Freedom and authority in religion

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FREEDOM AND
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

FREEDOM AND
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

BY
EDGAR YOUNG MULLINS, D. D., LL. D.

President and Professor of Theology in

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Ky.

Author of " Why is Christianity True ? " and
" Axioms of Religion "

PHILADELPHIA

THE GRIFFITH & ROWLAND PRESS

1913

^K^

Copyright 1913 by
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary

Published February, 1913

TO

mip students

OF THE PAST. PRESENT, AND

FUTURE, THIS BOOK IS

AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

PREFACE

It is scarcely open to question that there is a need
for a clear exposition of the problem of authority
in religion. Two chief considerations have led the
writer to prepare this volume : First, the disquietude
and mental unrest of many ministers of the gospel
and thoughtful Christians, as they have noted the
modern attempt to eradicate the whole conception
of authority from Christianity, resulting in many
instances in a paralysis of faith or an uncertainty
w^hicli destroys the power of the gospel message;
and secondly, the one-sidedness or inadequacy of
many books on authority in religion written from
the scientific or philosophic standpoint. A book
written under the influence of these motives ob-
viously should possess certain corresponding qual-
ities. For one thing, it should be within the grasp
of the average educated minister w^ho is in earnest
in his desire to understand one of the most vital
themes of modern times. At the same time it should
discuss with a sufficient degree of thoroughness the
scientific and philosophic aspects of the subject.
The problem of authority in religion involves di-
rectly or indirectly all the deeper problems of science
and philosophy. A book on freedom and authority

3

4 PREFACE

in religion, therefore, necessarily becomes a sharer
in some measure in the current controversy on
these subjects. This work, however, is not pri-
marily controversial, but rather constructive, al-
though in the earlier and critical chapters a num-
ber of controverted points are discussed.

The argument which we offer in these pages
recognizes fully the value of the distinctive scientific
criterion of explanation as employed hitherto, but
it denies with emphasis its adequacy for the re-
ligious life. Nor does the argument depend for its
cogency upon the outcome of pending discussions
as to the existence in the biological world of a prin-
ciple of creative evolution as urged by Professor
Bergson, or upon something else over and above
mechanism and chemical agencies which may lead
to the discovery of a second criterion of scientific
explanation. The bases of religious knowledge He
in personality and personal relationships. This we
undertake to show. Along with this we have sought
to indicate incidentally to what extent the current
effort to make religion and theology scientific has
been misleading. Until the conception of science
obtains a wider meaning such an effort either leads
too far or it does not lead far enough; too far in
that, if the scientific criterion of physical continuity
is consistently and thoroughly applied everywhere,
God and religion vanish; or not far enough, in
that, if deductions from the plane of nature to a
sphere above nature be the sum total of the outcome.

PREFACE 5

religion never becomes knowledge, but only philo-
sophic speculation. The religious life, indeed, sus-
tains very interesting relations to empirical science
and speculative philosophy. A part of our task is
to make these relations clear. Hence the chapter in
review of current philosophic theories, and that on
the nature of religion.

Numerous works have appeared in recent years
on the subject of authority in religion. A num-
ber of these are referred to in the pages which
follow. Much of current opinion among those who
have written has been away from the idea of au-
thority in religion altogether. In addition to the
works reviewed in our first chapter we may name
two very suggestive volumes by Mr. Oman, one
entitled " Faith and Freedom," the other, " Vision
and Authority," and also Professor Sterrett's vol-
ume, " The Freedom of Authority." Mr. Oman 'has
given admirable expression to the spiritual mean-
ing of the principles of freedom, and Professor
Sterrett has reviewed with effectiveness some recent
works which deal with questions bearing directly on
the problem of authority. Doctor Forsythe's vol-
ume, "Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind,"
abounds in suggestive insights as to spiritual free-
dom and is a fine tonic for a faltering pulpit. It
has not seemed necessary to consider formally Pro-
fessor Briggs' volume of several years ago on
" The Bible, the Church, and the Reason." The place
of each of these factors in the problem of authority

O PREFACE

becomes apparent in the course of our discussion.
Nor have we felt that it was needful to trace the
history of J. H. Newman's quest for religious au-
thority and his union finally with the Roman Catholic
Church. The principle we advocate is radically at
variance with Newman's view, and if it is correct,
the Roman Catholic authority is at once seen to be
an illegitimate form of religious authority. For in
none of the existing works has the specific problem
of this book been dealt with, viz., to indicate the
origin of authority, its permanent necessity and
value in religion as elsewhere; its peculiar charac-
teristics in religion which distinguish it from other
forms of authority; and, further, to point out the
relations sustained by the principle of authority in
religion to our scientific and philosophic culture;
to show how the principles of freedom and authority
are implicated the one in the other, each being
necessary to the realization of the other, and finally
to indicate how in the Christian religion the ideals
of freedom and authority meet and are reconciled
by a harmonious blending into the higher unity of
the spiritual life. It will thus appear that the view
of Schleiermacher and his successors, which has
gained wide currency, is inadequate for the religious
life of man, although it sprang from a high motive
and sought to revitalize a decadent Christianity.
We retain its truth, but show its relation to a sup-
plementary truth of vital importance. The books
which we examine in our first chapter were writ-

PREFACE 7

ten by men whose general positions are in har-
mony with those of Schleiermacher. These are
selected for careful consideration rather than
Schleiermacher himself, since they represent later
phases of the subjective ideal of authority. We
seek first to show the inadequacy of subjectivism and
then we proceed to lay the foundation for the gen-
eral doctrine of religious authority.

E Y M

Louisville, September i, 1912.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pagh

Chapter I. The Modern Ideal of Freedom . 1 1

1. The Case Stated ii

2. The Repudiation of Authority and the

Subjective Criterion i6

3. Criticism of the Subjective Principle 32

Chapter II. The Consciousness of Jesus

AND THE New Testament Records 64

1. The Central Place of Jesus in Current

Thought 64

2. Recent Criticism of the Gospels (fj

3. Jesus or Christ ? 92

4. General Conclusions from Criticism 104

Chapter III. The Intractable Residues of
Science 114

Chapter IV. The Unstable Equilibrium
of Philosophy 135

1. Critical Monism 136

2. IdeaHsm 140

3. Personalism 143

4. Pluralism 147

5. Pragmatism 151

9

lO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Chapter V. Voluntarism and Authority,
OR THE Religious Assimilation of
Truth 156

Chapter VI. The Principle of Authority. 167

Chapter VII. The Nature of Religion 193

1. Religion Defined 193

2. Religion and Science 213

3. Religion and Psychology 217

4. Religion and Ethics 224

5. Religion and Philosophy 234

Chapter VIII. Religious Knowledge 259

Chapter IX. The Authority of Jesus

Christ 286

Chapter X. The Place of the Bible in
Christianity 341

1. The Interdependence of the Literature

and the Life 342

2. The Formation of the Canon of Scripture 354

3. The Function of Criticism 358

4. The Reformation Doctrine of Authority. 364

5. The Protestant and Roman Catholic Doc-

trines of Authority 370

6. Theories of Inspiration 375

7. Conclusion as to the Authority of the

Scriptures 393

Chapter XL Summary and Conclusion. . . 399

Freedom and
Authority in Religion

CHAPTER I

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM

I. The Case Stated

Our age beyond all others is the age of freedom.
Freedom is the winged word which, since the Ref-
ormation, has led to human progress in all realms
of endeavor. The revolt has been complete against
all kinds of tyranny, and one might almost say
against all forms of authority. The separation of
Church and State has been, in the West at least,
triumphantly achieved. A free Church in a free
State is at once a political and religious axiom
in America. Democracy in the State has in very
great measure been achieved, although we are yet
struggling with many problems. Freedom of be-
lief in religion, of research in science, of opportunity
and effort in the industrial world, absolute free-
dom in all spheres is the ideal.

II

12 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

The philosophic impHcations of this ideal of free-
dom are manifold. A pronounced individualism
is, of course, an organic idea in all forms of the
struggle for freedom. The individualism arises
in one instance from the sense of the v^^orth of man
as man, the priceless and eternal value of the soul
as taught by Jesus. In another it grows out of the
sense of a man's direct relation to God and respon-
sibility to him. This is a fruitful source of all the
higher individualism of the age, and it is closely
related to the teachings of Christianity as to the
worth of the soul. Again, the moral autonomy of
the individual as emphasized in the philosophy of
Kant has been a potent influence in the develop-
ment of the modern ideal of freedom.

Once more individualism may rest upon a panthe-
istic basis. Man is conceived as the organ of the
infinite, and every man becomes authoritative to
himself in proportion as he correctly expresses the
infinite. Or the philosophy here shades off into
personal idealism, and to the individual is attributed
eternal worth as a part of the Absolute, and life
is conceived as the task of achieving the eternal
harmony with the Absolute, a canceling of the
finite in the infinite. Or again, individualism takes
its rise out of a philosophy like that of Nietzsche,
which is, in essence, monistic and materialistic evo-
lutionism. The Superman of Nietzsche is the result
of the struggle for life on the animal plane pro-
jected upward into the human realm. It is indi-

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 1 3

vidualistic animalism. We might continue the enu-
meration, but it is needless to do so. All phil-
osophic roads naturally lead to individualism or are
made to do so.

No one to-day will question the beneficence of
the modern movement toward individualism and
freedom. It has been of infinite value to mankind
in the West and will slowly leaven the East.

We are beginning to see, however, that the ideal
of freedom needs qualifying at certain points.
There exist political and religious and philosophic
ideals, which are the direct fruit of the freedom
of the human spirit, which in tendency are sub-
versive of all the values of civilization. The remedy
would seem to be not a return to absolutism in the
State nor the infallibility characteristic of the Roman
hierarchy in religion, nor to ecclesiastical or polit-
ical censorship of human thought in any sphere.
There is need rather that we revise our concep-
tions of freedom and authority, and endeavor to
define both in terms which will secure the needed
freedom combined with the restraint necessary to
human welfare. There is need, in short, for a
synthesis of the conception of freedom and authority
without excluding any of the elements of value
in the former and without including any of the
tyrannies which have, during the ages, been assem-
bled under the aegis of the latter. The solution
will be found ultimately in the fact that there is
an individual, and that over against him there is

B

14 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a world, and that there is interaction between man
and the world. These are the only assumptions
needed if we view the question generally and ab-
stractly. Of course there are numerous steps 'in
the development of the argument which will be
necessary before the view here presented is made
clear, but broadly speaking and in most general
terms man's freedom can only be achieved, and the
true authority for human life can only be recognized
by him when he wisely and properly seeks to adjust
himself to the universe, regarded as physical, social,
political, moral, or religious.

We have, however, deliberately limited ourselves
in this work to the problem of freedom and au-
thority in the religious and Christian sphere. Here
we find the most fundamental relations of man to
the universe. The solution of the problem of free-
dom and authority in religion will contribute greatly
to its solution in other spheres. What are the con-
ceptions of freedom and authority in the Christian
religion? Professor Sabatier, in his brilliant work,
" The Religions of Authority and the Religion of
the Spirit," denies that the principle of authority
in any legitimate sense has place in Christianity at
all. He is one of a large and growing school of
thinkers who exclude from their views of religion
all external authority of whatsoever kind.

We may profitably review the present situation by
considering the two contrasted types of opinion
which are now opposing each other with reference

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 1 5

to authority in religion. One type is the Roman
CathoHc, which need not detain us long. It is too
famihar to require extended comment. The Roman
CathoHc conception of authority as held to-day is
the result of a long process of development through
the centuries. It followed a logical principle which
was immanent in it at all stages. In the Middle
Ages the general council was regarded as the
supreme authority. The Gallican school lodged
authority in the necessary agreement of pope and
council at a later date. Finally in the Vatican
Council of 1870 the Ultramontane school triumphed
and the dogma of the infallibility of the pope was
promulgated. Our purpose does not require that we
trace this development in detail. The character-
istics of this authority of the Roman Catholic
Church are well understood. It is external. It has
its seat primarily not in an inspired book, but in
the head of the Church. The Church is the only
authoritative interpreter of the book. The indi-
vidual takes what is given in doctrine and in prac-
tice without question. His faith is implicit. He
accepts all that the Church teaches simply because
the Church teaches it. This reason for accepting
doctrines beyond his comprehension is not a reason
based on an intelligent comprehension of the needs
of the religious life arrived at by intellectual and
spiritual processes of his own, which seem to justify
such acceptance. He accepts them because he has
renounced the task of determining for himself in

1 6 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

any sense what is best for him in reHgion. He re-
nounces the privilege of interpreting the Scriptures
for himself because he regards himself and the
Church regards him as incompetent to do so with
safety. In a word, his individualism finds no recog-
nition. It is canceled. Individualism as a prin-
ciple is regarded as the fruitful source of every kind
of evil. Thus the principle of authority becomes
absolute in the Roman Catholic Church.

2. The Repudiation of Authority and the Sub-
jective Criterion

Over against Roman Catholic authority and in
sharpest antithesis to it is the modern principle of
freedom. The advocates of this principle in Ger-
many and France, in England and America, are far
too numerous to mention. They are idealists of the
most pronounced type in their view of freedom in
the religious sphere. They emphasize the likeness
rather than the unlikeness of man to God ; the im-
manence rather than the transcendence of God;
man's unaided and native capacity rather than his
incapacity in religion ; the pedagogic rather than the
redemptive aspects of salvation; and the Christian
consciousness rather than the Bible or the church as
the ultimate seat of authority in religion. Histori-
cally, this type of opinion came first to its most dis-
tinctive expression in Clement of Alexandria and
others of the Greek school in the early centuries. It
was restored by Schleiermacher at the beginning of

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM I7

the last century after a long period of eclipse. Since
Schleiermacher it has been a leavening influence in
theology in all Protestant countries. Ritschl and
his school in Germany have given it wide currency
in a modified form. In France it has recently
assumed a form known as Symbolo-Fideism, ac-
cording to which faith is the inner vital principle,
and doctrine the symbolic husk which contains it.

Two modern tendencies have contributed power-
fully to the formation and perpetuation of this type
of opinion. One of these is the religious — the
desire to restore vitality to theology and save it from
externalism and formalism. The other Is the scien-
tific spirit. The scientific method and ideal have
given direction to the movement at every stage.
It has been assumed in fact that only such truth
as can be scientifically mediated is worthy of belief
in religion. The scientific standard has been applied
to the doctrinal system at every point. A part of
our task will be to examine this assumption. Mean-
time it is mentioned as an essential factor in the
movement we are considering.

The field is so vast that the material for our
exposition can be found almost anywhere in cur-
rent theological literature. We shall make use,
however, of a few writers who have directly or
indirectly treated the subject of authority in religion.
Among these Martineau and Sabatier are the most
conspicuous examples. Professor Lobstein, in his
" Introduction to Protestant Dogmatics " affords

1 8 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

much valuable material. We proceed to note the
marks of the modern view which so sharply op-
poses the Roman Catholic.

First of all, the seat of authority in religion is
within and not without the human spirit. Sabatier
says : '' It is the property of the method of authority
to base all judgment of doctrine upon the exterior
marks of its origin and the trustworthiness of those
who promulgated it. In religion this method appeals
to miracles, which accredit God's messengers to
men, and stamp their words or writings with the
divine imprint. On the other hand, the modern
experimental method puts us in immediate con-
tact with reality, and teaches us to judge of a doc-
trine only according to its intrinsic value, directly
manifested to the mind in the degree of its evi-
dence. The two methods are so radically opposed
that to accept the latter is at once to mark the
former as insufficient and outworn." ^ Of course
the sum of the matter is that all external authority
in religion is repudiated. The principle of authority
has no place in religion, and the distinguishing mark
of authority is its externality. This last point needs
to be carefully noted, as it is a primary considera-
tion throughout the reasoning of Sabatier and the
others.

This leads to the next point, namely, that religious
truth is worthy of acceptance only in the degree of
its intrinsic evidence. In so far as it commends

* " Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit," p. 15.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM I9

itself to the reason and spiritual nature of man it is
trustworthy. Beyond this point it has no claim
upon our credence. This reason or spiritual nature,
however, is the Christian reason and spiritual na-
ture. It is the Christian consciousness to which
appeal is made and not to the ordinary unchristian
consciousness. Whatever commends itself to the
renewed consciousness of the believing followers of
Christ the morally and spiritually illuminated soul
is for that soul worthy of acceptance.

At this point we are led a step farther backward
to the gospel as the law of the Christian conscious-
ness. Says Sabatier : '* Jesus never appears to act
by constraint; he is always inspired. His religion
was essentially the religion of the Spirit, and re-
mains forever its source and perfect type. . . The
gospel properly becomes the law of human con-
sciousness and is forever inseparable from it. . . The
religion of the Spirit is the adequate and natural
form of the gospel, and the gospel is the content,
the very substance of the religion of the Spirit.
They form an organic unity, which is destroyed
when they are separated and set one over against the
other." 2 We shall see later what Sabatier means
by the gospel. Meantime it is to be noted that he
imposes to this extent a norm or standard upon the
Christian consciousness. This standard, however,
must be spiritually applied to the Christian con-
sciousness. It is binding and effective because the

'"Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit," p. 323.

20 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

consciousness of the Christian responds to it, recog-
nizes its truth and value. Here it is claimed that
Sabatier and the Reformers are at one. Luther
and Calvin and the rest appealed primarily, it is
asserted, to the inner witness of the Spirit, and
later Protestantism lapsed from this high position
to external authority of the creeds and the Scrip-
tures. The modern subjective principle is declared
to be simply a restoration of the Reformation prin-
ciple.

The advocates of the subjective principle do not
deny that the mind is subject to law. Sabatier
says : " To say that the mind is autonomous is not
to hold that it is not subject to law; it is to say that
it finds the supreme norm of its ideas and acts not
outside of itself, but within itself, in its very con-
stitution." ^ Again he says : " What is the edu-
cation of mankind if not the passage from faith in
authority to personal conviction, and to the sus-
tained practice of the intellectual duty to consent
to no idea except by virtue of its recognized truth,
to accept no fact until its reality has been, in one
way or another, established." *

In this last quotation we have the modern scien-
tific ideal clearly and sharply stated. The language
of Sabatier is almost identical with that of Pro-
fessor Huxley in his " Discourse on Method," where
he lays down as "the great first commandment of
science " the following :

8 *• Religions of Authority," etc., p. i6. * Ibid., p. 21.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 21

" There is a path that leads to truth so surely that
any one who will follow it must needs reach the
goal, whether his capacity is great or small. And
there is one guiding rule by which a man may
always find this path, and keep himself from stray-
ing when he has found it. This golden rule is — give
unqualified assent to no propositions but those the
truth of which is so clear and distinct that they
cannot be doubted." ^

That the theological method of Sabatier is iden-
tical with that of Huxley and physical science, it
is perfectly clear, since the theologian asserts our
obligation " to the sustained practice of the intel-
lectual duty to consent to no idea except by virtue
of its recognized truth," while the scientific man for-
bids us to accept any propositions except " those
the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they
cannot be doubted." There will be need to com-
ment at some length upon this identification of the
methods of theology and physical science in later
pages. We shall raise the question whether the
generic differences between science and theology
do not forbid such identification, and whether it
does not constitute one of the most far-reaching-
fallacies of Sabatier and his school. Surely the
scientific spirit in dealing with the facts of the inner
life of man as well as the facts of external nature
is wholly admirable. But we may well give heed to
the question whether in the nature of the case the

° " Lay Sermons," p. 322.

22 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

two spheres do not present differences so radical
as to forbid the thorough-going application of the
same method at all points.

To grasp Sabatier's position truly we need to
consider other features of it implied in the fore-
going. He exalts Jesus as the sovereign religious
leader of men. The gospel which he advocates
came from Christ. It is his gospel. '' In the last
analysis and to go down to the very root of the
Christian religion, to be a Christian is not to acquire
a notion of God, or even an abstract doctrine of
his potential love; it is to live over within our-
selves the inner spiritual life of Christ, and by the
union of our heart with his to feel in ourselves
the presence of a Father and the reality of our
filial relation to him, just as Christ felt in him-
self the Father's presence and his filial relation
to him." «

At every point, however, Sabatier safeguards his
fundamental subjective criterion of truth and credi-
bility. While clinging to a gospel, and to Jesus as
its author, he nevertheless affirms that there is
nothing in the gospel which the soul may not verify
for itself.

" There is nothing in the gospel which your con-
science may not recognize as the highest good to
which secretly it aspires; nothing which, if you
sincerely desire it, you cannot yourself experience,
and thus recognize it as the very soul of your soul." ^

® " Religions of Authority," etc., pp. 293, 294. ^ Ibid., p. 328.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 23

We note in the next place Sabatier's analysis of
the Christian consciousness. It is necessary to con-
dense his statements lest these quotations be ex-
tended too greatly. The Christian consciousness,
according to Sabatier, is constituted by the vital
antithesis of the Christian's sense of fatal separation
from God, and the sense of blessed reconciliation
with him " the reciprocal passage from the one to
the other is the constant activity, the very life of
the Christian consciousness." The passage from
the sense of sin to the sense of reconciliation is
made by repentance, which renounces the sinful
past, and faith, which is trust in God alone and
which becomes the hope of eternal life. This is
the passage from darkness to light, and is the true
moral resurrection wrought in us by the conscious-
ness of Christ, which becoming ours produces in us
this change.

The sense of sin and of reconciliation which fol-
lows it does not take place once for all in con-
version. They are the poles of experience between
which the Christian constantly oscillates. Regen-
eration is the conquest in us by the divine Spirit of
the evil principle of our nature. The Christian
consciousness is in the last analysis simply the
moral consciousness, so that we remain one with
the common humanity about us in our Christian
consciousness. The latter is simply a broadening
and deepening of the moral consciousness under
the stimulus of the gospel.

24 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

In addition to the moral antithesis of Christian
experience as outlined above, there is also a meta-
physical one, our sense of the contradiction be-
tween the finite and the infinite, the ephemeral and
the eternal, the weak creature and the universal be-
ing. This contradiction, however, is morally over-
come in our sense of reconciliation with God and
the revelation of his infinite love.^

The above is a condensed outline of Sabatier's
conception of the gospel. It will be observed that
its contents are meant to include only such things
as are accessible to the individual consciousness. It
will be noted also that Christ's relation to our salva-
tion is not that of Redeemer who performed in any
sense an objective work for us. He is rather the
supreme example of what is to enter into our ex-
perience. His experience of the love and power of
God in his consciousness is the norm of all religious
experience. The idea of salvation must be con-
structed on the basis of the consciousness of Christ.
It spreads, so to speak, from his consciousness to
ours.

Professor Lobstein, in his " Introduction to Prot-
estant Dogmatics," while stating more consistently
and retaining more adequately the objective element
in the Christian Scriptures, and while according
perhaps a slightly higher place to Jesus Christ than
Sabatier, is nevertheless in substantial agreement
with him in his theory of religious authority. In

8 " Religions of Authority," etc., pp. 366-368.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 2$

answering the question how we are to obtain the
gospel from the word of God, he asserts that '' this
revelation is not an abstract idea; it is a manifes-
tation of a creative and redemptive power, a decisive
virtue, which, from the consciousness of Jesus,
where it reigns in all its fulness, has spread every-
where into the hearts opened to the benign influence
which emanates from that mysterious force. . . The
content of this revelation does not consist in a sys-
tem of supernatural notions and inspired doctrines;
the living center, the luminous focus, of the gospel
is the inner and immediate sense of divine sonship,
which is the inspired essence of the self-conscious-
ness of Jesus, the primitive and indestructible ex-
perience of his spiritual life, the immovable and
permanent principle of his religious testimony and
his Messianic activity. That experience, prepared
in history by the progressive education to which
God submitted humanity, appeared among the peo-
ple of Israel in Jesus of Nazareth ' in the fulness
of time,' and was propagated in the consciousness
of the apostles, who were its first witnesses and
faithful interpreters. The succeeding generations
have been, with regard to the great creative and
redemptive facts of the historical appearance of
Jesus, in a relationship of dependence which is not
limited to the external bond of remembrance or of
tradition. Life produces life, and it is only when
this Spirit which constituted the very personality
of Christ comes to its unfolding in the heart of

26 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

man that there is born the new creature called ' the
Christian.' " ^

Again Lobstein affirms that the unity of the dog-
matic system is based on the subjective principle
and that " we will reject every plan, every arrange-
ment which would seek in external domains for the
spiritual reality affirmed by the Christian conscious-
ness; we will try to draw our principle of division
out of the very heart of the Protestant faith, the
child of the gospel." ^^

It is unnecessary to multiply quotations. Lob-
stein maintains the subjective conception at all
points as the constructive principle in theology.
Like Sabatier and the rest, he fails to harmonize it
with his own doctrine of the Scriptures and their
objective normative value, as we shall see, but he
never fails to urge it upon us at all stages of his
discussion.

In order to complete our statement of the sub-
jective conception of religious authority, we now
set forth the view of Doctor Martineau, as stated
in his notable work, " The Seat of Authority in
Religion." Doctor Martineau is less trammeled by
Christian or evangelical considerations than Sabatier
or Lobstein. His estimate of the person of Christ is
unembarrassed by the difficulties connected with his
incarnation and Messiahship, his atoning death and
resurrection, and related subjects. Martineau's
point of view frankly repudiates all of these and he

* " Introduction to Protestant Dogmatics," translation by A. M.
Smith, pp. 159, 160. 1" Ibid., pp. 219, 220.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 2^

undergoes no moral or spiritual struggles in order
to reconcile himself to the repudiation. This can-
not be said of his intellectual processes, however,
which exhibit phases of marked violence at times,
and his dealing with the New Testament records
in the effort to discover the consciousness of Christ
is arbitrary in the extreme. It is on these very
accounts, however, that Martineau is able to state
the subjective principle in relation to religious au-
thority with extraordinary clearness and force.

In protesting against the authority of the New
Testament, Martineau states the selective principle
by means of which we determine what is true and
what is false:

" We are not permitted, it would seem, to take
our sacred literature as it is, to let what is divine
in it find us out, while the rest says nothing to us
and lies dead; all such selection by internal affinity
is denied us as a self-willed unbelief, a subjection,
not of ourselves to Scripture, but of Scripture to
ourselves. We are required to accept the whole
on the external warrant of its divine authority,
which equally applies to all; to believe whatever is
affirmed in the New Testament, and practise what-
ever is enjoined." ^^

Martineau also asserts that nowhere is there of-
fered to us anything but mixed materials in church
or Scripture, and that we must needs select and
choose and not merely accept:

" " Seat of Authority in Religion," p. 175.

28 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

" The tests by which we distinguish the fictitious
from the real, the wrong from the right, the unlovely
from the beautiful, the profane from the sacred,
are to be found within, and not without, in the
methods of just thought, the instincts of pure con-
science, and the aspirations of unclouded reason."^^

In part, the plea for a subjective criterion of
truth is based on the conception of the mind as
active and not merely passive in religion. The in-
tellect is not simply a crystal through which light
passes as through a transparent but quiescent
medium. Man's powers must be respected even in
religion and it is urged that any external authority
fails to do this, fails to arouse them and call them
into activity.

Doctor Martineau leaves us no room to doubt as
to the criteria of truth. He makes a distinction
between revealed religions and apocalyptic religions.
Revealed religions are those in which God and the
soul come into direct contact and in which truth
is directly authenticated to us within our own spirits.
Apocalyptic religions are those which falsely pro-
fess to reveal supra-mundane truths or facts, future
events or ideas beyond the grasp of our native
powers. He denies utterly that man is capable of
receiving such ultra-mundane knowledge. He says :

" It is no limitation of his (God's) power to
say that into capacity such as ours, and through
media such as our dwelling-place affords, the ultra-

^ " Seat of Authority in Religion," p. 297.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 29

mundane knowledge supposed could not pass and be
authenticated. We are not made for its reception;
and the earth is not made for its display." ^^

What then are the tests of truth? The answer of
Martineau limits truth in the religious sphere to our
moral and spiritual axioms or intuitions.

" Where the agent is divine and the recipient
human there can be nothing for the mind to do but
to let the light flow in, and by the luster of its
presence turn each common thought to sanctity : The
disclosure must be self -disclosure ; the evidence, self-
evidence; the apprehension, as we sa}^ intuitive;
something given, and not found. Here then we
have the essential distinction . . . that the one
(natural religion) is worked out by man through
processes which he can count and justify; the other
is there by gift of God, so close to the soul, so
folded in the very center of the personal life, that
though it ever speaks it cannot be spoken of ; though
it shines everywhere it can be looked at nowhere;
and because presupposed as reality it evades crit-
icism as a phenomenon." ^*

It is clear from the above that the only proposi-
tions which we are warranted in asserting in religion
are moral and spiritual axioms, things which com-
mend themselves to us by their self-evidence. Mar-
tineau does not hesitate to apply this principle to the
New Testament, and asserts that all its teachings as
to Christ's incarnation, Messiahship, and all its

^ " Seat of Authority," p. 321. "Ibid., pp. 305, 306.

C

30 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ultra-mundane teaching on all subjects are simply
the apocalyptic and false elements read back into
the history after Christ's death, and left in the
records by his disciples.

By way of summary of the preceding exposition
we have the following as the notes of the criterion
of truth in religion as held by the writers whose!
views we have cited. The criterion is inward and
not outward; the truth is mentally assimilated, not
accepted on authority; the truth is achieved by us,
not donated to us for acceptance merely; it is per-
sonally constituted by us, and not by proxy; it is
inner verification, not unverified acceptance; it is
intuitive and axiomatic, not inferential; it is opr
posed to all externality and objectivity as an au-
thority; it has none of the elements of the Roman
Catholic implicit faith, which accepts merely on the
authority of the Church; it is spiritual assimilation
rather than mechanical adhesion to a creed; it is
scientific in that it confines its assertions to the
facts of the Christian consciousness and rejects
tradition.

Now it is characteristic of the subjective school
of theologians to class all forms of external au-
thority in religion with the Roman Catholic. No
compromises are admissible. To make the Bible
authoritative is no whit better in principle than to
bow to tradition or the pope or the Church. So
that modern Protestantism has lapsed sadly from
the earlier positions of Luther and the Reformers.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 3I

Any external authority in religion is fatal to the
interests of religion. It is alleged that the prin-
ciple of authority cannot be stated in terms which
lodge it in the objective world without destroying
the freedom and vitality of faith. Modern Protes-
tantism is called upon to repent and cast out its
doctrine of an authoritative Bible, and the modern
man is called upon to choose betv/een the authorita-
tive absolutism of the Roman Catholic Church and
the absolute individualism of the subjective cri-
terion of truth. There is no middle ground.

The position advocated in this treatise is that
neither of these views is correct. We are not shut
up to the alternative of Romanism and subjec-
tivism. One of these theories assumes man's per-
manent incapacity and spiritual infancy; the other,
his full maturity. Neither is true. One asserts
that religious beliefs must all be imposed by an
external ecclesiastical authority ; the other, that they
must all be evolved from the depths of our own
consciousness. Neither is true. One assumes that
nothing is worthy of belief unless it is the ipse dixit
of some other human authority; the other, that
nothing is worthy of belief unless a man has dis-
covered it himself. Neither is true. The one con-
ceives of the salvation of man as being like the
rescue of a horse from a cistern by means of
machinery without his intelligent cooperation; the
other, as of the Chinaman who fell into the mire and
tried to save himself by tugging at his own queue.

32 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Both are wrong. One conceives of man's spiritual
intelligence as if he were a grub; the other, as if
he were an archangel. He is neither the one por
the other.

We stand for the free development of human per-
sonality, the complete unfolding of all man's powers
— intellectual, moral, and spiritual — in short, for the
perfection of man. But we hold and shall try
to show that this end is to be achieved not by the
abolition of the principle of authority, but by its
recognition. The need to-day is for a clear defi-
nition and grasp of the conception of authority, a
clearer apprehension, especially of the nature and
function and peculiar attributes of religious au-
thority. Christianity as revelation is not merely
subjective. It is also objective. Christianity as
authority has none of the unlawful elements of
ecclesiasticism or other forms of tyranny. It is
rather the crystallizing in objective form of the
eternal verities of the spiritual universe, a deposit
of truth which is consonant with the nature of God
and man and all forms of being, and which pro-
jected outward from the invisible God upon the
stage of history is necessarily in the first instance
objective to man and then subjectively apprehended
and gradually assimilated by him.

3. Criticism of the Subjective Principle

In another chapter we propose to examine the
relations of empirical science to religion. We,

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 33

therefore, defer to that time much that might be
said here in criticism of the subjective criterion of
rehgious truth. There are, however, a number
of things which should be said now, which have a
scientific or philosophic or practical bearing upon
our theme.

For one thing, the subjective criterion assumes in
an unwarranted manner that the only value of truth
to us is to be assimilated by us; that, so to speak,
the only function of truth among human interests
is to be intellectualized ; that until the inner vital-
izing and rationalizing process has taken place,
truth is of no interest whatever to man in religion.
Such a position cannot be maintained either on
practical or theoretical grounds. As a matter of
fact, all kinds of truth, scientific, philosophic, moral,
and religious, come to us in both forms, as subjec-
tively apprehended and as objectively presented and
accepted. All human progress is based upon the
acceptance of truth achieved by others and its use
as the basis for new achievements of our own.
These in turn become the basis for the further
achievement of those who follow us. Otherwise
the fabric of truth would be razed to the ground
with each new set of thinkers and a new one
attempted. Human thought under such conditions
would have a back-and-forth motion, like the old
Anglo-Saxon poetry, without progress.

Besides this use of objective truth in acquiring
other truth, it is also valuable as a means of adjust-

34 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ing ourselves to the conditions of life. Truth as
a rule of conduct is of greater value even than
truth as intellectual capital. Just as money has
two elements of value, its purchasing power and
its value as capital for gaining more money, so
truth has these two elements of value. The pur-
chasing power of objective truth is the chief ele-
ment of value for the comunon man, just as is the
purchasing power of money. To accept moral or
religious precepts simply and to live by them secures
for mankind at large unspeakable good in the form
of peace and joy and hope and power for living
and a thousand other forms. If man's chief in-
terest were merely rational, if his mind were simply
an intellectual hopper for receiving as much of the
grist of the objective world as he could mentally
verify for himself, the subjective criterion might
serve all his ends. But man is religious and prac-
tical as well as intellectual and speculative.

If it be objected at this point that the objective
truth which man is warranted in adopting as a rule
of conduct must be only such as has been verified
by some one or through the combined experience
of the race, the reply is that this does not relieve
it of the quality so fatal to it in the eyes of all
those who adopt the subjective criterion in religion,
viz., its externality. We are quite ready to con-
cede and, indeed, to maintain with vigor that objec-
tive truth to be valid and binding upon us must of
course be truth, just as is truth which verifies

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 35

itself in experience. But in the light of the prin-
ciple advocated by Sabatier and Lobstein and Mar-
tineau and the school to which they belong, when-
ever religious truth comes as dogma, in any other
sense than that in which it is the explication or
definition of the moral and spiritual intuitions, it
at once becomes vitiated by its externalism and par-
takes of the principle of authority, so much repro-
bated by them all. The assumption of the sub-
jectivist at this point is that in religion external
propositions are either untrue in themselves or un-
true for us, and hence irrelevant to us until veri-
fied in our own experience. Our own assertion, on
the contrary, is the relevancy of all objective truth
to us first, in so far as it is really truth; and
secondly, in so far as it may be useful in acquiring
other truth; and thirdly, in so far as it will aid
us in the practical adjustments of life.

Professor Sabatier distinguishes between faith
and belief. Faith is the inward principle; belief
is the externalization of faith, so to speak, in a
proposition. He is quite inconsistent, however, in
his maintenance of the distinction. He admits that
faith produces belief, and is thus primary and vital.
Then he admits further that belief may produce
faith. In so doing he forsakes his fundamental
principle. For such a use of belief in producing
faith is a clear recognition of the function of objec-
tive truth in religion, and to this extent a recog-
nition of the principle of external authority.

2,6 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Sabatier nowhere gives an adequate account of the
uses of beHef. It tends in his thinking to become a
mere by-product of faith with Httle or no impor-
tance of its own. 'As a matter of fact, beUef
mediates between faith and faith. It is in part
the creation of faith, but in its turn it produces
faith. In reHgion faith becomes expHcit in belief,
and behef becomes the instrument of faith in pro-
ducing faith. It is of course inevitable that prac-
tical men who know human nature and are familiar
with man's religious struggles would recoil from
a thorough-going subjectivism. The struggle in the
cases of all the writers we have named to make
room for some sort of objectivism in their theory
is very marked. By minimizing it to the extreme
limit they seek to overcome it. Our own view is
that they have misconceived the problem, and hence
failed in the solution.

Perhaps it may be urged here that our acceptance
of objective truth is only in the degree of our as-
similation of it. The reply is twofold : First, if this
is true, the function and value of objective and even
authoritative truth is vindicated by its office of
producing results within us. Secondly, objective
truth is not limited thus. In a thousand forms we
accept truth unverified by ourselves in science as
well as in religion. The solution of the problem lies
in the direction of ascertaining the laws and the
relations which prevail in the interaction of our
minds and the world, or how the interaction may

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 37

take place and at the same time leave us free.
Here again it may be interposed that the objection
of the subjectivists is not to external truth, but to
the authoritativeness of such truth. To which we
reply that according to the definitions of the sub-
jective principle already cited, the one aspect of
truth which is most offensive in religion is its ex-
ternality. It is irrelevant and worthless for religion
so long as it remains external. Not until it is as-
similated by the mind, mentally digested, so to
speak, is it of value. All objective truth according
to this view is without religious standing as such.
It must be naturalized in the subjective sphere in
order to attain such standing. If it is conceived
as having objective worth and definite and fixed
value and distinct function of any kind in religion,
it instantly passes over to the realm of authority.
For this reason we have been urging the function
of truth as objective as well as subjective in the
interest of a legitimate conception of religious
authority.

Much of the confusion attending the efforts of
the subjectivists arises from a false identification
of science and religion. Sabatier asserts that to
attempt to combine science and authority is like
trying to weld together a clod of clay and an iron
bar. Thereupon he identifies the task of religion
with that of science and says religion cannot brook
the principle of authority. He says : " Quite other
is the profound affinity between religion and scien-

38 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tific inspiration. They spring from the same source
and tend to the same end, and both manifest the
same life of the Spirit. Both are born of a re-
Hgious love of truth. The spirit of piety adores
the truth, even when it does not recognize it; the
scientific spirit perhaps seeks for truth without
adoring it, but both love it above all else, and de-
vote themselves to it without reserve. They meet
and hold communion together in the religion of
truth." 1^

It is this complete intellectualizing of religion
which constitutes a fundamental fallacy in all
Sabatier's reasoning. Along with the effort to make
an intellectual and scientific ideal absolute in re-
ligion comes numerous other unwarranted things.
One of these is the effort to conceive mobility
as the leading characteristic of the religious life and
that in intellectual terms. Progressive apprehen-
sion of truth, while incident to religion, is not its
chief characteristic. Progressive realization of
righteousness is the religious ideal. Fellowship
with God and man and a perfect individual life
and social order are the goal of religion. To
achieve these ends truth must become static in very
large measure, because only thus can it take the
form of working principles for practical life. To
assimilate truth mentally is widely removed as a
process from that by which truth is assimilated
in life and conduct. Truth as a rule of conduct

^ " Religions of Authority," pp. 342, 343.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 39

and means of adjustment to the universe is ap-
plied in one way, while truth as intellectual capital
for the expansion of the mind is quite another. Of
course there is no ultimate contradiction involved,
but the spheres of religion and science are so dis-
tinct that it is perilous in the highest degree to
overlook the difference.

There is a singular absence of sympathy and lack
of imagination exhibited by many earnest men of to-
day who are bending all their energies to make of
science and religion a seamless robe, continuous with
each other in all respects. The religious interest is
that of man as man, the scientific interest is that of a
comparatively few, and when science becomes altru-
istic enough in spirit to appreciate the tremendous
urgency and gravity of the moral and religious
task of mankind as distinct from that of science, it
will insist less on a procrustean conformity of re-
ligion to each passing phase of scientific culture.
It will seek rather by tactful and sympathetic ad-
justment of spheres to become a co-worker with re-
ligion, each in its own sphere, toward the great
common goal of all human life. It will be found as
we proceed that there is a valid point of view which
enables us to escape all sense of contradiction as
between faith and science. When knowledge of
reality is conceived voluntaristically, the difficulties
of adjustment in a great measure vanish. It is the
rationalistic and abstract point of view against which
our argument has been directed. The latter is the

40 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

point of view so widely prevalent, which has won
the loyalty of numerous modern theologians at the
cost of most of the vital characteristics of religion
itself.

Not only does the subjective criterion ignore
certain functions and uses of truth, but it is also
guilty of carrying the principle of individualism to
an unwarranted extreme. All human interests are
social as well as individual. If a man is incom-
plete apart from God, so is he incomplete apart
from his brother. The interdependence and soli-
darity of the parts of the social organism are com-
monplaces of sociological teaching. All human ex-
perience inevitably becomes socialized. Its outward
expressions take the form of laws and institutions
and traditions and canons, rules of action which in-
evitably become authoritative for society. The par-
ticular form assumed is determined by the sphere
in which it arises, and the nature of the resultant
authority corresponds. Now it is clear that the
same law holds in religion as elsewhere. It would
indeed be a strange universe if in the lower spheres
of human activity, where man can find his way more
easily, he were blessed with the operation of this
social law, while in the highest of all spheres,
where his needs are greatest, he should be de-
prived of it.

This leads to the remark that none of the cham-
pions of subjectivism has sufficiently analyzed the
conception of authority. Sabatier, e. g., boldly

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 4 1

promulgates the view that nothing can be authori-
tative in reHgion which is not infallible. The
Roman Catholic form of infallibility is set up as the
sole form of authority in religion, and no varia-
tion from it is allowable in any essential particular.
Thus he succeeds, as he thinks, in fixing upon
Protestants the stigma of blind obedience.

As a matter of fact, however, this procedure is
wholly unwarranted. It is a misconception of the
nature of authority. It is only by inventing or
adopting a form of the conception which varies
from the general law that such a case can be made
out. In all spheres there is an absolute authority
in the background and a concrete expression of
it on the lower human plane. The Bible is the
concrete expression of religious authority for Prot-
estants. But among them, taking them as a whole,
the views as to how it is an authority extend all
the way from those who assert the inspiration of the
Hebrew vowel-points and the divisions into chap-
ters and verses and the like, out to those who
find in the Scriptures simply an authoritative divine
message and a saving gospel. At this point we
are not discussing the question which of these
views is the more correct. Our discussion of the
authority of the Scriptures comes later. We simply
assert the variety which prevails in the ideal of
authority respecting the Scriptures in order to set
aside the broad statement that authority in religion
is inconceivable save in terms of infallibility. Else-

42 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

where men have no difficulty in avoiding this mis-
take. Parental authority is real, but not infallible.
Social authority in many forms is real, but not in-
fallible. Scientific authority is real, but sometimes
fallible. In the State authority is very real, but
far from perfect. The general principle of au-
thority therefore is exemplified in many forms apart
from the attribute of infallibility. This last point
is the only one we are concerned in insisting upon
here. Whether authority does assume a special
form in religion is another question. In the Chris-
tian religion the fact of revelation gives rise to
peculiar and special conditions which must be taken
into account.

