the a priori and the empirical.

The a priori Method and Rational Theology.

Of the phrase a priori we can distinguish two meanings that are apt to be confounded. It may have a psychological sense, when the phrase means "contributed by the mind itself," and so is generally equivalent to "innate." It may also bear a logical sense, as when a priori truth is described as truth characterized by universality such as, in contrast with mere generality, bespeaks intrinsic or unmediated necessity. In the former case, contrast with the em pirical and sense-given is pointed, in the latter case, contrast with the contingent—i.e., with what is, but conceivably might have been otherwise.

It may be said, with accuracy sufficient for the present purpose, that the a priori method was introduced into philosophy and theology by Plato. He took the ideal or pure science of mathe matics, which deals with the non-actual, to be the paradigm of knowledge of the actual—science and philosophy. Despising the sensory, and empirical investigation, he valued only the relations and the universal qualities manifested in facts, so that these came to be considered, not as entering into the constitution of actuality, but as existing wholly independently, and this rational or intel ligible world, as contrasted with the sensorily perceived, was accounted the truly existent or the "real." Thus arose the a priori method, in the logical sense of that phrase, and the rationalistic theory of knowledge, which, without much qualification, may be said to have dominated philosophy for centuries. So long as it did not and could not—till analytical psychology was born—be suspected that sense and understanding may have a common root and that between understanding and reason there is continuity rather than disparateness, the rationalist's belief in a faculty called reason, capable of functioning in independence of sensation and sensory data, was possible and natural. This faculty was regarded by the ancient philosophers as the sole source of real, i.e., higher, knowledge ; as independent of body and "animal soul," and even as a participation in the Divine Reason, a "spark of Deity." Christian theologians, who found much in Plato's system that they could assimilate, also appropriated this ancient doctrine as to reason. Augustine applied it to explain the reception of super natural truth and the divine illumination of the mind of man, and it coalesced with the Logos-doctrine of the Church. From Augus tine and neoplatonism it was accepted by Descartes and so be came entrenched in early modern philosophy. The existence of a lumen naturale, a faculty innate as instinct, but mediating neces sary and eternal truths, was one of the tenets of rationalism and one that theologians were naturally inclined to adopt. Hence a priori theology, in the psychological as well as the logical sense of the phrase, flourished long. Another feature of the rationalistic and a priori theory of knowledge is its tendency to identify knowl edge and thought. Knowledge (of actuality) is pre-eminently thought, but since the i8th century we have been compelled to recognize that it is also more. Further, the consistency of thought with itself was often confounded with validity—i.e., with "hold ing of" actual things. But fiction can be consistent while not being truth about actual persons, and metageometries may be as con sistent as Euclid without having any applicability to our world. Moreover, what were deemed to have been self-evident axioms, forming the basal principles of various sciences from mathematics to theology and purporting to be read off as necessary truths by pure reason, have in these latter days been accused of being either conventions, like the rules of a game, or disguised empirical in ductions. These modern discoveries and the emergence of a genetic science of common or universal, as distinct from private or individual, experience have rendered tenet after tenet of the a priori school obsolete for many minds.