It follows from the above that to escape from the
social authority in any sphere is to escape from
life. There is no way out except by ceasing to be a
member of the social organism. The subjectivists,
as already noted, endeavor to provide a place for
this social influence, but seek to explain it not as
authority, but as something which is to them less
obnoxious. But this is impossible, since they pro-
vide no function for objective truth in their re-
ligious scheme, which does not partake of the of-
fensive qualities of authority. It is an impertinence
to the religious life.

Lobstein says that in religion man's apprehension
of truth is " assent of himself to himself." ^® So
far as this is meant to indicate the vitality and

" " Introduction to Protestant Dogmatics," p. 129.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 43

inwardness of faith it contains one element of
truth. The free action of man's spirit is essential
to religion. But as a definition of man's total rela-
tion to truth in religion, it is radically defective.
Most men in religion do not in the first instance
gain an assent of themselves to themselves, but an
assent to something other than themselves. With
most men religion begins with self-repudiation
rather than self-approbation, and in the distinctively
Christian experience it always begins with self-
renunciation. In the later stage of religious experi-
ence they may succeed in some measure in gaining
an assent of themselves to themselves. This defini-
tion of Lobstein and others is given under the pre-
vailing sense that external and objective truth must
needs be arbitrary and improper in religion. This
also is an error. All depends on the form of au-
thority, the manner in which it is exercised, and
the results in human character, whether it is so or
not. At certain stages of man's growth authority
is the most merciful and beneficent of arrange-
ments for him. In all stages it is essential in some
respects and under certain forms. We propose
later to point out the nature of religious authority.
Meanwhile we confine our efforts to indicating the
defects of an exclusively subjective criterion of
truth in religion.

There is a most intimate connection between the
subjective standard of religious truth and the theory
of knowledge implicitly or explicitly held by its

44 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

advocates. That theory finds expression in the
" value judgment " of Ritschl and in the Symbolo-
Fideism of the French school with which Sabatier
is to be classed. As the Ritschlian form of the
theory is perhaps more familiar to the reader, we
make use of the other form represented in the
French school. Critical symbolism is the designa-
tion of the point of view which regards all dogmas
as symbols rather than as exact expressions of truth..
The designation is well fitted to express the pro-
visional and transient aspect of humanly formulated
beliefs. Fideism is employed to indicate the inner
core of vital faith out of which the dogma arises.
It will be seen from these definitions that Symbolo-
Fideism does not regard doctrinal development as
the attainment in successive stages of definite and
permanent results which may henceforth be em-
ployed in stable forms for future conquest, but
rather as the varying attempts of men to state in
symbolic form their apprehension of the phenomena
of experience.

This is really a poetic rather than a scientific
conception of truth. It is adopted, however, in
order to provide an armor of defense against
the scientific attack. Faith or the inner vital prin-
ciple is in and of itself beyond the assaults of
unbelief because it is a matter of personal experi-
ence. Symbolism places dogma also beyond the
power of the enemy because it leaves it wholly in-
determinate. A symbol does not bind us to scien-

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 45

tific exactness of statement, but leaves the widest
margin for variations of interpretation. Science,
on the other hand, is characterized by a demand for
the most rigorous exactness. It thus easily appears
in what sense Symbolo-Fideism is scientific. It is
scientific not in the sense that it shares with science
the integrity and definiteness and rigorous exacti-
tude of a movement independent in its own sphere,
but only in the sense that it feels deeply the need of
defining itself in terms which will enable it to live
with science. Symbolo-Fideism is a life-preserver
donned by theology under the depressing sense of
imminent shipwreck. In addition to the advantage
of thus providing a modus vivendi with science,
Symbolo-Fideism is a remarkably expansive theo-
logical conception in that it is capable of serving as
sanctuary to a host of theological views of most
divergent type also laboring under the storm and
stress of the scientific attack.

This view of religious truth can scarcely be main-
tained. It conceives religion in a manner which
destroys the greater part of its value for religious
purposes. It leaves religious truth wholly indeter-
minate. It makes the principle of change or " be-
coming " or mobility absolute in the development
of doctrine, so that doctrine ceases to be a tool
to work with and becomes merely a sphere for the
play of dialectic. It permits no element of positive
and final assertion about any of the great realities of
religion. It is a device for holding on to and let-

D

46 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ting go religious truth at the same time. As a matter
of fact, its Kantian foundation for its theory of
knowledge is an untenable one. Moreover, it
smuggles in certain factors and assumes them for
the religious life, which the theory of knowledge
forbids. It insists much upon our relations to God,
the Father, in religious experience. But this it has
no right to do on the Ritschlian premises. At least,
it has no right to assume the idea of God, the
Father, as a permanent and fixed one in theology,
because the mobility involved in Symbolo-Fideism
opens the door to a rejection of the conception of
God, the Father, for some other principle or ideal
at any time. Indeed, this step has already been
taken by some. God is becoming simply an '* appre-
ciation " or " value " in the thinking of many. In-
deed, the subjective point of view consistently car-
ried out leaves none of the Christian elements safe.
The consciousness of Jesus may serve as a norm
for those who have affinities for Jesus, but the re-
ligious consciousness of many of the modern sub-
jectivists feels the authority of Jesus as an incubus
in the religious life, which men must throw off
in order to attain freedom. ^^ In the nature of the
case this must be so. It is the inevitable logic of
the subjective principle. If the principle of au-
thority is rejected in a thorough-going manner, the
authority of Jesus disappears.

" Cf. Geo. B. Foster, " The Function of Religion in Man's Strug-
gle for Existence," pp. 207f., 223.

THE MODERN" IDEAL OF FREEDOM 47

In order to make clear the fundamental defect
in the view we are examining, we may for the
present define authority as any external expression
of reality or truth or power which is indispensable
and binding, which we cannot escape, which is inevi-
table for us, which environs us so that to escape it
we must change the nature of reality itself, or else
pursue a course which will destroy ourselves. We
can deny such external authority only on the assump-
tion that truth and reality never become definitely
crystallized in forms external to us, that human ex-
perience never succeeds in attaining to a knowledge
of this inevitable and eternal truth, this environing
reality in the world about us, to a sufficient degree
to enable us to state it in forms which may become
working principles for life and thought and con-
duct which are authoritative for us. This is really
the meaning of the Ritschlian and Symbolo-Fide-
istic conception of religious truth. Truth pervades
the world about us somewhat like leaven; it is
latent in the universe, implicit but never explicit.
We never succeed in formulating it, but only as in-
dividuals subjectively assimilate our own measure
and degree of it. For whenever ultimate and
inevitable truth is formulated into definite proposi-
tions these propositions become authoritative. They
then impose their law on consciousness, which as-
similates them if it can; but consciousness finds it-
self unable to escape their authority. It is perfectly
clear that such a conception destroys the very mean-

48 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ing of the word progress. For the milestones of
civilization are the crystallized and authoritative
expressions of truth and reality which thought^ and
expression have achieved.

Our relation to truth and reality are not so vague
and indeterminate as symbolism contends. Sym-
bolism is one of the most radical forms of evolu-
tionism as applied to the progress of the race. But
it is really not warranted by any of the many
scientific forms which evolution has assumed. The
relation of the organ to environment is not that
of a symbol to its potential and indeterminate con-
tent of truth or life. Its relation is that of a definite
reality in the organism to definite laws and condi-
tions in the environment. These laws and these rela-
tions are quite susceptible of definite scientific for-
mulation. There is a vast stretch between a fin and
a wing as modes of locomotion. But science does
not find the chief use of a fin to consist in its
symbolic relation to the wing which it is alleged to
become in the course of evolution, or to some mode
of locomotion higher than the wing which is to be
attained, or to some more vague and indeterminate
principle of becoming which is latent in the whole
progress. Science reverses this way of regarding
the matter, and takes fin and wing and all the
other intermediate stages of the progress as con-
crete embodiments of truth and reality. They are
the points of rock which jut above the mysterious
sea of being and constitute the only data science

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 49

has to build upon. To treat them as symbols is
to conjure up a haze to cover them until the points
of rock lose their identity and blend again with the
blankness of the sea itself. Symbolism appears to
be simply an ingenious device for conceding all to
science while claiming all for religion at the same
time. Religion, however, is the sufferer, for the
things which constitute its very life are all placed
in jeopardy. If they are retained at all, they are
retained in a form which leaves them at the mercy
of speculative thought and the protean whimsi-
calities of our marvelously varied and forever rest-
less modern individualism.

We conclude, therefore, that neither Ritschlian-
ism nor Symbolo-Fideism is a satisfactory view of
religious truth. They rest upon a radical agnos-
ticism or a pantheism which cannot supply a safe
basis for religion. Religion cannot permanently
survive any view which leaves its objects wholly in-
determinate. There must be some better way of
conceiving the relations of science and religion than
either of these ways. Moreover, religion can never
flourish save under the stimulus of profound con-
viction. The ihtellectualistic interest which domi-
nates Symbolo-Fideism, its excessive sensitiveness
to the scientific situation, keeps it continually at the
work of adjusting itself to science. Thus it never
has sufficient leisure from itself, so to speak, to
enable it to devote itself to its own distinctive re-
ligious ends and aims. Its fingers are always busy

50 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

at the loom, wherein it hopes to weave religion
and science into a seamless garment. The law of
the religious life and activity, however, must be
imposed by religion itself, not by physical science.

The remark was made that no form of scientific
evolution really justifies the theology which makes
the principle of mobility absolute. It is only a
highly speculative form of evolutionism which can
be called into the service of such a theology. It
does not fall within our purpose to examine this
speculative evolutionism at length. We confine our
comments to its bearing upon religion and the re-
ligious interest. Called into service as a means of
making terms with physical science as we have
seen, and as a means of escaping the authoritative-
ness of an external v/orld of stable realities, it has,
by the inevitable gravitation of its logic, led in
some of its advocates, to a rejection of all that is
worth while in religion. It seizes upon the obvious
fact of motion and change in the physical universe,
and applies a principle thus derived from the cosmos
to all forms of being including God. The universe
as a whole is under the dominion of the all-inclusive
law of becoming. Such a view of course cancels
itself, because to be consistent change itself would
have to change. Becoming would necessarily lapse
into being. The static element would enter thus by
way of its denial.

What does this speculative evolutionism leave
us ? For one thing, it leaves a mere ghost of scien-

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 5 1

tific evolution which is shot through, from begin-
ning to end, with teleology, with purpose, and prog-
ress. But a goal and a purpose imply a static reality
incompatible with mere becoming or change. If
there is a goal before the on-going world, then all
the details of the progress are to be thought of
as subordinate to that, and we have a static world
after all. Of course this view cancels human per-
sonality, because if personality is in any sense fixed,
the discordant static element enters by this door.
The law of change forbids us to regard our indi-
vidual selves as in any sense of the word perma-
nent realities. Immortality in the Christian mean-
ing of the term of course disappears. Fellowship
between ourselves and God, which religion teaches,
becomes meaningless and empty. For God him-
self is a part of the sum of totality, of which we
also are a part and which forever changes. The
gods of men are simply their own creations, which
may serve some sort of purpose as " values " or as
" appreciations," but have no objective reality.
Thus it appears that speculative evolutionism
empties out every distinctive element of religion,
and leaves it in abject poverty, naked and cold and
starving on the philosophic highway of life.

Since the days of Heraclitus and the Eleatics the
pendulum of speculative thought has swung be-
tween the principle of change and that of per-
manence as the clue to the meaning of the world.
The controversy is endless.

52 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

As in all abstract systems of thought, the theory
of becoming is built entirely of some one aspect of
reality, some fragment of the universe, scale^ off
and adopted as a major premise for deducing the
rest. That change and becoming are facts no one
can deny. But permanence is also a fact, and both
principles must be recognized if we are to avoid
deceiving ourselves. Permanence and change are
not problems for thought so much as data of
thought. We are not warranted in making one of
them absolute in order to cancel the other. We
must somehow reconcile, or if we cannot reconcile,
we must accept the existence of both. And this
means simply that the error of the speculative evo-
lutionist here lies in his taking his standpoint on
a single aspect of the physical world instead of
human personality. The change of the cosmos may
seem to present an irreconcilable conflict with the
conception of a static universe. But that conflict
ceases in the human personality, which contains
both the element of change and the element of
permanence. We can only explain ultimate reality
in terms of the highest we know, and personality
is the highest phase of being known to us, and
contains in itself the greatest promise for the solu-
tion of the mysteries of thought without canceling
any part of the reality in the interest of any other
part. Speculative evolutionism assumes the incom-
petence of religion to supply from her own re-
sources the laws of her existence, and imposes a

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM . 53

law upon her from an alien sphere. It crucifies
religion upon the cross of intellectualism.

Schleiermacher, whose influence began to be
powerfully exerted at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, was the first modern writer to give
coherent expression to the Christian consciousness
as the seat of authority in religion. All more recent
views run back in principle to that of Schleier-
macher. Their implications are essentially the same
with his. Now Schleiermacher was decidedly pan-
theistic in his starting-point. His doctrinal system
and his " Speeches on Religion '' exhibit every-
where his effort to graft Christian truth into a pan-
theistic stock. He struggled hard over the idea
of the personality of God, and never clearly grasped
it, much less worked with it consistently in his teach-
ing. The pantheism underlying the subjective prin-
ciple is easy to understand. If God is a person, the
truth about him, when we learn it, becomes definite
and clear in meaning. When it becomes thus
definite and clear in meaning we may frame it into
doctrines. These doctrines become our guides to
correct relations with God. Thus they become au-
thoritative.

If the universe, on the other hand, is not personal,
if pantheism is true, then such authoritative state-
ments are impossible. Each individual conscious-
ness is equally an expression of the true meaning
of the world. If there is no personality above our
finite personalities, then each one of us is a law

54 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

unto himself. The impersonal world-ground comes
to expression in each of us. Humanity is like a
vast flower-bed with an infinite variety of flowers.
The same sap produces them all. Each conscious-
ness is a valid and correct blossoming of the sap
into human experience. Error cannot exist since
there is no higher standard than the individual con-
sciousness. A has no more right to dispute B, Paul
has no more right to dispute Schleiermacher, than
a rose has a right to dispute an orchid.

It is but natural that men so spiritual and earnest
as Sabatier and Lobstein should recoil from the
consequences of a radical subjectivism in religion.
They clearly saw that unless faith were anchored to
something objective the tides and winds would
keep it forever drifting on the sea of thought. We
are not surprised, therefore, to find that both these
writers, whose advocacy of the subjective criterion
we have already pointed out, should make an effort
to protect their principle against its own inherent
perils. This they attempt to accomplish by setting
up the Scriptures as indispensable to faith while
eliminating as far as possible the obnoxious element
of authority. The result is a pronounced dualism
in the point of view of both writers and a futile
effort to maintain a thorough-going subjectivism
along with some sort of authority. They themselves
repeatedly declare the irreconcilable discords be-
tween faith and authority, and yet place faith in
leading-strings to an external norm of truth and

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 55

life. If they had simply conceived vitality and in-
wardness as necessary to faith, they would have
preserved its integrity and power intact. Then
they could have gone on to assert also the necessity
of authority to faith, and have been in a position to
expound the true nature of religious authority. But
instead of this they expressly and repeatedly re-
pudiate authority, and then inconsistently call it in
to assist at the ceremony of installing and crown-
ing the subjective criterion. They sometimes try
to distinguish between a norm or indispensable
source and the idea of authority. But so long as
the norm or source is held to be the only means of
producing faith, the only criterion of the gospel, it
is indistinguishable from the objective standard
which they so much reprobate. It is the setting
up of such a standard as independent of faith and
as the cause and source of faith. It places creden-
tials in the hands of an objective guide in religion
and specializes its function and, in short, validates
it as an authority.

Professor Lobstein recognizes the necessity of
the Scriptures more adequately than Sabatier, per-
haps, and suggests a conception of the gospel more
nearly in accordance with the New Testament. As
to authority in religion he says :

" There is a second point which must always be
emphasized, because it is always forgotten. If there
are serious and earnest Protestants who have any
difficulty in conceiving the notion and the role of

56 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

religious authority, is it not because they have so
much difficulty in establishing it on moral and
spiritual grounds? One insists on thinking th^t the
moral certitude is less than material or scientific
certitude; one confuses the three orders of great-
ness so admirably defined and distinguished by
Pascal ; one imagines that an authority which lays
claim to the conscience only could not be an abso-
lute authority." Again he says : ** This truth which
makes believers and is accessible only to believers,
the fact which gives life to faith, that is precisely
the gospel, the word of God, the divine revelation
in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is not
my personal experience which makes the gospel
and which creates authority; on the contrary, it
is the gospel which, rising on the horizon of my,
history, entering into the sphere of my soul, pene-
trating to the very center of my life, determines,
by its influence and its intrinsic force, an inner and
decisive crisis by virtue of which I decide, believe,
obey, love, surrender. Without this divine word
which has awakened my soul, I should continue to
sleep my sleep, troubled perhaps by prophetic
dreams, but a sleep always overwhelming and at last
fatal."

The above has an excellent ring from the point of
view of all who desire to preserve an authorita-
tive Scripture. But in the next sentence Lobstein
proceeds to say that this authoritativeness of the
word of God. or gospel is confined to such truths

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 57

as the believer can assimilate. Thus : *' On the
other hand, it is true the gospel remains for me a
dosed or dead letter if I do not assimilate to myself
its divine content by a voluntary and free act,
solicited, made possible, realized within me by
means of that same gospel which frees me while it
enslaves me, and which guarantees my independ-
ence while creating my submission." ^^ Further
Lobstein says : " Our experience does not make
truth, but it does make it our own; it does not
produce religious authority, but it does give it its
hold upon our consciousness and submits our inner
Hfe to it." ^^

We have already seen -^ how Lobstein defines
this inner experience. It is not a set of super-
natural notions and inspired doctrines, but rather
" the inner and immediate sense of divine sonship
which is the inspired essence of the self-conscious-
ness of Jesus." We also saw how he declared : " We
will reject every plan, every arrangement which
would seek in external domains for the spiritual
reality affirmed by the Christian consciousness." It
is quite evident, therefore, that Lobstein limits the
authority of the Scriptures, or the content of the
Scriptures, to the moral and spiritual intuitions, such
truths as each one may verify for himself.

In like manner Sabatier recognizes the indispen-

^8 " Introduction to Protestant Dogmatics," p. 135.
^3 " Introduction to Protestant Dogmatics," p. 136.
^ Ibid., pp. 27, 29.

58 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

sableness of Scripture. He writes : *' The gospel
properly becomes the law of the human conscious-
ness and is forever inseparable from it." ^^

Sabatier, in defining our relation to Christ, says:
" Nevertheless it is evident why in the normal course
of things the person of Christ is the essential factor
in the Christian religion, and why Christianity can-
not be severed from him without death. . . This is
why the heart of every Christian is bound to Jesus
Christ, and must ever be so bound ; bound to the
story of his outward life as the type of life which
it is his task to reproduce, bound to his person as
the source of holy inspiration, without which it
can do nothing. The full and normal development
of the Christian consciousness can take place only
under the influence of Christ. He is the vine whose
sap flows into the branches. His consciousness is
the generating cell, whence proceed all other like
cells of that social organism which Paul calls his
body, and of which his Spirit is the common^
sovereign soul." ^^

In one paragraph Sabatier declares that the
Scriptures are " the necessary starting-point of
all religious and dogmatic development " ; " hav-
ing preceded all forms of later tradition, it is
the historic norm by which these may and should
be controlled, that we may know to what de-
gree they adhere to or depart from the primitive

21 " Religions of Authority," p. 323.

22 " Religions of Authority," p. 334.

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 59

essence of Christianity " ; " all dogmas come from
Scripture by way of interpretation; all go back to
it as their original source or warrant." ^^ These
statements seem quite in the order of the widely
prevalent Protestant view of an authoritative Bible.
Yet in the same paragraph with the above statement
we find the following : *' Theology is not bound
under the yoke of biblical conceptions, but it is
clear that no new dogmatic expression would be
legitimately Christian if it contradicted the spirit
of the Bible and was bound by no tie to primitive
Christian experience, of which the Bible is the
authoritative document." The paragraph closes with
the sentence : " The Bible is not an authority for
theology, but it will ever be an indispensable means
of historic explanation and religious control of the-
ology." How to discriminate between " authority '*
and " religious control " is a rather perplexing ques-
tion. As indicative of how thoroughly Sabatier
is wedded to the subjective principle, we cite one
other passage among many : The gospel is defined in
terms of our moral and spiritual intuition : " There
is nothing in the gospel which your conscience may
not recognize as that highest good to which secretly
it aspires ; nothing which, if you sincerely desire
it, you cannot yourself experience, and thus recog-
nize it as the very soul of your soiil." -*

Here again Sabatier reduces the gospel and the

23 " Religions of Authority," p. 360.
2* " Religions of Authority," p. 328.

6o FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

r

authoritative element of Scripture to the moral and
spiritual intuitions.

Now this adherence to an objective " norm " of
control, this adoption of the Scriptures as regulative
in theology is quite in harmony with the generally
received view as far as it goes. It asserts that in
the course of history there has arisen a form of
religious experience to which the soul of man re-
sponds, and that this form of experience has been
enshrined first in the consciousness of Christ and
then in a literary record, and that because of our
ability to verify it, each of us for himself, we
are to regard this form of experience as final for
the religious life. It is not so much what it in-
cludes as what it excludes that renders this view
inadequate as a statement of the relation of Scrip-
ture to religious experience. Two or three of its
assumptions cannot endure careful scrutiny. It
assumes that whatever a man can assimilate is the
form of religious experience he should cultivate,
and then asserts that there is but one form of that
experience for all. This would be regarded as in-
tolerable by all who do not respond to these par-
ticular moral and spiritual intuitions which these
writers adopt as the essential content of religion.

The wide-spread prevalence of the Christian ideal
of the religious life is indeed a marvelous tribute
to its essential and fundamental truth. But in our
day there are not wanting in large numbers men
and women who repudiate the Christian norm of

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 6l

both ethics and rehgion. The type of thought in-
augurated by Nietzsche and advocated by so many
in recent years will repudiate the Christian intui-
tions, which seem so completely to satisfy the
writers under review. " The only golden rule is
that there is no golden rule," is a saying which
very well characterizes this type of opinion. It
holds that Christianity is a moral and spiritual dis-
ease, an incubus which has been fixed upon the
race two thousand years, utterly destructive of all
the highest and best qualities of manhood, and that
the only hope of the race is to cast it off. The
adherents of such a view of course rebel in most
vigorous fashion against binding the race back
to a " gospel," or a " norm," or a " word of God,"
or an alleged group of moral intuitions derived from
the record of the life of an individual Jew who
lived two thousand years ago. They will repudiate
this procedure as a return to Roman Catholicism, to
mere externalism in authority, and a repudiation
of all that civilization has attained in the struggle
for freedom.

Besides Nietzsche and those who follow him,
there is a group of modern biblical students who
deny that we can through the Gospels arrive at
any reliable picture of Jesus at all. The view pro-
pounded by Strauss long ago and that of Schmiedel
and others more recently illustrate what is meant.
Schmiedel reduces the authentic sayings of Jesus
in the records to a number which can almost be

62 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

told off on the fingers of one hand. Moral intui-
tion does not enable these men to accomplish the
results so confidently claimed by the advocates of
the subjective criterion. For them it leads to utter
negation. The New Testament records, they claim,
were written to prove a case, and are utterly unre-
liable as history. Hence the facts as to what Jesus
was and what he taught lie beyond our reach.
Thus an exclusively subjective criterion delivers us
over bound hand and foot to the most radical
opponents of the claims of Jesus in all respects.

There is no way to answer these men if we attach
ourselves to the view that the sole means for de-
termining the truth of the New Testament records
Is the appeal which these records make to our
individual consciousness. The reply might be made
to them that although the Gospels were written
with a purpose, they cannot be successfully assailed
on the general assumption that every record writ-
ten with a purpose is false. Both purpose and
record might be in conformity with the highest
truth. The subjectivists, however, cut themselves
off from this mode of reply, because they too as-
sume the unreliability of all that part of the record
which clashes with their moral sense.

It is clear, therefore, that the subjectivists have
not solved the problem satisfactorily. If they are
consistent with the subjective principle, then there
is no way to establish the Christian intuitions on
a more firm basis than other forms of belief. Every

THE MODERN IDEAL OF FREEDOM 63

man will claim the truth and finality of the par-
ticular form of religious experience which appeals
to him. The subjective principle, in short, does not
admit of indissoluble attachment to any external
" control " in the gospel, the New Testament, or
anywhere else. Hence our assertion that the views
of Sabatier and Lobstein exhibit an irreconcilable
dualism or contradiction.

CHAPTER II

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS AND THE NEW
TESTAMENT RECORDS

I. The Central Place of Jesus in Current
Thought

Slowly the issues between the Christian religion
and its adversaries have converged during the last
few decades upon the supreme question as to the
person of Jesus. With increasing clearness men
have seen that their judgment concerning Christ
is the judgment of Christianity. Controversy about
the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations of the
doctrine of his person has given place to debate as
to the New Testament teachings as a whole, and this
in turn has been narrowed to the issue as to the
records of our four Gospels. Here again the con-
troversy has tended to confine itself to the synoptic
Gospels. The Gospel of John is not employed for
apologetic purposes to any great extent, because of
its later date and because its reliability as a historic
record has so often been called in question in critical
circles. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are at present
the storm-center, and the " synoptic problem " has
become the watchword of critical activity. Here
again the tendency is to pass beyond the historical

64

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 65

events and circumstances narrated in the Gospels
into the consciousness of Jesus himself.

This last is the chief subject of investigation to-
day. It is attended in the nature of the case w^ith in-
superable difficulties. Psychology has made known
to us no means by which we are enabled to enter
and reproduce the consciousness of another, much
less when the other is so exceptional and exalted in
character as Jesus of Nazareth. We are limited,
of course, to such intimations of his consciousness
as are left to us in his words and actions and in his
general bearing during his earthly ministry. We
are to inquire in this chapter what is the result of
this recent attempt by scientific methods to attain
a knowledge of the consciousness of Jesus. Its
bearing upon our general subject is obvious enough
upon slight reflection. All who cling to an ex-
clusively subjective criterion of rehgious truth and
who at the same time wish to be regarded as Chris-
tians, undertake to show that the consciousness of
Jesus is reproduced in the believer, and that this is
the sum of religion. It is entirely clear that here
is a parting of the ways in the views of men as to
the person of Jesus. If his consciousness contained
no element which may not be reproduced in ours,
if he sustained no relationship to God and man
essentially different from ours, if he was simply
that perfect ideal of manhood and religious devotion
of which we are imperfect approximations, then
our view of his person will determine our attitude

66 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

toward him on one plane. If, on the other hand,
there were factors in his consciousness and rela-
tions sustained by him, which we do not and can-
not recapitulate in our own experience, then our
attitude to him will be determined upon another
plane. His person will be thus placed upon a level
which will require us to regard him as more than
" the prince of saints," and his authority will be
enhanced in a measure which will correspond with
his exaltation. Thus also the question of authority
in religion will receive a new determination for all
those who attach themselves to him.

Before we proceed to our specific task, one or
two remarks are in order as to the results of
historical and critical exegesis of the New Testa-
ment generally in the matter of the person and
work of Christ. It can be asserted with confidence
that the preponderant, not to say overwhelming,
consensus of scholarship of all types of theological
opinion now recognizes that in the writings of Paul
and John, and in general in the New Testament wri-
tings outside of the synoptic Gospels, the doctrines
of Christ's preexistence and of the atoning efficacy
of his death are taught. 'As a mere matter of
exegesis, the agreement on these points is sufficiently
general to warrant us in assuming it without at-
tempting in detail to show it, even if space
and the object we have in view admitted of exten-
sive discussion of the point. This exegetical agree-
ment by no means implies perfect agreement as to

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 6/

the exact contents of the preexistence or of the
atonement idea. In this respect there is yet much
divergence. Still less does it imply general accept-
ance of the New Testament teaching on these points
by all students and critics. Philosophical presup-
positions and general world-views in many instances
seem to those who hold them to forbid the accept-
ance as doctrinally true of what is clearly imbedded
in the heart of the New Testament teaching. It is
held that these and many other New Testament
ideas are the result of speculation or of Jewish
ideas and influences imported into the religion of
Jesus. Our object in calling attention to this
exegetical agreement is simply that we may under-
stand how narrowly the problem is now limited to
the synoptic Gospels and in particular to the ques-
tion of the consciousness of Jesus.

2. Recent Criticism of the Gospels

The " synoptic problem," or the problem of deter-
mining by means of scientific and critical methods
the relations of Matthew, Mark, and Luke to each
other as to source and origin, is one of the most
complex and difficult with which criticism has to
deal. It is no part of our undertaking to attempt
its solution. It is necessary for us, however, to
offer a brief sketch of the present status of this
problem and to indicate its bearing upon the ques-
tion of the consciousness of Jesus.

To-day in the world of critical scholarship efforts

68 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

more elaborate and painstaking than at any former
time are being put forth to clear up the " synoptic
problem." A great variety of answers have been
given. Quite generally the Gospel of Mark is dealt
with as, in considerable measure, independent of
Matthew and Luke. The close correspondence be-
tween certain sections of Matthew and Luke has
led an increasing number of scholars to the view
that these common sections of the First and Third
Gospels are based upon a non-extant source referred
to by Papias as Logia, or " sayings," of the Lord.
Professor Harnack has gone carefully over the
ground, and has given exhaustive analyses of the
material involved in his work entitled '" The Say-
ings of Jesus: The Second Source of Saint Mat-
thew and Saint Luke." In summing up the con-
tents of the document made up of sayings of Jesus,
designated by the critics for convenience as docu-
ment Q, Harnack calls attention to its homogeneous-
ness. It was made up chiefly of the teachings of
Jesus, and belongs, therefore, to an early period
before the varied elements found in the later Gos-
pel narratives were introduced. In Mark the super-
natural is emphasized, Matthew has written in an
apologetic interest, and Luke presents Jesus as the
Great Healer. But in Q we find no such unifying
purpose which governed in its composition unless
it be simply the author's desire "to illustrate our
Lord's message and his witness to himself, in their
main and characteristic features, by especially

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 69

striking examples." ^ Professor Harnack thinks that
Q was an older document than Mark, and indeed
that it is difficult to establish any sort of relation-
ship between them.^ Professor Wellhausen, on
the contrary, holds, for reasons it is unnecessary to
give here, that Mark is the older of the two. Rev.
Sir John C. Hawkins also gives us elaborate and
careful analyses of the contents of the synoptic
Gospels from various points of view and in many
forms. He concludes that the identities of the
language between the different Gospels suggest
strongly the use of written Greek documents. There
are, however, distinct traces also of oral transmis-
sion. He thinks Mark and Luke made use of writ-
ten documents as their chief, although not exclu-
sive, sources; and that Matthew and Luke both
probably employed Mark and the Logia, composed
by Matthew, in accordance with the testimony of
Papias.^

In the above statements it doubtless has been
noted that the tendency to refer Mark to an early
date and to trace Matthew and Luke to Mark and
the source Q becomes more pronounced as in-
vestigation advances. It is very difficult, however,
to narrow the evidence down to one or two original
sources for our synoptic Gospels, and consequently
there are not wanting able writers who lay less em-
phasis upon Q as a source, and insist that the

1 " Sayings of Jesus," p. 168. ^ Ibid., p. 226.

8 Hawkins, " Horae Synopticae," pp, 217, 218.

70 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

evidence points to numerous sources. Prof. E. D.
Burton finds as a result of a careful study of the
synoptic Gospels that Matthew and Luke made use
of Mark as one source at least, that they also pos-
sessed in common another source which is referred
to as the Galilean document, and another called the
Perean document. Matthew, Doctor Burton thinks,
but not Luke, also employed the Logia document
spoken of by Papias. For the first and third evan-
gelists there must have been also additional minor
sources. The question of the sources behind Mark
and the Perean document. Professor Burton con-
siders an unsolved problem.*

It is evident from the foregoing summary of
opinion that the " synoptic problem " is as yet far
from solution. It may be, and indeed has been,
questioned whether a solution is possible by means
of the methods usually employed by criticism. The
results of the critical effort may be briefly stated.
In our quest for sources of information as to Jesus
and his teachings and as to early Christianity in
general, unless we employ the Gospels as they stand
we are debarred from other documentary sources
except the '' original " Mark, which is nearly iden-
tical with our present Mark; and along with this
the document Q, containing large sections of our
present Matthew and Luke, which are not contained
in Mark. These two sources at least have been

* E. D. Burton, " Principles of Literary Criticism and the Synop-
tic Problem," pp. 52, 53.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 7I

defined with sufficient clearness to make them avail-
able for use, apart from the ultimate question of the
correctness of the critical judgment which yields
them. So far as our argument is concerned, we
may and shall employ these two sources.

What knowledge then do these sources yield us
as to the consciousness of Jesus? Professor Har-
nack surmises that the Logia document was com-
piled to " illustrate our Lord's message and his wit-
ness to himself, in their main and characteristic
features, by especially striking examples." Do w^
learn then from the Logia and Mark that Jesus
was simply the " prince of saints," or was he more:
According to its testimony can we classify him
with other men or does he stand apart: Was he
a part of his own message, was he the object ot
faith, or simply a teacher? Was he simply a
"Jew " and not even a " Christian," as Well-
hausen asserts ? ^

If now we trace the sayings of Jesus in the Logia,
which in an especial manner are significant for his
person and for his relations to faith, we find that
this greatly abbreviated section, containing material
common to Matthew and Luke, and most carefully
detached from the Gospels themselves by critical
analysis, yields a remarkable result. There is no
essential characteristic of Jesus recorded in these
Gospels elsewhere, which are not also found in this
common document which criticism assumes to

5 Wellhausen, " Einleitung in die drci ersten Evangelicn/' p. 113.

*J2 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

underlie both Matthew and Luke. The texture ex-
hibits the same threads of material in these sections
as elsewhere, which clearly evidences the fact that
the fabric is consistently woven throughout.

We call attention first of all to certain sayings of
Jesus regarding himself, or utterances which in a
special manner enable us to arrive at a knowledge
of the way in which Jesus regarded himself. The
note which rings clear throughout this source, if not
at every point, at least with sufficient frequency
to make it a distinct characteristic, is the absolute-
ness and finality of the words of Jesus. It is not
so much that these qualities are asserted — ^though
they are at times asserted — as that they are as-
sumed. In the Beatitudes, for example, Jesus
speaks with the note of absolute authority. He does
not base his words directly upon the authority of
God here as was the custom of the prophets. The
prophets authenticated their message uniformly with
a *' thus saith the Lord." Jesus assumes authority
himself. It is a curious fact that John's Gospel, in
which more distinctly and specifically than in the
synoptics we find the theological and transcendental
view of Christ's person, we also find a more dis-
tinctive and frequent assertion of his dependence
upon the Father in his teaching and his work. If
John had been constructing an imaginary history to
prove Christ's deity, it would have been to his in-
terest to suppress these sayings ; and if the synoptics
had been bent upon recording the events of a merely

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 73

human life unremoved in any essential respect from
Other human lives, their interest would have been
to omit all such elements from their narratives as
would seem to point to a character transcending
these limits.

In Matthew 5:11 Jesus pronounces those blessed
who shall be persecuted and spoken against falsely
" for my sake.'' In the corresponding passage in
Luke,^ which exhibits other verbal variations, the
phrase is " for the Son of man's sake." Professor
Harnack, because of this difference, omits both
forms of the saying from the Logia.'^ This would
scarcely seem to be justified. There is a parallel of
thought as well as of language in the two passages.
It seems unlikely, therefore, that two different forms
of statement identical in meaning would have been
derived by the evangelists from independent sources
in the midst of a context drawn from a common
source. That is to say, identity of meaning implies
identity of source in such a context. Besides, as
Professor Denney has pointed out, Luke might have
felt that the phrase " Son of man's sake " had a
certain rhetorical advantage over the phrase " for
my sake," when the bodily presence of Him who
spoke the words could no longer enforce them.^

What, then, do these words imply : " Blessed are
ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you,
and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for

® Luke 6 : 22.

'Harnack, " Sayings of Jesus," p. 255.

^ James Denney, "Jesus and the Gospel," pp. 215, 216.

74 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great
is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they
the prophets that were before you." ^ Here Jesus
identified the cause for which his hearers shall
sufifer with himself. The prophets were persecuted
for Jehovah's sake and their identification with his
cause upon earth. The disciples will endure the
hostility of the world for Jesus' sake and their
identification with his cause. It may not be proper
to press the implied parallel between Jehovah and
Jesus here beyond the obvious limits suggested by
the words themselves. But no possible explana-
tion can empty them of their unique significance.
His person and their relations to it supply the
motives which shall give them courage and power to
endure, which shall justify them in the renuncia-
tion of all things and the endurance of all things.
We turn to various other details recorded in Q.
Here, as elsewhere, both in his formal expres-
don, " I say unto you," as well as in numerous
:ommands, Jesus appears as legislator. '*' I say unto
you: Love your enemies and pray for your perse-
cutors," etc.^° Again, " Wherefore I say unto you :
Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat,"
etc.^^ " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he
that doeth the will of my Father." ^^ It does not

» Matthew 5:11, 12.

10 Matthew 5 : 441 ; Luke 6 : 22f.

11 Matthew 6 : 25f.; Luke 12 : 22i.
^Matthew 7 : 21, 24-27; Luke 6 : 46f.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 75

suffice to explain this as if Jesus were pointing
away from himself to God and excluding himself
from any relationship to human faith. For the
language clearly implies that it is proper to call
him Lord. Yet some of those who do so will be
insincere or false disciples. In the same context
Jesus says : " Every one therefore that heareth these
sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will show you
whom he is like."

Again in his instructions to the disciples as he
sends them forth to preach the kingdom of God he
indicates the momentous issues which hang upon
(:he acceptance or rejection of the message by the
people. " Verily I say unto you : It will be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom in that day than for
l.hat city." ^^ Thus the coming of the kingdom of
God and the appearance of Jesus are Indissolubly
'bound together. The attitude of men toward him is
■i:heir attitude toward the kingdom. The doom of
the cities of the plain was to the Jews the most
fearful type of doom which could be named. Evi-
dently he who uttered such words was conscious of
a mission and authority which forbid our classifying
him with other teachers or with the prophets of
Israel. In further illustration of his supremacy in
determining human conduct he declares : " Think
ye that I came to send peace on the earth? I came
not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to
set a man at variance against his father, and the

13 Matthew ii : 24; Luke 10 : 12.

yd FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law." ^* It is difficult for us
who have become so familiar with these words to
appreciate their revolutionary character in the ears
of a Jew of Jesus' day. With the Jew in a spe-
cial degree family ties were inviolate. The accent
of individuality in these words, the value of man as
man, the worth and significance of personality in re-
ligion, which they evince, to say nothing of the
daring and challenging form in which the truth is
stated, lift these words to a very high plane. Above
all are we impressed with the assumption of au-
thority in determining human relationships on the
part of the speaker.

In close connection with the above passage a
number of other sayings may be appropriately con-
sidered. " He that loveth father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth
son and daughter more than me is not worthy of
me." ^^ These words clearly imply that in setting
up conflict in the members of the same household
his own person is the disturbing factor. It is not
merely that his words shall become a source of
discord, but that he himself shall be that source.
The one rival to all other loves is love to him. His
supremacy is so great that all other known ties are
subject to it. " Whosoever doth not take up his
cross and follow me is not worthy of me." ^® Thus

^* Matthew lo : 34; Luke 12 : 5 if.
^5 Matthew 10 : 37; Luke 14 : 26.
^® Matthew 10 : 38; Luke 9 : 23.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS "J^J

he definitely declares himself to be the subject of
religious pursuit, the archetype and goal of moral
and spiritual endeavor. As if to discriminate still
further between himself and his message, Jesus de-
clares : " The disciple is not above his master, neither
the servant above his Lord. It is sufficient for the
disciple that he become as his master and the serv-
ant as his Lord." ^^ It is not easy to reconcile this
saying of Jesus with the view that he was simply
the revealer of the ideal of the religious life with
no further significance for that life in his own
person. He is not only the teacher of the prin-
ciples of discipleship ; he is also the Lord of the
disciple. The Christian life revolves around his
person. Again he says : " Whosoever receiveth you
receiveth me, and whosoever receiveth me receiveth
him that sent me." ^^ Here he identifies recog-
nition of himself with recognition of the Father
who sent him. Thus he becomes the mediator of
the knowledge of God to men, through whom the
kingdom of heaven is to be founded.

Another notable saying of Jesus found in Q we
note in this connection : " And whosoever shall
speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be
forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak a word
against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven
him." ^® We do not enter into the much-discussed
question of the meaning of the phrase " Son of

"Matthew lo : 24; Luke 6 : 40.
^^ Matthew 10 : 40; Luke 10 : 16.
"Matthew 12 : 32; Luke 12 : lof.

78 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

man " as employed by Jesus. But, upon any view
of its origin, its Messianic import is too generally
accepted by scholars of the first rank to admit of
serious doubt on this point. In the words we have
quoted Jesus clearly classifies himself in some sense
with the Holy Spirit. The " Son of man " must
have been a personage of no ordinary dignity and
authority for him to be coupled in the same sen-
tence with the Spirit of God when reference was
made to an unpardonable sin. No doubt this im-
pression as to the dignity and authority of the Son
of man in this passage is derived in part from the
general effect of Christ's teachings elsewhere, but
it is none the less justified but rather the more war-
ranted on that account.

A passage which is wholly inexplicable on any
view of Jesus which asserts with Bousset that *' he
never overstepped the limits of the purely human," ^^
is that in Matthew lo: 32, 33 and Luke 12: 8, 9. It
reads : '* Every one therefore who shall confess me
before men, him will the Son of man also confess
before the angels of God ; but whosoev. r will deny
me before men, him will I also den}' before the
angels of God." Can it be justly ass ted in the
light of such a saying as this that Jesus in no sense
included himself as a part of his message, and that
the Christianity of Jesus would remain, even if
Jesus himself should disappear altogether? Surely
we have in this saying a warrant for the central

20 Bousset, " Jesus," p. 202.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 79

place Jesus holds in the thought of the earliest Chris-
tians in so far as that thought is reflected in the
epistles of the New Testament. Words like these
have no place in the mouth of an ordinary prophet.
They have no place on the lips of any sane teacher,
however exalted in moral character, who moves on
the sarhe plane with other men. One cannot fail
to sympathize with the feeling of Doctor Mar-
tineau, whose views we consider farther on, in deal-
ing with passages of this kind in the life of Jesus so
long as one looks at Christ's person from Doctor
Martineau's point of view. He eliminates passages
which represent Jesus as assuming undue impor-
f:ance on the ground that they are inconsistent with
his character as the most pious of men, " the prince
of saints." The pious man is humble and unassum-
:ing. We can with unerring certainty discern those
words which came from Jesus himself, because they
constitute a consistent and harmonious whole.
Other alleged sayings of Jesus which conflict with
those which are self-evident must be regarded as
the result of the corrupting influences of the faith
of discipl 3 which read back into the sayings of
Jesus much that was not originally there. With
Doctor Martineau's premises his conclusion fol-
lows. If Jesus was simply the highest type of piety
the race has known, and nothing more, then words
which make him the object of human faith and the
center of human conduct have no application to
him.

8o FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Another passage of the document Q which assists
us in our effort to understand the consciousness of
Jesus is that in which he repHes to the messengers
from John the Baptist. The first point to be noted
is that Jesus points to his miracles as signs of his
Messianic calHng. That this was the understanding
of the narrators cannot be doubted. Matthew
refers to them as the signs of the Christ. Secondly,
Jesus utters a remarkable Beatitude upon believers
in him in these words : " Blessed is he whosoever
shall find no cause of stumbling in me." Here
again we have a singularly clear note from Jesus
as to his central place in human faith. Prof. James
Denney is so impressed with this word of Jesus that
he remarks as follows : " This sentence may be
easily passed by, but there is not a word in- the
Gospel which reveals more clearly the solitary place
of Jesus. It stands on the same plane with those
wonderful utterances in which he speaks of confess-
ing him before men, of hating father and mother,
son and daughter for his sake. It makes the blessed-
ness of men depend upon a relation to himself;
happy with the rare and high happiness on which
God congratulates man, is he who is not at fault
about Jesus, but takes him for all that in his own
consciousness he is. . . Taking this simple sentence
in its simplicity, we do not hesitate to say of it,
as of Matthew 10:32, that there is nothing in the
Fourth Gospel which transcends it." ^^

21 Denney, "Jesus and the Gospel," pp. 231, 232.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 8l

In the next place we note the reference to John
made by Jesus in the passage under consideration
as the forerunner of the Messiah referred to in the
Old Testament. " This is he of whom it is writ-
ten: Behold I send my messenger before thy face,
who shall prepare thy way before thee." There is
some debate as to whether these words are inserted
by the compiler of the Logia or were uttered by
Jesus and reported by him. It seems to the present
writer that the preponderance of considerations
favors the view that Jesus uttered them himself.
In any event, it is perfectly clear that if the words
were added, they were introduced as harmonious
with the words of the context, which are indubitably
given as the words of Jesus himself. In that case,
to the writer of the Logia there was no violence,
but rather fitness in applying to the Messiah words
which originally, as the prophet Malachi ^^ uttered
them, had reference to Jehovah. Thus the words
become an interpretation of the words of Jesus
in the context.

In this passage Jesus makes the notable deliver-
ance concerning John the Baptist that " there hath
not arisen among those born of women a greater
than John the Baptist"; and along with this the
even more notable declaration that " he that is least
in the kingdom of God is greater than he," ^^ thus
indicating the supreme significance, in the estima-

22 Malachi 3:1.

23 Matthew 11 : 11; Luke 7 : 28.

82 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tion of Jesus, of the kingdom of God which he, as
Messiah, had come to establish. And as still further
signalizing the transition which his own coming had
brought about he says : " The prophets and the law
were until John; from then until now the king-
dom of heaven suffereth violence, and the vio-
lent take it by force." -* In connection with this
saying we note also the woes pronounced upon
Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum because of
their moral blindness and stubbornness in the pres-
ence of the supremely significant revelation which
he brings and the implied declaration that human
destiny hangs upon men's relations to him.

We come next to one of the most notable of all
sayings of Jesus in the Gospels. " At that season
Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these
things from the wise and understanding and didst
reveal them unto babes: yea. Father, for so it was
well pleasing in thy sight. All things have been
delivered unto me of my Father: and no one
knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any
know the Father save the Son, and he to whom-
soever the Son willeth to reveal him." ^^ There
are several exegetical and critical questions con-
nected with this passage which our purpose does
not require us to take up in detail. It is a part
of the common source of Matthew and Luke, and

-* Matthew ii : 12; Luke 16 : 16.
^Matthew 11 : 25-27; Luke 10 : 21, 22.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 83

no critical objections urged against it as yet war-
rant us in concluding that the above is not in all
essential particulars the original form of the saying.

What, then, does the passage mean? In it Jesus
declares that he is the sole organ of the revelation
of God to man, and that all the resources of divine
knowledge are placed at his disposal. Through him
and him alone may men attain a true knowledge of
God. He refers to himself as " the Son " and to
the Father as " the Father," thus suggesting a rela-
tionship lifted above all ordinary relationships be-
tween man and God.

Doctor M'artineau thinks it is quite possible to
extract from the Gospel records the true sayings
of Jesus, because they bear on their face a self-
evidencing witness, while those which were falsely
attributed to him can be discovered by their contrast
with the authentic sayings. In this passage he brings
to bear his discriminating faculty. He asserts that
the thanksgiving sentence of the prayer is quite in
harmony with the known character of Jesus, and
that it, therefore, belongs to the " unspoiled tradi-
tion." But the other sentences of Jesus, in which
he declares his unique relationship to the Father
and sets himself forth as the sole bearer of the
knowledge of the Father, do not belong to the time
of Jesus at all. The expression '' the Son " and
" the Father " belong to a later dogmatic and theo-
logical period, and they were simply put into the
lips of Jesus by the evangelists long afterward. No

84 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

really pious man. Doctor Martineau thinks, and
especially none so transcendently pious as Jesus,
could have arrogated to himself such language as
this. No exegetical or critical grounds are urged
by Doctor Martineau against the words which war-
rant his bold elimination of them from the text.
It is his consciousness at work with the records,
and with this alone as his guide he reconstructs
and reverses the meaning of many important pas-
sages.^^

Professor Harnack has given more attention to
the critical aspects of the question, but finds no
real justification for a repudiation of these words
of Jesus. Following some later variations in the
Western texts of the Gospels, he succeeds in
finding ground for changing the tense of the
verb translated knoweth, and for one or two
other slight modifications. He is thus led to re-
ject the readings of the canonical text in the
interest of readings which relieve the passage in
some degree of their offensive Christological im-
plications. He indicates rather clearly, however,
that his chief grounds for rejecting the reading as
we have it in Matthew and Luke are identical
with those of Doctor Martineau. This passage is
" Johannine " in its teachings and, therefore, could
not have been the report of the actual words of
Jesus. Professor Harnack says : " The original
version of the saying (in Q) may be defended on

** Martineau, "Seat of Authority in Religion," pp. 582-585.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 85

good grounds; but the canonical version in both
Gospels is * Johannine ' in character and indefen-
sible." 2^ Numerous other writers agree with these.
They simply refuse to entertain the idea that any
passage in the Gospels can be genuine which points
to anything in the character of Jesus which tran-
scends the '' purely human."

It is not our purpose to develop in detail the
numerous sayings of Jesus recorded in the docu-
ment Q. This would require more space than the
plan of this work admits. It is sufficient for our
argument that we condense into brief compass those
sections of Q which assist us in our effort to under-
stand the consciousness of Jesus. We deal, there-
fore, even more concisely with the sayings which fol-
low than with those previously noted. There is
some question as to the order of the reported say-
ings in some instances. We follow in the main the
order suggested in Professor Harnack's translation
of Q}^

As suggesting the supreme significance of his
advent, Jesus says, possibly in close connection with
the thanksgiving prayer, " Blessed are your eyes,
for they see, and your ears, for they hear; for
verily I say unto you that many prophets and
kings desired to see the things which ye see, and
have not seen them, and to hear the things which ye
hear and have not heard them." ^^ The saying

^ " Sayings of Jesus," p. 302.
-'' " Sayings of Jesus," p. 2 53f.
2» Matthew 13 : 16, 17.

86 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

regarding the casting-out of devils by Beelzebub is
of similar import. The argument of Jesus is that
a divided house must fall. His expulsion of demons
by the Spirit of God was proof that that kingdom
was come. Then he added words which have the
ring of destiny : " He that is not with me is against
me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." ^^
That is to say, his own person is the criterion for
determining the validity of human conduct, its
permanent and abiding moral worth.

Again in the words of reply to the demand for
a sign we note the same solemn tones, words which
are in themselves a judgment of men of the most
tremendous import. An evil and adulterous genera-
tion seek a sign. The Son of man shall be a sign
to that generation only as Jonah was a sign to the
Ninevites. ^' The men of Nineveh shall rise up in
judgment against this generation and shall con-
demn it, because they repented at the preaching of
Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah is here."
In the same connection he asserted that a greater
than Solomon is here.^^ Nothing short of utmost
violence can rob these words of their momentous
import as a declaration of the significance of Jesus
for his generation. He is not to be classed with
kings or prophets. Kings and prophets, indeed,
longed to see and hear the things seen and heard
by that generation.

™ Matthew 12 : 30; Luke 11 : 23.
^Matthew 12 : 41; Luke 11 : 32.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 87

The note of judgment pervades a large number of
the utterances of Jesus preserved in the Logia:
" Wherefore the wisdom of God said : I send to
you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of
them ye will slay and persecute; that there may
come upon you all the blood shed upon the earth
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias,
whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Verily I say unto you, All these things will come
upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
which killeth the prophets and stoneth those that
are sent to her ! How often would I have gathered
her children together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Be-
hold your house is left unto you desolate. For I say
unto you : Ye shall not see me from henceforth until
it shall come when ye say : Blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord." ^^ The last words of
this passage are clearly Messianic. Herculean ef-
forts have been made to remove the Messianic
sections of the Gospels by all sorts of critical sup-
positions. There is a school of critics who assume
that all the Messianic utterances are the result of
the action of the faith of the disciples after the
death of Jesus attributing to him words which he
never spoke. But as a matter of fact the Logia,
this ultimate source of knowledge of what Jesus
did say, according to recent criticism, is teeming
with Messianic implications and assumptions. In a

32 Matthew 23 : 37^-; Luke 13 : 34f.

88 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

number of instances the Messianic import lies on
the surface, as in the closing words of the above
passage.

The Messianic character of the Logia appears
even more explicitly in the following : " For as
the lightning cometh forth from the east and is
seen even unto the west, so shall be the coming
of the Son of man." Again : " As were the days
of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of
man. For as in the days before the flood they
were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the
ark, and they knew not until the flood came and
took them all away, so shall be the coming of the
Son of man." ^^ Of like import are the sayings
in connection with the return of the Master and the
surprise of the unfaithful servant and his expulsion
and portion with the hypocrites. Passages like
these present insuperable barriers to the current
theory that Jesus was not the Christ at all, that he
was simply a pious Jew who desired to restore Is-
rael, and who made no assertions which warrant
any other supposition. A final citation from the
Logia we give which is itself inexplicable save on
the assumption of the Messianic import of the
message of Jesus : " Ye who follow me shall
sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes
of Israel."^*

^Matthew 24 : 37f. ; Luke 17 : 26f.
^Matthew 19 : 28; Luke 22 : 30.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 89

Of course many critics set aside the testimony of
the Logia document whenever it exhibits Messianic
impHcations as well as when it contains direct Mes-
sianic teachings. The expression " Son of man "
employed by Jesus and the other expression found
in the Gospels, " the Son of God," as applied to
Jesus have been the occasion of a long-drawn con-
troversy. We do not need to enter the contro-
versy. Our purpose does not require it. Certainly
the phrase " Son of man " in the passages just cited
cannot have any other than a Messianic import as
used by the compiler of the Logia. Its presence in
the Logia with that import is all we are here con-
cerned in making clear. The fact that some critics
ascribe it to the later action of faith and deny that
these " Son of man " passages came from the lips
of Jesus we do not forget. The relation of that
fact to our argument will appear in due time.

Hitherto we have confined our attention to the
sayings of Jesus as recorded in the document Q.
It is chiefly made up of sayings. Yet it contains a
record of a few of the most important of the events
of the life of Jesus, or of events with a direct bear-
ing upon his life. The preaching of John the Bap-
tist is recorded, and in connection with it is proph-
ecy of the coming One " mightier than I, whose
shoes I am not worthy to bear," who shall bap-
tize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.^^ An ac-
count is also given of the temptation of Jesus, which

38 Matthew 3 : 11; Luke 3 : 16.

go FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

from beginning to end is freighted with Messianic
significance.^^ There is also the record of what is
in some respects the most notable miracle of Jesus,
the healing of the centurion's servant at a distance,
and the remarkable commendation of the Gentile's
faith.^^

In the above outline we have not exhausted the
material in Q available for our understanding of
the consciousness of Jesus, but we have shown that
this source lying in the background of Matthew and
Luke is in all essential respects similar in character
to the remaining portions of our first and third
evangelists. There is no evidence whatever that
these common sections which Matthew and Luke
may have derived from a preexisting writing of
Matthew himself or other writer, contain any alien
or discordant elements as compared with the Gos-
pels as a whole. It is no more possible to find the
portrait of a merely remarkable Jewish teacher who
was the " prince of saints," in no respect transcend-
ing *' the purely human," in this document than it
is possible to find it in the Gospels as a whole. If
Matthew and Luke as wholes contain " apocalyptic "
and " transcendental " or " Johannine " elements, so
does the record contained in the Logia.

It will not be necessary to give any extended
outline of the teachings of Mark. These are
familiar to the reader. A very condensed refer-

^ Matthew 4 : if.; Luke 4 : i f .
3'^ Matthew 8 : sf.; Luke 7 : 2f.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS QI

ence to a few passages by way of reminder will suf-
fice to indicate the importance and value of the
testimony of this second primary source of our
knowledge of Jesus. Mlark records the baptism
of Jesus with the opened heavens and approving
voice of the Father ; ^^ the announcement by Jesus
of the coming of the kingdom and his preaching of
the gospel ; ^^ among many miracles the healing of
the paralytic and the forgiveness of his sins by
Jesus in connection with which he answers the
charge of blasphemy ; ^° the very remarkable saying
about the departure of the bridegroom and the
fasting of the disciples ; *^ his proclamation of him-
self as Lord of the Sabbath;*^ the appointment of
the Twelve ; *^ the saying about binding the strong
man and spoiling his house ; ** the raising of the
daughter of Jairus from the dead ; *^ the feeding
of the five thousand ; ^^ the walking on the sea ; *^
the feeding of the four thousand ; *^ the memorable
confession of Peter and the extended Messianic
utterances, including the prophecy of his death and
resurrection ; ^^ in connection with these events the
request of the sons of Zebedee for places on his
right and left hands and the reply of Jesus ;^*^ the
triumphal entry ; ^^ the parable of the Vineyard and
rejection of the King's Son;^" the prediction of
false messiahs, persecution of disciples, and that

88 Mark i : 9-12. ^^ Mark i : 14, 15. <» Mark 2

" Mark 2 : 20. *- Mark 2 : 28. *^ Mark 3

** Mark 3 : 26f. *5 Mark 5 : 3sf. *« Mark 6

« Mark 6 : 4gi. *8 Mark 8 : 6f. « Mark 8

6-12.

i4f.

34f.

27f.

'• marK 0 : 491. '^ martc » : 01. " marK; 6 : 271.

60 Mark 10 : 35f. 5i Mark 11 : 8f. ^2 Mark 12 : if.

92 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

they should be hated of men for his name's sake ; °^
prediction of the coming tribulation and the com-
mand to watch ; ^* the anointing at Bethany ; ^^ the
institution of the Lord's Supper and the remark-
able saying as to the shedding of his blood " for
many " ; ^^ the Gethsemane agony ; ^^ the betrayal,
crucifixion ; ^^ the resurrection and appearances to
Mary Magdalene, to the two walking in the country,
to the Eleven, the giving of the Great Commission,
the ascent into heaven, the preaching which fol-
lowed attended by mighty works.^^

3. Jesus or Christ?

It will be proper at this point to pass in review
very briefly a number of the current critical views
of the person of Jesus. We select a few only out
of a multitude, and these on the principle of illus-
trating the variety of prevalent conceptions by
means of typical examples. The real issue is
whether Jesus is to be held simply as Jesus or
whether we are also to regard him as Christ the
anointed of God and Saviour of the world. Or,
stated in other words, it is the question whether
the gospel of Jesus is simply his message about
God the Father, or whether it also includes his
person.

We begin with Doctor Martineau, to whom we
have already made frequent references, because of

^ Mark 13 : 1-13. "Mark 13 : i4f. ^^ Mark 14 : sf.

^ Mark 14 : 22f. ^^ Mark 14 : 32f.

^ Mark 14 : 44 to 15 : 47. ^9 ^aj-k 16 : 1-20.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 93

his views on religious authority. Doctor Mar-
tineau's view may be very briefly stated. He recog-
nizes clearly the existence of the Messianic and
apocalyptic elements in the Gospels as we have them.
But Jesus did not claim to be Messiah. That would
have been claiming to be what he was not, and this
would be inconsistent with his piety. For Jesus
was " the supreme type of moral communion be-
tween man and God." ^^ He was the " prince of
saints." Martineau everywhere employs this con-
ception of Jesus to reconstruct the Gospel history.
The moral impression of Jesus upon his disciples
was so tremendous that it created the belief in the
resurrection, which did not occur; and led them to
impute to Jesus the Messianic claim, which he did
not make; and to represent him as uttering many
sayings in accordance with the Messianic fiction,
which were never uttered by him. Martineau runs
the keen edge of his knife between the parts of say-
ings which are indissolubly bound together in the
records in order to relieve them of offensive ele-
ments. The large plea of Jesus for Sabbatical free-
dom in the passage in Matthew 12: 1-6 is quite in
harmony with Jesus' character. But the sayings in
that connection, " One greater than the temple is
here," and " the Son of man is lord of the Sab-
bath," cannot have been spoken by Jesus, because
the official and personal implications involved are
incompatible with the simple piety of Jesus. So

*» " Seat of Authority," p. 356.

94 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

also Jesus must have uttered the thanksgiving
prayer, *' I thank thee, O Father," etc.,*^^ but he
could not have uttered the lofty words as to the
mutual and exclusive knowledge of each other be-
tween the Son and the Father, nor the words of the
great invitation, " Come unto me all ye that labor,"
etc., in the same context.

Doctor Martineau maintains that the records as
we have them are made up of mythological and un-
historical elements combined with some truth.
These alien elements were introduced by the writers
after Christ's death. The Christianity of the
churches has been that created not by Jesus him-
self, but by the mythology which his followers
introduced in the record. Jesus as the object of
faith was no part of the teaching of Jesus. Chris-
tianity is the personal religion of Jesus.^^

We note next the view of Professor Wellhausen.
Jesus was undoubtedly regarded as Messiah by his
followers, and as such was crucified. Only thus can
we account for the belief in his Messiahship after
the crucifixion.^^ But how Jesus regarded himself
with reference to the Messiahship it is difficult to
determine. The synoptic records disclose suf-
ficiently the disciples' belief, but not Jesus' own
view of the matter. His final confession before the
Jews is not " free and spontaneous," ^* and doubt

•^Matthew ii : asf.; Luke lo : 2if.

^ " Seat of Authority," p. 651.

^ Wellhausen, " Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien," p. 92.

** " Frei und unumwunden," p. 92.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 95

lingers as to the occurrence. Jesus may be called
the Jewish Restorer, although he renounced all po-
litical elements of reform. The best witness for
his self -consciousness is the parable of the Sower.
He is the teacher who shows the way to God.®^

Professor Wellhausen also asserts the " Chris-
tianizing" tendency in the early church in accord-
ance with which Christ was changed from the
human teacher into the divine Saviour and risen
Lord. He recognizes clearly, however, the presence
of those " Christianizing " and Messianic elements
in all the records as we have them. In Mark those
elements begin with the narrative of Peter's con-
fession and the predicted death and resurrection.
In Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, the Mes-
sianic elements pervade the narrative throughout.
Even Q, he admits, has them in a large measure,
and on this account he holds against Harnack that
Mark is older than Q.®^ Wellhausen vigorously
opposes those who try to explain away the clear
Messianic import of Mark 8:27f., on the theory
that this account simply records the foreboding of
Jesus as he looked forward to the inevitable. The
real Messianic meaning of the passage, he contends,
cannot be denied. But it was simply the historic
action of the death of Jesus carried back into his

® Wellhausen, " Einleitung in die drei erstenEvangelien," pp. 93, 94.

^ " Fur die Vergleichung ist am Wichtigsten der scheinbar ^ nur
ailsserliche Unterschied, dass die Quelle, die bei Markus eng eingC'
fasst ist, bei Matthaus und Lukas nach alien Seiten durchsichert.
Er genugt zum Beweise der Prioritat des Markus, audi vor Q."
" Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien," p. 84.

96 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

purpose by the writer of Mark." The view of
Professor Wellhausen generally stated then, is that
the Jesus of the church is not the Jesus of history,
although the records which we have clearly exhibit
the essential features of the Jesus of the church.

The view of Doctor Martineau and that of Pro-
fessor Wellhausen, as the reader has doubtless noted,
are very similar, though not identical. We note
next a somewhat different type of opinion repre-
sented by Professors Bousset and Harnack.

Professor Bousset holds that Jesus considered
himself to be the Messiah of his people, not because
•)f his reported sayings, which have been critically
doubted, but on the certain fact that the belief of
the Messiahship existed from the beginning, and
its origin is inexplicable without his assertion of it.*^^
The post-resurrection belief would be the result of
'' sheer magic " without some psychological pre-
fesurrection preparation.^^ The reserve of Jesus in
proclaiming the Messiahship was due to the inevi-
table political complications. Jesus was " super-
prophetic " in his consciousness and has no succes-
sor. The title " Son of man " is Messianic, and
was purposely chosen by Jesus to change the popu-
lar Messianic conception of the " Son of David "
into a supernatural one in which the Messiah be-
comes judge, taking God's place."^^ Jesus predicted
his return in glory. He almost assumes divine

^ " Einleitung," p. 91. ^^ Bousset, "Jesus," p. 168,

«^ Bousset, "Jesus," p. 169. '» Bousset, "Jesus," p. 187.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 97

powers; indeed, Bousset asserts, according to the
synoptic account, he does assume them. But it is
*' inconceivable " that Jesus actually did so. " It is
inconceivable that Jesus who stamped the fear of
that almighty God who had power to damn body
and soul together upon the hearts of his disciples
with such marvelous energy, and who could speak
of that fear because he shared it to the bottom of
his soul, should now have arrogated to himself the
Judgeship of the world in the place of God." "^^
Thus Jesus never overstepped the limits of the
" purely human " or put himself on a level with God.
All which transcends the human is the dogmatism
of the disciples, not the opinion of Jesus.'^^ The
belief in the resurrection was the energy behind the
victories of the early church, Bousset asserts, but he
fails to record a belief in the actual resurrection of
Jesus. He rather assumes that the resurrection
experiences were subjective with the disciples,
though mighty in their action.*^^

Jesus was the leader of the ages and nations to
God, the revealer of the Father, the perfect type of
manhood and piety, the founder of the kingdom of
God.*^* It is very difficult to reconcile the discordant
elements in Professor Bousset's conception of Jesus,
and in particular to attribute to Jesus as much and
no more than the view involves. It is much less
self -consistent than that of Martineau and Well-

" Bousset, " Jesus," p. 203. '- Bousset, " Jesus," p. 205.
■^2 Bousset, "Jesus," p. 210. ''* Bousset, "Jesus," p. 209.

lOO FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Jewish and human factors of Him who was a
Messiah and more than a Messiah, as his fore-
runner, John, was a prophet and more than a
prophet."^^

Another group of writers, without dogmatic pre-
judgment of the case, reaUze the difficulties of the
middle ground on the question of the Messianic
self-consciousness of Jesus. If that form of self-
consciousness coupled with predictions of a future
return in glory is allowed, then the whole structure
of the argument against the supernatural and
eschatological elements of the synoptic picture be-
gins to totter to its fall. For it rests upon the as-
sumption that all those elements were projected back
into the teachings of Jesus by the disciples after his
death. Either Jesus was simply the teacher and
pious Jew of Martineau and Wellhausen or he was
the Jesus of faith. A middle ground here is dan-
gerous, indeed a fatal compromise. Some able
writers, seeing this, do not hesitate to choose the
latter alternative. Being unable critically to clear
the records of the supernatural and eschatological
elements they accept the records as substantially
correct. We note two of this class of writers.

Professor Kiihl has set forth this view in his
" Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesii." He holds that Jesus
was and desjred to be recognized as Messiah; that
the records abound in proofs of this; that while
Mark's general plan seems to exclude Messianic

'* " Das Messianische Bewusstsein Jesu," p. loo.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS lOI

notes prior to Peter's confession in chapter 8,
nevertheless there are such notes eadier in the Gos-
pels; that beyond all question Jesus conceived the
completion of the kingdom of God eschatologically ;
that it was an act of peculiar greatness in Jesus to
assimilate the conception of a suffering Messiah
in his Messianic consciousness; that Jesus was
impregnably convinced that his sufferings could
not but result in his exaltation; that the words at
the institution of the Supper show that he under-
stood the saving significance of his death; that the
Messianic faith is conceivable in connection with
the resurrection of Jesus only if the resurrection
is a historical factJ^

Prof. James Denney, in his recent work, "Jesus
and the Gospel," has subjected the entire New Tes-
tament record to a searching investigation and analy-
sis with a view to answering the question whether
the actual Jesus of history is to be identified with the
Jesus of faith. He finds that the Christ of primi-
tive Christian preaching, of Paul, of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, of Peter, of James, is one and
the same Christ. He puts the case strongly for the
resurrection of Jesus, and then gives an elaborate
account of the pertinent elements in the Gospel of
Mark and Q. We give Doctor Denney's conclusion
in his own words : *' The most careful scrutiny of
the New Testament discloses no trace of a Chris-

'® Ernst Kiihl, "Das Selhsthewusstsein Jesu," pp. 27, 29, 30, 44,
49, 52, 53» 55. 57, 61-65.

102 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tianity in which Jesus has any other place than
that which is assigned him in the faith of the his-
torical church. When the fullest allowance is made
for the diversities of intellectual and even of moral
interest which prevail in the different writers and
the Christian societies which they address, there
is one thing in which they are indistinguishable —
the attitude of their souls to Christ. They all set
him in the same incomparable place. They all ac-
knowledge to him the same immeasurable debt. He
determines, as no other does or can, all their rela-
tions to God and to each other." ®^ Doctor Denney
says the New Testament teaching, when expressed
in the form of a belief, may be stated thus : " I be-
lieve in God through Jesus Christ his only Son, our
Lord and Saviour." ^^ This means two things :
" First, that the Person concerned is to God what
no other can be; and secondly, that he is also what
no other can be to man." ^- Of course men will go
on and define further in creedal and theological
forms what Jesus Christ is, but Doctor Denney holds
that properly understood the above statements con-
tain the essentials of the New Testament teaching.
When it Is borne in mind that the conclusions of
Professors Kiihl and Denney and others who hold
similar views are reached after giving most care-
ful attention to all the critical considerations in-
volved; when also we recall the conclusion of men

^ James Denney, " Jesus and the Gospel," p. 329.
^^ James Denney, " Jesus and the Gospel," p. 350.
*2 James Denney, " Jesus and the Gospel," p. 351.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS IO3

like Professor Harnack that the source Q is rich
in Messianic teachings,^^ and that of Prof. Bernard
Weiss and others that there is no proof that the
earHest sources were corrupted by later ideas ^* we
are impressed with the strength of the claim that
the Christ of faith is the same as the Jesus of
history.

The situation thus arising is necessarily embar-
rassing to all who wish to maintain their critical
principles and at the same time reject the Jesus of
faith. The logical result has followed in the dis-
position on the part of many to reject the entire
New Testament record as untrustworthy. If the
utmost effort of critical analysis leaves us the same
Jesus we had before, then criticism must condemn
the record as a whole. There are many, therefore,
who assure us that the effort to find out who and
what Jesus was is a hopeless undertaking. Some of
these, however, while seeking to invalidate the his-
tory attempt philosophically or through the study of
comparative religion to validate the doctrine. Pro-
fessor Pfleiderer presents the view that the funda-
mental ideas of Christianity are true and necessary
for man's religious life, but that they were not de-
rived from an actual incarnation of Jesus. The in-
carnation idea he derives from a study of com-
parative religion. He thinks that the disciples in
harmony with the general religious tendency of the

^ " Sayings of Jesus," p. 168.

''^ B. Weiss, "Die Qtiellen der Synoptischen Ueherlieferung," p. 89.

104 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

race, incorporated this idea in the story of Jesus.
The " leit motiv "of the Christian drama " through
death to life " is a universal idea of the race. So
far as our evangelical records go, it is a hopeless
undertaking to attempt to ascertain from them the
real facts of the life of Jesus.^^

Professor Royce, in an article in " The Harvard
Review," holds that the elements v^hich are vital to
Christianity are, among other things, the cardinal
doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement. Yet
he does not think that these are dependent for their
validity upon a historical basis. They are essential
as factors in man's religious apprehension of real-
ity.^*' A writer in " The Hibbert Journal," in an
article entitled The Collapse of the Liberal The-
ology, sets forth a similar view. The simple
human Jesus of liberal theology, he shows, has
through the efforts of criticism disappeared from
the synoptic records where he has been supposed
hitherto certainly to be found. He then proceeds to
construct a mythical Jesus and a faith in an incar-
nate and atoning Saviour as necessary to religion,
while repudiating the Gospels as records of actual
historical events.^^

4. General Conclusions from Criticism

We are now prepared to ask and answer the
question: What conclusion does the present status

^ Pfleiderer, "The Early Christian Conception of Christ," pp. 10,
33, IS4. 158, 160, 162.

8* " Harvard Review," October, 1909, p. 4D8f.

^ Rev. K. C. Anderson, in " Hibbert Journal," January, 1910, p. 301 f.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS IO5

of scientific and historical criticism warrant as to
the teaching of the synoptic Gospels concerning the
consciousness of Jesus? The answer which is
thrust upon us has already been anticipated in the
foregoing discussion. Here we summarize more
fully and generally.

For one thing scientific criticism clearly war-
rants the conclusion that the Christ of faith is con-
tinuous with the Jesus of the synoptic records.
Observe that we do not say continuous with the
Christ of history. On this point we shall speak
further. Observe also that we do not assert in the
above sentence that criticism warrants the con-
clusion that the Christ of Nicsea and of the historic
creeds is continuous with the Christ of the synoptic
records. Our effort now is to state with exactitude
the situation which has arisen out of the elaborate
effort of New Testament criticism. The Jesus of
the synoptic records gave himself out as Messiah
and founder of the kingdom of God. He offered
himself as the supreme and sole revealer of God
to man. He presented himself to men not merely
as the teacher of the way to God, but as the mediator
of religion to man, through whom, by faith in him,
man is to fulfil his religious destiny. He announced
himself as having authority to forgive sins and as
the future Judge of men who should return in
glory for the purpose. So far there is scarcely
any difference in opinion. So far as such differ-
ences exist they are on matters of detail and not

I06 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the main points. Martineau, Wellhausen, Bousset,
Harnack, and all the others admit the presence of
the Messianic and '' Johannine " and " apocalyptic "
elements in the records. These elements we find
not only in Matthew and Luke, as we have them,
but in Q, the common source alleged by criticism
to be the background of Matthew and Luke. So
also are they found in the other primitive source,
Mark.

The next question is: What has scientific criti-
cism to say in answer to the question whether the
Christ of faith is continuous with the Christ of
history? The reply is that scientific criticism has
nothing to say on this question except on the basis
of the records. If scientific criticism rejects the
testimony of the records, then scientific criticism as
such has no opinion, and no data for forming an
opinion on the question. Critical philosophy has
given numerous answers to the question, nearly as
many as there are critics disposed to philosophize.
Doctor Martineau says all the Messianic and apoc-
alyptic elements were imported or projected into
the story from a subsequent date. Wellhausen says
the disciples held Jesus as Messiah, while there is
no evidence that Jesus himself desired to be so re-
garded. Wrede says that Jesus did not offer him-
self as Messiah, nor did the disciples hold him. as
such, but that this does not settle the question, and
Jesus might nevertheless have secretly considered
himself to be the Messiah and that all the synoptic

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS IO7

records and sources, so far as we know them, in-
cluding Q, are rich in Messianic material. Pro-
fessor Pfleiderer admits the presence of these ele-
ments in all the records, but concludes that the
records are wholly unreliable. Not the records, but
other considerations lead to these views.

We may classify these writers in a twofold man-
ner. All the others agree with Professor Pfleiderer
in holding that the records are unreliable in part.
They hold, against him, that in part they are trust-
worthy. The line of cleavage at this point it will
be interesting to note. Those who follow the records
in part and repudiate them in part proceed in both
respects upon the deliverances, not of their scien-
tific and critical, but of their moral consciousness,
or upon their philosophic assumptions. There is
no scientific evidence against the rejected parts
which warrants the rejection. There is no scientific
evidence in favor of the accepted parts which is
more compelling than the corresponding evidence in
favor of the rejected parts. Pfleiderer and his
school see clearly that to admit the Messianic and
apocalyptic elements at all in our original sources
on scientific grounds is toi imperil the whole case for
the view held by his school. The others whose
ethical attachment to Jesus is strong cannot bear to
raise questions as to the incomparable moral teach-
ings of Jesus. But in admitting these elements of
the record on scientific grounds they allow the valid-
ity of a principle which can be used to vindicate the

I08 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

presence in the record of the other parts which do
not appeal to their moral consciousness.

In view of the above it may be asserted that either
of two courses is open to the critic. He will pursue
a course, which is logically justifiable at least, if
with certain presuppositions to begin with, when he
finds in the record certain elements incompatible
with his presuppositions he rejects those elements;
and then, if when he finds that the remaining ele-
ments are authenticated no better than the dis-
carded ones, he also rejects these. This course will
be self-consistent and logically justifiable provided
the presuppositions are correct. At any rate,
Pfleiderer has pursued this course. On the other
hand, if with some constraining interest of an-
other kind the critic finds elements which he regards
as scientifically tenable and which must be retained
at all hazards, and then finds also certain elements
not on their face so acceptable but scientifically
and critically as well authenticated as the other parts
— then I say he will be both logically and scien-
tifically justified in retaining the record as a whole.
This is the attitude adopted by writers like Pro-
fessors Denney and Kiihl. There is a third course,
however, which is not to be justified, either logically
or scientifically, and that Is to accept some things
because they appeal to the moral or philosophic
consciousness and reject others because they do not
appeal to that consciousness and then proclaim that
the rejection took place on scientific grounds. !A.nd

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS IO9

this becomes one of the gravest of scientific sins
when the actual historical documents and critical
evidence are as strongly in favor of the rejected as
for the accepted parts. Yet this is the course of the
group of writers named and many others.

Now I do not wish to overstate the results of
critical effort in either direction. But the following
statement is warranted: To accept the records in
their essential features or to reject them in their
essential features would, therefore, seem to be the
only self-consistent course in view of the present
status of scientific historical criticism. Critical analy-
sis of the sources does not yield the simple human
fesus of Martineau's and Bousset's picture. That
Jesus, in other words, has vanished from the New
Testament. That such a Jesus cannot be found in
the Johannine and Pauline writings has long been
'<nown and acknowledged by all schools of thought.
And now at length it appears that he cannot be
found in the synoptic records.

The objections then to the Christ of faith are not
scientific objections arising as the result of the ap-
plication of the principles of criticism to the phe-
nomena or thought of the evangelical records. The
essential factors which constitute the objection to
the Jesus of faith are not at all derived from the
objective realm to which inductive historical science
confines her view. These objections come from a
peculiar stage of the human consciousness due to
the form which our recent culture has taken. It is

H

no FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a philosophic world-view, derived from inductive
science not yet full grown, turning against the in-
ductive method when applied in a particular way.
It is the child trying to devour the mother. For
this objection asserts that no amount of historical
evidence can establish a particular kind of fact.
The facts involved are not only such as belong to
the religious view of the world, and the existence
of an orderly moral kingdom, and the communica-
tion of a divine revelation to man — facts which
should predispose us in their favor; but they are
also facts which have actually evoked the pro-
foundest " Amen " in all our Western world during
two thousand years, and have been the criteria of
our on-going civilization. Historical and critical
science here so far depart from the humility and
docility of all genuine science as to assert a uni-
versal negative. Such events as the Gospels nar-
rate could not have occurred in any conceivable sort
of a universe. It is not that the Christian view of
the world is not self -consistent and, from its own
standpoint, tenable, but rather that its standpoint is
untenable.

No standpoint is tenable save one, and that as-
serts the universal negative. It is not that Chris-
tian history is not self-consistent regarded as a
phenomenon by itself. For Professor Martineau
and many others admit and deplore the action of the
evangelical conception of the gospel throughout
Christian history. That conception is indeed a

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS III

myth, but the myth has created the church and
Christian civilization. The real Jesus has been lost
to history two thousand years. He failed to get his
message understood. He is not the cause which
has produced the effects we see. The mythology
to which his shadowy history gave rise has done
that. Not only so. If the Jesus of history had been
actually what evangelical Christianity has asserted
that he was, then indeed he and not the mythology
regarding him would be the real cause behind the
Christian history. All the records of his life we
have testified that he was just such a Jesus. Now
that two thousand years have elapsed millions of
Christians regard him exactly as did the New
Testament writers. To them and to their experi-
ence he is the Light of the world. It would be like
a total eclipse to eliminate him from history. Now
we are told that all this devotion, all this intense
religious conviction, is born of and sustained and
nurtured by a myth regarding Jesus, not by Jesus
himself.

In view of the situation thus outlined, surely
denial can go no farther. The facts, so far as they
are accessible to us, are all in, and without exception
they all point one way. Nevertheless they point
the wrong way, we are confidently assured. This
group of literary facts, reenforced by this continuous
course of historical facts, and these confirmed by a
vast mass of experimental facts, this threefold in-
duction of criticism, of history, and of experience,

112 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

is false. It cannot be true, because it clashes with a
particular world-view. Under these circumstances
there is nothing left to argue about if the methods
of science are to be employed. The debate is
ended.

It is evident that the opponents of the Chris-
tian view have permitted the phenomena and laws
of the physical world to determine for them the
view of the action of all the forces of the uni-
verse. They are not open to the conception which
allows to spiritual and personal forces the para-
mount place in the world. All the highest intel-
ligences must needs work on the lines and under
the conditions of the cosmos as we know it. This
attitude is as unscientific as that of the Ptolemaic
against the Copernican view of the solar system.
It is not now the Ptolemaic against the Copernican
view of the solar system, but the mechanical against
the personal and moral view of the universe. Jesus
could not have been Christ, because the Christ can-
not be made to harmonize with a closed system of
forces operating in obedience to the same laws which
we see prevailing in nature to-day. No conception
of the relations of God to man can justify such a
departure from the natural order. Personality, in
God and man, can in no sense supply a key to the
unique events alleged in the synoptic records. On
this account and not on scientific grounds they are to
be rejected as the dreams of fond disciples who
idealized Jesus after his departure.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS II3

It is evident that the debate over the question
of the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith has
reached a new stage. It is no longer a battle of
critical theories, it is a battle of world-views. The
new stage which we have reached may be stated as
follows: Do the methods and results of inductive
science warrant us in holding a philosophic world-
view which requires the scientific mediation of all
religious truth? Must we, in other words, reject all
alleged religious truth as false, which may not be
verified in the usual scientific way ? Is it possible to
transfer the methods of physical science into the
personal and religious realm in a manner so thor-
ough-going as to discredit all phenomena of that
realm which are not reducible to scientific formula-
tion under the usual categories of law and causa-
tion ? Or, more generally, is the current world- view
derived from the application of the principle of
physical continuity applicable in religion, as well as
in nature? The question of freedom and authority
in religion is intimately bound up with the answer
which may be given. We proceed in the next two
chapters to consider the function of scientific re-
search and philosophic speculation in relation to
religion and religious belief and religious authority.

CHAPTER III

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE

In the long-drawn discussion of the alleged " con-
flict " between religion and science in modern times
there are two things which impress the thoughtful
reader. One is the prevailing disposition on all
hands to concede the primacy to the scientific
method as a means of testing truth. The other is
the indeterminate and vague manner in which men
conceive the function of science in relation to re-
ligion and of religion in relation to science. There
is at present a feeling on the part of many that
while religion has its own sphere and function
which must be recognized, nevertheless somehow,
in the end, nothing can permanently endure in re-
ligion which does not obtain for itself scientific
validation. Men imagine that it is possible to secure
such validation for all the enduring elements in
Christianity. Assuming that essential Christianity
is true, they proceed to the next step and exclude as
untrue all those factors of faith which may not be
verified in a rigidly scientific manner. As the out-
come of this tendency, there has come into existence
a class of books dealing with the " essence " of
Christianity, such as that of Harnack and others.
114

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE II5

In all these efforts the controlling purpose is to find
an irreducible minimum in Christianity which is
unassailable by the rigorous methods of the best
science. The man in the laboratory has to a very
large extent dominated the thinking of the theo-
logical teacher.

A wholesome reaction to the above tendency has
appeared in recent years in the form of the asser-
tion of the independence of religion and the uni-
versal religious as distinguished from the intel-
lectual rights of the soul. This assertion has not
as yet, however, become sufficiently clear and strong
to emancipate and to restore to religion its proper
sphere and function in the life and thought of
many modern men. It is our purpose in this chap-
ter to indicate somewhat definitely the limitations
of science on the religious side.

We wish at the outset to remind the reader of the
realities which underlie the religious life of man.
Speaking broadly and leaving out of view, for the
moment, the specific claims of Christianity, what
are the great conceptions or realities, the founda-
tion, so to speak, of the whole religious structure?
They are four, viz., the Soul, Freedom, Immor-
tality, God. In the higher forms of religion, most
of all in the Christian religion, these are everywhere
assumed. In the lower religions they are often
obscured in one way or another, but even in these
they are, for the most part, implicit if not clearly
held. If any one objects to our employment of the

Il6 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

word realities and insists that the Soul, Freedom,
Immortality, and God are assumptions of religion
rather than demonstrated or demonstrable realities,
we make no objection for the present. Our imme-
diate purpose admits of our dealing with them as
assumptions only. But even so, as assumptions they
are essential to the existence of religion. Without
them religion in the higher sense would be im-
possible, and without them in some sense no religion
of any kind would be possible.

Of course it is true that there are forms of re-
ligion in which none of these four ideas is very
clearly held. Buddhism, for example, is not very
distinct in its conception of any of the four. But
our contention is not at all invalidated by this
fact. In Buddhism and other forms of pantheism
there is some sort of equivalent of each of these.
The individual essence, whatever it is, and the
ultimate essence, whatever it is, and the interaction
and relations of the two in time and after time
are the factors of religious activity even in Bud-
dhism. Whether, therefore, religion is conceived
as involving the interaction of the soul and God
in the strict personal sense or in some other, there
are involved the ultimate essences or forms of
reality which lie beyond the sphere of exact science.
So that we may employ the terms we have selected
as sufficiently accurate designations for the purposes
in view with the understanding that in some forms,
of religion it is their equivalents rather than these

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE II7

objects in the personal sense which are to be under-
stood, and with the further understanding that these
defective conceptions will prove insufficient when
we come to define religion in its true and highest
form.

What then is the message and function of modern
exact science regarding these fundamental realities
or assumptions of religion? Keeping in mind our
purpose, which is not exhaustive discussion of any
of these four conceptions, but simply to indicate
how science deals with them, our answer may be
given in comparatively brief compass.

The general ideal of science is so familiar to
modern readers that it is scarcely needful to de-
fine it at length. We pause long enough, how-
ever, to remind ourselves of that ideal. Science as-
sumes the objective existence of a material world,
the universality of the law of causation, and the
uniformity and permanent validity of the laws of
nature. The object of science is "the discovery
of the rational order which pervades the universe;
the method consists of observation and experiment
(which is observation under artificial conditions)
for the determination of the facts of nature; of
inductive and deductive reasoning for the discovery
of their mutual relations and connection. The vari-
ous branches of physical science differ in the extent
to which, at any given moment of their history, ob-
servation on the one hand, or ratiocination on the
other, is their more obvious feature, but in no other

Il8 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

way; and nothing can be more incorrect than the
assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics
has one method, chemistry another, and biology a
third." 1

These same principles quoted from T. H. Huxley
are carried forward into the realm of psychology
and the social sciences so far as the phenomena
admit of their application. Mr. Huxley declares
that the golden rule of science is that of Descartes:
" Give unqualified assent to no propositions but
those the truth of which is so clear and distinct
that they cannot be doubted." Thus Descartes con-
secrated doubt in the enunciation of the first great
commandment of science. " It removed doubt from
the seat of penance among the grievous sins to
which it has long been condemned, and enthroned it
in that high place among the primary duties, which
is assigned to it by the scientific consciousness of
these latter days.^

The task of science then is perfectly distinct and
its method is perfectly clear. The uncompromising
rigor with which modern science pursues its task
by the application of its method is its chief glory.
It would be an unspeakable calamity if science were
to become vague and confused as to her distinctive
mission and should abandon her exacting methods
of verifying truth. Certainly religion has no con-
troversy with science at this point. It is only when

^ T. H. Huxley, in essay, " The Progress of Science," in volume
entitled " Methods and Results," p. 60.
2 " Methods and Results," pp. 169, 170.

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE IIQ

science seeks to transcend her own sphere, or re-
Hgion is tempted beyond her own boundaries that
conflict ensues.

Let us now consider the question : What message
has science concerning the great conceptions which
are in the background of all religion? We begin
with the Soul. Does science authorize belief in the
existence of a reality which we name the soul ? The
key to the method of Descartes as well as the
starting-point for his philosophy was the data of
consciousness. The primary reality for him was
thought. It is possible to resolve all the external
world into our own subjective experiences. Philos-
ophies, indeed, have been built upon the principle
that thought is the sole realit}^. But, as Descartes
urged, the one reality which cannot be denied is
our own thought. The data of the individual con-
sciousness are impregnable to any and all skepticism.
We must distinguish here, however, between thought
and the thinker. The existence of an ego which
thinks seems an irresistible conclusion to ordinary
common sense from the existence of thought itself.
And yet, as will appear, such conclusion is one
v/hich can be and has been doubted, and thus is
transgressed the " first great commandment " of
science. It is not a " proposition the truth of
which is so clear and distinct that it cannot be
doubted."

From thought as a starting-point Descartes de-
duced several truths concerning the soul and God,

I20 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

and restated the argument for God's existence in a
cogent form. Yet from the point of view of exact
science Descartes' deductions from his datum of
thought are untenable. Cogito, ergo sum, is his
famous dictum. This declaration of Descartes
has been repeatedly attacked as being without scien-
tific warrant. " I think, therefore I am." Now
science gives its assent to the first statement only,
" I think." This is an immediately given fact. Or
rather more accurately stated we should say, science
would exclude the " I " from the declaration and
assert simply that thought exists. The assertion
that the ** I " exists is not warranted in the scien-
tific sense. It is rather a deduction of the most
metaphysical kind. The further assertion that the
thought is the product of the " I " which is as-
sumed to exist is equally metaphysical and scien-
tifically unwarranted. Thus modern scientific men,
including Professor Huxley, refuse to accept the
Cartesian reasoning involved in his celebrated say-
ing except in one particular, viz., the assertion of
the existence of thought.^

In accordance with the above, physiological psy-
chology of the most advanced and rigidly scientific
type confines its observations and assertions to the
*' stream of consciousness." It observes what goes
on in consciousness and makes a record of what
it finds. It generalizes the results as far as possible
and formulates the general laws of consciousness.

3 " Methods and Results," p. 177.

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE 121

It never allows itself, however, to assert on scientific
grounds the existence of a soul or ego independent
of and behind the phenomena of consciousness.
The reasons are first, that such an independent ego
is entirely beyond the range of scientific observation
and hence unverifiable by any methods now at the
command of science ; and secondly, because such in-
dependent ego is only one of several hypotheses
which might be alleged to explain the phenomena of
consciousness. Materialism asserts that conscious-
ness is simply a refined sort of matter, while the
spiritual philosophies resolve all matter back into
thought, but vary in their manner of conceiving
this ultimate reality. But here we pass over from
the domain of science into that of philosophy,
whereas our purpose is to confine our view strictly to
the sphere and function of science. The conclusion
of the matter is that science as such has no message
whatever as to the existence or non-existence of
the soul. Professor Huxley has alluded to this as
the " consecration "of doubt. From another point
of view it might be called the consecration of
modesty. It is simply science asserting her own
limitations and refusing an enterprise and task for
which she is not qualified. She will not be diverted
from her own legitimate function into byways where
her quest may become fruitless.

Let it be noted before we pass to the next point
that this conclusion as to science does not at all
prejudge the case of faith or the conclusions of

122 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

philosophy. Faith may go on and postulate the soul,
and philosophy may deduce it. Science cannot
gainsay either the one or the other. It leaves mate-
rialism and spiritualism to fight out their battles in
the light of the totality of the phenomena of exist-
ence as best they may.

What has exact science to say as to the problem
of Freedom? It requires little reflection to show
that this question is intimately bound up with the
question of the existence of the soul. Materialism,
of course, excludes freedom; while a theistic or
spiritualistic view of the world implies it. The per-
vading influence of the conception of law has well-
nigh destroyed the idea of freedom with many. The
logical tendency of science is toward the denial of
freedom, for the reason that science everywhere
employs causation, which in the mechanical sense
is incompatible with the idea of freedom, as the
basis of her investigations and assumes its universal
validity. This is true of psychology as of all other
sciences which deal with the question directly
or indirectly. Many psychologists, therefore, are
wholly deterministic. They deny the principle of
freedom entirely. And yet it is clear that this is
unwarranted. For in the first place we think we are
conscious that we are free, just as we are conscious
that we think. This datum of our consciousness is
less easily disentangled from its antecedents than
the datum of thought, but it seems to us as really
" given " in consciousness as the other.

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE I23

Science, however, declines to admit that the con-
sciousness of freedom is to be taken at its face value
in the same sense in which our consciousness of
thought is to be taken. The difference lies in the
fact that the question of 'freedom involves the
further question of antecedents, while thought does
not. Thought, so science urges, is a " phenomenon "
within us, a manifestation of our own consciousness,
which is so immediate and direct that we can in
no sense doubt it, while freedom by its very defini-
tion means independence of the chain of causes and
effects. So long as w^e are ignorant of the chain of
antecedents and their relation to our free choices we
cannot on scientific grounds assert that we are free.
On the other hand, we repeat, science is no more
warranted in denying freedom than in asserting it.

In the second place, so long as the problem of the
soul as an independent entity exists for psychology,
so long will the question of the soul's freedom re-
main an open one. The question cannot be closed
against freedom so long as science has no final word
as to the soul. Prof. William James, whose brilliant
work in psychology has made all of us his debtors,
says regarding free will : *' The fact is the question
of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological
grounds. After a certain amount of effort of at-
tention has been given to an idea, it is manifestly
impossible to tell whether either more or less of it
might have been given or not. To tell that, we
should have to ascend to the antecedents of the

124 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

effort, and defining them with mathematical exacti-
tude, prove, by laws of which we have not at present
even an inkling, that the only amount of sequent
effort which could possibly comport with them was
the precise amount that actually came. Such meas-
urements, whether of psychic or of neural quanti-
ties, and such deductive reasonings as this method of
proof implies, will surely be forever beyond human
reach." Again he says : " For ourselves, we can
hand the free-will controversy over to metaphysics.
Psychology will surely never grow refined enough
to discover, in the case of any individual's decision,
a discrepancy between her scientific calculations and
the fact." ^

Here, again, we find exact science passing her
question on and renouncing the problem as one with
which she has nothing to do. Her researches give
rise to the problem, but her methods do not admit
of her dealing with it. It lies beyond her frontier.^

We consider next the question of Immortality.
Here again science is helpless to prove or disprove.
The belief in a life after death is one of the in-
eradicable and well-nigh universal convictions of the
human soul, and from this men have inferred its
existence. The upward course of evolution has been

* " Psychology," briefer course, pp. 456, 457.

6 If the reader is interested in the very difficult question of de-
terminism and freedom, among the vast number of discussions of
the subject, I refer him to Professor James' essay, " The Dilemma
of Determinism," in his volume entitled "The Will to Believe";
also an essay by Professor Schiller, on " Freedom," in his work en-
titled "Studies in Humanism," p. 39if. ; and to the "Elements of
Ethics" of Prof. Noah K. Davis, pp. 11, 15, 55; and to Chap. Ill
in a volume entitled " Personal Idealism," by various writers.

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE I25

alleged as supplying a basis for the hope of im-
mortality because nature seems bent upon producing
the highest and most perfect form of life, and it is
not likely that nature will end in anti-climax. Again
immortality has been argued from memory, which
unifies our experiences in a manner which is un-
affected by any of the ordinary changes in the body ;
and from the will, which breaks in upon the current
of events and the on-going of the world as if it were
a force superior to cosmic changes. In recent years
much interest has been created in the subject through
the researches of the Society for Psychic Research.
Frederic Meyer, in his work " Human Personality
and Its Survival of Death," has given an extremely
interesting and suggestive discussion. After all
these and many other efforts, however, the problem
of immortality from the scientific point of view re-
mains unsolved. What the future may disclose of
course no one can say. For the present we must
be content to admit that there is no scientific demon-
stration of immortality.

We must not overlook the further fact that
materialism has failed to make good its claim. We
heard much and read much a few years ago of
thought as a " function " of brain. But nothing
brought to light so far in psychology or any other
scientific pursuit warrants us in identifying mat-
ter and thought. They are totally diverse. Thought
is in some manner associated with brain in our ordi-
nary experiences, and the word " function " may be
I

126 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a proper one to describe their relations. But as
Professor James has shown in his lecture on Im-
mortality, there are three possible forms of " func-
tion " which may describe the relation of brain
and thought — releasing function, transmissive func-
tion, and productive function. Conceivably, in other
words, brain might release thought, transmit
thought, or produce thought. In the last case only
would materialism be true.

It is obvious from the foregoing that exact science
has no message whatever on the subject of immor-
tality. It is compelled as in the previous instances
to refer the matter of immortality to religion and
philosophy, and therewith to admit its own inability
by any methods devised hitherto to provide an ade-
quate answer of the question.

We ask now what has exact science to say re-
garding the greatest of all subjects, and the funda-
mental assumption of religion, the ex^istence of
God? We are all familiar with the modern effort
to discredit the traditional arguments for God's
existence. They do not convince the scientific mind
so long as it demands scientific forms of proof.
The teleological and cosmological forms of the
argument are grounded ultimately in the belief
in personality, i. e., the existence of an independent,
free, and spiritual self in man, from which we de-
rive the ideas of causation and purpose. This at
least is our primary source for these conceptions,
hov/ever we may apply them in our theistic reason-

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE 1 27

ing. So long, therefore, as exact science fails to
work its way back to the soul or self behind the
thought which manifests itself in consciousness, it
cannot accept as conclusive a form of reasoning
based upon the existence of the soul. But, besides
this, science takes note of the fact that theism is
simply one world-view among many. And so long
as men can find theoretical justification for a mul-
tiplicity of world-views, exact science as such will
not take sides in the controversy.

And this suggests what lies at the basis of the
scientific attitude, viz., the fact that the question of
theism lies outside the province of exact science.
Science deals with phenomena, with those manifes-
tations of the universe whose movements may be ob-
served and whose laws may be formulated. Science,
therefore, has no bias against theism, indeed many
of her ablest votaries are devout believers. But her
function is wisely and strictly limited. All that has
been said will become doubly clear if we reflect
that science applies the principle of causation, so to
speak, horizontally rather than vertically. She seeks
causes on the same plane with effects. The effect
lies in the sphere of phenomena. The causes be-
long to the same order. Religion deals with causes
which are above phenomena. Its causes produce
effects in consciousness, but are alleged to lie above
or below consciousness on another plane. One
fundamental question, as we shall see, is whether
the scientific conception of causation necessarily

128 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

excludes the religious conception. But meantime
the limited function of science is sufficiently clear.

The writer does not anticipate any serious ques-
tioning of the preceding contents of this chapter
by any of his readers. And yet the import of what
has been said may seem startling to those who have
so industriously sought to test all religious claims
by scientific standards. The conceptions of the
Soul, Freedom, Immortality, and God are the in-
tractable residues of science. That is to say, they
resist all the efforts of exact science to deal with
them. Science is compelled to abandon them alto-
gether and acknowledge her own incompetency.

And yet it is these four realities or assumptions
which constitute the foundation of religion. Re-
ligion begins, therefore, exactly where science ends.
Religion has to do with a group of objects which
never come within the range of the scientific vision
at all.

The conclusion from the above is sufficiently ob-
vious. It is that, fundamentally, religion never can
hope for scientific validation and justification unless
science shall change her present methods, or add to
them new methods of discovering truth, and in
particular shall admit a criterion of truth and ex-,
planation other than physical causation. If it be
granted, as it is now quite generally granted, that
religion is a legitimate and necessary form of human
activity, that its right to exist and its supreme value
for men is not to be called in question, then its

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE I29

validation and vindication must rest on other than
scientific grounds. If it is conceded that religion
rests upon reality, then there must be some methods
of apprehending reality other than scientific methods.
What those methods are we propose to consider
farther on.

It is not proper to attempt extended exposition
of the relations of science and religion until we
have defined the nature of religion. Meantime we
limit ourselves to one or two general statements.
One statement is this: Science is competent to deal
with the phenomenal aspects of religion, but not
with its foundation or essence. Religious practices
and ceremonies and forms which may be observed
and classified are proper subjects of scientific re-
search. Science may compare religion with re-
ligion, the false with the true, the lower with the
higher, and learn valuable lessons. In all the mani-
festations of religion science may ply her calling,
but beyond these her credentials do not warrant her
proceeding. She abandons the role of exact science
at once when she does so.

Is it a proper function of science to criticise re-
ligion? This question also can be answered more
satisfactorily when we have considered the nature
of religion. There are, no doubt, senses in which
scientific criticism of religion is warranted, but this
function of science must be limited to the sphere of
religious phenomena. If science sits in judgment
on the religious realities behind the manifestations.

130 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

then she has passed over from the scientific to the
philosophic sphere, or to the sphere of faith. She
is no longer true to her calling ; she can no longer be
called exact science.

The truth we are now considering is of the
utmost importance at the present time. Its recog-
nition is absolutely necessary if we are ever to clear
the atmosphere of vagueness and confusion. To
religious men whose spiritual life is the supreme
experience, the scientific procedure which endeavors
to weave religious experience and physical science
into a continuous fabric is an impossible under-
taking. These men cherish a group of realities, or
objects, or " values," which by virtue of his own
self-imposed limitations the scientific man excludes
from the range of objects which he investigates, and
concerning which, therefore, he can have no scien-
tific opinion.

I do not forget that many who disparage miracles
and the supernatural, and who yet cling to religion
in some sense seek, perhaps unconsciously some-
times, to smuggle into their world-view the values
for which religion stands. These are held, how-
ever, as belonging so completely to the inward life
of the soul, as being so hidden and limited in range
and so intimately personal that they cease to be
an inconvenience in conducting negotiations with
science. Certainly the writer rejoices with them
in all the comfort they may derive from such a view,
but he thinks it is not self-consistent. Either we

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE I3I

live in a personal universe or we do not. The re-
ligious world-view is that we do live in such a
universe. The possibility of miracle is simply a
corollary of this conception of the world, against
which science has not even a syllable to utter. The
right to believe in the possibility of miracles and
the supernatural is, therefore, a religious right.
This, of course, does not settle the question of fact
as to miracles. The question of fact has been pre-
sented briefly by the writer elsewhere and is not
under discussion here.^

Our conclusion, therefore, is that the current
mode of expounding the relations between science
and religion is incorrect. It confuses the two
spheres in an unwarranted manner. If religion
has a right to exist, if the underlying assumptions
of religion are tenable at all, then we are warranted
in working out in a consistent manner the contents
of religion, just as with its own assumptions scien-
tific men may unfold the contents of science. This
can be done without prejudice either to religion
or science, indeed they may become fellow helpers
to the truth.

We are not here troubled at all with a possible
objection which may lurk in the scientific mind as
to the cogency and convincingness of truth in the
religious sphere as compared with the inductions of
exact science. We shall attempt to show at a later
stage that there are other ways of apprehending

^ See "Why is Christianity True?" p. i7of., by E. Y. Mullins.

132 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

reality than the scientific way. And however bril-
hant and splendid the achievements of exact science,
these need not be held as in any degree dimming the
glories of religion.

Before closing this chapter perhaps we should
add a few words as to the tendency of some scien-
tific men to adopt the speculative method beyond
the lawful limits of hypothesis in dealing with ulti-
mate problems in defiance of the limitations of
science. The note of warning is being sounded by
those who most appreciate the real strength and
value of exact science and who deplore the dis-
position to merge science in metaphysics. A recent
writer in " The Hibbert Journal," discussing the
extremes to which this sort of pseudo-scientific
speculation may proceed, indicates quite clearly the
danger to science. He says : " Such confusion of
thought and dissolution of the boundaries between
fact and fancy is deplorable, and if they create
trouble in the minds of scientific men, they have
absolutely bewildered the general public. Books
of a popular nature are constantly appearing which
change the result of speculation into established
fact, and their readers naturally credit the most
astounding statements. The day may come when
a new war will arise between science and religion
on the issue that the hypotheses of science are too
metaphysical to be of value."

Again he says, referring to the efifort of great
men of science to unite all the phenomena of physics

THE INTRACTABLE RESIDUES OF SCIENCE 1 33

in a few general laws and to explain their cause by
the aid of the atomic theory : " They have spent upon
the problem infinite thought and pains, and in the
end we have a body of laws firmly established on
experimental evidence, but the causes of these laws
are as hopelessly obscure as ever. The atom has
failed to satisfy the requirements, and now the cor-
puscle is added to explain new facts, hypothesis on
hypothesis. As our knowledge increases, who can
doubt but that these, in their turn, will give place
to others still more complex, if the same method
is pursued, until the succession of atoms and
subatoms will make the whole atomistic ideal an
absurdity ?

"Just as we have, after centuries of incessant
controversy, been forced to accept the fact that we
cannot by reasoning from our consciousness obtain
an objective knowledge of natural causes, so we
must come to realize that reasoning from experi-
mental evidence is subject to exactly the same
limitations. Science, in other words, like philos-
ophy, has no ontological value. Should not the men
of science clearly recognize this fact and confine
their efforts to the legitimate function of science —
the discovery of natural phenomena and their classi-
fication into general laws derived by logical mathe-
matical processes ? " '^

If the above remarks of Professor More apply
to the tendency of science to unlawful speculation

'Prof. L. T. More, in " Hibbert Journal," July, 1909, PP. 880, 881.

134 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

concerning the objective world with which science
herself deals, how much more pertinent and ap-
plicable are they to the scientific tendency to dog-
matize about the objective world of religion which
lies in an altogether extra-scientific sphere.

We have attempted in the foregoing to define the
function and limitations of science quite broadly
and generally, and we have had in view physical
science. There is more to be said as to how far
religion and theology may or may not be made
scientific. We shall have occasion to discuss this
point particularly in connection with our exposition
of the nature of religion. References will be made
to it in other contexts as well. We shall see that the
one distinctive and vital point which differentiates
science from religion is the principle of causation
conceived as continuity, or the transformation of
energy.

CHAPTER IV

THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY

Our subject requires a brief outline of modern
philosophic movements. Religious life and philo-
sophic thought of course are closely related. But
they are not related in the manner assumed by
many. Philosophy, as a matter of fact does not
supply the basis of religion. Religion antedates the
rational explanation of religion. As the sunshine
breaks up the slumbering potencies of planted seeds
into all the variety and beauty of a profuse vege-
tation, so religion awakens art and thought and the
various activities of culture in the human spirit.
Religion is a life-adjustment which creates social
systems and civilizations. Philosophy is the rational
attempt whose task in part at least is to explain the
forces in the background which produce these re-
sults. But the rational interest of man is not
identical with the religious interest. The desire to
know the meaning of the world must never be con-
founded with the craving for the power necessary
to live in conformity with a lofty ideal. We pro-
pose now to discriminate these two parallel move-
ments, the desire for explanation and the desire for
redemption, religion and the philosophy of religion.

135

136 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

To this end we select a group of representative
modern philosophers who present the philosophy
of religion in its varied forms. Of course our
treatment must needs be very brief, and can deal
only with the central and significant aspects of the
view of each writer.

I. Critical Monism

First we consider the critical monism of Prof.
H. Hofding. This is set forth with clearness in
his work " The Problems of Philosophy," and his
more extended discussion in the " Philosophy of
Religion." Professor Hofding describes his philos-
ophy as critical monism. It is monistic, because it
seeks a single principle whereby all the facts of
being may be explained. It is critical since, as
Professor Hofding admits, there are numerous
breaches in the continuity of the world.^

The word continuity suggests Professor Hof-
ding's principle of explanation. It is the scientific
way of explaining facts. An event is explained
when we find its meaning in events already known
to us. We pass over to the unknown on a bridge
thrown across the chasm from the side of the
known. We explain a thing only when we see in
the effect the transformed cause.^ True explana-
tion, scientific explanation, is always thus hori-
zontal, not vertical. Theological explanation is

^"Problems of Philosophy," pp. 8, 26, 33, 37, 39, 85, i36f.
2 " Philosophy of Religion," p. 21.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1 37

vertical, and explains nothing at all, or everything
equally and in the same way. Hence, in Pro-
fessor Ho f ding's view, the older arguments for
God's existence based on causation and design are
without value, since they are forms of explanation
which ignore continuity and the scientific principle
of explanation.

Professor Hofding recognizes discontinuities,
however, in abundance. Continuity is broken as
between organic and inorganic, and between sen-
tient and insentient forms of life. In human con-
sciousness again it is broken. W!hen we sleep con-
sciousness is discontinuous, and each of us has a
consciousness discontinuous with other conscious-
nesses. There are other discontinuities mentioned
by Professor Hofding, but we need not discuss them
here.

In adopting the scientific principle of continuity
or the transformation of energy as the basis of his
world-view Professor Hofding simply does a thing
which is necessary in any and all forms of philos-
ophy. Every general world-view selects some one
phase of being, some one unifying principle to ex-
plain all the remainder. World-views are, after all,
art constructions rather than scientific demonstra-
tions.^ No possible world-view can be final since
there are always other principles of explanation
apart from that of any particular world- view.
Moreover, it is impossible to explain the world as

*" Problems of Philosophy," p. 127.

138 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a whole by any single aspect of the world. World-
views therefore all remain unfinished just as the
world itself remains unfinished.*

Continuity as employed by science, Professor
Hofding holds, is a principle taken ultimately from
consciousness. It is much like the principle of
rationality. When we reason correctly the con-
clusion never has in it more than was contained in
the premises. Physical causation is much like this,
'3ave that the time element enters in the physical
events and seems to change the nature of the proc-
ess.^ Here arises the issue as to idealism, which
Professor Hofding does not discuss. He does hold,
however, that consciousness supplies us with the
idea of continuity which science takes over into
nature.

As to religion, Professor Hofding says its es-
sence consists in the " conservation of value." He
denies that the idea of the '' soul " or even of per-
sonality is an established truth. Of course this
denial applies to the personality of God as well as
of man. Hofding is frankly a pantheist in the
sense that he denies personality to God, unless by
poetic license.^ Of course he cannot admit im-
mortality, and rather scouts the idea that the future
existence of any individual soul can be of any par-
ticular importance to scientific thought. Professor
Hofding shrinks from any decisive conclusion as

♦"Problems of Philosophy," pp. 116-152.
^ " Problems of Philosophy," p. 6of.
® " Philosophy of Religion," p. Syi.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I39

to the ultimate meaning of religion. All his main
positions lead logically to the cancelation of the
more important meanings men have always attached
to religion.

We can reply but briefly to Professor Hofding.
The first point against his view is that his funda-
mental principle of continuity is an abstraction
rather than an empirically given fact. He takes it
from consciousness, but cuts it away from its context
in consciousness, where it is combined with will and
all the manifestations of personality. This pro-
ceeding on the part of Hofding is scientifically un-
warranted. Again Professor Hofding is illogical
in his use of the idea of personality. The " con-
servation of value " has no meaning apart from
the idea of personality. Yet he holds to the " con-
servation of value " while refusing to admit the
vaHdity of the conception of personality.'^ No value
can be a value to any other than a personal being,
so far as our knowledge goes. To assert the con-
servation of value, therefore, in an impersonal uni-
verse is a meaningless assertion.

Professor Hofding is thus pulled violently in two
directions. Continuity is necessary in his scheme of
thought to explain the interconnection of events in
the cosmos. Personality is required on the other
hand to give any meaning whatever to the conser-
vation of value. Plofding frankly permits the
personal side of his teaching, and therewith his

' Ibid., p. 86.

140 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

" values," to succumb to the principle of continuity.
We are not surprised, therefore, in the end, that he
declares himself satisfied with the prospect of the
ultimate disappearance of what we now know as
religion.

No clearer or more typical example of the logical
outcome of the application of the scientific prin-
ciple of continuity to the philosophy of religion
could well be found than that of Professor Hofding.
We have cited it because of its value in this respect.
The affinities of Professor Hofding's critical monism
with the subjective view of religious authority are
obvious. In an impersonal world all forms of
thought and consciousness are equally valid, equally
true, equally authoritative. The idea of a valid, au-
thoritative source of religious truth in such a world
is inconceivable.

2. Idealism

We glance next at Prof. Edward Caird's idealism.
This is set forth in his work entitled " The Evolu-
tion of Religion." Professor Caird assumes the
unity of mankind and the universality of religion.
He defines religion not by its earliest forms, but by
means of a common principle found in all forms,
later as well as earlier.

Psychology supplies the starting-point. !As ra-
tional beings, Caird says, our conscious life is made
up of three elements: First, the idea of the object,
the not-self, or the world ; secondly, the idea of the

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I4I

subject, or self; thirdly, the idea of the unity which
is presupposed in the difference of the self and not-
self. There must be such a unity, else the not-self
and self could not be related to each other. This
underlying unity which binds together subject and
object is the infinite which embraces and connects
all finite things.^

To know is to do two things, to distinguish and to
relate. Thus to discriminate the tide from other
things and likewise the moon, and then to relate
moon and tide, this is knowledge. Religion, in
Caird's view, is unfolded from lower to higher
forms through this progressive knowledge of the
self, the world, and the underlying unity which is
God. In lower religions the unifying principle, or
God, is an object external to man, a fetish or object
of nature. In the next stage the perceiving subject
or human spirit supplies the idea of the God which
is worshiped. He becomes a person as in Jewish
monotheism. In the highest stage God is neither
like the subject nor object, but is the unifying bond
behind or beneath both. Religion evolves con-
tinually, and in the evolution opposites, contra-
dictions, antitheses, are reconciled. Christianity is
the crown of religion, and " dying to live " is its
fundamental law as taught by Jesus.^

Professor Caird thinks of matter and spirit as
forms of manifestation of a single spiritual prin-

8 "Evolution of Religion," Vol. I, pp. 64, 107 f.
»Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 195, i69f., i72f.. Vol. II, pp. Ssf., 295f.
K

142 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ciple. With him the thought process is the funda-
mental fact of the world and is the principle of all
movement, all life, all being. He is monistic and
pantheistic; indeed, he goes farther and declares
that the true theory of religion must combine mono-
theism and pantheism.^^

Like Hofding, Professor Caird works with the
principle of rationality as the basal fact of existence.
Hofding, however, presses it over into the service
of science transformed into continuity in the
physical sense ; while Caird is chiefly concerned with
its use as the key to man's religious life. Both alike,
however, use it in an abstract form severed from its
place in consciousness and in concrete human ex-
perience. It is like taking a wing by itself to
explain the mechanism of flight. The body to
which the wing is attached is a necessary part of
the explanation of flight. Nature presents not de-
tached wings, but winged bodies. Rationality is
found not adrift by itself in the world, but only as
a part of a larger unity. Caird fails to show that
matter and mind are manifestations of a single
spiritual principle. He assumes it. Things are not
identical because they are related. The differences
are as marked as the identities of things. Mind and
matter are radically unlike, although of course sus-
taining important relations to each other. The
world is not an organism save in a figurative sense.
Caird is especially fond of the physical organism

10 Ibid.> Vol. II, Lectures 3, 4.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I43

as the symbol of the evolution of religion. He
thus tends constantly to reduce the movement to
the physical level. Individual centers and wills are
the outstanding fact in the social movements of men,
not the dominance of a biological law as in an or-
ganism. Professor Caird has no difficulty in pre-
serving pantheism in his system of thought, but he
scarcely provides for an adequate monotheism. The
universe is not level like a tranquil sea. There
are geysers of personality shooting up above the
surface through some Power behind the visible and
tangible. By no kind of known process may these
centers of consciousness be made identical with the
physical transformation of energy or with the log-
ical processes of the reason.

3. Personalis M

The late Prof. Borden P. Bowne, in his work
entitled " Personalism," comes much closer to the
facts of experience in his general view than Hof-
ding or Caird. Philosophy must keep close to the
facts of life and experience or else float away from
the world like a cloud. We have no instance of
Hofding's or Caird's principle save in personality.
Bowne sees this clearly. He sets out by assuming
personal life and personal relations among men,
and argues powerfully to prove that all the con-
tradictions of thought are reconciled in personality.
He thus keeps his feet resting on the solid rock of
fact. Physical continuity, he holds, really explains

144 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

nothing. Causation in nature is an endless regress,
like a row of bricks falling against each other. The
physical force a melts into b, and b into c, and so
on — not to the end of the alphabet, for this alpha-
bet has no terminus in the physical series. The only
initial cause we know is will as included in per-
sonality. Rationality he admits of course as an
aspect of personal life, but only as an aspect.

As Professor Bowne starts with personaHty, so
also he ends with it. God is a person. Being as a
whole is personal. Only thus can it be made intel-
ligible. Personality is the only engine which is
adequate to keep the world going. Professor
Bowne, however, does not place God outside of the
world. He is not a mere engineer in charge of a
machine. God and the world are one, not in the
pantheistic sense of an impersonal monism like that
of Hofding, nor in the rationalistic sense like the
view of Caird. Reality is one as a person.^^

Philosophy is the search for an intellectual string,
so to speak, long enough to tie up all the facts of
existence in one bundle. Personality is surely the
longest and strongest string yet found. It is the
highest and richest thing we know. Our own per-
sonality is a known fact. There is no ground for
supposing therefore that it will be reabsorbed in
something higher and thus canceled. Personalism
finds it, values it, and leaves it. From it the
supreme Person, God, is deduced.

"•"Personalism," pp. 54, 57f., Saf., lyoi., 202f., aSif., 3oof.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I45

Of course, like all monisms, Professor Bowne's
fails to bridge the gulf separating mind and matter.
Like all general world-views, it uses a part to ex-
plain the whole, but it takes the highest part, and
the only part containing in itself the various prin-
ciples of explanation. Like a lens, it focalizes these
principles in one intense point of light. You seek
in vain for any real and fundamental unity in
plurality in nature, but you get a real unity com-
bined with plurality of activity and experience in
personal consciousness. So also with the other con-
tradictions of thought. The parts lie scattered like
stones for an edifice until personalism combines
them into a living unity. Personalism, then is a
philosophy with a real climax. Philosophies which
explain by means of any lower principle all end in
an anti-climax. They begin by an effort to con-
struct and end by dismantling and wrecking the
fabric of being. The universe is a universe of per-
sons, not of things. Life is a fellowship of per-
sons, not a play of blind forces, nor merely a logical
or biological process. Monistic systems like those
of Hofding and Caird, feeling the force of the ap-
peal to personality as the key to a knowledge of the
universe, usually provide for some principle higher
than personality which shall embrace the values of
personality. But such a " higher " principle is an
abstraction. There is no basis for it in any facts
known to us.

In his volume " Creative Evolution " and related

146 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

writings Professor Bergson presents yet another
form of monism. He rejects physical continuity
and rationality as the key to the meaning of the
world. With him instinct or vital impetus is the
ultimate fact. A stream of life flows through the
universe and ramifies in various directions like the
tide flowing into bays and inlets along the shore,
or like the fingers pushing out into the fingers of a
glove. All forms of life are the outcome of this
vital flow or impulse. He argues to prove that mat-
ter is a sort of by-product of this vital energy and
that reason in man results from his instinctive reac-
tion against matter; that logic, in other words, is a
copy in man of the mechanical world outside of
man. Bergson makes instinct primary and reason
secondary, however, in his general view. Instinct
is the real genius of the universe, achieving far more
than is possible to reason. It gathers energy as it
moves, all the momentum of the past being con-
centrated in each present act. It is split up into
various streams, like the wind blowing against the
corners of a house, or like a current of water split
into divergent channels. All forms of life from the
lowest to the highest arise thus from the original
impetus. Professor Bergson denies purpose to this
creative energy. Some of his advocates, however,
claim that his views are out of harmony with the
idea of purpose only in a lower and secondary sense.
For our present purpose it is not necessary to dis-
cuss the point at all, as our conclusion will show.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1 47

We merely cite Professor Bergson's view as one
of the most recent forms of monistic philosophy.
His effort to " generate " matter from mind does
not succeed. But it marks a new method. Ideal-
istic monism usually seeks to show the identity of
matter, in principle at least, with consciousness or
reason. Bergson rejects mechanism as the funda-
mental fact, and in this he is right. A higher prin-
ciple is necessary to explain the world.

4. Pluralism

Thus it appears that monism is a very prevailing
fashion in philosophy. We have not even men-
tioned a number of varieties of it which have
greater or less acceptance. There is an opposing
camp, however, that questions whether the monistic
passion is a wise one. In it are the pluralists.
The late Prof. William James' volume, " A Plural-
istic Universe," presents an interesting form of
pluralism. I give his point of view in general terms
only, space forbidding the discussion of details.
The pluralist admits the unity of the world, but he
is more impressed with its plurality. As Professor
James puts it, the " allness "of things appeals to
the monist while the " eachness " of things appeals
to the plurist. Things are many even more im-
pressively and radically than they are one. Some
things are apart from other things, and so far as
science has learned, they must stay apart.

The blossoms on the stalk of Being are unlike each

148 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

other, radically unlike — too much so indeed to be
explained as the outflow of a single vital prin-
ciple. For instance, good and evil, truth and error,
mind and matter, freedom and mechanism, per-
sonality and physical energy do not, as opposites,
coalesce anywhere in our knowledge or experience
into identical things. Philosophy never finds any
means of gathering all these together, like the beads
on a string, save by constructing an imaginary
string. It never finds actually any bond of unity
such as monism claims. Monism cannot endure
contradictions. Pluralism says we must endure
them if they exist. Hegel, and in a derivative way
later idealists, assert that evil and error and other
troublesome things are negative and will gradually
be canceled in the on-going of the world. The
pluralist replies that this cancels morality and per-
sonality, which are facts to be reckoned with, not
illusions to be explained away. The thorough-going
monists, like Hegel, assert that all things are parts
of God, ignorance and error, as well as other things.
The pluralist replies that this makes God omniscient
and ignorant, holy and sinful at one and the same
time.

Professor James assumes a sort of pan-psychic
substratum of things, a basal unity or element in
which all things float like buoyant objects in the sea.
But he puts very special stress on the apartness and
mobility of these floating objects, their independ-
ence of each other. Hence freedom and will and

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I49

responsibility are permanent things, ineffaceable
facts of life. And there is no ground for believing
they will pass away through any dynamic process
of the universe as a whole. God and man are over
against each other. They may commune with each
other. Professor James clearly recognizes the
supernatural in Christian experience, and indeed
explains the fact of regeneration itself in terms
which are quite in harmony with those of the
Pauline epistles. The God he finds is not infinite in
the older sense of that word, but he is a God which
Professor James thinks is closely akin to the God
of Christian theism. Few men in modern times
have equaled Professor James in judicial breadth
of view and fair-mindedness. Pluralism of course
has its own inherent difficulties. The monist insists
that unity of thought and being is the goal of all
thinking and that a disconnected universe, like that
of James, does not satisfy the reason. The pluralist
in his turn rings the bell of warning against frail
bridges of speculation built across the chasms of
the world, and insists that it is wiser to stay the
feet from premature attempts to cross upon them.
The interests of Hfe are, after all, paramount to
those of the reason alone, and the pluralist would
wisely protect these.^^

We might go on outlining philosophic systems if
it were necessary. They have increased in num-
ber, variety, and impressiveness, along with human

""Pluralistic Universe," pp. 37f., 291, 298f., 186, 325, 318, 321.

150 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

genius and insight. The universe is like a mighty
jewel with innumerable facets. Each philosopher
has seen one of these and explained all the others
by it. Each system is impregnable from the point
of view of its leading assumption. To refute a
particular philosophy one needs only to start with
some other assumption. Of course the systems are
not all equally strong in proofs assembled in sup-
port of their respective assumptions. But there is
no compelling logic in any one of them. As logical
processes all the leading philosophies are equally
respectable. The individual is convinced by the
particular system which appeals to him. Thus the
rational process, applied to the task of explaining
the world, is inconclusive. So long as there is more
than one view the clash of systems will continue,
and there is no principle on which any one system
can read the others out of court. The reason is
kaleidoscopic in its preferences and changes. It is
inherently in unstable equilibrium, like the waves of
the sea.

The result is inevitable. Men weary of an in-
conclusive rationalism, as a squirrel must weary of
a rotating cage. There is action in plenty, but no
arrival anywhere, no freedom of movement. Men
have repeatedly asked the question whether we
are doomed forever to the rotating cage of ration-
alism. Is there no escape? Two answers have
been given. One is that of agnosticism. We can-
not know the ultimate meaning of the world, it

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY I5I

asserts. The key to the mystery of being is hope-
lessly lost. The wise thing and the only wise thing
for men under the circumstances is to forego the
search for the lost key. Science discovers truth
and formulates it. Truth is to be found only in
physical research. Here alone is there fruitful
effort. Metaphysics, as one has said, is a search of
a blind man in a dark room for a black cat which is
not there. And yet agnosticism does not satisfy
men generally. There is that within us which
storms the gates of the unknown with undying
energy.

5. Pragmatism

The other answer to the question is that of
pragmatism. Pragmatism offers denials and asser-
tions, both of which are significant. It denies first
that you can explain the world by any abstract prin-
ciple, by any single aspect of being, such as con-
tinuity, rationality, and so on. It denies further
that we have any right to explain away any part of
the world in order to set up some other part as
the key to the true meaning of the whole. Lotze,
for example, argued that because things act and
react upon each other they must in the last analysis
be identical with each other. Pragmatism says
things do act and react upon each other, but things
are not Identical. Both facts must remain. The
one must not be sponged from the slate In order
to emphasize the other. Pragmatism goes to the

152 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

roots of knowledge also by denying that there is
such a thing as " pure thought," or pure logic. The
error of philosophy has been in assuming such
" pure thought." The will enters into all our
knowing processes.

Here pragmatism begins its assertions. First, the
truth of an assertion depends on its application;
secondly, all mental life is purposive; thirdly, prag-
matism is a systematic protest against all ignoring
of the purposiveness of actual knowing; fourthly,
all logic which ignores purpose or will is false or
misleading. Thus pragmatism leads directly to a
voluntaristic metaphysic ; that is a metaphysic which
does not seek exhaustive explanations through
" pure reason," which has no existence, but by
taking account of will as an element in all
knowing.^^

Pragmatism, then, asserts that we can escape from
the rotating cage of rationalism provided we are
willing to let our whole nature, our total experi-
ence, speak to us and not merely an abstract rea-
son; and provided further we permit the whole of
the external world to speak to us and not abstract
an infinitesimal part of it as the exhaustive prin-
ciple of explanation. That which is workable in
our life-experiences will in the end prove to be true,
pragmatism asserts. All world-views are to be
treated with equal respect according to pragmatism.

""Pragmatism," by W. James, pp. 56f., 6if. ; "Humanism," by
F. C. S. Schiller, pp. 12, 13, and Preface, p. xxi.

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1 53

They are to be regarded as working theories, which
must be tried out in actual human experience. Life
then becomes the test of the truth of all theories and
not the speculative reason alone. True knowledge
thus arises from actual experience. Truths become
known to us by a process of verification covering
many and varied forms of experience. Our axioms
even are the result of such life-experiences and life-
adjustments. The body of truth grows with the
life-process itself. As will appear in the sequel this
last-named fact, the rise of truth through life-
adjustments, is fundamental for the doctrine of
authority in religion.

Pragmatism claims to be a method rather than a
philosophy. As such it has its own inconsistencies,
its own problems and difficulties. These we pass
by in order to accentuate its central truth, viz., the
will as a factor in all knowledge. Here pragmatism
has the closest kind of affinity for religion. " He
that willeth to do shall know," is the fundamental
Christian definition of knowledge as announced by
Jesus. Pragmatism singles out this principle as of
the very core and essence of all knowing.

The will is central in religion. Submission of the
human will to God's will is of the essence of religion.
Thus pragmatism cannot consistently become a phi-
losophy at all without the experiential knowledge of
religion. If we cannot know, save as the will enters
into experience, then to know the ultimate mean-
ing of the world we must test that meaning by a

154 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

voluntary act by relating our wills to the universe.
It is this test when honestly made which produces
the impregnable conviction of the truth of religion
in men's hearts. Within that world of Christian
experience man meets a personal God through
Christ. A distinct and definite type of experience
and of knowledge arises. Through this interaction
of God and man in religious fellowship the Scrip-
tures come into being. The sort of authority pos-
sessed by them we shall discuss in a later chapter.
Here we simply call attention to the inconclusive-
ness and non-finality, the unstable equilibrium of
philosophy when conducted as a process of the
*' pure reason," and to the rich and fruitful out-
come when man's total nature, his will and emo-
tions as well as his intellect, enter into the knowing
process.

We saw in the preceding chapter how science
fails to yield the realities and forms of truth re-
quired by religion. We have also seen that ration-
alism is an inherently inconclusive and unstable
attitude of mind. Hence it also fails to supply the
needed foundation for religion. This is because re-
ligion cannot subsist upon postulates and assump-
tions merely. These are inadequate for its needs.
Nor can we ground religion in mere feeling. Re-
ligion, in other words, must be grounded in truth.
It must be seen to be a form of truth if it is to grip
men powerfully and permanently. We commit
ourselves fully and strongly to this view. Unless

UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1 55

religion is truth or leads to truth in the ultimate
outcome it will not permanently endure. If, on
the other hand, it does yield truth to man in his
quest for God the principle of authority inevitably
arises in the development of man's religious life.

CHAPTER Y

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY, OR THE RELIGIOUS
ASSIMILATION OF TRUTH

We now pass from the critical to the more con-
structive side of our task. We must note a Httle
more fully a few things implied or expressed in
the preceding pages in order to a clear understand-
ing of one very important phase of our subject.
We have accepted the principle that the will is active
in all our knowing. Our entire nature in fact
passes through the experience when we know a
thing most deeply and truly. This is the new
principle which modern philosophy and science are
recognizing. It has a very vital part to play in
religious knowledge. Those who insist that the
seat of religious authority is within man's soul, it
will be recalled, insist always that we must assimi-
late, or inwardly digest, every truth of religion
before we accept it. On our own part we gladly
admit that the assimilation of truth is necessary in
religion, but we deny that all religious truth should
be rejected until it is assimilated, and hold rather
that some religious truths must be assimilated gradu-
ally. Indeed, one of the best ways to assimilate
some truths is to act upon them. This is particu-

156

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY 1 57

larly the case with some truths regarding Jesus
Christ and his place in our own Christian faith.

But we dissent further from those who insist upon
the inward assimilation or mental digestion of all
religious truth prior to its acceptance on a still
more important ground. We object to their defini-
tion of " assimilation " and to their definition of
" truth." If the will enters into our knowing proc-
esses, then we must revise our notions of what is
true and of what we may assimilate. There is
much confusion at this point. When men insist upon
our rejecting all that is commended to us as truth
until we mentally assimilate it they usually have in
mind the scientific forms of truth and assimilation.
We have seen that in physical science continuity
or the transformation of energy is the leading
method of " explaining " things, and through it
" truth " is established. Thus truths of science are
mathematically exact and clear, such as the laws of
motion, the law of gravitation, the laws of chem-
istry, hydrostatics, hydraulics, mechanics, etc. It
is the rigor and vigor of science that the subjec-
tivists insist upon for theology. Thus they drop
out of Christian doctrine everything which lies
outside of consciousness itself. They limit essential
Christianity to certain axiomatic truths, such as
the moral law, repentance and faith, and that inner
group of truths in general based on the fact that
God is our Father and we his sons. These truths
are taken by them as being harmonious with the

L

158 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

rigid scientific requirements in the method of ex-
planation.

Now these men fail to appreciate one fatal de-
fect in their position. Their insistence upon scien-
tific rigor and exactness destroys their own founda-
tions. They can never on such principles prove that
there is a God or that he is Father. In so far as
they do obtain these truths in experience it is in an-
other way altogether. In so far then as they are
consistently scientific in their standard of proof and
explanation they must become atheists or agnostics.
" But," it is asked, " is not the scientific method the
logical and only method of finding out truth? Is
not logic, after all, the compelling force in all our
dealings with truth ? " This question leads right up
to the issue between the older logic and that
deeper, truer logic which recognizes that the will
plays a large part in all our knowing. Of course
I can only touch one or two salient points. They
will, however, show what is meant by the defects
of logic.

When I say man is mortal I place in my declara-
tion two terms, one referring to a being possess-
ing the quality of manhood, the other indicating
the quality of mortality. Then if I assert that John
is a man I easily arrive at the true conclusion that
John is mortal. This conclusion contained in the
premises is as necessary a deduction as anything in
mathematics. Now what have I done in this proc-
ess ? I have singled out man from other objects, and

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY 159

mortality from other qualities, and John from other
men, and I have connected them with each other.
This is logic and the logical process. Now in thus
singling oiit John from other men and declaring him
to be mortal how much have I told about John?
Very little. If I am to learn all about John I must
know him. So I find he is a white man, five feet
ten inches in height, with a multitude of additional
physical qualities. He is a graduate of a great
university, a lawyer with certain mental peculiar-
ities, and so on. I might fill a volume with facts
about John if I should enter sufficiently into detail.
You see my experience of John, my personal knowl-
edge of him, give me vastly more information than
any logical process could ever do. And with all
I thus learn of John, how small it is compared with
John's own knowledge of himself, his inner ex-
periences in all his relationships as well as outward
conditions.

Go back now to our pale little logical deduction
and compare it with the rich full experience of
John himself, and you have a general idea of the
contrast between ordinary deductive logic and what
is known as voluntarism in our processes of know-
ing. The logic is sound and necessary for its pur-
pose. But if you were to frame ten thousand logical
deductions or syllogisms about John you would
not begin to exhaust. the knowledge he has of his
own life, his own experience. Thus reasoning in
syllogisms is like trying to dip up water with a

l60 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

sieve. It flows through the bottom back into the
vessel ere we can Hft it out. Perhaps a better illus-
tration would be to say it is like trying to empty the
Mississippi River with a teacup. The syllogism, if
correctly formed, is true, and through it we may
make progress in knowledge, but it is futile to
dream of covering all the meaning of life and the
universe by means of syllogisms. What we know
above and beyond what we reduce to logic is im-
measurable. Our living, vital experience in our
contacts with the world about us and above us
is incalculably richer and fuller than those few
phases of it which we reduce to rational and logical
form.

Now science purposely limits itself to certain
ways of looking at the world and to certain ways of
explaining the world. Thus it attains mathematical
exactness and within the limits of its just conclu-
sions it is logically beyond all cavil. But how little,
after all, do the laws of motion tell us of the bodies
which move. How little does the law of gravitation
tell us of the universe as a whole. It is the glory
and power of science that it does limit itself to the
visible and tangible, the sense universe, and to
certain ways of dealing with it. How splendidly it
has widened our vision of nature. And yet how
impotent are its methods to grapple with the higher
verities and deeper, richer experiences of man's
personal, moral, and religious life.

We easily understand from the foregoing how

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY l6l

inconclusive is the rational process by itself when
applied to the explanation of the universe as a whole.
In order to deduce the meaning of the universe in
a logical way it is necessary to cut out, as it were,
a section of it in order to obtain a first principle
or major premise as a starting-point. Having done
this, of course it is easy to deduce from it a con-
clusion. But in thus limiting ourselves to a part
in order to get something exact and definite to base
our reasoning upon we have left most of the world
out of account altogether. The materialist starts
with matter, the idealist starts with the principle of
rationality, and so on through the various philos-
ophies. Hence the unstable equilibrium of philos^
ophy, the inconclusiveness of it. Each general phi--
losophy is an abstraction; that is, some small part
scaled off from the totality of things, and there may
be as many philosophies as there are parts to scale
off, and as there are philosophers with different tem-
peraments and preferences. Now all this does not
destroy logic, it only destroys some of its preten-
sions. It can accomplish far less than has been
claimed for it.

At this point enters pragmatism with its doc-
trine of the will. Its '' theory " of knowledge is
that the rational principle is not by itself capable
of teaching us the meaning of the world. There is
another form of knowledge which we obtain not by
reasoning, but by living. The doctrine that the will
enters into our knowing processes must not be taken

l62 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

as meaning even the will in the abstract. It means
all our nature, including the emotions, the intel-
lect, and the will, — man's total nature in its reac-
tions against the world. This is the way in which
we come to know the true meaning of things. Now
I do not go with the pragmatists in all their con-
clusions. I do not, for example, with some of them,
reject logic. I accept it within its own sphere and
for its own uses. But I do hold with them in the
view that we know in the richest and truest sense
not by means of logical deduction, but by actual liv-
ing experience with the realities of the world in
which we live, the physical and spiritual universe.
Logic is like sitting on the bank of a river and
deducing its contents from a fish caught in its
waters. The other method is like plunging into
the stream itself and learning by contact with it
what it contains.

Now it is in precisely this larger, richer form of
experience that we acquire truths in the religious
life. Religion is not and never was based on
logical deductions from the world about us. This is
philosophy in the older sense of the word, or the
effort to explain by means of the one principle of
\ rationality. In religious experience, on the con-
trary, we submit our wills to God's will, we enter
into fellowship with him, and in so doing we enter a
world of new realities. This new world is as real
to our experience as a landscape with its hills and
valleys and trees and flowers, its sky and its hori-

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY I63

zon. Indeed, it slowly acquires for the Christian
the unity and harmony and beauty of the solar
system itself. It is its power to give man this kind
of knowledge and experience which is the distinct
and unique quality in the Christian religion. Christ
mediates to us the knowledge of God and the result
follows.

Observe now that there is no conflict in all this
with science or with logic. I may still insist that
the exact criterion of science be applied in all
scientific proof. I demand a mathematical ex-
pression of the law of gravitation and the laws of
motion, and, indeed, in all that limited sphere where
it is possible to apply the exact scientific method
of explanation. I may still demand also that logic
be exact, that conclusion contain no more than the
premises yield. But I am under no obligation what-
ever to submit my full, rich experience, my knowl-
edge of God and redemption through his grace, to
the demands of a criterion of explanation and of
proof which belongs exclusively to another sphere,
to physical nature. The logical process or rational
principle in me may indeed gather up some parts
of my new knowledge and experience into premises
and deduce certain correct conclusions. But the
logic will never more than touch the outer edges
of the great deep of experience within me.

Now it will be clear from the foregoing that the
standard by which we are to test all alleged truth or
knowledge will depend on the sphere in which we

164 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

may at the time be moving, the interest which may
be uppermost for the time-being. If, for example,
a group of great scientists without proof or veri-
fication should have announced as the laws of gravi-
tation that bodies attract each other directly as the
mass and inversely as the square of the distance
we should have refused to accept it on their mere
authority. But when by the application of scientific
methods of proof and verification they demonstrate
the law, we not only accept, but we may for our-
selves assimilate the truth and understand its exact
mathematical form. But if we are wise we do not
demand this kind of proof and verification for the
truths of religion and the doctrines of theology.
In this sphere the interest ceases to be purely in-
tellectual. Here we crave divine fellowship and
redemption.

Our entire nature craves not only truth, but
power, moral and spiritual reenforcement; in short,
redemption. Christianity comes with its teaching
as to God and man and the Mediator between
God and man, Jesus Christ. The only method of
proof here is that of immediate contact with God,
the immediate experience of the power we crave,
the redemption from sin and its power we so much
need. This view of life we accept not as a rational
belief merely, but learn it by an act of the will, by
vital union with God in Christ. Thereafter we go
on verifying the truth of what we have accepted in
a thousand ways in our life-experiences. We thus

VOLUNTARISM AND AUTHORITY 1 65

know the truth, and the truth makes us free. No
scientific method which pertains to the physical
realm could ever have yielded this knowledge. It
is too meager in its scope and range. No logical
deduction could ever yield it for the same reason.
Thus we slowly assimilate religious truth in the
religious way. We make the will a prime factor
in our theory of knowledge, and learn truth as
we could not have learned it otherwise.

Observe now that it is the confounding of these
two methods of knowing that gave rise to Ritsch-
lianism. If the only true knowledge and the only
real explanation is that which is derived from the
method of physical science, then Ritschl was right,
and we must remain agnostics so far as a knowledge
of God is concerned. The scientific method never
yields it. But the pragmatic method is incomparably
superior to that of Ritschl in religion. In the re-
ligious sphere w^e have not to do with physical causa-
tion, but with free causation. The same confu-
sion of thought underlies the subjective theologians,
who wish to limit doctrine to the moral axioms, and
who would reject all religious teaching other than
these. They unconsciously insist upon a particular
method adapted to satisfy a narrow range of human
interests, as if there were no deeper or higher in-
terests. Religious assimilation then is after its kind.
It is verification through the actual experiences
of life. It is progressive and cumulative in the
individual life and history. The revelation of relig-

l66 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ious truth came through Jesus Christ. It was the
answer to a universal human craving and quest.
Men know the truth as thus revealed by methods
of verification quite as satisfying as the methods of
physical science.

CHAPTER VI

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY

We have now arrived at the point where we may
set forth the principle of authority. We reserve
the discussion of the pecuHar nature of Christian
and bibhcal authority for a later chapter. Here we
lay the foundation for that by showing in broad out-
lines how authority arises and how it is exerted in
the progress of the race. Let it be understood al-
ways that we are as deeply concerned for freedom
as we are for authority, and that our whole under-
taking consists in the effort to exhibit these two
in their mutual relations, to show that each is im-
plicated in the other, and that neither can be achieved
or realized without the other in any manner worthy
of the name. My task could be stated as the ef-
fort to ascertain either how we achieve freedom, or
how authority arises. Let it also be understood that
the chief point involved in the current controversy
about authority is its externality. We stand for the
point of view that the subjective principle is not ad-
equate as a means of defining our relations to re-
ligious truth; in other words, that the view of
Sabatier and Martineau and men of that school is
inadequate and inconclusive.

167

1 68 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Briefly and fundamentally we state the case as
follows: Authority arises as the result of the inter-
action of the individual with the universe. The
environment over against the individual, whether it
be the human environment of society or the physical
environment of the cosmos or the spiritual environ-
ment of the divine life, inevitably and necessarily,
in its interaction with the individual consciousness,
creates and validates external authorities of many
kinds and degrees. The world and the individual in v
their mutual interaction and relationships create
normative external standards in the form of laws,
doctrines, ideals, or world-views.

First of all, we do not choose the universe. It
chooses us. Whether or not we come '' trailing
clouds of glory," we come assuredly at the behest
of powers over which we have no control. We are
subjects by the very fact of birth, and subjects in
manifold ways ; as to where we are born, whether in
New York or Timbuctoo; as to the color of our
skin, whether white, black, red, or of any other
shade; as to the racial and social conditions around
us, whether civilized or barbarous, whether ignorant
or enlightened, whether cultured or debased; as to
our physical state, whether inheriting a sound or an
unsound body ; as to religious opportunities, whether
in a society of highly developed spirituality or of
degrading superstitions. In a word, to be born
merely is to confront a thousand tyrannies. The
cosmos stands over against us a colossal menace, a

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 169

doom forever impending. We are flung out into the
abyss and caught in the waiting hands of titanic
powers and tossed back and forth hke a ball. And
yet it is given to us to achieve freedom. The law
of that freedom is deeply written in the constitu-
tion of our nature and the world about us.

But let us come to details. Our first reaction
upon the world is of course in infancy. To us
then it is a vast " buzzing confusion," a meaning-
less phantasmagoria of sights and sounds. The
universe imposes upon our senses, as the initial
tyranny, its own phenomena. All the materials for
our thought are thrust upon us without the slightest
reference to our wishes. What is the psychic proc-
ess which ensues? Let any work on psychology
make reply. We slowly distinguish objects, analyze
the phenomena; name or learn the names of the
factors in the field of observation; relate objects
and sensations to one another, learn to distinguish
distance, color, size, and all the other aspects of the
world about us; form conceptions of the objects
learned ; combine the concepts into judgments, com-
bine the judgments into new concepts, and from
these pass to new judgments. From these judg-
ments we pas^ to hypotheses, and through the veri-
fication of the hypotheses we formulate laws, and
by means of the laws we pass to new fields of re-
search and extend the frontiers of knowledge. It
is through this process that science is born. It is
needless to illustrate at length or even attempt to

170 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

prove the above assertions. They are commonplace
in our psychologies. Take a single example: We
learn to see correctly by a most complex and elab-
orate process. The perception of size depends on
the perception of distance. If v^e mistake the dis-
tance, an insect seems to us a bird, or vice versa.
In infancy there is little accurate perception of
either size or distance. To the child the lines may
be true :

" Over his head the maple buds,

Over the tree the moon,
Over the moon the starry studs

That drop from the angels' shoon,"

and yet he may be unable to perceive at all how the
tree and moon and stars are related to each other
from the point of view of distance.^ Slowly we
learn by means of muscular movements and other
means to distinguish distance and correlate objects.
What is true of vision is also true of hearing and
feeling and all forms of sense perception. Thus
our primary chaos becomes cosmos. Thus we ad-
just ourselves and relate ourselves to our environ-
ment. Thus we build up a coherent world.

The psychic state which precedes decision is the
open state, that in which reasons for and against
are balanced against each other. This is the state
of suspense and tension and pain and inaction.
Action is the result of decision, not openness. Our

i Cf. James, " Psychology," one-volume edition, p. 40.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY I/I

progress in thought and in Hfe is in large measure
due to our abihty to refer our problems to maxims *
and classes, to decisions already made. When we ^
proceed to new decisions it is on the basis of the old
ones.^ When decisions become tools for further
thought, and especially for action, they become ef-
ficient. Openness and efficiency then are contra-
dictory terms. I do not mean efficiency and an
open mind, but efficiency and an open truth. Open-
ness in mind and efficiency in speculation are quite
compatible with each other. But if openness of
mind on a particular point in scientific or philo-
sophic research becomes deep-seated and chronic, it
wanes into agnosticism, and loses even the power to
stimulate. Its power to excite thought is dependent
upon progress toward a static judgment. A man's
interest will grow with progressive verification. He
will be hot on the trail when the particulars of
verification are multiplied. Interest will wane other-
wise. Openness of mind, then, is a negative and
general virtue only. It is a passing phase of ex-
perience, a means to a higher end. The established ^
truth alone constitutes an element in progress, for
on it we rise to the next higher truth. The open
mind is a condition only, not a factor, of progress
of a substantial kind.

Whenever we pass from research to life this is
particularly true. The power to achieve, to dare,
and to suffer is the great power men need. This

^ Cf. James, " Psychology," one-volume edition, p. 4^9^'

172 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

power is born of belief and conviction. For science
or philosophy, therefore, to make of freedom in the
sense of openness of mind the fundamental principle
in religion is to do violence to human life. Indeed,
it becomes the most intolerable of dogmas in that it
puts a permanent estoppel upon the right and joy
of man to bind himself to an ideal, or principle, or
movement, or cause, or religious object. One of
the dearest of human rights is the right of loyalty,
the right of men to commit themselves irrevocably.
True loyalty is enlistment and issues in apostleship.
Affirmation is the primary function of the will, and
its paralysis must always ensue upon the denial of
that function.^

Now with reference to the above process two or
three remarks are in order as a means of elucidating
the principle of authority. The first is that the total
objective world imperiously thrusts itself upon us,
chooses us for its own, so to speak, and leaves us
absolutely no choice in the matter. We are subjects,
it is sovereign. The second remark is that we do
assimilate gradually the meaning of the chaotic data
thus presented to us. The third remark is that our
efficiency in the struggle for life, in our adjustments
to the world about us, begins to show itself as we
begin to acquire concepts of fixed meaning and
working value. That is to say, as our perceptions
of phenomena are crystallized into concepts and
judgments which have objective value and which are

^ See James, " Psychology," p. 454.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY I73

thenceforward assumed, we acquire efficiency. And
this leads to the further remark that the subjective
assimilative process, so far as we have yet seen,
is especially characteristic of infancy. It is the
sole and exclusive method of absorbing truth in the
most infantile forms of experience. In proportion
as maturity is attained another process figures
largely in cognition, viz., assumptions and judg-
ments, or axioms and established laws. The sub-^
jectivists make much of their claim that subjec-
tivism is the method of manhood, whereas really it
is peculiarly characteristic, from the point of view
of psychology, of the earliest stages of infancy.
The openness of mind of childhood is of course al-
ways meritorious, but the emptiness of mind of
childhood is not. Subjectivism is the resolve on
the part of the individual to ignore the crystallized
results of the experience of the race, and by a sort
of tour de force to assimilate the universe himself./
If now we summarize results so far as we have
gone we say: (i) We begin our interaction with
the world as subjects; (2) even our primary sen-
sations at the birth of thought are " donated," or
imposed upon us; (3) the assimilative or analy-
zing process by means of which we attain a
coherent view is always one of suspense and arrest
of progress in very large degree; (4) the efficiency
of our adjustments and struggle for life is con-
ditioned upon the winning of definite conclusions
expressed in judgments, generalizations, or laws;

M

174 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

(5) the conclusions become tools of thought and ac-
tion in proportion as they become fixed and definite.

From this point we proceed to remark, as in-
dicating the next step, that all our progress is social
as well as individual The experience of the one
becomes the experience of the many. Common in-
terests, common aims, common efforts give rise to
like experiences of the meaning of life and reality.
The individual conclusion is then reenforced by the
social sanction. The common experience is funded,
so to speak, and becomes the possession of each by
becoming the possession of all. Now as a result of
this social effort and interaction there arise certain
standards by means of which all effort and experi-
ence are tested. Truths are crystallized into canons,
norms, laws.- These are accepted as the expression
of the nature of reality and our relations to reality.
Now it is this social outcome of man's reaction upon
the world which constitutes the basis of all progress..

An analogy may help to make it clear. The law
of habit as expounded by physiological psychology
will serve us. Acts, when repeated, tend to establish
tendencies in the brain substance, grooves, so to
speak, along which conduct shall move. Learning
to write, for example, very nearly exhausts the
motor and brain activity of the child. When skill is
acquired writing becomes automatic ; that is to say,
the previous laborious effort is funded in the brain
and nerve substance through cumulative accretions
of tendency until the mechanical process of writing

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 175

no longer requires attention at all. Thought and
imagination and feeling now have play and find
through the pen, it may be, a highway to immor-
tality. An exactly analogous process goes on in
society. The results of social experience become
organic in the social order. Intellectually there is
a funding of truths in the same way. Professor
Schiller has an interesting essay entitled " Axioms
as Postulates," in which he seeks to show how
our most commonplace truths were originally hy-
potheses.? Experience slowly verified them and by
degrees they attained the dignity of axioms, which
we install in the high places of our mental kingdom,
and in whose hands we place the scepter to rule
over our thought processes. No one of us thinks
of attempting to repeat the verification process. We
accept the axioms and proceed with our tasks. In
like manner the advanced truths of religion be-
come axioms as they are assimilated.

The assumptions of evolution all look in the same
direction. Evolution, although it has been a very
fruitful and suggestive principle, is not an adequate
or sufficient explanation of the world, as we are see-
ing more and more clearly. But all organs obtain
a certain cosmic validity through the action and
interaction of the organism and the environment.
The organ which survives because of its utility
in the struggle for life, its serviceableness in the
career of the organism, becomes thereby legitimized
in the cosmic order, and receives the cosmic sane-

176 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tion. The analogue in society to the organ in the
organism is the estabhshed truth or standard of
conduct. Its vaHdity may appear in many ways, but
it always appears in its utility and value for the
ends of our Hfe and purpose. We have already
seen how voluntarism yields the same result. Vol-
untarism repudiates the merely rationalistic way
of finding out truth and asserts that we learn it
primarily in our contact with life in all its varied
relations and in its manifold fulness. Reason ac-
cepts what we thus learn otherwise and expresses
it intellectually as best it may, and thus works with
it as an intellectual tool and perpetuates it. It thus
becomes the crystallized or definitely formulated
result of experience itself.

Now every aspect of human life comes under
the operation of this law of the externalization of
experience in canons, standards, or institutions.
The law has as its essential and inalienable meaning
that experience is thus externalized. Until this is
done the law enacts no great role in the on-going of
the world. Only as experience becomes social and
objective is this possible. But as it becomes social
and objective so much the less can its action and
its utility be defined exclusively in terms of the
subjective assimilative process. Men accept these
canons and standards of conduct in a thousand
forms simply because the past experience of the
race, or its scientific research, commands us to do so.

It is easy to make clear most concretely what is

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY I77

here meant. In literature there are certain ideals
and canons of style and taste. They are numerous
and to a certain extent variable. Nevertheless they
are a very definite and very coherent assemblage of
ideals and standards. We may sum them up under
the conception of classicism. Again, human ex-
perience in the rational processes gave rise to a
careful effort to establish the laws of reason, and
we have, as the outcome, what is known as the
Aristotelian logic. Human society of course has
also struggled long with the problems of conduct.
The result is seen in the system of ethics. Ethical
systems indeed vary in standpoint and in details,
but the general conception and total outcome are
clearly defined. The laws of science, again, are the
crystallized results of the study of phenomena."
Physical science arises thus.^ In the State the out-
come is embodied in constitutions and laws. Thus
we might continue to enumerate, but it is unneces-
sary. The various religions of the world exhibit
a similar tendency, and there is no reason why they
should not, inasmuch as they represent wide-spread
efforts of men to adjust themselves to their vari-
ous gods, or else, as in the case of Christianity,
the result of the experience which follows God's
approach to them.

It must be obvious to the reader in view of the
preceding that external standards of thought and
conduct are abundantly justified by the experience
of the race as a whole as well as by psychological

178 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

laws which underHe all our reactions upon the world
about us. It is perfectly evident, then, that we do
not, each of us for himself, assimilate and verify
through careful personal investigation the truths
and propositions which we accept and adopt as the
working principles of our lives. Scientific men do
not verify over and over again the formula for the
action of gravitation. They accept the previous
formulation of that law and proceed with their
tasks. Chemists do not refuse to accept the con-
clusions of their predecessors because they have
not personally gone through the various forms of
experimentation necessary to establish them. All
truths and discoveries tend to become authoritative
axioms.

i And yet it is this universal law of human
progress against which the subjectivists inveigh so
vehemently when it is applied in the religious
sphere. Nothing is worthy of acceptance in religion
save that which the individual can and does intel-
lectually assimilate for himself is the plea which the
subjectivists unweariedly urge upon us. Applied
in any other form of activity or sphere of experi-
ence it would strike paralysis through the very vitals
of all progress. It would require that we accept
nothing whatever beyond what each one of us had
personally made true for himself by his own in-
dividual verification. This would mean that the
race would to-day be standing and marking time in
the same tracks where primitive man stood. It

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY I79

would mean the denial of social cooperation in
human progress. Subjectivism, in other words, is
the most reactionary doctrine ever propounded. It
is only by ignoring the bearings of their own view
in other spheres than that of religion that men are
enabled to maintain it at all.

The subjectivists may seek to evade the force of
the foregoing consideration by the claim that we
are here dealing not with authority in the sense in
which they oppose it, but in another sense. What
they oppose, they may urge, is ecclesiastical, or pre-
latical, or hierarchical authority. The Protestant
conception of the authority of the Bible, they insist,
is exactly the same in principle with that of Roman
Catholicism. But we are dealing with authority in
exactly the form in which they oppose it. If the
reader will turn back to the section, the nature
of religious authority, where we outlined the sub-
jective principle, he will find that inner assimila-
tion by the individual is the sole criterion for the
acceptance of a truth in religion, and that nothing
is worthy of acceptance in the religious sphere
merely as- the reported opinion of some one else.
That which vindicates it is its inwardness, that
which vitiates it is its outwardness.* One of the
fundamental fallacies of the subjectivists is their
habit of identifying the principle of authority as
such with the Roman Catholic view, and then defi-
ning authority in other terms altogether.

4 See Chap. I.

l8o FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

The Roman Catholic ideal of authority is a con-
venient weapon for their purposes; but when
they come to tell what it is they oppose in other
terms, they are found battling valiantly against a
principle which has all sorts of justification, — ^psy-
chological, logical, social, ethical, scientific, religious,
and cosmic. For the thing which they combat is
not decrees of councils, bishops, or popes, which are
enforced under pains and penalties ; that is, Roman
Catholic authority. They oppose rather the use in
religion, as a means of propagation or otherwise, of
a body of truths which the deepest religious experi-
ence of the race has transmitted to us out of the
past. Nothing, in other words, is to be accepted
merely because it is the funded experience of the
spiritually competent. Such experience when urged
upon our acceptance in science no one thinks of
questioning. The consensus of the scientifically
competent is ample warrant for acceptance.

The authoritativeness of the Scriptures rests upon
various grounds. It is difficult to sum them up in
a single statement. We do not attempt at this point
to do so. But we do insist that the validity of the
view which regards the Scriptures as an external
source of authority in religion is amply established
by the principles we have set forth. From the point
of view of the man who has tested the Scriptures in
the struggles of life, and who has spiritually assim-
ilated their contents they may be the very word of
God. To another who does not yet know them so

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY l8l

deeply they may be authoritative simply as the con-
sensus of the spiritually competent. In the latter
case, however, it is a form of authority which
directly clashes with subjectivism, for the reason
that according to it any form of externalism vitiates
the claim of religious authority. In the former case
the assimilation is not merely intellectualistic and
rationalistic, but spiritual, so that there also is a con-
flict with subjectivism. It would seem, therefore,
that subjectivism has no solid ground to stand upon.
If it should conclude that, after all, it will be best
to admit the value and power of the verified ex-
periences of the spiritually competent as an external
norm in religion, then it will be compelled to return
and displace its old foundations with new. For by
definition it is inherently opposed to any such ad-
mission. If it undertakes to reply by denying that
such externalized norms of the religious life are in
any real sense authorities, then it will need to ex-
plain why it so insistently urges upon us its iden-
tification of authority with externality. Externality
is of the very essence of authority in its view. The
particular variety of the external has nothing to do
with the principle itself, for by the definition of
subjectivism it cannot be external without being
authoritative.

We insist the more upon this point because sub-
jectivism has confused the whole conception of re-
ligious authority, and introduced much confusion in
religious thinking. It has not taken pains to define

l82 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the nature and function of religious authority, but
in violation of the fundamental laws of psychology,
and in devotion to a chimerical rationalism, it has
repudiated all authority. Its reaction has been
against the bugbear of Roman Catholic authority
in its dealing with the evangelical view of Christ and
the Scriptures, with the result that it has never taken
the time or pains to find out what the evangelical
view, when consistently stated, really is. The dia-
lectic, back and forth, as between subjectivism and
Roman Catholic authority, might go on indefinitely,
as it has done in Sabatier and Martineau and many
others, without ever getting into close quarters with
the distinctive elements in the Protestant evangelical
point of view. That view is in part as we have
abundantly shown, identical with those forms of
externalism which are fundamental and universal
in human progress.

We note next an unwarranted assumption of sub-
jectivism, viz., that the right of criticism invalidates
authority; that nothing can in any sense function
as an authority over us unless on the assumption
that it is infallible in every sense and that the mo-
ment we criticise or claim the right to criticise we
repudiate the authority. But there are so many
forms of imperfect authority in family, Church, and
State that the view would seem to be entirely
groundless. Logic, as the laws of thought, and
ethics, as the laws of conduct, are externally norma-
tive. Thought proceeds chaotically and conduct

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 183

proceeds lawlessly without logic and ethics. We
know our welfare lies in obedience to them. Yet we
may criticise them. Pragmatism is criticising very
severely the Aristotelian logic. Professor James
relates in his pluralism how he obeyed, as a devoted
adherent of the older logic, until he discovered that
it could not solve the mysteries of being, and then
he gave it up as a means of achieving that result.
In ethics also, criticism has been one of the continu-
ous processes without undermining the authority
of ethics. Now, it is true that while the critical
process is going on, and with respect to those points
against which the criticism is directed, and in the
degree in which it applies to those points, and for
the mind engaged in the criticism, the logic or ethics
does not function authoritatively. Criticism and
authority are incompatible to this extent indeed.
But this is a bare fraction of the area involved. Crit-
icism is of all shades and degrees, from the most
superficial and incidental to the most radical. More-
over, it may be throughout merely tentative and
provisional. It may reach a point where it is in-
compatible with the principle of authority, as in
the case of Nietzsche's criticism of ethics. But here
it takes the form of radical and final repudiation
of all ethics. The case is so rare and extreme that
the mere statement of it brings a shock to the moral
sense of most men.

But let us keep in mind the Implications of crit-
icism itself. Criticism implies fundamentally a

184 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

definite and determinate constitution of reality and
not an indeterminate flow. Implicit in all criticism
is the problem of error which could not arise in an
indeterminate world at all. In an indeterminate
world, in a world without a definite movement or
goal, error is inconceivable. For in such a world all
forms of psychic life, error included, are legitimate
and necessary products of the cosmic movement and
are justified by the movement itself. The thing
criticised and the criticism alike are equally its prod-
ucts. Criticism is thereby emptied of all meaning
or value. If, on the other hand, criticism be legit-
imate, and we hold that it is, it is because there is
a determinate movement and a definite meaning
resident in reality. The further fact is that in our
individual and social reactions upon it we do ac-
quire some degree of permanently valid knowledge
of the world, and that our externalized and thereby
authoritative forms of life and culture do attain
finality within the limits and to the extent of our
attainment of real knowledge.

It is entirely clear then that criticism itself be-
comes futile after it reaches a certain point, and
becomes thereafter a waste of valuable time. It
can never set aside our really solid and permanent
acquisitions. It is conceivable that criticism may
cease altogether at certain points, not by eccle-
siastical or civic enforcement, indeed, but because
it has become a spent force, having consumed all
the material that is inflammable in a given sphere.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 185

It is also conceivable that we may attain final
forms of knowledge with respect to some depart-
ment of experience and culture. Our logic and
ethics, for example, may become definitely and
finally fixed in form. In this event, and in so far
as they do actually attain such finality, do they
become externally authoritative. Indeed, it is this
process of refining the pure gold of life and ex-
perience which constitutes the true meaning of his-
tory and which saves us from despair. The race
through its struggles, its triumphs, and defeats
achieves a knowledge of the truth. Thus by suc-
cessive stages it chips away the inferior bits of
stone which cling to it, and smooths the rough
edges of the jewel of truth until it is shaped finally
for our uses. In proportion as we succeed in this
does truth become objectified and externalized in
human life, to be imposed upon each new generation
from without, not indeed as a tyranny, but as the
choicest part of the human heritage.

Now the practical bearings of the differences be-
tween this view and that of subjectivism are of
the most vital kind. The method of instruction in
the family, the school, the church, and the whole
question of the true attitude of the individual to
existing forms, are involved. Shall our educa-
tional theory take the form that the child should
be taught to reject everything it finds in existence
until it has personally verified it? In our school-
rooms shall we announce the results of past inquiry

1 86 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

as worthy of acceptance or insist rather that the
pupil should accept nothing until for himself he has
proved it? Shall we continue to proclaim accepted
truths in religion or wipe out all religious assump-
tions and summon all men, young and old alike, to
come together to consider for themselves the ques-
tion whether or not there is such a thing as religion ?
Shall we abolish the method of the dogma in e very-
form and set up in its stead the method of inquiry?
To ask these questions, for the average man, is to
answer them. The educational and religious theory
which is consistently subjectivist is in the highest
degree absurd and im.possible.

Yet the two points of view confront each other
to-day in sharp antagonism. Rationalism says the
method of authority is perilous in the extreme.
Voluntarism says it is the only practicable method
in dealing with the larger area of human life and
experience. Rationalism says the first right of the
child is to criticise what it finds current in the world.
Voluntarism says the first right of the child is to in-
herit what the wisdom of the race has transmitted
and what the race has verified in experience. Ra-
tionalism says criticise and verify before acceptance.
Voluntarism says accept and then verify and then
criticise. Rationalism says the intellect is competent
to deal with questions of truth apart from experi-
ence. Voluntarism says the only condition of know-
ing truth is the experiences of life, and that criticism
of the verified experiences of the race is legitimate

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY iS/

only in view of some measure of experiential test-
ing of received truths. Voluntarism says criticism
should supervene upon the life-experiences. Ra-
tionalism says the critical attitude is the only proper
attitude in even approaching the formulated results
of past experience. Voluntarism says criticism
is a by-product of experience. Rationalism says
experience is a by-product of criticism. Volun-
tarism says criticism is inevitable and necessary as a
means of correcting the errors of the past, but that
competency to criticise can only arise out of experi-
ences analogous to those out of which past con-
clusions were deduced. Rationalism declares that
criticism is the primary duty of man without any
sufficient recognition of the relation of criticism to
experience. Thus it appears that the conflict lies
in the method of apprehending the relationships
between the two points of view, the one side making
primary what to the other is necessarily secondary.
And just as rationalism is seen to be inadequate
to-day so we firmly believe it will be found, when
present movements work themselves out, that the
rationalistic conception of progress will give place
to the deeper and richer one. -

How then do we attain freedom if the method
of authority is the true method of human progress?
The answer follows from what we have been say-
ing. In our interaction with the world we attain
definite knowledge which, when externalized in
permanent forms, becomes the rule of life for us.

l88 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

In obeying the rule of life thus prescribed to us by
the objective universe we. become free. " Ye shall
know the truth and the truth shall make you
free," this is the eternal law. The error hitherto
has been in man's view as to how we know truth.
Jesus taught the true way and men are now begin-
ning for the first time to find the theoretical justi-
fication of his great words. Our freedom consists
in the fulness of life and of joy which results from
our conformity to the 'eternal laws of being as these
become known to us in the externalized and au-
thoritative forms of past experiences ; and along
with this it consists in our privilege of personally
reaching out to new discoveries and adding our
own contribution to the sum total of those of the
past, and so far as is needful and possible our
privilege of correcting the errors of the past.

It is evident then that while all imperfect au-
thorities are relative they are not relative in the
sense that the principle of authority is waning in its
power, but rather that it is waxing. As all forms
of culture grow in completeness and toward finality,
they will progressively become absolute. If in the
present forms of existence they never become per-
fect, we shall nevertheless make progress toward
them as final and absolute and the principle of au-
thority will deepen and widen rather than vanish.
Meantime our freedom will keep pace with our pro-
gressive obedience to our waxing authorities. We
shall more and more assimilate, through heredity and

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY 189

through education and through faith, the results of
our increasing experience. Less and less will these
be felt as burdens to carry and more and more as
laws of our very being and fountains of eternal joy,
but by the very structure of our minds and their
relations to the external world we shall never, under
present conditions, escape the operation of the prin-
ciple of external authority.

There is one further point needing elucidation in
this chapter. It is that the form in which the ex-
ternal authority manifests itself is always condi-
tioned by the nature of the department of life where
it operates and by the relationships of those in-
volved in its operation. In science, in art, in medi-
cine, in literature, and in many other departments
it is truth accepted without verification because of-
fered to us as the consensus of the competent, or as
the product of mathematical or scientific demon-
stration. In the family it may be enforced also by
penalties. In the State it takes the form of statu-
tory enactments and constitutions which are en-
forced by penalties, and administered by the ma-
chinery of government. In religion practically all
the elements named here have been found. The
chief characteristics of the religious forms of au-
thority are those which grow out of personal rela-
tionships between the individual and the object of
worship.

In the preceding we have not discussed religious
authority, which we reserve for a later chapter, much

N

190 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

less have we had to do with religious authority in
the Christian sense. The ideal form of religious
authority is that which is embodied in Jesus Christ.
How that authority is mediated to us through the
Scriptures we hope to make clear farther on. Some-
times men limit the idea of authority to the spheres
in which personal relationships exist, claiming that
the word is meaningless elsewhere. It is impos-
sible, however, for practical purposes, to restrict
its use thus unless we are willing to take a great
part of the meaning from the discussion, or give to
the conception of personal relationships a very
broad application. Moreover, the issue involved is
not that as to personal or impersonal relationships,
but rather that as to externally imposed or inter-
nally appropriated truth. It is also urged sometimes
that loyalty to ideals is a better conception than
obedience to authority. Here the personal relation-
ships in religion forbid. Loyalty to an ideal is of
course a practicable and highly valuable conception,
but taken alone it does not exhaust our relationships
to the highest Person. Authority and obedience
seem to be the only adequate terms for certain vital
forms of relationships here, although of course
Fatherhood and sonship involve a higher relation-
ship. And while these do not imply tyranny on the
one side nor servility on the other, they do express
the meaning of inherent relationships and rest on
basal facts. What the relationships of religion are
we reserve for the next chapter.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY I9I

We have outlined on a previous page the earher
stages in the development of authority. There we
summed up the preceding discussion by stating that
beginning our interaction with the world as sub-
jects, and receiving what is imposed upon us from
without, we pass through the experience of observa-
tion and suspended judgment to the formation of
static conceptions, which in turn become judgments
and generalizations, and these last are transformed
into tools of thought and instruments of progress in
so far as they are definite and fixed in form. To
these conclusions we now add the following : ( i ) In-
dividual discoveries of truth always become social-
ized. That is to say, they pass over from the indi-
vidual into common use. Society adopts them and
thenceforward accepts them as true without proof.
(2) These accepted truths become the didactic ele-
ment in civilization, that is to say, the treasured re-
sult of previous culture, crystallized in forms which
render them useful for the purpose of Hfe and
thought. All the earlier stages of education recog-
nize this truth. Even when education seeks to
abolish the principle of authority and make of it
an assimilative process merely, it works always
with accepted truths whose assimilation is sought.
This, indeed, is the only alternative to abolishing
cruth as fast as it is discovered and turning back the
hands on the dial-plate of time to the beginning with
each new generation, and indeed with each indi-
vidual life. (3) In the third place the knowledge

192 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

acquired and transmitted thus takes objective form
and expression in accordance with the nature of the
subject and the exigencies of Hfe. In logic and
ethics and science it is intellectually formulated into
canons and generalizations and laws, in government
it is enacted into statutes and in religion it takes the
form of truths or doctrines; while in both govern-
ment and religion it gives rise to institutions. (4)
In all these particulars we arrive at a clear recog-
nition of the truth that civilization and culture alike
proceed fundamentally upon the principle of au-
thority. (5) In the fifth place the right of criticism
remains unquestioned. But criticism is not the
primary, but only a secondary principle of prog-
ress. Its function is incidental to that of authority,
and it is sufficiently provided for when authority
itself is so conceived or expressed as to include it as
incidental and secondary.

CHAPTER VII

THE NATURE OF RELIGION

I. Religion Defined

In order to elucidate the conception of authority
and its relation to freedom in its Christian form, it
is necessary first that we discuss the nature of re-
ligion. We need not delay over the question of the
universality of religion, for it is held now with
practical unanimity that the general form of ac-
tivity which we call religion is a universal human
phenomenon. All tribes and peoples are in some
sense of the word religious, however far their re-
ligious activities may be mingled with supersti-
tions and fall below the Christian ideal. We shall
not spend time examining the various attempts at
a definition of religion. Many of the recent at-
tempts at defining religion have committed the same
fallacy. They have detected some one thing which
seemed to be characteristic of religion generally,
and have exalted this general conception into the
sole and sufficient religious ideal. Or they have
thinned out the concrete manifestations of religious
activities and beliefs until nothing was left but a
pale phantom of the reality.

Another tendency has been to define religion

193

194 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

from the point of view of its earliest or lowest
forms among savages OvT primitive people. This
is never an adequate and always a hazardous pro-
cedure in cases where a real progress or develop-
ment has taken place. It would be folly to define
other things thus, the present solar system, for
example. We would not think of saying: If you
would know what the solar system is, including this
planet and its inhabitants, look at the primitive fire-
mist ; it is essentially that and nothing more. Of the
full-grown oak no one would contend that it is sim-
ply and solely acorn and we must not treat it as any-
thing more. No one commits the folly of asserting
that our advanced and highly developed civilization
is inherently and essentially nothing more than the
tribal life and relations of the South Sea islanders
in their crude and undeveloped forms. We cannot
understand endings by beginnings. The reverse is
the true process. We can only understand begin-
nings by endings. And yet in many current at-
tempts to tell what religion is men have sought to
limit the essential significance of religion to some
one temporary manifestation of it belonging to its
earlier stages, such as ancestor-worship, or ani-
mism, or what not.

Schleiermacher defined religion as the feeling or
sense of absolute dependence. But subsequent
thinkers have very largely acquiesced in the judg-
ment of one of Schleiermacher's critics that this
would make a dog the most religious of beings.

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 195

The absence of the cognitive element is one defect
of Schleiermacher's definition. Another is that it
omits any adequate account of the rehgious object,
as well as of the essential contents of the religious
life itself. Some recent definitions are little better
than that of Schleiermacher. One writer asserts that
the idea of a god is not essential to religion, employ-
ing the word god in the widest sense of a super-
human spirit or personal object of worship. He
then defines religion as containing two elements:
First, the recognition of the existence of a power
not ourselves pervading the universe, and secondly,
our endeavor to put ourselves in harmonious rela-
tions with this power.^ The objection to this defini-
tion is that it gives nothing which enables us to
differentiate religion from a hundred other things.
According to it a man learning to walk on stilts,
or a herd of buffalo running from a prairie fire, or
a sailor hauling in sail in view of a coming storm, or
an aviator balancing his aeroplane among the clouds
would have to be classified as performing equally
acts of religious devotion. For in every instance
there is a recognition of a power not ourselves in
the universe, along with an attempt to establish
harmonious relations with it. The fact is these ele-
ments of the definition belong to religion in common
with a vast number of non-religious activities and
on this account it is worthless as a definition of re-
ligion. Until some clear view is presented as to

IF. S, Hoffman, "The Sphere of Religion," p. lo.

196 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the nature of the power not ourselves and of the
kind of adjustment to which men seek, we know
nothing which is truly characteristic of religion as
such.

In defining religion it is essential that we seek the
normal elements. In doing so we must needs allow
for the pathology of religious life; that is, for in-
stances where men have become so warped in their
conceptions of life's ideals that they may be re-
garded as exceptions and not as instances of the
essentially religious life.

With this understanding we may assert that re-
ligion contains the following elements in addition
to the recognition of a power not ourselves and an
effort to establish harmonious relations with it. ( i )
The object of religion is personal, superhuman
spirits, or a supreme spirit. (2) The adjustment
is in personal terms and on the basis of personal
relationships. (3) Religion includes a cognitive
and voluntaristic as well as an emotional element.
(4) The aim of religion is redemption. The word
redemption is not perhaps the best word, because it
is a distinctively Christian word. The meaning is
that in religion man seeks alliance with higher per-
sonal powers in order to achieve results in war, or
to avoid danger of any kind, or for other purposes.
Redemption in the Christian sense is highly ethical
and spiritual and the ethnic religions sometimes
leave out these elements. Moreover, the divine in-
itiative in Christianity as revealed and embodied in

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 197

Christ gives to Christian redemption a meaning and
value it does not possess anywhere else. Yet the
idea of deliverance or salvation in a general sense
underlies the religious activities of all men to a
greater or less degree.

In the above definition perhaps the point v^hich
will be most combated by extreme rationalists is the
declaration that religion is carried on in personal
terms with personal beings. Buddhism and Brah-
manism and Taoism may be cited by them to prove
the contrary. But I think the testimony of com-
parative religion is conclusive on the point notwith-
standing the fact that Buddhism is often declared to
be a religion without a God. Certainly in the lower
forms of religion the object is personal, whether
animism, fetishism, ancestor-worship, or polytheism
in any of its varied forms be the type under consid-
eration or not. Worship and propitiatory sacrifices
prove this conclusively. Whenever religion becomes
philosophic speculation, as in Brahmanism, it some-
times resorts to an abstract principle rather than a
personal being as the key to explain experience. But
in so far as it does this it loses its distinctively re-
ligious character and becomes allied with philosophy
instead. Even among Brahmans, however, the re-
ligious instinct reasserts itself and the personal gods
swarm back into the consciousness of the worshiper.
A like result followed the Buddhist effort to elimi-
nate God from the religious consciousness. It is pre-
cisely the absence of God from Buddhism which

198 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

makes it the religion of despair, and leads it to
reverse all normal human instincts in the cultiva-
tion of the love of non-being and of the effort to
extirpate desire. When God departs from religion
extinction of being becomes the goal instead of re-
demption. Despite its elements of value, then, we
must declare that Buddhism is not normal, but
pathological as a religion. The nemesis of all sys-
tems which expatriate the superhuman personality
or personalities has overtaken Buddhism and many
gods have returned and even Gautama himself has
been exalted into a god.

There is indeed a difference between Buddhism
and Brahmanism in their conception of redemption,
but in both the idea itself persists. With the Bud-
dhist redemption consists in the final extinction of
desire. The Karmic expiation through successive
incarnations and transmigrations leads to this result.
The law of Karma is causality transferred to the
moral sphere, the inexorable law of penalty from
which there is no escape. Brahmanism seeks re-
demption through reabsorption in the universal sub-
stance. To make this process of reabsorption ef-
fective many gods arise, who are aspects or phases
of the All. Thus personality in the religious ob-
ject becomes necessary whenever the idea of re-
demption takes on a positive form, and ceases to be
merely a negative desire for the extinction of being
in order to escape the sorrows and sufferings of
existence. The logic of this is as obvious as the

THE NATURE OF RELIGION IQQ

facts are clear. The chain of natural causation
cannot be broken by other than a personal agency.
Karma is the only possible interpretation of a non-
personal universe, and in it religion is a form of
despair, and the love of non-entity becomes the
guiding motive. Escape from the Karmic chain
requires personal agencies.

Modern speculative pantheism is sometimes cited
as an example of a religion whose object is im-
personal, and Spinoza is named as an example
of a profoundly religious man holding such a
view, while Schleiermacher himself was decidedly
pantheistic in many respects. But in these and
all similar cases of religious pantheism where
the object is non-personal it is to be observed
that the religious object is conceived as more
than personal. In fact, this " supra-personal " ob-
ject is a pure abstraction, simply a speculation to
escape certain difficulties, real or alleged, in the
conception of personality and, therefore, without
warrant of any kind in the facts of experience. Yet
even here the values which belong to personality are
ascribed to this '' more than personal " God, so long
as the belief itself is attended with a religious life
of any kind. So soon as it ceases to be the object
of a religious devotion it becomes a materialistic and
non-spiritual pantheism. Of course religious devo-
tion is possible in some sense toward an object
which has all the attributes of personality and
more besides, or which gathers these up into some-

200 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

thing higher because through the help of such a be-
ing the worshiper may conceivably hope to attain
his ends. Pantheism, therefore, in its modern forms
may not be cited as an exception to the rule that the
religious object is personal. Of course pantheistic
speculation may dispense with anything personal in
its object; but this is not the point we are now
discussing, but rather pantheistic religious life.

The mystics of the Middle Ages are not a real
exception to the principle. They came to their
mysticism from the distinctively Christian environ-
ment and saturated with Christian ideas, although
that environment was ecclesiastical and formal
rather than vital. Professor Herrmann is right in
asserting that their mysticism was resorted to chiefly
because it was their only means of religious escape
from an external and oppressive ecclesiasticism,
while maintaining a nominal loyalty to the prevail-
ing religious order. The absence from their ex-
perience of the vital inner elements which the New
Testament discloses is thus accounted for. The ab-
sence of positive Christian contents from their mys-
tic experiences, their pantheistic attitude, is largely
owing to their wish to renounce and yet retain their
loyalty to the hierarchy. Such a form of experi-
ence enabled them to do so. Yet even in these ex-
periences the communion with God is in large part
carried on in personal terms.

This leads to the point that all the distinctively
religious values are essentially personal so long as

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 20I

they remain positive, and they can only become non-
personal when they become negative or empty of
content. Propitiation and sacrifice in all their forms,
lower as well as higher, atonement and reconcilia-
tion in all their forms, adoration, thanksgiving,
praise, fellowship, communion, repentance, a sense
of sin, faith, hope, love, all these and others, when
they relate to a religious object invariably invest
that object with personal attributes. The whole of
religious literature teems with such forms of devo-
tion, and in the lower as well as the higher forms
of religious devotion practically all the religious
activities are carried on in personal terms.

In Christianity the idea of religion culminates.
Here intercourse between the human spirit and the
ideal Person, God, belongs to the essence of the
religious life. Here too, religion becomes ethical.
Some of the specific phases of this interaction of the
spirit of man and God are the following, which in
every instance involve the personal relationship:
(i) A sense of sin and alienation from God along
with a sense of weakness and need. The sense
of sin is meaningless in relation to an impersonal
object and prayer to an unhearing one is a mockery.
(2) Repentance and faith are the appropriate ex-
pressions or completion of a sense of sin and need
and in turn are without religious value save in rela-
tion to a personal object. (3) Reconciliation and
fellowship, which lead to humility and praise, adora-
tion, and worship. Prayer arises now as a vital

202 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

experience since the universe ceases to be dumb and
becomes responsive and vocal with spiritual mean-
ing. (4) Providential care and God's fatherly love
'become the clue to experience henceforth, and (5)
moral character fashioned after the divine ideal be-
comes the goa> of individual endeavor. (6) This
ethical ideal becomes the ground for a new social
order, first as spiritually embodied in church life
and fellowship, and then in society at large as pro-
gressively realized in the kingdom of God.

Now all these values are personal on both sides
of the religious relationship. Sin against the cosmos
merely is not sin. Schleiermacher's feeling of ab-
solute dependence never becomes truly ethical until
the world whole which interacts with man's spirit
becomes personal. The bigness of the universe does
not save it from emptiness for the religious life.
The fetish-worshiper prostrates himself before a
§tick. The difference between his god and an im-
personal universe is the difference simply between
a little stick and a big stick.

Jesus Christ personalized religion completely, and
gathered up all the elements of all religions into a
new combination which was at once their justi-
fication and realization. The bad and the low were
eliminated, the partial and the fragmentary were
completed, the implicit was made explicit, the search
of man for God was met by the divine response in
God's revelation to man. There is no middle ground
between an impersonal and a completely personal

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 203

conception of religion. There is no possibility of
any realization of the religious ideal apart from a
personal object. All theories and definitions of re-
ligion are compromises which stop anywhere be-
tween the impersonal and the completely personal
view of the religious object; and all theories which
assume an impersonal object transform religious
values into a totally different order of thought in
which religion ceases to exist.

The nature of the religious act itself explains the
persistence of the personal terms in which it is car-
ried on. The world or cosmos gives occasion for
the religious movement of man's spirit in part at
least. The desire to overcome the world is the im-
pulse behind it. Man feels oppressed by powers
around him which he cannot control, and he feels
the desire for assistance in his struggle against these
powers. He is thus led to form an alliance with
superhuman powers by means of sacrifice and pro-
pitiation, or otherwise. His devotion is instinct-
ively anthropomorphic. He conceives these powers
as personal, because thus alone do they seem to him
to be able to succor him. In nature-worship he
conceives the object worshiped as hearing and heed-
ing him, or the reverse. In animism and fetishism
he thinks of a spirit as inhabiting the object, or of
having connection with it, and so in the various
forms of idolatry. To primitive man will seems
to be a practically invariable attribute of the ob-
ject of religious devotion. So soon as the naive

204 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

and instinctive worship of personal beings gives
place to reflection and observation in the ordinary
scientific sense and men attain the conception of
nature as a system with causally connected parts, a
struggle takes place to adjust this impersonal to the
personal religious world.

If the principle of causation obtains thorough-
going recognition as in the Brahman and Buddhist
Karma, then the course of development is either
pessimistic and religion is emptied of all positive
content, as in the Buddhist extinction and the Brah-
man reabsorption in the absolute; or else it be-
comes optimistic again through the return of the
personal agents of redemption, the god. Brahman-
ism and Buddhism are instances of the arrested
development of religious thought at its most critical
stage. In both there is a profound grasp of the
inherent antithesis between the physical and the
personal worlds without a corresponding ability to
reconcile the interests of the two spheres save by
sacrificing completely those of the personal. In
our Western thought this is precisely the form
which the issue has taken, although of course in far
different terms. With us the supreme problem for
thought for a generation or two has been that of
reconciling the interests of the world of persons
with those of the world of physical laws.

The religious man seeks redemption or salvation.
This does not mean something which refers ex-
clusively to the future, nor does it necessarily

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 205

imply in its lower ranges an ethical form of experi-
ence. Among savages the gods are simply very use-
ful allies, who may be induced to bestow a gift or
avert an evil of the most practical kind. In the
religious life of man there is the greatest possible
variety. It is denied by some that belief in immor-
tality is essential to the conception of religion. As
a matter of fact, comparative religion shows that
some form of belief in a future life is practically
coextensive with religion itself, and as we have seen,
religion is coextensive with the race. If, therefore,
we are to look for an empirical basis for the defini-
tion of religion, that is, if we are to derive our con-
ception of religion from the facts of life and ex-
perience rather than from speculative thought, it
would seem to be at least possible, if not necessary,
to include belief in a future life as an element in
religion. The religions of the East in the doctrine
of transmigration are an instance of the belief, al-
though they consider extinction or reabsorption of
the soul as the final outcome. The future life, then,
is a factor in practically all forms of religion.

There is one method of defining religion which'
must be noted here. It is quite common now to
define religion as a belief in the " achievability of
values " or of " universal values." This is Hof-
ding's view as we have seen, though he employs the
phrase " conservation of values." Prof. George B.
Foster defines religion as " the conviction of the
achievability of universally valid satisfactions of the
o

206 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

human personality." ^ The chief objection to this
form of statement is its indefiniteness. It is true the
definition may and does include religion, but it is
also true that it may and does include forms of
life and culture which can be designated as re-
ligious only with violence. All depends upon the
nature of the " universally valid satisfactions," and
of the meaning of " achievability." If, for example,
a man has adopted materialism as his philosophy,
and continuity in the physical sense, causation in
other words, as the sole criterion of explanation
and of truth, and the attainment of scientific cer-
tainty regarding the natural world as the chief goal
and activity of man, then his " universally valid
satisfactions " will have a very narrow range. His
particular belief in continuity and his appreciation
of scientific certitude are both " universally valid
satisfactions." But if held to the exclusion of other
forms of human satisfactions they do not imply or
necessitate anything whatever peculiar to the re-
ligious life of man. The conviction of the achiev-
ability of these satisfactions may and does some-
times accompany a total rejection of religion. Mr.
Haeckel accepts these forms of satisfaction, but
empties the religious values of their real significance.
In like manner there are esthetic and ethical and
social satisfactions and values which are univer-
sally valid, but which do not belong to the essence

2 See " The Function of Religion in Man's Struggle for Exist-
ence," by G. B. Foster, p, i88.

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 207

of religion. Religion combines all the elements of
life and culture in its own way, indeed, but this is
not to identify them with religion. The definition
fails therefore to discriminate between religion and
other things. It contains again the fallacy of the
universal. " Achievability " also is an equivocal
word. To achieve may mean merely a subjective
psychological process unless some regard is had to
an object through which or through whom the
achievement takes place. In religion superhuman
powers are required in order to achieve results. To
the average man it would throw his religion into
chaos to tell him that there is no objective helper
for him in his religious struggle. Only by defining
religion abstractly rather than empirically can we
arrive at so empty a view as merely indeterminate
" achievability.'' If we ask of the religions of the
world concerning their beliefs as to how their ends
are achieved, their answers are quite definite.

In general it may be said that the prevailing tend-
ency to define religion abstractly as in instances we
have just cited, the tendency to substitute " values "
merely or " satisfactions " merely for religious ob-
jects and an indefinite " achievability " for the con-
crete and positive contents of the actual religious
life and beliefs of men, is due to the apologetic desire
to take refuge in a citadel which the scientific man
cannot successfully assail. The outcome is that the
apologist does find such a citadel, but he thereby
loses religion. Ultimately all that his plea means is

208 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

that man has a religious consciousness. It is a re-
turn to the starting-point of the Cartesian phi-
losophy " I think, therefore I am " modified to read
" I think religiously, therefore I am religiously."
The apologist thus flees from the problem of religion
rather than solves it. He does not construct a phi-
losophy of religion ; he simply names a single datum,
that of consciousness, which justifies a single asser-
tion about man, namely that he thinks religiously
and finds it useful. Here again the modern spirit
does obeisance to physical continuity, and prostrates
itself at the shrine of physical science to the neglect
of the personal world and personal relationships.
Religiously the outcome is like that of theoretical
Buddhism and Brahmanism, despair of immortality
and an eternal kingdom of God, a renunciation of
belief in our survival of bodily death as essential to
religion and a pantheism which is the practical
equivalent of naturalism. If our human life and
our human " values " are to be called to judgment
at the bar of physical continuity, our doom is sealed
beforehand. Unless modern religious thought can
have the courage to work out consistently the as-
sumptions of personality and religion as concretely
given in human experience, it is vain to talk about
the " conservation " or " achievability " of religious
values. If religious thinkers, out of dread of the
attacks of scientific men, insist upon limiting re-
ligion to what can be defended as the conclusions of
exact science are defended, forgetting the religious

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 209

methods of assimilating truth, and forgetting the
distinctiveness of the rehgious sphere, then they
will indeed flee from the lowlands and the valleys
and each individual will scale the peak of personal
consciousness and from that height he will laugh at
the scientific arrows which may be shot toward him,
but at the same time his habitation will be too nar-
row for free action and isolated from his fellows,
and high as he may be on his lonely peak no personal
God will be there to comfort or sustain him. In
short, it is not religion, but merely a truncated
semblance of it which can be defined in purely sub-
jective terms. The writers cited above do not
indeed reject the view outright that the object in
religion is unreal.

The objection to their definition is that it is so
indeterminate that it includes the possibility of the
complete emptiness of religious beliefs. The very
life of religion is bound up with the objective reality
which sustains it. John Fiske's interesting argu-
ment from development is in point here. It runs
thus: Life and growth are the result of the ad-
justment of internal relations to external relations.
The inner vital principle of the plant is adjusted to
the environment, for example, and there is inter-
communication between them. All living organisms
are dependent upon this harmonious adjustment for
their growth. When it is interrupted they die. The
fact of growth in the organism is proof of the real
correspondence with an objective environment. The

2IO FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

idea of God has undergone a gradual growth and
purification in human history and it has persisted
through all forms of human life. Unless God
actually exists as the religious environment of man,
we have in religious phenomena a marked exception
to the fundamental law of evolution. So he argues.^
We are not concerned at this point, however, with
arguments for God's existence. It is the intellec-
tualizing of religion which has often rendered it
barren and unfruitful. Our chief concern now is
to include the essential elements of religion in a
definition. This cannot be done by making the reality
of religion turn upon its conformity to alien princi-
ples or interests. The continuity with which science
works in physical nature cannot explain it, and the
rationality with which speculation works to produce
world-views cannot fully compass it. Religion is,
indeed, a form of thought ; but first of all it is a life.
Its rationality is the blossom which opens on the
stalk of a vital form of experience. Religion is the
experience of the achievability of a particular group
of values through alliance or intercourse with a
superhuman personal power. If we would define
more closely what those values are, we need to begin
by excluding other values which are achieved in
other forms of human activity. The rationalizing
process in its abstract form is excluded, because it
is distinct from religion. Scientific observation and
classification, while immensely significant and use-

3 John Fiske, "Through Nature to God," pp. 189, 190.

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 211

ful, are distinct from religious activity. Esthetic
and ethical achievements are possible v^ithin certain
limits apart from religion. These are not the re-
ligious values. Religion is as distinct from them as
they are from each other. The values v^hich re-
ligion seeks are those which arise in man's conflict
with the external world as it overpowers him in his
conflict with sorrow, loss, and doubt, in his struggle
against sin, disease, and death; that is to say, the
values which arise as the result of the longing for
victory over the world and self, the longing for
blessedness and purity and for endless life. It will
be noted that these values are sought in all religions,
including Christianity. We have purposely sought
to include the characteristics of religion as a world
phenomenon. Christianity in its ethical ideals and
in its revelation of supernatural power for achieve-
ment is far superior to other religions. In these
respects it is not merely a difference in degree, but
a difference in kind.

It will be seen at a glance that this group of
values is distinct from the other groups, and that to
confound the various groups is to introduce chaos.
Moreover, to apply the criterion of reality and of
truth in one sphere to the material of the other
spheres is nothing less than tyranny. There is no sort
of violence available which can enable us to deal suc-
cessfully with the religious principle in man as we
deal with continuity in nature. And yet the greater
part of the confusion which has arisen in the last

212 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

fifty or sixty years in writings which have dealt
with the relations between science and reHgion has
been due to the false assumption that the criteria of
physical science alone may be employed to determine
the contents of religion. We must then recognize
the independence of religion, its autonomy, so to
speak, in its relations with other forms of human
activity.

Life has many dimensions. Religion is one of
them; science is another; and so on. Scientific
absolutism would reduce life to mere flatness with-
out perspective or depth, like a Chinese picture.
Any one who imagines that he can compass all the
manifold wealth of being under a single dimension
does not know life as it is. Human life is complex,
not simple, and to reduce it to simplicity is to
ignore much. To run a scientific or philosophic flat-
iron over its corrugated surface may indeed smooth
it out, but it will also break it into bits. It cannot be
smoothed out in this way. Religion, therefore, must
be allowed to stand. Life and being, if construed
religiously at all, must be construed boldly and con-
sistently. Half-hearted definitions, in which lurk
the surrender of religion, will not serve the ends of
religion. They will only answer for the man who
is already convinced that the house is on fire and
is glad to escape in his night-robe. As walking is
a human function, a physical life-adjustment, which
the infant acquires without the slightest knowledge
of the laws of locomotion or of gravity, so religion

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 2I3

is a life-adjustment, prevalent over the whole earth,
which does not and need not wait for scientific
verification. What it needs and obtains is religious
verification. It is a life-adjustment, including all
the elements of our nature, intellect, emotions, will.
Its sphere of activity is that of personality, and re-
ligion itself is the supreme personal adjustment, re-
sulting, as in other personal adjustments, in new
forms of experience and new forms of knowledge.

2. Religion and Science

In order to complete the idea of religion we now
show its connections with some other forms of
human culture. First we note its relations to
science. We need here to avoid certain errors.
Religion and science do not differ in the sense that
science deals with facts, with forms of reality, while
religion has to do with mere beliefs or fancies or
forms of unreality. Religion also deals with real
objects. It too is empirical in that it starts from
actually given data of experience. These refer to
an object outside of consciousness. They are not
merely subjective. Nor is it true that science is
systematic and connected while religion is unsys-
tematic and disconnected, nor that science requires
proof while religion accepts without proof. Re-
ligion requires the open mind, the absence of
prejudgment and mere prejudice. It requires a
willingness to accept any and all truth from any
source. It may employ hypotheses. It sets forth the

214 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

results of experience in definite forms of teaching,
although we must keep in mind the difference be-
tween theology and religion. Religion always has a
theology, but there may be theology without religion.

Wherein then does the difference consist? It
consists first in the spheres or worlds of reality with
which they respectively deal and in the principles of
explanation and proof. Science in the usual sense
of the word deals with nature. Its leading assump-
tion is that the world is a machine controlled by
mathematical law. It explains as we have seen by
means of the principle of continuity. Religion, on
the other hand, deals with the world of persons, of
wills, of purposes, of intelligences, and it explains
by means of the principle of the interaction of free
personal wills. It holds to free causation while
science insists on physical causation.

Let no one imagine I am overstating the case
when I assert that the clash between science and
religion arises almost wholly from a failure to
recognize the above distinctions. A man who in-
sists that nothing is " explained," that no " truth "
is discovered, that we have no knowledge, except
that which comes in the form of explanation in the
physical world will certainly reject all explanation
in personal terms. That there are such men we
need not pause long to indicate. We have seen how
Professor Hofding rejects personal explanation en-
tirely. The idea of God explains nothing, he asserts,
since God is not in the causal chain of nature in

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 21 5

any manner with which science may reckon. A
recent critic of Professor Bergson says: "The his-
tory of scientific discoveries is a history of natural-
istic successes: for no scientific discovery has ever
been made that is not based on materiahsm and
mechanism." * This writer insists that all human
actions and hence all forms of science, even those
which deal with man and society and with religion,
are alike fruitless apart from explanation in terms
of physical causation.

Now it is to be feared that a goodly number o£
theologians to-day are trying to make terms with
the above school of thought and at the same time
retain religion. Can this be done? In reply we
may note several possible paths which diverge from
the view that mechanical explanation is the only
real explanation. First there is the path of mate-
rialism. It may be concluded that there is nothing
in existence except matter. There is also the path
of agnosticism. It may be admitted as possible that
there are realities behind matter unknown to us
and unknowable by us. Either of these views can-
cels religion. There is again the path of the philo-
sophic world- view, which leads to belief but not to
knowledge. The reason deduces from the data of
science a rational explanation of the world. Theism,
or the belief in a personal God, may arise thus and
the door be opened to a general religious belief.

* See " Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson,"
by Hugh S. R. Elliot, p. 167.

2l6 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

But other principles may be employed and the phi-
losopher may reach a non-theistic conclusion. A
religious belief based on a world-view deduced from
the data of science will thus be only so strong as the
arguments employed for its support. It will not
have the strength of living experience, which is not
a rational belief merely, but a direct knowledge of
God.

There is yet another path diverging from the
theory that mechanical explanation is the only real
explanation. It is the path of mysticism. Admit-
ting that physical causation is the only source of
knowledge, and distrusting philosophy because it is
so unstable and inconclusive, and yet seeing the
need and power of religion a man may claim to
have real experiences in unison with some kind of
power above the human concerning which we may
make no other assertion whatever. This mystic ex-
perience is not knowledge and hence cannot be com-
bated by other forms of knowledge. Science can-
not attack it since it presents nothing tangible to
oppose science. Now religion has a mystical ele-
ment, but mysticism without knowledge, without
doctrine, never has served and never can serve the
ends of religion fully, and especially in a scientific
age which cannot tolerate the vague and unreal.

It is clear then that none of the paths indicated
leads to religious knowledge. This can come only
by abandoning physical causality as the one and
only form of explanation and proof. Religion

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 21/

begins with another group of facts. Human free-
dom is one. This is given to us as a fact of con-
sciousness. It is not a fact to be explained away,
but to be accepted. Personality and personal inter-
action, communion, and fellowship are facts. Re-
demption is a fact known to us in experience. These
do not cancel scientific knowledge. They simply
enlarge the sphere of truth and increase the forms
of explanation.

3. Religion and Psychology

The wonder-working word for a large number in
our day is psychology. We have as a consequence
of the prevalence of the psychological standpoint
works on the psychology of education, of ethics,
of religion, and of everything else. But the psy-
chologists themselves have as yet reached no final
agreement as to the sphere and function of psy-
chology proper. On the one hand, psychologists are
claiming all human activity as a part of the domain
of psychology, while others are loudly calling for an
abatement of these claims. We do not propose at
all to enter the controversy which we leave to the
psychologists. We may, however, observe a few
things which are pertinent to our present point, viz.,
its relation to religion.

Modern psychology proceeds upon the assump-
tion that every mental act is attended by a brain
process. Stimuli reach the brain through the
nerves in the form of sensations, producing reflex

2l8 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

and motor discharges of various kinds, and thus
arises the conception of physiological psychology.
There is in this no ground for the alarm felt at one
time by many people lest psychology of this type
might aid and abet a materialistic philosophy. It
was soon recognized that a mental and physiological
parallel was all that was necessarily involved and
not at all an identity of mental activity with the
brain process. Spiritual philosophy fares as well
under physiological psychology as under any other
when the limits of psychology are understood.
There was, however, a real danger to our higher
interests in the effort to reduce human life by means
of psychological laws to the level of physical nature.
The principle of conservation of energy, or physical
continuity, according to which causes and effects
are quantitatively equal, was transferred to the
psychological field. Just as nature was theoretically
broken up into atoms, so consciousness was broken
up into sensations. And as in physical nature causa-
tion was the sufficient principle of explanation, so
it was also assumed and is yet assumed by many
psychologists as the sufficient principle of explana-
tion in their sphere. The inner connection of mind
states, and of mind states with brain states, was
thus observed and the laws deduced and the science
of psychology developed in a manner parallel to the
development of the physical sciences. The evo-
lutionary principle of the origin of organs and
functions in response to needs in the struggle for

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 2ig

life was employed to explain our psychic action,
and thus the whole of man's mental and moral
and spiritual life was construed by means of con-
tinuity or transformation of energy.

Of course it is easy to see that if it is assumed that
this method of explanation is adequate to account
exhaustively for the mental and spiritual life of
man, psychology would lead simply to a closed me-
chanical system like physical nature. It was felt by
psychologists that unless their principle of explana-
tion, that is, the quantitative equivalence of cause
and effect, were applied rigorously there could be
no really scientific psychology. The demand for
order and a fixed criterion of truth and explanation
being inherent in the scientific attitude and con-
tinuity being so universally valid in physical nature
it was only with great reluctance that psychologists
admitted the presence of factors in our psychic life
which transcend entirely the action of the causal
law. Of course there was never any demonstration
of the quantitative equivalence of mind states and
brain states. And now at length there is increasing
recognition of the will as lying outside the causal
series. It is in fact another order of reality. The
personal life of man, in other words, constitutes an
original center of energy wholly unlike the forms
of energy which we designate as merely physical.
There is no continuity as between the various wills
of men so far as demonstration has gone, as there is
none as between brain and thought.

220 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

All this appears most distinctly when we observe
that the forms of psychological explanation may be
valid for psychology while irrelevant to life itself.
The same sort of psychological explanation would
apply to the contents of the mind of George Wash-
ington, the great commander, and the humblest
soldier in the ranks of his army; to Raphael and
the meanest smearer of paint on canvas. The
psychic laws in so far as they are valid are uni-
versally valid, as are the laws of the cosmos. But
those universally valid psychic laws never compass
the originality, the variety, the inequality of life
itself. Professor Miinsterberg puts the case stri-
kingly as follows : " We can say that Socrates re-
mained in the prison because his knee muscles
were contracted in a sitting position and not work-
ing to effect his escape, and that these muscle
processes took place because certain psycho-phys-
ical ideas, emotions, volitions, all composed of
elementary sensations, occurred in his brain, and
that they, again, were the effects of all the causes
which sense stimulations and dispositions, associa-
tions and inhibitions, physiological and climatic in-
fluences, produced in that organism. And we can
say, on the other hand, that Socrates remained in
the prison because he decided to be obedient to
the laws of Athens unto death. This obedience
means, then, not a psycho-physical process, but a
will-attitude which we must understand by feeling
it, an attitude which we cannot analyze, but which

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 221

we interpret and appreciate. The first is a psy-
chological description; the second is a historical
interpretation. . . Both are equally true, while they
blend into an absurdity if we say that these psycho-
physical states in the brain of Socrates were the
objects which inspired the will of his pupils and
Vv^ere suggestive through two thousand years." ^

Professor Miinsterberg goes on to show how his-
tory fails utterly in its purpose if it neglects the tele-
ological and personal world of wills and will rela-
tions and attempts to confine its explanation to
human happenings due to climatic and geographical,
technical and economic, physiological and patho-
logical influences. In history we are in the realm of
freedom while in psychology we are in the realm of
causality, or rather of psycho-physical parallelism,
and the differences are radical and incommensura-
ble. Professor Miinsterberg attempts to give ac-
ciwate definitions of the various sciences, and al-
though his terminology does not seem to the present
writer to be very felicitous he makes his points
clear. He says : " We have the science of over-in-
dividual objects, that is, physics; secondly, the
science of the individual objects, that is, psychology;
thirdly, the sciences of the over-individual will-acts,
that is, the normative sciences; and last, not least,
the sciences of the individual will-acts, that is, the
historical sciences. Physics and psychology have
thus to do with objects; history and the normative

^Miinsterberg, "Psychology and Life," pp. 219, 220.
P

222 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

systems, ethics, logic, esthetics, deal with will-acts.
Psychology and history have thus absolutely dif-
ferent material; and one can never deal with the
substance of the other, and thus they are separated
by a chasm, but their method is the same. Both
connect their material; both consider the single
experiences under the point of view of the totality,
working from the special facts toward the general
facts, from the experience toward the system. And
yet the difference of material must, in spite of the
equality of the methodological process, produce
absolutely different kinds of systems of science." ^

In general, then, Professor Miinsterberg insists
with vigor upon the separation of the sciences which
deal with causality and those which have to do with
freedom. Of course religion is included in those
whose material rises above the causal chain and
belong to the teleological sphere. He asserts that for
the man who sees the difference between reality and
the psychological transformation, immortality is
certain. To such a man the denial of immortality is
quite meaningless. Death being a biological process
in time it cannot affect that reality in us which is
above time, and being in the causal chain it cannot
affect that in us which lies outside the causal chain.'

The above exposition is sufficient for our present
purpose. It is necessary to break the psychological
fetter which has bound religion as it was to break

* " Psychology and Life," p. 205.

'^ " Psychology and Life," pp. 278, 279.

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 223

that of physical causality, and it is now seen that
the two fetters are the same in kind. Religion no
doubt has its psychological side, but religion cannot
be identified with psychology nor is psychological ex-
planation sufficient in religion. Religion belongs to
the world of freedom, not to that of causality, and
this is gradually dawning upon many minds. But
we are confronted with the phenomena of the dawn
in many of those minds. They do not see all the
implications of this distinctness of sphere, and as
a consequence we have any number of compromises
in which religion is still partly tethered to the alien
powers. Somehow it is still felt by many that while
the rights of religion are assumed, yet religion must
always return and make terms with physical or
psychological continuity before anything is per-
manently gained. As we have seen, it is felt by
many of these that mystical experiences of some
kind seem to be genuine. At the same time these
are wholly vague and indeterminate in positive con-
tent. Along with this is found in many instances a
very definite regard for the ethical teachings of
Jesus. But these can proceed no farther. The
needed synthesis of the severed parts they cannot
attain. The terror that lurks along the forward
path to smite them down is physical and psycho-
logical science with its two-edged sword of causality.
There is, however, a way of escape if they will but
recognize it, and that is a courageous as well as con-
sistent construction of the material furnished us by

224 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

religious, and in particular by Christian experience.
This is not a petitio for the Christian view. We are
not assuming its truth outright. It simply means
that we obtain in the Christian life a self-consistent
and final synthesis of the various factors recognized
as essential to religion. But we never arrive at a
solution of the religious problem at all so long as
we insist upon playing fast and loose with the re-
ligious principle itself. If there is a personal and
teleological realm of purpose, ends and values, a
realm as real as any other, then we simply retard
progress and repress life so long as we endeavor to
construe its activities by means of criteria which
belong to a lower sphere.

4. Religion and Ethics

By ethics we mean the laws of conduct. Is it
possible to set forth a system of ethics without meta-
physical assumpc.ons? So it is held by many.
Positivism refuses to admit the propriety of such
assumptions. Utility in the struggle for life is
regarded as a sufficient explanation of the ethical
ideal. The ethical quality in man is regarded as the
result of struggle in a social environment result-
ing in the establishment of certain conventional
standards of conduct, which in turn tend to be per-
petuated by heredity and otherwise, and thus the
basis for the science of ethics is supplied. The
quest for pleasure, known in ethics as Hedonism,
or of happiness in the larger social sense, known as

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 22$

Eudemonism, is then made the key to the ethical his-
tory of mankind and regarded as a sufficient crite-
rion of explanation. But this form of ethical theory
never rises to the ethical at all. It is incapable
of ascribing any fundamentally valid ethical char-
acter to human conduct. It puts the ethical on the
same plane with the beastly in fundamental concep-
tion, since it assigns no character to ethics which
raises it above the lower forms of utility.

The other theory of ethics, known as intuition-
ism, fails to supply an ethical principle securely
grounded until it transcends human consciousness
itself for the ultimate explanation. The presence
in us of a moral sense it is, of course, proper for us
to recognize and respect. But devotion to the moral
ideal cannot be stimulated without some further con-
sideration. As has been said more than once, well-
being bears an essential relation to being. It is im-
possible to lop off the moral nature of man from
the universe of which it is a part and make it suc-
cessful in its action. Many who are strenuous for
the ethical ideal recognize that man's moral nature
is an essential part of or essentially related to some-
thing vaster, and that somehow it must be so dealt
with in our ethical theories. Logically the next step
with such men would be a theistic view of the
world. But as theism is difficult to harmonize with
the scientific criterion of continuity, resort is usually
had to a compromise of some kind. It is not as-
serted that God is the source of the ethical ideal,

226 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

but rather that in the on-going of the world ethical
values have been evolved. These we are to appre-
ciate and accept and achieve, it is urged.

Thus the universe as a whole is made to secrete
the ethical, so to speak, as one of its processes in the
little human niche which we occupy. If there is a
personal God, he has been evolved as we have been,
and has become ethical in the same way. He has
his own struggle and his own '' values " to
" achieve " equally with ourselves. It follows that
he can be of no particular use to us to whom the
ethical task is committed and to whom nothing can
be " donated " from without except on pain of dis-
aster to the ethical principle itself. This view of
course assumes some primary principle or force
behind God and man alike, out of which both are
evolved; and if no ethical being existed at the
outset, the ethical may be merely an incident in the
evolution of the universe. If it is merely an in-
cident, it will in due time be transcended and the
ethical will cease to be.

This brings two results which are fatal to human
struggle and human hope. One is that all the
ethical values are seen to be without a permanent
basis, and to most men scarcely worth while.
Thus the " achievability " of " universally valid "
ethical values becomes an illusion. A still further
result is that if " ethical values " are given any
sort of validity, transient or permanent, in such a
universe, then the non-ethical and the unethical

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 22'J

values are given precisely the same sort of perma-
nence and validity. A non-personal and non-ethical
energy or blind will from which the cosmos is
evolved without purpose or design can have no
favorite children. The bad is as real as the good
in such a world and the moral distinction itself
vanishes.^ A view of this kind is a straight and
short road to pessimism. A hopeful outlook upon
the world cannot be deduced from blind energy as
the first principle and of change as the fundamental
law of being.

Theoretically, then, some form of theism is the
only secure basis for ethics. The good is a perma-
nent value because purposed as the goal of all
things. Otherwise Spinoza's view is as valuable as
any of the many compromise views which have fol-
lowed and which have been in one form or other
modifications of his. But having said so much the
relations between ethics and religion do not yet come
fully into view. Ethics, even in the theoretical
form, remains abstract. A philosophical basis does
not convey ethics out of the sphere of the formal
and normative sciences into that of life itself. It is
when we relate ethics to religion rather than to
philosophy that we see the two in their most sig-
nificant and illuminating aspects.

The principle of explanation which will best serve
us in relating ethics to religion is the principle com-
mon to both, viz., personality. Ethics is the sys-

s See G. B. Foster, " Function of Religion," p. I73f.

228 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tern of laws or standards of conduct which set forth
the relationships of persons in human society. The
ethical is meaningless apart from the personal. In
like manner, as we have seen, religion is essentially
concerned with personal relations between God
and man. Now the ethical becomes vital and liv-
ing whenever the entire kingdom of the personal
is its sphere and not merely the human. Ethics
remains formal and normative so long as one set
of personal relationships only is kept in view.
When a man's relations to God as well as to other
men are considered we see how vastly the range of
personal relationships is extended and how the
ethical undergoes a transformation. Of course the
science of ethics remains even then and does not
necessarily become identical with religion; but the
personal relationships underlying the ethical prin-
ciple appear in a new light when religious experi-
ence begins to illumine and to energize them.

It is at this point that the Christian view of the
moral life appears at the greatest advantage. The
teachings of Jesus are saturated with the ethical to
such an extent that some moderns emphasize his
ethics to the exclusion of his religion. But in this
they fail to discern the relations between the ethical
and the religious in his teachings. To Jesus the wor-
ship of God and the service of man were indissolu-
bly bound together. It was indeed the divine energy
of religion brought into the human soul which made
the ethical in the high Christian sense possible of

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 229

realization in human conduct. This is seen in the
nature of the rehgious experience itself. '' Repent
ye and believe the gospel " was his message
throughout his ministry, as it is recorded in the
first chapter of Mark's Gospel. Repentance and
faith are both ethical and religious in their meaning,
and they constitute the nexus between ethics and
religion in Christianity. Repentance has regard for
the sinfulness of sin and requires its radical re-
pudiation in order to restored fellowship with God.
Faith involves a personal relationship of man to
God, which is a condition of the actual union of
the divine with the human and the divine reenforce-
ment of the moral will of man. Out of this root
springs the whole ethical life of the Christian. The
ethics of the gospel presupposes a regenerated Hfe,
and the regenerated life fails of its chief end un-
less it takes the form of ethical achievement. Re-
demption, in other words, becomes a moral proc-
ess. One of the chief difficulties of the forensic
forms of theological teaching has been to avoid a
separation between the vital and the moral sides of
religion. It is the supreme achievement of Jesus
that he united the two inseparably so that neither
is significant or valuable in any adequate degree
without the other. Professor Herrmann, in his
notable work " The Communion of the Christian
with God," has brought out this aspect of the Chris-
tian religion in a very striking manner.

We may gather up what we have been saying in

230 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the following statements. Religion and ethics are
not to be confounded or identified with each other
formally, but they unite in the Christian experience.
The points of union are as follows: First, man's
personal relationships are regarded as inclusive of
God as well as of human society in the Christian
religion. The common ground of ethics and re-
ligion is that of personal relationships. It is for the
reason that ethics is essentially and inherently a mat-
ter of personal relationships that philosophically
ethics cannot be successfully defended on the basis
of a non-personal world-ground. All the ethical
values collapse along with the substructure so soon
as any postulate other than a personal one is set
forth as the ultimate basis of ethics. Secondly, the
religious and the ethical unite in Christianity because
therein the religious aim, redemption, takes on the
ethical form. The meaning is that the Christian
salvation is salvation from sin and unto righteous-
ness. Every part of it is ethical in its contents and
in its goal. Redemption in the lower forms of re-
ligion may be various forms of deliverance from the
powers of nature or other dangers. In Christian
redemption the primary aim is moral and spiritual
deliverance. Other forms of deliverance are wholly
secondary to this. The redemption itself takes
place in a religious way, that is through the action
of the divine upon the human. But the ethical con-
tents of the redemption abide. In Christianity then
the ethical and the religious are the obverse and

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 23 1

the reverse sides of consciousness so to speak. In
so far as religion finds expression manward it is
ethical, and in so far as ethics finds expression
Godward it is religious.

Thirdly, in Christianity the ethical blends with
the religious sanction. We no longer pursue virtue
as isolated from its ground. Duty becomes pri-
marily duty to God. " Against thee, thee only have
I sinned " is the cry of the penitent. The Christian
religious sanction gathers up that of scientific ethics
in a higher unity. It does not deny the assertion of
intuitional ethics that virtue is inherently worthy
of pursuit, nor the utilitarian plea that the moral
life secures happiness or even pleasure. It rather
asserts both, but grounds the virtue itself in the
divine and exalts pleasure to the plane of moral and
spiritual values.

Fourthly, it is because of these relations be-
tween ethics and religion in Christianity that in the
New Testament duties have become graces. x\ll
moral acts are regarded as fruits of the Holy Spirit
and performed with the religious sanction. They
are the direct result of the action of God upon the
soul. From this it appears that Schleiermacher's
view is incorrect when he asserts that we should
never perform moral acts " from " but always
*' with " religion. He means by this that the re-
ligious and ethical ideals are too distinct to be re-
garded as proceeding the one from the other. His
definition of religion as the '* feeling of absolute

232 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

dependence " and his impersonal world-ground really
left no nexus between ethics and religion. His
philosophic assumptions forbade their union. But,
as we have seen, in the Christian view we have in
the initial religious act, repentance and faith, pre-
cisely the transition required from ethics to religion.
For those acts of the soul are both ethical and
religious. They require a personal object on the
religious side as they require personal objects on
the ethical. Thus we return to the assertion that
the common ground of the ethical and religious life
of man is to be sought in the idea of personality
and of personal relationships. It is this which en-
ables us to conceive the unity of all personal life,
divine and human, under the supreme ideal of
Jesus, the kingdom of God.

It does not follow from the above that the science
of ethics is destroyed. For it remains possible to
formulate the laws of conduct apart from religion.
Sanctions may be found, such as they are, below
the religious plane. Likewise religion in its lower
forms is often seen with very slight if any ethical
contents. Hence as a form of worship and ac-
tivity religion may remain to a very great extent
apart from ethics. This formal scientific separation
of religion and ethics, then, has its warrant and its
value. But it remains true nevertheless that in
life and experience we may see how the two unite.
The ethical point of view may be carried up into the
religious when we conceive the religious acts as

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 233

involving personal relations; just as we may bring
the religious point of view down into the moral life
when the religious sanction takes the place of the
ethical and the divine energy in the soul converts
duties into graces. That is to say, when religion
in the Christian sense becomes a fact in the soul
ethics is lifted to a higher plane and becomes essen-
tial to religion itself.

It is at this point that we see the Christian solu-
tion of the problem of mysticism. Mystical ex-
periences are an unquestionable fact in man's life.
The weakness of mysticism is that it is subjective,
emotional, and indeterminate. Christ made it ob-
jective by grounding it in a personal God, and he
made it cognitive as well as emotional by the specific
character which he assigned to God as Father, and
he made it determinate and practical by prescribing
an ethical task. Jesus was a mystic of the most pro-
nounced type if we define mysticism as fellowship
with God. But Jesus was no mystic at all if mys-
ticism be regarded as an indeterminate emotional
communion with the infinite without specific theo-
logical meaning and apart from the moral life. The
conception of God the Father was very definite in
the mind of Jesus and ethical obligations and re-
lationships were, in his teaching, of the most definite
and positive kind. It is clear from the preceding
that the subjective principle alone is wholly in-
adequate as a support to human life either in the
ethical or in the religious sphere. The subjective

234 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

principle in religion leads to mysticism which is
empty, and in ethics it leads to formalism which is
powerless. Formal or scientific ethics can only
point the way; it cannot reenforce the will in its
struggle against heavy odds. Mysticism has the sole
advantage that it is immune from scientific attacks
because it offers nothing definite against which the
arrow of criticism may be directed. What man
needs in his moral struggle is not merely rules of
conduct, but power. This religion supplies. What
man needs in his religious life is a definite goal.
This ethics supplies. The kingdom of God in Chris-
tian teaching combines both ideals and unites them
in the realization through faith of blessedness and
redemption.

5. Religion and Philosophy

In the discussion of the unstable equilibrium of
philosophy we omitted purposely the effort to de-
fine accurately and at length the relations between
religion and philosophy. From the nature of re-
ligion it cannot be identified with philosophy, al-
though of course religion implies and bears with it
a general world-view. Philosophic systems exist
which are not religious. Some of them formally
reject the religious as a valid element in human
life. This formal separation of philosophy from
religion is due to diverse aims. To combine the
various forms of reality in a logically coherent and
self -consistent and comprehensive view of the uni-

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 235

verse, however completely carried through, never
does in and of itself become religion. Philosophy as
the attempt exhaustively to explain being might
reach finality so that the last jot and tittle of the
actual existent world came under its dominion, in-
cluding the religious life and the religious experi-
ence itself, without thereby becoming religion. Cor-
rect explanations of religion can never constitute re-
ligion. But philosophy thus conceived does not ex-
haust knowledge. As a rational process merely
philosophy excludes certain forms of experience and
the attendant knowledge. Explanation, in intel-
lectual terms of the mental and esthetic experi-
ence of Raphael in painting the Sistine Madonna,
could not possibly include as a part of the explain-
ing process the actual experience of the painter as
he created the masterpiece. Religion as a fact in
the soul of one man can never become a part of the
rationalizing process in the mind of another. For,
as we have seen, philosophy is the intellectual for-
mulation of experience while religion is experience
itself.

The difference between this form of experience
and philosophy is seen further in the fact that
religious experience has other elements besides the
intellectual. The emotions and the will, the whole
nature in fact, is included. We do not know God
by thought alone. We know him by faith. Yet
faith has a cognitive element; that is, knowledge in
the intellectual sense. Knowledge then is a more

236 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

comprehensive term than science, logic, or phi-
losophy, or all of these combined. Science gathers
facts, logic manipulates them in a formal way for a
particular purpose, and philosophy seeks to apply
logic to the data in a comprehensive way. Yet none
of these processes ever exhausts being as a whole.
Nor can we say that esthetics, ethics, and religion are
appreciations merely while science, logic, and phi-
losophy are forms of knowledge. The former come
into contact with the real just as truly as does
science. The truth here and especially in religion
can never be confined within the limits of a me-
chanical scheme of things. Yet mechanics cannot
be truly held to be the only form of knowledge.
We saw in a previous chapter how certain modern
philosophers are forsaking rationalism and intel-
lectualism, even as a philosophy, and adopting vol-
untarism. And yet experience cannot well take the
place of thought about experience. Our formal
explanations of what we experience and observe
must continue to be valid even apart from experi-
ence itself. But these formal explanations by no
means exhaust knowledge, and as life is fuller and
richer than thought, religion cannot be identified
with philosophy; and as knowledge has various
forms in our varied experiences, no one form of
knowledge is exhaustive of all the other forms.
They do not conflict ; they supplement each other.

It is thus clear that religion can with the utmost
good-will bid the philosopher Godspeed in his

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 237

effort to reason out the facts of being. Likewise
there is nothing in the nature of the case to prevent
the philosopher from according to the rehgious
man plenary rights in the religious sphere. For, be
it observed, it is no longer a question of " thought "
against " faith " or of " faith " against " thought,"
as if •' thought" has a monopoly of knowledge. It
is rather two forms of knowing which, within their
respective domains, are entirely valid and legitimate.
There is a vital point of contact, as we shall see,
and under certain conditions religion blends with
philosophy as we saw it blend with ethics. But the
distinction between them holds.

There is a crucial question which we must notice
next. As religion requires a world-view, just as
philosophy requires one, shall philosophy dictate
its world-views; or shall religion dictate to phi-
losophy its world-views? The difference here is
that religion requires a particular world-view; that
is, some form of theism. Philosophy, on the other
hand, manufactures world-views, valid from the
point of view of philosophy, to an indefinite extent.
Religion as such, then, must be very particular in
its selection of a world-view, while philosophy as
such can get along with almost any kind.

Now theism, which religion must have to remain
religion, is a view which many modern men reject.
But they reject it not because theism is a low
view, but because it is a difficult view to maintain
on scientific grounds. It breaks continuity. As
Q

238 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Hofding says, it " explains " nothing scientifically.
Scientific explanation, however, is simply one kind
of explanation. Let us remember that. Scientific
explanation is causal and not necessarily teleological.
Religious explanation is teleological and personal
and not causal in the physical sense. Theism, which
is a difficult, is also a very high view. To conceive
God as personal and paternal and loving and holy
and purposive, and as both immanent and tran-
scendent is to supply man with the highest possible
object of worship, the highest conceivable stimulus
to faith, hope, and love. This is not denied. No
alternative view of God or of the world-ground
has been suggested that compares with the view re-
ligiously considered. It is a rational belief of the
highest degree of cogency as a world-view. All the
opposing views are constructed not primarily in the
interest of religion at all, but in the interest of some
principle which belongs to another sphere; usu-
ally it is physical continuity. From this arise the
various forms of pantheism and monism, the forci-
ble welding of being into a continuous chain, not
to serve religion but to serve science, or a form
of philosophic thought which works solely with a
scientific criterion of reality.

Out of this situation arises the stress and strain
of current theological and philosophical controversy.
On one side men must needs recognize religion as a
fundamental factor of human life. On the other
they feel that they must remain loyal to science and

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 239

its principle of continuity. Endless compromises
are being urged to-day. Our own view is that the
way out is the recognition of the distinctiveness of
the religious sphere, of religious truth, of religious
experience, and of religious reality in the personal
world over against physical continuity in the cosmos.
Having clearly grasped this fact it is the duty of re-
ligion to insist upon its rights within its own sphere,
including the right to construct a world-view based
on the data of religion and for religious ends. A
great many writers see this truth partially, but fail
to grasp it in all its implications. They speak elo-
quently about religion and its place in human cul-
ture, and then reduce the world practically to nat-
uralism and mechanism. Essentially the strug-
gle in this type of mind is that between the interests
of thought as against the interests of life. The
moment we come into close quarters with this issue
it becomes clear that the interests of life cannot
survive the method of interpreting the world which
makes continuity exclusive and exhaustive. A
world in which physical continuity and scientific
causation rules is a necessitarian world. Freedom
in such a world is a mere name. In such a necessi-
tarian world error is without meaning and sin is
impossible. Moral responsibility, being a figment
of the imagination, the whole ethical view of life
vanishes, in any fundamental meaning of the word
ethical.
Resort is sometimes had in this emergency to

240 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Other principles of explanation which at first sight
seem to relieve the situation. One of these is the
principle of evolutionism, of eternal becoming.
Change is made the fundamental category of being.
The world began in non-rational or irrational blind
energy and gradually evolved intelligence and per-
sonality it is urged. But in such a world we must
needs face the possibility that our human life, our
ethical ideals, our social and religious sanctions,
one and all, are a mere incident in a vaster move-
ment. The restless sea of change which cast these
things forth upon the shores of time may roll in
upon them and engulf them all again, sweeping
them back into oblivion. No cross section of reality
at any stage of the on-going world can be taken as
permanently typical of the outcome under this view.
Indeed, there can be no definitive outcome in a world
of endless change when the principle of change is
made radical and exhaustive. It is only when it is
combined with a static element of some kind that
such an outcome is possible. Indeed, thought about
ultimate things in such a world of change is the
climax of folly. There is no criterion of thought at
all except continuity, if even this is possible. A
thorough-going evolutionism is the very desperation
of thought, the despair of truth rather than its dis-
covery or elucidation. Evolutionism, then, if radi-
cal and self-consistent, conserves no value, wins no
goal, provides no satisfaction, ministers at no point
whatever to the interests of life. In consequence

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 24I

it is destitute of all power of human appeal. As it
ignores life, so it will be ignored by life. The
reader will, of course, understand that we are here
referring not to evolution as the working hypothesis
of science, but to evolutionism exalted into an ex-
haustive philosophy.

Again, resort is sometimes had to the principle
of the divine immanence as a sufficient explanation
of God's relations to the world. It is felt by many
that in view of the scientific criterion of explanation,
physical continuity, the only safe course for re-
ligion and theology is to assume a God who is iden-
tical in all respects, in his action, with the cosmos
itself. There are accordingly various attempts to
restate the truths of religion from this point of
view. The result is always the same. So long as
the effort is consistent with the fundamental prin-
ciple, the truths of religion are left out, and so far
as the truths of religion obtain real recognition the
fundamental principle is violated. If God's action
does not rise above the natural order, including man,
then his activity is no better than that of the natural
order. If it does rise above the natural order,
then it is more than is implied in the principle of
immanence. It is the plus in the case that is really
significant for religion.

Moderns often oppose the principle of immanence
to the exploded deistic view of God. In truth it
is practically identical with deism if it is consist-
ently held as the exclusive and sufficient explana-

242 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tion of God's relations to the world. What ad-
vantage, in his relations to the world, is possessed
by a God who is exhausted in the cosmos, over
a God wholly apart from and above the cosmos?
If the deistic God made a machine, and then sits
aloft and watches it go, is not such a perpetually
moving and evolving machine equal in its possi-
bilities to a world in which an indwelling God
never transcends the natural order? If God locks
himself in nature, is it not equivalent to locking
himself out? For be it remembered that it is the
uniformity of nature under the operation of causa-
tion or physical continuity which constitutes the
basis of the whole plea. If the divine energy resi-
dent in and as distinct from nature ever boils over,
as it were, and produces something new or lifts
nature to a new and higher stage, then evidently
God transcends nature. If divine causation as dis-
tinct from or supplementary to physical causation
ever gets in at any point, the principle of immanence
is violated. It is curious that so many fail to see
that this boiling over of nature and the lifting of
nature to a higher plane contravenes the principle of
the quantitative equivalence of cause and effect.
The consequent cannot be stated in terms of the
antecedent in the cosmic sense at all in such case.
Thus the principle of explanation in the scientific
sense also breaks down. Explanation to be scien-
tific must remain horizontal. It can become ver-
tical only by becoming personal. It does not avail

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 243

to convert nature into spirit merely and assert that
nature is God. For so long as the physical or
mechanical or causal action of nature remains un-
relieved by the personal, such a spiritualized nature
is identical v^ith nature regarded as material. A
new label does not change the nature of the thing.
A uniform world with God locked in is exactly
equivalent to a uniform world with God locked out.
Religion calls for the interaction of God with the
world of men in a way which transcends the normal
even of the human life. It is to lift man above the
world and redeem him from sin which constitutes
the supreme function of religion.

The theologians of the divine immanence alone
when they attempt to construe the idea of redemp-
tion invariably do one of two things. They either
introduce the necessary plus of divine action which
violates the principle of immanence, or else they
adopt what is equivalent to naturalism as their
fundamental view, which excludes redemption. The
reader will, of course, understand that we are not
opposing the conception of the immanence of God.
We are only showing its insufficiency. The tran-
scendence of God is the supplementary principle
which is essential to a just view if the life of re-
ligion is to be preserved. The motive of those who
stand for an exclusive principle of immanence is
obvious. A God locked in the world seems to admit
the free and full play of causation. These ad-
vocates are under the spell of physical continuity.

244 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

They erroneously imagine that rehgion must make
terms with the principle and proceed at once to
the compromise. They subject religion to an alien
power which is rightly regarded as supreme in its
own sphere, but which has no jurisdiction over re-
ligion. Here again the interests of life perish as the
so-called interests of thought invade the territory of
religion.

There is yet another way adopted by some to
adjust the interests of life to those of thought.
It is to recognize the imperative demands of life
and especially of religion and admit their practical
value, but deny their value as based on truth and
reality. To many of these there is a pointblank
contradiction between philosophy and man's prac-
tical interests. But the practical interests are im-
perative and cannot be ignored. Man needs morals
and a social order. He cannot successfully com-
mand himself to be moral. He needs the religious
reenforcement of morals. Man must have God and
he must have religion. Truth, however, does not
warrant belief in God. He is assumed therefore
for practical purposes. Truth is independent of life,
and has no relation to it whatever. It is wholly
impersonal and non-human. A recent writer, after
stating the case substantially as in the preceding
sentences, says : " As to myself, I propose to com-
promise. My reason cannot abdicate her throne, nor
can I agree to give up philosophy for the sake
of life. . . On the other hand, since it is dangerous

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 245

to allow life to be absorbed by philosophy, danger-
ous from the social point of view, I propose to
adopt for practical reasons the system of two truths
— a philosophic truth independent of consequences,
and a pragmatic truth, which shall be our social
philosophy of the people, for the benefit of society." ^

Again, he deprecates the effort to make scientific
and philosophic truth bend to human aspirations
and thinks the means employed by the pragmatists
to do this are unwarranted. *' Above all, I do not
believe they are the most worthy means, for they
rest on a double philosophic error — ^the agreement of
scientific truth with human aspirations, and the in-
tellectual and social equality of individuals." ^^ This
writer seems to confound scientific and philosophic
truth, and he assumes that truth is in his possession
in the philosophic sense, and that it certainly con-
tradicts human aspirations. He fails to tell us what
philosophic truth he holds so securely in his hands,
or where we can find it by searching. We have al-
ready seen how inconclusive is the mere intellectual
search for ultimate truth. This writer inveighs
against the pragmatists for insisting that expediency
and the will must be taken into account in all our
knowing processes and holds that truth is independ-
ent of us and our needs. Our reason is our guide
and our thought must be impersonal.

One is impressed in reading this controversy that

^ A. Schinz, " Anti Pragmatism," p. 250.
^^ A. Schinz, " Anti Pragmatism," p. 252.

246 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

both parties are right and both are wrong. Pro-
fessor Schinz assumes that reahty, and as a conse-
quence truth, is objective to and independent of us
and that we can find it by means of the reason.
The pragmatists assume that truth is only truth as
we make it, as we take the data given to us and
recast it in the human mold. They are never en-
tirely clear on the point as to the nature of the
objective world, but they are clear as to our " ma-
king " of truth in the way indicated. Now here is
a needless conflict. Schinz cancels human aspira-
tions in order to save truth and pragmatism cancels
objective truth in order to save human aspirations,
including religion. Schinz cuts man into two parts,
reason and aspirations, an intellectual nature and a
moral and religious nature. He says the objective
world is congruous with his reason, with one part
of man, and answers to it, but that it has no rela-
tion to the other part. Pragmatism also cuts man
into two parts, the intellectual and the volitional,
just as Schinz does, and asserts that being is con-
gruous with the volitional part of man, but has
no inherent relation to the intellectual. It is in
both cases the monistic passion to exalt some one
factor of being to the supreme place, to cancel half
of the world in order to save the other half. If
the intellectualist assumes an agreement between
man's truth-loving and truth-seeking nature with the
universe, why not assume a corresponding agree-
ment between our aspirational and volitional life

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 24/

with the same universe? And if the pragmatist
assumes the congruity of the world and our volition,
why not a like congruity of the world and our rea-
son? A whole man and a whole world, and the
reaction of the whole man against the whole world,
this is the road to truth and the only road in the
philosophic sense.

Here, however, comes an immediate reply. It
is a dualism in man's own nature which gives all
the trouble, it will be urged. Scientific explanation
is the only real explanation. And this form of ex-
planation has nothing in common with man's voli-
tions and aspirations, but pertains solely to his
reason. The forms of explanation are not con-
vertible the one into the other. Our own reply
is that reality has more than one dimension, that
explanation may be in terms of personality and
teleology and will as truly as in terms of continuity ;
that there is no necessity for setting up these two
forms of explanation as opposed to each other, or
to put truth on one side and life on the other and
assume that there is a truceless war between them.
It is the truth of life on one side and the truth of
nature on the other. The personal world has its
own categories, and norms and concepts, and is as
orderly and systematic in its connections as the
cosmos.

But here again it is objected : " You never get
God with all your reasonings and all your forms of
reality. You do not discover God and you fail to

248 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

deduce him." Here again our own reply is at hand :
We experience God. He becomes actual to us in
religious experience. This is the point at which we
find the empirical basis for religious philosophy
and at which the problem of Kant and therewith the
crucial problem of modern philosophy finds solution.
Kant distinguished between the phenomenal and the
noumenal world. We know only phenomena. We
cannot know what is behind phenomena. So he
argued. Our practical interests, however, demand
God, and so through the practical reason Kant re-
stored the God whom he had lost through the the-
oretical reason. No one has ever improved much
over Kant's way of stating the case so long as relig-
ious experience is left out of account. For Kant's
method is purely rational, not experiential. When
the data involved are manipulated by the reason
alone we never get over beyond phenomena into the
world of noumena, we never solve the problem of
thought and life, of intellect on the one hand and
of volition and aspiration on the other. In re-
ligious experience, on the other hand, we pass
over to the world of noumena. The divine comes to
us. Thus the circle of personal relationships is
completed by fellowship with the highest person,
God, and the kingdom of the Spirit is established on
incontrovertible fact.

I am quite aware that many will be disposed to
turn away from this conclusion. To them it will
seem a forced and unreal solution of the standing

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 249

riddle of the contradiction between thought and
life. Our reply is that it is in the name of reality
that we urge it as the solution. A scientific age has
joined Christianity in preaching the doctrine of sin-
cerity and in inveighing against the unreal. It tells
us that the fact basis is the only basis for human
hope and human aspiration. Now the religious life
and experience are as real to men who have it as
breathing or walking. They can no more get away
from that religious world than they can from the
external world of nature. To such men it is the
height of absurdity for the scientific man to urge
them to be genuine and cling to the real and at the
same time propose a religious object which is as
indeterminate and illusory as a morning cloud. Yet
this is going on all about us. A religious agnos-
ticism is joined with exhortations to religious devo-
tion. Eloquent tributes to religion are coupled with
a definition of it in terms of Ritschlianism or of
mysticism. Assertions of the primary and funda-
mental place of religion in man's life are accom-
panied by expositions of it which leave it no power
wherewith to grip man. The love of truth and of
reality is preached as the supreme virtue, and the
high ethical quality of the scientific spirit is eulogized
chiefly because science cannot endure shams of any
kind.

In the next breath a view of religion may be
urged which makes of it a mere functional or emo-
tional make-believe, in which man piously imagines

250 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a God whom he never finds, who in no sense is
real, a God who is manufactured subjectively by the
worshiper and worshiped as if he were actually
existent in order to aid man in his struggle for exist-
ence. We insist that such fictitious and illusory
forms of religion are all in vain and really an af-
front to the religious hfe of man. The philosophers
of religion who are dealing out this sort of religious
theory to us will have to give up their " scientific
love of reality " or else give up their theory of re-
ligion. The two are in deadly conflict. In other
words, religion must become real or it must cease to
be. We know God or we do not know him. He is
real to our experience or he is not. He never be-
comes more than one of a number of possible deduc-
tions until he becomes actual in religious experience
itself. One can understand the logical self-con-
sistency at least of a man like Hofding, who con-
templates with serenity the passing of all distinct-
ively religious " values " as such ; that is, the ex-
tinction of religion by science. But one cannot
grant the self -consistency of men who accept Hof-
ding's premises and try to argue against his con-
clusions.

As we have seen, it is the monistic passion which
demands the exclusion of the interests of life for
the sake of those of thought. A personal and a
physical criterion of truth it cannot tolerate. Yet
scientifically and philosophically all monisms in some
degree come short of demonstration. At the same

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 25 1

time our Christian theism yields a unity of the most
significant kind. It does not succeed in convert-
ing mind into matter nor matter into mind. It does
not achieve any sort of locked-together unity of all
existence. But as a matter of fact no other theory
does these things. There is no clearly defined and
clearly recognized scientific and empirical founda-
tion for any of the monisms which are current.
These monisms pass out of the personal sphere into
the physical and adopt a physical criterion of reality
and then theoretically attempt to reconstruct all be-
ing with this physical conception of substance and
of continuity.

Our Christian theism, on the contrary, leaves the
dualism of fact as we find it, and denies that
we are compelled to formulate any self-consistent
monism which cancels the interests of life and
personality. But our theism does exhibit a bond
of unity for all the forms of human life 'and
culture. It finds a vital point of contact with
physical science in its empirical basis of Christian
experience wherein the soul ceases to speculate
about God and finds him. Its point of contact with
psychology is seen in the psychological laws which
govern man's religious life, and if Professor James
is correct, in the subconscious mind as the medium
through which the divine and regenerating influences
reach the soul. Our Christian theism again is vitally
related to ethics in that Christian ethics is the
expression on the human side of the meaning of

252 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

religion ; and to practical endeavor in its divine reen-
forcement of the will for the performance of duty.
And finally its service to philosophy is seen in its
solution of the riddle of the conflict between the
theoretical and practical reason on the empirical
basis of experience itself. In religious experience
we are not dealing with hypothetical atoms or mole-
cules or ions. We are dealing in the most direct
and vital manner with God himself.

Besides the above, religion seeks and promotes
a higher form of unity, viz., that of a moral and
spiritual kingdom. Moral and religious " monism '*
is of far greater importance to the race than intel-
lectual or physical. It seems strange that in our
pronouncedly Christian age men should resort to
a form of conception and of knowledge on a non-
moral and non-religious plane as the ultimate ideal
of truth. Current forms of monism in many in-
stances do not have any essential regard in and of
themselves for our moral and spiritual welfare.
These may be and often are gathered up into the
monistic systems of Christian thinkers with more
or less consistency. And as purely intellectual con-
structions, ethical monism and personalism, which
are in large part identical, are the best attempts
yet made to solve the problems of philosophy. Our
own view is that monism of substance implyin^^
physical continuity as the criterion of truth and
reality, however spiritual the conception of substance
is held to be, is not the highest form of the demand

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 253

for unity. We believe we may forego the solution of
the problems of mind and matter for the present.
We must discover the solution, not force it. Our
supreme need lies in the personal realm where the
unity and harmony of man with God and of man
with man in a redeemed society is to be realized. It
is far more important to the world to know that
the universe is personal than to know that in the
monistic sense it is one. In short, we propose to
make the interests of life and the facts of experi-
ence the basis of philosophy.

We return to philosophy then through religion.
Science recognizes two objects, the observer and
the world observed, the self and the physical uni-
verse. By its own methods of verification science
discovers truth. Philosophy applies the laws of
logic to the data supplied by science, selecting such
part or parts as may seem to be most significant
and employs this to explain the remainder. It may
select any known principle from matter up to per-
sonality. From this it deduces a general world-
view. The possible world-views are indefinitely
varied and inconclusive as rational deductions
merely. This variety and non-finality of world-
views are due to the nature of logic. You cannot
get out of the premises more than you put into
them. You fill the logical basket yourself. Then
you select one of the objects you have placed in it
to explain the rest. If you have only the human self
and the physical world in the basket you can only

R

254 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

take out one or the other of these. If you do
you violate your logic. Now religion adds a third
object to the two named. In religion we obtain God,
not as a deduction from reason as in the logical
process, but as a fact given to us actually in experi-
ence. We know him, and thus know what Kant
declared could not be known, viz., the reality be-
hind the world of phenomena.

With this addition to our stock of knowledge we
frame our general world-view, confining it to the
elements actually given to us, and avoiding forms
of theory which ignore the breaks in our knowledge.
We do not know God in religious experience as
identical with ourselves or the universe, but we
know him as real and as active in us for our re-
demption, and we know him as personal in Christian
experience; that is, in the form in which Christ has
revealed him. We may call the resultant view Chris-
tian theism. Or, if we have respect to the deep
demand of the reason for unity of thought and for
a unified world, we may call it critical personalism.
This means that personality is the highest object
we know, since we find it in ourselves and in God.
Thus we conclude it is the key to all the riddles
of knowledge, and all the discords and contradic-
tions and dualisms of the world. But we hold our-
selves under restraint. We remember that although
we have found the key we have not yet found the
keyhole in all the doors of the world. For re-
ligion we have ample knowledge. For reconcilia-

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 255

tion of some other forms of disharmony, some
problems of reason, we patiently wait and earnestly
labor.

Now all the interests of human freedom are
bound up with the interests of life and of the king-
dom of God announced by Jesus Christ. That
kingdom rests upon the religious and personal inter-
pretations of the universe. Only with such an in-
terpretation can the interests of the human indi-
vidual survive. An impersonal universe augurs ill
for the personal life of man. In such a system of
things he finds no permanent basis for personality.
He never really escapes from the cosmos into real
personality. His apparent personality is illusion.
A non-personal universe provides no permanent
abode for our human personality and yet many
scientific men inveigh against Christianity and the-
ism in the interest of individuality and personality.
Thereby they saw off the limbs on which they
sit. If the men who inveigh against Jesus and
his teaching would look more deeply, they would
discover that with all his authoritativeness he is
the supreme emancipator of the human spirit, in
that for the first time in the world's history he
established a world-view in which personality came
at last to all its rights. He revealed the eternal
foundations of our personal life in a personal
and ever-living God. Nothing can well be more
inconsistent than a clamor for liberty of thought or
action coupled with a non-personal conception of

256 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ultimate reality. In such a necessitarian world
personality and freedom and individualism are with-
out serious significance. It was Jesus who first
gave the true basis to human freedom. This free-
dom comes through religion. Man's highest free-
dom never comes otherwise. Religion has been
called the self-affirmation of the soul. It is the con-
quest of the world within and without in so far as
the world is opposed to the ends and interests of the
soul. It is thus the highest assertion of freedom
and of personality.

To find God is to escape reabsorption in the
cosmos, and every other form of defeat which the
material universe can bring upon us. Through
religion indeed we first attain full personality.
Prior to the religious life we are not full-grown
persons. Through religion we attain not only free-
dom, but also truth. " Ye shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free." Our free
attainment of truth is our highest privilege as
men. And yet it is the validity of truth freely
achieved and attained which constitutes the basis of
authority. If human experience fails to find truth
in its free endeavor, there can be no authority. But
man's freedom implies God's freedom as well, and
the religious assumption and experience imply the
free interaction of God and man, and this free inter-
action means the possibility of divine revelation as
well as of free human discovery of truth. Indeed,
as we shall see, God's method is so to present truth

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 257

that men grasp it and appropriate it for their spir-
itual regeneration and growth. This does not mean
that all the facts which revelation brings to us are
fully rationalized by the human intellect, so that
there is no unknown remainder. This is never true
of any fact, whether revealed or not. But God's
revelation to us does mean that our experience
religiously assimilates revealed truth and it becomes
valid for us not as propositions imposed by sheer
divine authority, but is recognized by us as the
answer to our deepest needs and congruous with our
highest aspirations.

In the light of the preceding conclusions it is
clear that the reassertion of the religious interpreta-
tion of the world is part and parcel of the reasser-
tion of human freedom. One of the chief fallacies
of current anti-religious thought is that religion is a
source of bondage. As a result many are trying to
square their theology with a form of tyranny which
is only less tolerable than that of the old persecuting
States because it employs intellectual rather than
political means for enforcing its decrees. An im-
personal and indifferent universe conceived as a
principle deduced from the physical order stifles
the nature of man and quenches human hope. It
paralyzes his being and conquers his upward stri-
vings at the most vital point. It pleads the name of
science without warrant and reduces life and being
to a single dimension. It thunders against man's
religious instincts in a manner which has terrified

258 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

many and has led them to abandon prayer as
futile, and to reduce religion to a form of ethical
culture merely. It has led some religious teachers
to frame theoretical interpretations of religion in
which nothing is left but a trace or a semblance, and
to confuse the religious with other values until the
distinctions disappear altogether. Some are preach-
ing the funeral of theology, which, if it were really
in order, would imply the end of human hope,
since theology is the inevitable outcome of the re-
ligious life itself. This darkness and confusion be-
wilders the men who are without interest in the in-
tellectual side of the problem, but who have a tragic
and terrible interest in the ministry of religion to
human struggles and achievement; while for those
in whom the religious need has slowly surrendered to
the other, which is intellectual merely, nothing is left
but the din of a conflict which can never end so long
as men insist on exalting causality above personality.
Human freedom, in other words, can never be main-
tained on the basis of an absolute and exclusive prin-
ciple which by its very definition cancels freedom.

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

Psychology deals with man's mental life and de-
fines the laws of its action. Religious experience
does not interrupt the work of psychology. The
stream of consciousness simply becomes more com-
plex and interesting. The data or facts observed
are subjective it is true; but this is true also of
ordinary psychology. The psychology of religion is
a distinct branch of inquiry and considerable prog-
ress has already been made therein.

What is knowledge? The following points enter
into the definition of knowledge: (i) That which is
self-evident in the nature of reason. (2) That which
is immediately given in experience. (3) That which
is cogently inferred from the given.^ It is clear then
that the scientific method is not the only way of
acquiring knowledge. Rational belief as distin-
guished from knowledge is a conviction based on
reasons which lend support but do not compel the
conclusion.

Let us ask now, what are the elements in religious
experience which warrant us in claiming that in it
we have real knowledge ? The following assertions

^ Cf. Bowne, " Theory of Thought and Knowledge," p. 368.

26o FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

may be made of the reality which we know in
Christian experience, (i) In it we know a power
not ourselves, a power from without acting upon
our spirits. (2) We know that this power is spir-
itual as distinguished from material. It has none
of the marks of the material realities we know,
and it acts upon our spirits. (3) This power which
thus acts upon us from without is redemptive. It
achieves in and for us a salvation which Professor
James has described as " lyric " joy and a sense of
deliverance, and which we know by experience as
moral transformation. We may bring to bear upon
these contents of the religious consciousness any
and all tests of truth and reality, and in so far as
they are applicable at all they do not and cannot
shake the conviction of their subject that they are
elements of real knowledge. One of these tests is to
strive to think the opposite. This the believer can-
not do. Another is conceivability. Of course the
denial is to the man who has the experience in-
conceivable. Another is demonstrability. Here we
have not that which can be demonstrated, but that
which is immediately known. We may apply Des-
cartes* criterion of truth ; since the data are imme-
diately given in consciousness. So also Huxley's,
since it is so clear and distinct it cannot be doubted.
In particular does this knowledge conform to re-
quirement number two in the tests given above.

Several points need emphasis here. One is that
this form of knowledge is empirical in character,

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 26l

not deduced by abstract reasoning. In this sense it
is scientific, and this distinguishes it from all mere
speculative philosophies of religion. The second
point is that as a form of knowledge it is not ex-
planation in terms of physical continuity, but in
terms of personal interaction. It is not merely
subjective, because the religious consciousness knows
an object outside itself as acting upon it in a par-
ticular way. Further, we have not here an ideal
which we impose upon the world and seek to make
real. We have rather a power not ourselves which
makes for righteousness and which acts within the
soul of man.

From the above it is clear that continuity in the
scientific sense is not the only form of explanation
or test of truth. It is rather a highly specialized
and technical method of investigation or form of
knowledge which serves a practical end in scientific
research, but does not apply in the personal realm.
Personal interaction is a source of knowledge as
truly as the transformation of energy.

The question now arises how much is really
included in the above form of knowledge which an-
swers the ends of the religious life? Can we assert
that we know the object in religious experience as
God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and
earth? Professor James concludes, in his " Varieties
of Religious Experience," that we cannot know the
nature of this object in religious experience; that in
the strict sense we must draw the line and say that

2()2 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

beyond the assertion of a supernatural power we
have only overbeliefs. But even so we do have
knowledge in religious experience. And this is the
sole point of our present claim. How much knowl-
edge is another question. It is true we carry on our
intercourse with our religious object in personal
terms, and without this form of intercourse religion
would be meaningless. In this experience apart
from the Christian revelation we do not obtain
a knowledge of the full outline of the character of
God as a loving Father. To the subject of the ex-
perience indeed these truths about God are evident,
but they are based on Christ's revelation of God
and cannot be urged as the Christian urges the
facts of his religious consciousness otherwise. An
opponent might conceivably and in fact does often
actually deny that this religious object is personal
and paternal. This possibility of denial we freely
admit. Nevertheless it remains true that we have
in religious experience actual knowledge of an order
of reality, a form of existence which is totally
diverse from physical nature, an order of reality
objective to man yet capable of interacting with his
spirit and of achieving in and through him definite
moral and spiritual results. This establishes our
claim that religion is knowledge and not merely be-
lief. This fact supplies an empirical warrant for
the personal and spiritual kingdom and the per-
sonal and spiritual form of truth and reality to those
who are dominated by the scientific ideal.

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 263

Now it is this distinctly experiential and empirical
character of the Christian religion which is one of
its chief characteristics. It is this which gives to
it stability as a form of faith, among all classes
from the lowest to the highest. So long as religion
is an ideal or value merely which we impose upon
life, so long as it is based merely upon philosophic
and intellectualistic theories of the world and its
causes, it is subject to all the fluctuations and un-
certainties which we have found incident to the un-
stable equilibrium of philosophy. It remains then a
subject for academic debate with very slight if any
power to grip men in the battle of life. To become
mighty as a real energy in man religion must be
known and felt to be part and parcel of the real and
the true. Its texture must be seen and known as the
same substantial stuff with other forms of reality
and not as a changing mist of desire made irides-
cent by the glamour of human reason. It is this
quality and sense of the real in the Christian life
which imparts to the Christian his deep and abiding
conviction, which gives to him indeed the scien-
tist's loyalty and devotion to the real. To deny
would be to him the renunciation of the most real
factors of his inner experience and would involve
him in a hopeless agnosticism as to his own capacity
to know at all.

We are not forgetting, of course, that in the fore-
going account of the contents of the Christian
experience much has been omitted which, from

264 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the Christian standpoint, should be included. Due
account will be taken of this element when we come
to discuss the authority of Jesus Christ. We re-
mark here by way of anticipation that it is Christ's
revelation which has fixed the form of the experi-
ence. It is he who has first of all enabled the world
to find itself religiously, and especially is it he who
created in man the capacity for assimilating truth
religiously, and who has thus added to man's intel-
lectual powers a vast area of capacity for obtain-
ing a knowledge of ultimate truth.

Meantime we are content with the fact that we
have in Christian experience as immediately given
distinct elements of knowledge. Science would
not be able to gainsay the claim that it is real knowl-
edge on the ground that in that immediately given
experience we have not a knowledge of God as per-
sonal and paternal. For it is the peculiar mark of
the scientific form of knowledge that it omits ex-
planation in terms of the ultimate and final, and con-
fines itself to the phenomenal. Scientifically it is
knowledge primarily because it does so confine it-
self. The scientific objection then that the contents
of the Christian consciousness are not knowledge,
because not exhaustive knowledge of the object, is
a complete surrender of the fundamental scientific
assumptions. Science recognizes energy in nature
and expressly designates the laws of its action as
knowledge without any reference to the ultimate
nature of energy. In like manner, from the scien-

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 265

tific standpoint the energy which in rehgion comes
to man from without and Hfts him to a new moral,
emotional, and intellectual plane, transforming him
into a new man, may be observed and the laws of
its action formulated as knowledge. This is often
overlooked by those who dispute that in religious
experience we have knowledge. They smuggle in
non-scientific assumptions and definitions of knowl-
edge and then offer scientific objections to the
religious form of knowledge.

In the estimation of the present writer no task is
so significant and imperative in dealing with the
subject of religion as that of defining and fixing
clearly for thought the nature and limits of knowl-
edge as given in religious experience. It is this
which will solve most of the riddles which perplex
men regarding the relations between science and
religion.

The most obvious objection to the foregoing ac-
count of religious knowledge will be its non-mathe-
matical or its non-exact character. Scientific men
will urge that alone as knowledge which may be for-
mulated in exact laws like the laws of motion, of
chemistry and gravitation and similar laws of phys-
ical science. We reply that such a definition of
knowledge is arbitrary in the extreme. The defini-
tions of knowledge previously given do not require
it, and to insist upon confining knowledge to such
formulations is absurd. For consider what it im-
plies. It implies that the only reality which exists

266 FREEDOM AND. AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

is that of the mechanical order. The only sphere
in which mathematical exactness in the formulation
of laws is possible is physical nature. If the real
is to be found here only, and if the truth is solely
the statement in mathematical terms of the laws of
this sphere, what becomes of the higher personal
realm? Is it the realm of the non-real and is truth
impossible of attainment there? Are the sciences of
economics and sociology, of psychology, of politics
and civilization — are all these pseudo-sciences? Is
there no apprehension of the real in these spheres?
To ask the question is to answer it. Precisely as
we rise in the scale of being do we pass from the
possibility of stating truth in mechanical terms. In
biology, for example, we cease to deal with mathe-
matical and mechanical truth. Science can predict
an eclipse of the sun to the minute, but when has
science predicted in the same sense the variation of
species? In the human sphere the true and the
real become more intensely and richly true and real
in proportion as the non-mechanical and non-phys-
ical forces have play. Here it is the incalculable
element which gives interest and value to life. The
vision of Plato, the moral heroism of Socrates, the
renunciation of Buddha, all these belong to a sphere
of the real far above the mechanical. So in the
sphere of religion. In the personal and religious
realm it is not the absence of truth, but its presence ;
not the deficiency of the real, but its overflowing
abundance which prevents our stating it as we state

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 26/

the truths of physical nature. We set forth in doc-
trines our interpretations of our rehgious Hfe and
presently we discover that that life is richer and
fuller than we had supposed and we must needs
restate them. These restatements are not sym-
bolic guesses at the nature of religion, nor the an-
nulment of all the past by some sudden scientific
or philosophic insight, as the superficial so often
imagine. They are simply the marks of man's
growth toward the divine ideal and the full com-
prehension of divine truth. Religion has no atoms,
nor molecules, nor ions ; we have not there the uni-
formity of physical nature and the law of physical
causation; we cannot measure by inches or feet, by
pounds or mathematical units. Sometimes men ex-
press a longing for a conceptual apparatus, stand-
ards of reality and value in religion analogous to
those of physical science. The desire is a wise one
with a proper understanding of the nature of re-
ligious truth, but it is as unwise as it is hopeless if
mechanical and mathematical exactness is implied.
For such an apparatus would destroy religion at a
single blow if rigorously applied.

The man whose ideals of truth are those of phys-
ical science merely will of course shrink from a
religious and personal criterion of truth. Its ap-
parent indefiniteness will seem to him to involve
a very great hazard to the very ideal of truth. It
will seem to him to open the way for all kinds of
superstitions and vagaries, a letting-down of the

268 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

bars to every kind of emotional and speculative wild
beast to destroy the tender plants in the scientific
garden. His fear, however, shows how far an
arbitrary and over-narrow conception of truth has
caused him to drift away from human life and in-
terest. Only by the complete cancelation of the
higher interests of the race and the higher forms
of reality can his program for discovering the truth
be carried out. We admit the hazard of course.
Life itself is a marvelous adventure under the eye
of God, the Christian believes. Yet a part of our
task is to achieve a knowledge of the real and a
holy character. The hazard involved in handling
truth in the non-mechanical and personal sense is
the price we must pay for the privilege of living the
life of men. When the dust first stood erect in the
form of man the most dramatic event in the history
of the cosmos took place. For then for the first
time freedom appeared, and it is the presence of
freedom which gives rise to the new order of reality,
the new form of truth, and the hazard of existence.
If, therefore, we insist on defining truth in merely
mechanical and physical terms, we throw away our
birthright of freedom. The religious form of truth
is intimately bound up with the interests of freedom
itself.

Another point needs to be noted here, and that
is the relation of logic to religious truth. Is sci-
ence logical while religion is illogical? Here the
distincton is without pertinency. The difference

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 269

between religion and science is not that one is logic-
al while the other is not. Both are spheres for the
application of logic. Physical continuity and per-
sonal interaction are the members of the scientific
and religious antithesis. The laws of identity and
contradiction, and all laws of syllogistic reasoning
are applicable in both spheres. The grist which we
pour into the logical mill in the two cases is different,
but the grinding process is the same. The logical,
however, is simply a single phase of both kinds of
reality, and there is always more in the reality than
the logic gets out. The most important thing is the
manner of adjusting ourselves to reality or han-
dling it. Therein is the distinction between logic and
life. We aim first to get facts. Life and experi-
ence yield facts. We then reason about the facts.
It is fallacious to substitute logic for experience or
experience for logic. Logic, which is simply a
formal science, may be carried on in midair with
perfect consistency. It can flourish in a vacuum, as
it were, because it does not need the real as material
to work on. We may reason as cogently about non-
existent as about real things. Hence the interests
of truth demand the life adjustment, or in a word,
the experience of the real, in religion as elsewhere,
far more than they demand logical consistency. We
know the real, we have truth, long before we know
logic. There are all stages of the apprehension of
the real, from the infant consciousness to which the
world is a " vast confusion," all the way up to the
s

270 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

trained thinker, to whom definite concepts of fixed
meaning become instruments of syllogistic reason-
ing. It is folly to assert that none of these appre-
hensions of the real is knowledge save the final con-
cepts of fixed meaning. For these even are nearly
all in a state of growth and change from less to
more. The preceding and less definite stages, there-
fore, cannot be read out of court as forms of knowl-
edge. They are simply imperfect stages of knowl-
edge.

We have spoken of the hazard of a non-mathe-
matical and non-exact formulation of truth, and we
have pointed out that freedom is vitally related to
this peculiarity of religious truth. A very little con-
sideration shows this. Suppose religious truth were
mathematically formulated and the nature and limits
and qualities and activities of God were stated with
all the exactness and mathematical clearness of the
law of gravitation. It would imply that man has com-
prehended God as well as apprehended him, that he
has learned God as he has learned the multiplication
table. It would imply further that growth toward a
more adequate conception of God was impossible.
Such formulations of the doctrine of God man's free
spirit would certainly reject. And yet it is nothing
less than this sort of tyranny which is implicit in
the modern demand that theology and religion be
" scientific " in the rigidly mathematical sense —
scientific that is, in the sense in which research into
physical nature is scientific.

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 27I

A God which could be mathematically defined
would thereby cease to be a God at all. His divine
attributes would vanish, and the man who insisted
on such a demonstration of God would instantly
repudiate him as God when so demonstrated. So
also, if our human and personal world could be
reduced to the plane of causation, it would thereby
become a necessitarian world, and all the glow
and inspiration of life would vanish for men who
have been inwardly conscious of freedom. It is
clear, therefore, that the non-mathematical nature
of religious truth is the best safeguard to our
intellect and our conscience, the real guarantee, in
other words, of the free development of person-
ality. The fascination which Christ has for the
men who love freedom has been the conscious-
ness that while he enables men to find the true
religious object, he nevertheless leaves them utterly
free to formulate their interpretations of his truth.
Hence the non-finality of humanly devised creeds.
With each new influx of life from him his people
grasp some new aspect of its meaning and slowly
round out the body of vitalized truth. In him it
was all contained to begin with. He is the religious
horizon of men, and as men rise in the scale of
religious experience and comprehension of religious
truth, the horizon does not disappear; it simply
becomes more extended. Men may as soon tran-
scend all horizon as abolish Christ as the standard
and guide in religious experience.

2^2 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

It is often claimed that scientific truth is less
esoteric and individual and private than religious
truth, and hence has greater claim to the adherence
of men generally. This is a glaring error. The
number of men who personally verify scientific
conclusions is incomparably smaller than the number
who verify religious truths in experience. In a sense
all religious men are experts, while uncounted mil-
lions accept the results and enjoy the fruits of
science who have no first-hand knowledge of science
at all. Closely akin to this is the claim that religion
employs authority while science employs freedom.
Exactly the reverse is true. Or rather we should
say both employ authority, but science in a far more
universal way than religion. How many astron-
omers have for themselves verified all the laws of
astronomy ; how many chemists and physicians those
pertaining to their callings ? Indeed, the verified re-
sults of science are proclaimed universally on the
authority of expert knowledge, while the religious
call invites men to test for themselves the reality
and truth of the religious life.

We have spoken of the non-mathematical charac-
ter of religious truth. Is it to be inferred then that
religious experience is wholly indeterminate? By
no means. The factors of knowledge in that experi-
ence have already shown this clearly, and they are
susceptible of analysis be3^ond the points previously
indicated. These wxre — that we know in religious
experience a power not ourselves, which is spiritual

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 273

and which acts upon us redemptively. How much
further may we discern elements of cognition here?
First, we reply that in Christian experience the
ethical factors call for discrimination into forms
of knowledge. We know ourselves as distinct from
the Object. This marks off the experience from
mysticism, whose ideal is absorption in the Absolute
and the merging of all into pure feeling. Secondly,
we are moved by a sense of wrongness in ourselves
coupled with a sense of weakness and helplessness.
Thirdly, there is the ideal of righteousness distinctly
grasped by the seeking soul. Fourthly, there is the
attitude of conscious penitence, a renunciation of
evil. Fifthly, there is a conscious adjustment to the
higher power under a sense of guilt and need.
Sixthly, there is the act of surrender and of faith.
This from our side. From the side of the Object
there is, first, the definite response ; secondly, the in-
ward peace and sense of fellowship; thirdly, the
reenforced will; fourthly, the morally transformed
life. Of course these are ethical and spiritual fac-
tors of experience, but they are none the less forms
of knowledge as well. They all involve definite
conceptions with fixed meanings and require the
exercise of the powers of analysis and discrimina-
tion. The frequent renewal of the act of adjust-
ment, the repeated response of the Object and the
law of our interaction with it steadily verifies the
first truths of our experience under the stress and
strain of life. The will is a fundamental factor in

274 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

this form of experience, and the knowledge which
arises is conditioned by this action of the will.

The distinction between this form of religious
knowledge and mysticism will be clear from the fore-
going. There is a mystical element in Christian ex-
perience, but mysticism in the historical sense is
pantheistic and non-personal. It aims explicitly to
cancel the distinction between God and man by
absorption of the finite in the infinite, and knowledge
ceases and pure feeling takes its place. Mysticism
thus supplies no motive to conduct ; indeed, it tends
to a paralysis of ethical endeavor and the effort to
achieve personality in the full sense. Christian ex-
perience is carried on in very definite conceptual
forms, while mysticism expressly avoids them.
Christian experience is controlled by definite ethical
and religious ends for practical life and these are
very definitely held. Mysticism flees from the world
of the practical for the life of contemplation. The
interaction of God and man in Christian experience
gives to human personality a distinctness, imparts to
human self -consciousness a clearness, and lifts man
to a conviction of triumph and hope and immor-
tality not to be attained in such measure in any other
way.

We may pause for a moment at this point to
indicate precisely how this knowledge obtained by
us in religious experience is related to the sort of
knowledge given in the application of the princi-
ple of causation in nature. It is not necessary to

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 275

emphasize further the fact that in our Christian ex-
perience we are deahng with data of consciousness
immediately given. As to the principle of causation,
we find in Christian experience that it continues to
operate, but not in the physical sense. In the latter
it is properly defined as transformation of energy
or the quantitative equivalence of antecedent and
consequent. In religious experience, on the con-
trary, there is a cause at work and there are effects
in our consciousness very marked and distinct. But
here there is no transformation of energy in the
physical sense. It is not transformation, but inter-
action of distinct things. Indeed, it is this distinct-
ness between ourselves and the power coming to us
which imparts the chief significance and the chief
elements of value to the experience itself. Here the
Christian experience is in marked contrast to mys-
ticism and pantheism. In these the act of union
with the Object lowers religion to the physical
plane by merging human personality in that object.
That is to say, a principle analogous to that of
physical continuity is substituted for personal inter-
action. Personality and freedom are thus inevi-
tably quenched in these systems and the kingdom
of God lapses into the cosmic movement and loses
its significance. Causation, therefore, must be de-
fined more broadly than in the sense of physical
continuity. Knowledge may and does arise, and
may be stated in another causal form than that
which physical science would make so exclusive as

276 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a criterion of explanation. The interaction of hu-
man persons is the most indisputable form of knowl-
edge we possess apart from the contents of our own
consciousness. Yet these other personalities which
act upon us are, in their real essence, wholly hid
from our senses. The theoretical and speculative
difficulties all exist in their case as in the case of
the divine personality. Our knowledge of them,
however, rests not on theoretical but upon empirical
grounds, our actual experience of interaction with
them, just as in our fellowship with God.

What we have described as knowledge in religion
has been of set purpose limited to what lies clearly
and incontrovertibly in the field of consciousness.
This because our aim has been to keep our claim
strictly within limits which on no ground what-
soever can be gainsaid, limits which yield knowl-
edge in every sense of the word save that of mathe-
matically exact truth. There are, however, several
further statements to be made. One is that the
knowledge which religious experience yields is not
knowledge in the intellectual as distinguished from
the moral and spiritual sense, nor moral and spir-
itual in contradistinction to intellectual knowledge.
The New Testament, and especially the apostle John,
speaks of the knowledge of God as " life eternal." ^
This is sometimes explained as if it were not cog-
nition at all, but simply a form of moral experience.
But this is not the thought of John. He always

2 John 17 : 3.

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 2^7

deals with man's nature as a unit. With him in-
tellect and will, all the parts of our nature, act
together. Both elements of experience are present
in the thought of John when he defines eternal life
as the knowledge of God. It is knowledge in the
full sense due to our total reaction upon God.
Voluntarism does not exclude intellectualism. The
will and the reason act as a unit in our grasp of
religious truth.

Again what we have described as knowledge does
not take into account all that enters into the act
of knowledge, even as thus described. We do ac-
tually know God as personal and as Father in this
experience. But here enters the element of revela-
tion through Jesus Christ. In Matthew 11:27 and
Luke 10 : 2.2 we have Christ's statement of his rela-
tion to the knowledge of the Father. He mediates
that knowledge to us and he alone. We do not ob-
tain it without him. Indeed, all the knowledge we
have previously described is part and parcel of the
process involved in our experience when we come to
know God through Jesus Christ. It is not, there-
fore, as if we were arbitrarily cutting the experience
into two unrelated parts and claiming one part as
knowledge and the remainder as something else, say
rational belief. On the contrary, as Christians we
claim that we do have here more than knowledge
of a power not ourselves which works in us and
produces a regenerate life. The reader will under-
stand our point of view if he keeps in mind the

278 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

fact that our aim has been to show the actuality of
the knowledge in Christian experience. To show
this we may for purposes of analysis look at a part
of that experience and disregard momentarily the
remainder. In experience we get the knowledge as
a whole, but for purposes of thought we may divide
it for the sake of clearness and for argument.

At once the question arises : What is the neces-
sity for thus looking at a part of the experience and
treating that as a thing by itself? Why not retain
all the experience and deal with it as a whole ? The
reply is that we do retain it as a whole in our
final view, and we agree that we may not perma-
nently bisect religious experience. But we must add
that it is not we who run the line through religious
experience, but the scientific student of experience.
Prof. William James, in his " Varieties of Religious
Experience," does exactly this. He goes with the
Christian all the way in recognizing the presence of
a supernatural transforming power in Christian ex-
perience, producing the effects previously outlined.
But beyond this he will not go. When we begin to
assign definite causes we are, he thinks, in the
realm of overbeliefs. In the minimum of knowl-
edge, therefore, which we have claimed in religious
experience, we have had in view the scientific ob-
server of religious experience and not the Christian
himself. The division of experience was for pur-
poses of argument and with the aim of making our
point perfectly clear by claiming the minimum rather

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 279

than the maximum of knowledge. We have also
had in view another result, viz., to show that the
scientific criterion which applies in physical nature
cannot be applied in any thorough-going way in re-
ligious experience. The absence of mathematically
exact modes of defining the nature of the power
acting upon us excludes this form of scientific
explanation. The Christian knows God, the Father,
through Jesus Christ. The scientific observer of
religious experience takes the data of the Chris-
tian consciousness and applies the law of parsimony,
and fails to obtain the full Christian conclusion.

Now this last point is of the utmost importance
for our discussion of authority. For we are deal-
ing in this work, in very large measure, with those
who deny that Christianity is a religion of authority
and who yet seek to cling to Jesus Christ and his
gospel. The full meaning of this statement will
appear farther on.

It will aid us in clarifying the idea of religious
knowledge we here advocate if we observe its rela-
tions to other forms of modern thought. What is
known as the sensation theory of knowledge, accord-
ing to which all our ideas are mere sense-percep-
tions of the external world, of course excludes the
view of religious knowledge we advocate. Later
psychology and philosophy have repudiated sensa-
tionalism. The self-activity of the mind, its power
to unify the data supplied by the senses, and in
general its own originative activities, have been

280 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

clearly and fully recognized. The denial of man's
capacity for a knowledge of God in religious ex-
perience goes with the sensation theory of knowl-
edge.

As is well known, Descartes inaugurated the
modern appeal to consciousness as the source of
our most certain knowledge. His famous cogito,
ergo sum was a purely formal way of announcing
an immediately given fact. Descartes, however, was
controlled by the mathematical view of the nature
of truth and failed to perceive the direct and funda-
mental relation of the consciousness to truth in the
religious sphere. His statement of the ontological
argument for God's existence was philosophic and
rationalistic rather than empirical and experiential
in character. Nevertheless his emphasis of con-
sciousness as the starting-point in the quest for
truth was a momentous advance in the progress of
thought.

In his emphasis upon the practical reason Kant
exhibited an insight and expounded a form of the-
ory which has powerfully influenced all subsequent
thought. But with him also the method of ap-
proach to religious truth was philosophic and ra-
tionalistic rather than empirical and experiential.
In his separation of the noumenal from the phenom-
enal worlds he laid the foundation for agnosticism.
He also opened the way for idealism in his doctrine
of the categories of the understanding and the
nature of reason. In his theoretical dualism Kant

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 281

is thus the most striking exponent in modern times
of the effort to reconcile the two points of view, the
rehgious and the intellectual. His failure was due
to the absence in his thinking of the empirical re-
ligious element. To separate man's nature into non-
communicating compartments and assign religion
to one and knowledge or truth to the other was pre-
destined to fail from the beginning. To make the
'' noumenal " world inaccessible to man, that is, to
remove the Object in religion beyond our reach,
is to undermine religion. Abstractions about God
and postulates about religion do not serve the ends
of religion. Religious experience, as we have
pointed out, supplies the missing link in the theo-
retical attempt of men to harmonize the noumenal
and phenomenal worlds. The truth then is not as
Kant tried to show that there is a phenomenal world
which we may know and another world of " things
in themselves " which we cannot know. The truth
is rather that there is a world of phenomena which
we know in one way, and a world of noumena which
we know in another way. This is only another way
of saying that bare rationalism cannot solve the
problem of being; and this in turn means that the
permanent divorce of philosophy from religious ex-
perience means the indefinite postponement of the
solution of the philosophic problem. The higher
culture of the race henceforth must make room for
the religious life or else doom itself to a permanent
arrest of development.

282 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Schleiermacher saw clearly that the intellectualistic
method of approach could not solve the problems of
the soul or answer the ends of life. He exalted
the feeling of dependence upon the Absolute to the
first place in religion. But his theory was essen-
tially pantheistic in principle, although not com-
pletely so in his own doctrinal exposition of it. His
half-loaf, however, was better than Hegel's rigor-
ous exposition of the Absolute wherein the interests
of life were almost completely sacrificed. The need
was for a union of the emotional and voluntaristic
along with the rational factors of knowledge; that
is to say, the reaction of the whole of our nature
upon the whole of reality. Schleiermacher missed
the essentially Christian point of view because his
whole effort on its theoretical side was to graft
Christianity into pantheism. All his writings betray
the irrepressible conflict between the Christian and
the pantheistic elements. Yet his emphasis upon
the religious consciousness was a factor of unspeak-
able value at the time when he wrote. His em-
phasis of the Christian consciousness as the seat of
authority was an essential part of his general pan-
theistic tendency. In this particular he mistook the
function of the Christian consciousness, although
he brought the study of religion back where it be-
longs, the inner life of the soul. The correlation
of Schleiermacher's view with a true theism is the
direction we must now take.

Ritschl rendered excellent service at certain

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 283

points, but in his exclusion of the mystical element
from religion he produced essentially the contra-
dictions of Kant. In a scientific age wherein the
passion for reality has become with many almost a
form of worship it was vain to erect religious agnos-
ticism into the first place in theological and doc-
trinal constructions.

Pascal and Butler and Coleridge alike had a pro-
found intuition of the nature of the religious life as
contrasted with other forms of activity. With But-
ler the rationalistic and speculative were too con-
trolling for his method to become permanent in the
defense of religion. Pascal and Coleridge per-
ceived clearly the inner and spiritual nature of
religion in contrast with intellectualism. But the-
ories of knowledge had not advanced so far as in
our day. The defects and limitations of deductive
logic, the fallacies of abstract thought, the precarious
nature of absolute philosophies, had not then re-
ceived the exposure of later times. Professor James
stated a great and valuable truth in his famous
essay, " The Will to Believe." The soul has a per-
fect right to assume God's existence and act upon
the assumption. But the " will to believe " may be
exercised in an intellectualistic way merely without
including the vital inner principle of religion as
spiritual union with God. A man may adopt as a
practical proposition the reality of God's existence
and lead a moral life based on the belief. This
is not, however, what Jesus means by religion.

284 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Nothing short of personal union with God in inti-
mate and loving fellowship meets his requirement.

In our own period, especially during the last fifty
or sixty years, the crucial issue has been felt chiefly
in the effort to apply a standard of truth and reality
derived from the study of physical nature to the
personal realm. The solution of the difficulty is
found in the nature of religious truth. We have
found an empirical basis for the religious life in
the knowledge acquired in religious experience.
Thus the scientific demand for reality is met. At
the same time our interaction with the noumenal
world of Kant proves, contrary to his theory, that it
is a knowable world like physical nature. Religion
is thus removed from the realm of mere ideals
and values and postulates into the realm of the
concrete, the actual, and the given. The order of
truth and reality contained therein is in no sense
in conflict with that of the cosmos. It is simply
diverse and supplementary. The union of the two
orders in a common point of view can never take
place under the conception of physical substance. If
any sort of monistic harmony is to arise, it must be
on the higher plane of personality. Practically this
cannot be done in our present state of knowledge.
Meantime we may rest content so far as the in-
terests of religion are concerned in the unity of the
kingdom of God and proceed on the assumption that
the cosmos was made for that and not vice versa.
In his " Creative Evolution," Professor Bergson

RELIGIOUS KiMOWLEDGE 285

seeks to show how matter is '' generated " by mind
or from mind in a most interesting way. He thus
aims to bridge the real chasm encountered in all
monistic philosophies. In our view he does not
prove his main point, but he has indicated the point
at which philosophy must concentrate attention in
order to a final solution of the problem of the rela-
tions of God and man to nature. The Scriptures
anticipated all our philosophies in exalting right-
eousness to the supreme place in the universe, as
Isaiah clearly indicates. The apostle Paul in various
connections shows that the particular form of right-
eousness which is to arise is that of sons of God
for whose full revelation and emancipation the
whole creation groans and travails.

We will not hold then with those who deny relig-
ious knowledge and contend that religion is merely
an ideal adopted by us for practical ends; nor with
those who demand that the Christian religion be
reconstructed in the interest of physical continuity
and thus lose all its most distinctive features; nor
again do we hold with those who would set up a
conflict between faith and knowledge or religion
and science. We hold rather that they are inde-
pendent spheres of experience, each autonomous
within its own limits, having their own criteria of
truth with no possibility of real conflict, and that all
the methods of scientific research are applicable in
the religious sphere save continuity, the character-
istic criterion of physical science.

T

CHAPTER IX

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST

We have now reached the stage where it is in
order to gather up the threads of our discussion and
to indicate their relation to our main purpose, the
reconcihation of the principles of freedom and
authority in religion.

We sum up briefly. First, we have seen that a
purely subjective principle of authority fails in
religion. It is based on pantheism. It is out of
accord with the psychological laws of growth in
knowledge. It is unworkable practically. It is
exposed to the attacks of anti-moral and anti-Chris-
tian philosophy.

We found that criticism leaves us the Jesus of
faith as presented in the Gospels. This means that
for substance of teaching these records stand. By
the Jesus of faith we do not refer to the definitions
of Christ's person by early councils, but simply
the Jesus whom faith holds as Redeemer and Lord
and as unclassifiable with other men.

We have found that continuity in the physical
sense does not and cannot explain the facts of the
religious life where we have to do with free rather
than physical causation.
286

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 287

It has also been shown that the psychology of
religious belief favors the principle of authority
since it shows how definite beliefs arise as we dis-
cover truth and how new redeeming forces enter
consciousness in Christian experience.

We have further seen that rationalism remains
permanently unstable, and hence fails to afford an
adequate support for the moral and spiritual Hfe.

Religion, it has been shown, requires personality
in its object as well as in the subject. Personality
in turn, as it becomes active in religion, illustrates
in a very unique and extraordinary way the neces-
sity of recognizing the presence of will in our
processes of knowing.

It has become clear also that there are elements
of genuine knowledge in religious experience. This
knowledge lifts religion above the plane of merely
rational or logical deduction and the mere '' will
to believe," and supplies a fact-basis for religious
teachings. It is this actual experience of God which
changes the nature of philosophy from a merely de-
ductive process based on data outside experience,
and converts it into a constructive process which
interprets and explains our living experience.

We have pointed out also how the principle of
authority arises in all spheres, as truth is discovered ;
and along with this we have seen how human prog-
ress is dependent upon the principle of authorit3^

Authority then is a universal law. But freedom
also is the goal of man. It too is an undying ideal

288 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

and necessary to human welfare. Now we shall
find, paradoxical as it may seem, that Jesus Christ
while retaining the principle of authority combines
it with the perfect ideal of human freedom. Chris-
tianity is as truly the religion of freedom as it is
the religion of authority.

In order to prepare the way for a statement which
shall include the ideals of freedom and authority,
we must recur for a moment to our discussion of
the nature of religion. There we found that re-
ligion is not only carried on in terms of person-
ality, but that personality in the object is essential
to the very idea of religion. This is due to the fact
that in religion man seeks ends which personal be-
ings alone can bestow. Religion, therefore, re-
quires personality in the object as well as in the sub-
ject. We may now carry this definition of religion
a step higher and say that religion is that reciprocal
relation between the divine and human persons in
which the respective personalities involved in the
relationship receive that consideration and defer-
ence which the nature of personality itself and the
relations between the human and divine persons re-
quire. Or more briefly, just as God must be duly
reverenced in all true worship, so also must man's
personality be respected in every just conception
of religion. Religion then in its true meaning is
that interaction of God and man in which due
tribute is paid to God by man and all the interests
of man are in the highest degree conserved by God.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 289

Among those human interests is freedom and the
highest development of personaHty itself. Here the
true ideal of religion coincides exactly with the ideal
of scientific unbelief in the demand that the rights
of personality be safeguarded at every point. Un-
fortunately for scientific unbelief, however, it cuts
the ground from beneath its own feet when it de-
clines to accept the personal interpretation of the
world and merges all values in the idea of sub-
stance and physical continuity. Human personality
has no secure basis in an impersonal universe. If
the interests of personality are to be duly con-
served, then we must conceive religion as the direct
approach of the soul of man to God, the freedom
of man to approach God, and the equality of men
in their privilege of access to God.

Now this view of religion at once raises the re-
ligious life of man to the plane of other human
rights. It shows it to be as fundamental and vital
as the right of man to freedom of thought or any
other form of human right. From this starting-
point we may at once proceed to eliminate several
forms of authority which have no place in man's
religious life since they thwart or hinder the free
development of his personality.

We begin with all authorities which from the
point of view of intellectualism alone interject
themselves into man's religious life. Religion is
the assertion of the soul's right to find truth
and reality for religious ends just as science and

290 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

philosophy are the assertion of the soul's right to find
truth and reality for intellectual ends. As diverse
but legitimate human interests, we assume that man
is able gradually to realize all his ends, intellectual
as well as religious, and that there is and can be no
real conflict. The right of religion is the soul's
right to be loyal, that is, to find objects of devo-
tion, such as causes, creeds, persons. In religion
loyalty takes on its highest form. No authority of
a purely rationalistic kind can ever find a legitimate
ground for hindering or forbidding the Hfe-adjust-
ment of man wherein he finds a religious object.
Knowledge inevitably arises in greater or less degree
through this religious adjustment, which in turn is
reduced to objective form and expression and
gradually assumes the character of an authority in
man's religious life. When it is argued by believers
that Christianity is the ideal response to man's re-
ligious adjustment, the reply is sometimes made that
this does not prove that Christianity is true. This
reply to the Christian is not well considered or
serious. Surely no man will forsake that which
meets his need perfectly for something less perfect.
Moreover, the objector assumes that nothing can
prove the truth of religion save mathematical
demonstration. As we have seen, such demon-
stration would not merely prove Christianity, it
would also discredit it at the same time. No mathe-
matically demonstrated faith would for a moment
adequately serve our religious needs.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 29I

There are indeed two forms of the criticism of
rehgion which proceeds all the time, the scientific
and the religious. The scientific criticism will re-
move superstitions and false views of nature, but
it will never touch the heart of the religious life.
It is not an authority there at all. The failure, in
such large measure, of the scientific criticism of
Christianity is due to the fact that it has been an
attempt to destroy a form of reality itself. Men
go on their way in their religious life, not because
they are without respect for science, but because
they know that a large part of the scientific criticism,
that is, where it touches the heart of religion, is
irrelevant.

The religious criticism of religion is the severest
of all criticisms of religion. This is one of the
chief contributions of Christianity to the religious
life of the world. Prior to Christianity religions
collided as nations collided. They conquered as the
sword conquered. Or else they Hved side by side
under systems of toleration. Christianity on the
other hand introduced the principle of the religious
criticism of religion. The only authoritative form of
the criticism of religion is the religious form. Only
a better religion will destroy men's confidence in a
false religion. Scientific and philosophic truth un-
attended by better or higher religious truth will
avail nothing. For these are not authorities in re-
ligion at all. The approach of Christianity to
heathen people is no presumption, but an inherent

292 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

right. It involves always vi^hat Paul said to the
Athenians. It is the answer to the religious quest
of all men. It is the interpretation of the religious
life of all men. It is the fulfilment of the religious
ideal for all men. Its approach to other religions,
therefore, implies the acceptance of all truth and
the correction of all error in them. Christianity is
the supreme and only effective criticism, there-
fore, of the religions of mankind. Its criticism,
however, is equally a plea for the religious rights
of mankind. The lordship of Jesus is never under-
stood save as a means to emancipation. His pro-
gram is emancipation, his method is lordship, as we
shall see. His sphere of influence is primarily the
religious sphere. He has quietly and steadily as-
sumed the religious leadership of the race because
of the effectiveness and finality of his religious
criticism of religion.

This leads at once to a question: If science and
philosophy are not authorities in religion, does re-
ligion paralyze reason? Has reason no place in
religion ? The preceding pages have in many forms
anticipated this question and answered it. The
issue as thus stated is a false one. It is not a ques-
tion at all between the activity and the suspension
of the reason. Reason is active in genuine religion.
Christianity preeminently respects reason in man,
because reason is an inalienable element of human
personality. Just because the free development of
personality is a human right, the untrammeled

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 293

exercise of reason is a human right. The imposition
of doctrinal beliefs upon men by fiat merely or by
force would contradict the central truths of Chris-
tianity. Indeed, such imposition of beliefs would
not be religion at all, but something else wholly alien
to the true religious life. For, as we have seen, re-
ligion is the personal interaction of God and man,
and not merely the '' holding for true "of doctrines
nor the imposition of doctrines. We shall see pres-
ently how doctrines arise and what is their function
in religion. Meantime we assert that the free un-
folding of our personality imperatively calls for
freedom of thought on man's part. The reason is
not stifled at all, but set free in religion, most of all
in the Christian religion.

" How then," it is asked, " do you explain the
real and alleged conflict between reason and faith
through the ages ? " The answer is very direct and
simple. Such alleged or real conflict has been due
to an unwarranted arraying of one human right
against another. The right to think and the right
to religion are not conflicting rights at all. They
are equal and coordinate. A man may elect to
ignore religion and exercise his reason alone, just
as he may work with one hand and leave the other
idle, or close one eye for special ends while he
searches the landscape of truth with the other. But
this does not at all affect the right of another man
to work with both hands and open both eyes. Re-
ligious experience is the other hand, the other eye of

294 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

man's spirit. Now the logical mill, reason, grinds
only such grist as is poured into it, no matter which
side of man's nature is in action. If the scientific
eye alone is open and the scientific hand gathers
data and pours them into the logical mill, only a
scientific result will follow, laws and generalizations
about nature. But if the religious eye and hand
are at work, man's spirit reacts upon another sphere
of reality and the reason handles the data of re-
ligion. The reason then is active in either sphere.
Recall our previous conclusions. Religion is not
merely rational belief or simply a general " will to
believe." If so, concrete data would be lacking and
religion would remain merely speculative. Religion
on the contrary is a form of experience, and hence
a form of knowledge. It thus calls for the play of
the reasoning powers precisely as in other forms of
experience, of course guided by the standards of
truth and explanation appropriate to the sphere in
which it works. The " conflict " then is not because
religion is illogical and science and philosophy are
logical. All are logical alike. The alleged conflict
arises only when the spheres of the respective forms
of experience are confounded and the standards or
material of the one are forcibly imposed on the
other. In short, only the unwarranted setting up of
one human right against another can lead to any
real conflict between religion and other forms of
truth. We conclude, then, that as a personal ad-
justment between God and man religion adds a

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 295

hemisphere to the sum total of truth attainable by
man. By recognizing the inalienable right of reason
in the religious sphere as well as the scientific, it
widens the horizon of personality and opens the
door for its development upward and outward in-
comparably beyond the range of ordinary science.
Thus religion is not the enemy of the free develop-
ment of personality, but its sole condition in the
widest sense.

What then are the limits of reason in the religious
sphere? Those limits are precisely analogous to
those in other spheres. Reason does not create
reality anywhere, nor does it set aside any realities
it may encounter. Its function is simply to discover
the realities around it and formulate the results of
its discoveries. Reason, therefore, cannot forcibly
alter anything it discovers in Christ and in Chris-
tianity. These are facts as definite and tangible as
any facts of nature. The reason may manipulate
the Christian material to the utmost in criticism or
otherwise. It may encounter mysteries which it
cannot fathom. If so, it cannot explain them away.
It can only leave them as they stand or accept the
New Testament explanation of them. If, however,
the dominant interest of the quest for the truth is
religious, then the construction of the mysteries will
inevitably take the religious form. They will be
construed in the interest of religion. That is to
say where no other form of human right is vio-
lated, the religious man will interpret reality in the

296 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

interest and from the point of view of religion, be-
cause he seeks the highest development of his per-
sonality and the most complete realization of his
destiny.

We are led next to the place of the Christian con-
sciousness in religion. Is it the final court of appeal
for the Christian ? Here again we must construe the
principle in relation to our fundamental assumption
in which all parties agree, viz., the free development
of personality, and also in relation to the essential
character of religion as adjustment or reciprocal
relation between the human and divine persons.

The usual reply to the plea for Christian con-
sciousness as the norm or standard of judgment
in religion has much force. It runs as follows:
First of all the Christian consciousness varies much.
It varies as to individuals. It is not the same in
the same individual in successive periods of life.
It varies in successive ages of Christian history be-
cause the intellectual forms for conceiving truth
are not uniform. It varies ethically because of
ethical growth, and theologically for a similar rea-
son. Different schools or types of Christians often
hold directly opposing views. The first section of
this book has already shown the failure of a purely
subjective principle in religion. Underlying it is
an essentially pantheistic world-view, which most
effectually cancels rather than affords scope for the
free development of personality.

These are the usual arguments and they carry

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 297

much weight. They may in large measure be
summed up by saying that the Christian conscious-
ness at the present stage of man's rehgious Hfe is
incapable of clear definition because it is so variable
among Christians. Each school considers itself the
ripest, the most advanced type of the Christian con-
sciousness. If this variety itself is postulated as
the ultimate ideal for the religious life, then the
pantheism becomes frank and open and not merely
implicit. All forms of the Christian consciousness
cannot be equally valid, save on the supposition of
an impersonal world-ground, and the cancelation of
the distinction between truth and error. It may be
urged that there is, after all, a minimum of truths
in which all Christians are agreed and that to this
extent the Christian consciousness is authoritative.
But even this minimum when fixed would be too
narrow to serve all the ends of religion. We may
concede the point that the final Christian conscious-
ness will doubtless agree with all the truths of
Christianity. But this would adjourn indefinitely
the question of a norm or authoritative standard.
Meantime the specific problem and task of Chris-
tianity is to train men to a common consciousness
by means of a norm or standard not yet fully as-
similated by them. How can we transcend our
present attainments unless there is something ex-
ternal to us toward which we may grow?

We admit fully the great value of the modern
emphasis upon the Christian consciousness. The

298 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

contents of that consciousness, as we have seen,
are of very great significance for the Christian re-
hgion, and indeed constitute our chief barrier to
rationaHsm in Christian thought. The Christian
consciousness is the result of the direct relation of
the soul to God and of freedom in the soul's ap-
proach to God. But theology has not yet adequately
construed the Christian consciousness in relation to
religious truth.

There are several radical defects in the view
which makes the Christian consciousness the stand-
ard of judgment in religion. One of these is that
it is based on a false view of religious truth bor-
rowed from physical science. It is the same subtle
foe which we have traced in so many forms in our
preceding discussion. It is assumed that the same
principle of explanation is needed for the purposes
of religion as for physical science. So long as you
can apply the criterion of continuity or descriptive
consistency you have all the conditions for physical
science. Actually given phenomena are the material
of physical science. This is the case in religion also.
But religion has a transcendent element essential to
its very life, and the data are different in kind from
those of physics. Because of sin and finite limita-
tions, consciousness never grasps all of the religious
Object. The contents of consciousness at any given
time in the individual or the group, therefore, can
never be the final interpretation of the meaning of
religion, especially of the Christian religion. Of

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 299

course the Christian consciousness is the conven-
tional standard, but religion must have more than a
conventional standard. If we are to make moral
and spiritual progress, we must move toward some-
thing higher than all our present attainments.

The theory also overlooks a subtle danger, viz.,
that often we may place to the credit of conscious-
ness simply our inferences from the contents of con-
sciousness. The data of consciousness must be
very sharply defined if we are to raise conscious-
ness to the first place for the final adjudication of
religious truth.

Again the view ignores the meaning of the recip-
rocal relation between subject and object in religion.
Two consciousnesses are involved in the religious
relation, God's and man's. We are scarcely war-
ranted in the claim that the human side of the rela-
tionship is determinative. Of course I am here
speaking as a Christian and assuming a revelation
of God in and through Christ. Christianity means
that God has become active in an especial manner
in the religious life of man, and that he has made
himself known objectively to us as well as in our
consciousness. It is not then a tenable view that in
a reciprocal relationship, in which two conscious-
nesses interact, man's and God's, the human con-
sciousness is the seat of authority. It is here that
the unique place of Jesus Christ appears. God's
consciousness apart from Christ never becomes a
sufficiently definite and compelling idea to serve

300 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

fully man's religious needs. Human consciousness
of God apart from Christ never becomes sufficiently
clear for the highest effectiveness in religion. Jesus
Christ objectifies God's consciousness and creates
the Christian consciousness.

We conclude then that if the free development of
personality is the ideal for man, and if religion is
the reciprocal interaction of God and man, the Chris-
tian consciousness cannot be the norm and standard
of religious truth. It is too narrow at any par-
ticular stage of human growth and becomes a burden
even when self-imposed if it is held in a manner
which bars the way to the heights beyond present
attainment. One of the dearest rights of the soul
is the privilege of transcending present attainments.
Unless some way is provided for us to pass beyond
the errors and infirmities of an imperfectly trained
present consciousness; unless, in other words, we
recognize the problem of error and sin in all our
relative stages of Christian consciousness, we defeat
the chief end of the Christian caUing. Of course
our present attainments limit our testimony if we
are sincere. We can only speak what God has
taught us. But unless I can carry with me always
a sense of the non-finality and insufficiency of my
present Christian consciousness, I am in sad case.
My personality is thwarted in its upward strivings
save on the view that my religious Object, God,
has much more to show me and that I am free to
pursue my path upward to the greatest heights.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 3OI

What of the authority of creeds and confessions
of faith? Do they foster man's rights and conduce
to the free development of his personality in re-
ligion ? Creeds have been so misused and abused in
the history of Christianity that many have regarded
them as the sum of evils for man's religious life.
Here again the freedom of personality and the per-
sonal intercourse involved in religion furnish the
means for estimating the function and value of
creeds. Creeds arise as the effort of religious men
to interpret and reduce to scientific form the con-
tents of revelation and of Christian experience.
They also come into existence as a means of de-
fending the faith against hostile influences. The
early ecumenical creeds arose as a reaction against
agnosticism. So also creeds are formed for pur-
poses of Christian unity and as a means of propa-
gating the faith. In all these respects the forma-
tion and promulgation of creeds are normal ex-
pressions of the religious rights of men. In all
these ways creeds serve rather than hinder the
development of personality. Any authority, there-
fore, which prohibits the formulation of creeds as
man's free expression and confession of religious
belief is a tyranny to be resisted.

It is equally true, however, that the imposition of
creeds by authority is also a form of tyranny to be
resisted. The free acceptance of religious beliefs is
the correlative of their free formulation. The peril
of creeds is in the tendency to substitute them for
u

302 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

life. They become barriers to the free development
of personality in religion whenever the holding of
them as true, and the propagation of them as mere
intellectual, beliefs take the place of the free inter-
course of God and man in religion. This, perhaps,
is the chief peril of creeds in our time. The value
of creeds then is seen in man's freedom to make
them, freedom to propagate them, freedom to tran-
scend them by better creeds, and, above all, freedom
to keep them subordinate to life. The tyranny in-
cident to creeds is seen in the effort to prevent
others from making them, the imposition of them by
authority, and the substitution of form.ulated creeds
for spiritual life through fellowship with God.

It seems scarcely necessary for us to discuss at
length the ecclesiastical, priestly, and sacramental
forms of authority in religion. The reader has al-
ready perceived that we reject all of them in so far
as they interfere with the free intercourse of the
soul with God. Ecclesiastical authority legislates
for men in a sphere where legislative authority
has no place or function. Priestly authority cancels
the very conception of religion in its Christian form
where all believers are priests because of the free
access of all to God by faith. All of these forms
of authority cancel religion to a greater or less ex-
tent and are unwarranted barriers to man's free
progess in the religious life.^

^ See the author's work, entitled " The Axioms of Religion," for
full discussion of the peril of ecclesiastical and hierarchical forms
of authority in religion, Chap. IV, VII, and VIII.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 303

There remains then the Bible as a possible source
of authority in religion. Is it the final authority for
man's religious life? We defer the answer to this
question until we have discussed a prior question
with which it is intimately bound up, and that is
the authority of Jesus Christ. The authority of
the Bible is a burning question for Christians of to-
day. Protestantism is being assailed from many
quarters as sharing the Roman Catholic principle of
authority in its doctrine as to the Bible. A part of
the object of this book is to indicate the true Prot-
estant view and to show how current attacks on the
line indicated wholly misconceive the Protestant
principle of authority, and miss, therefore, the Prot-
estant conception of freedom. The true place of the
Bible in man's religious life, that required by the
logic of the Protestant principle, and that actually
held by the Reformers themselves and a consider-
able part of the Protestant world since, is distinctly
not that which is alleged by men like Sabatier. This
school of thought has failed to grasp accurately the
point of view of the men of the Reformation, and
hence has failed to understand their doctrine of
the Scriptures. This we shall make clear as we
proceed.

The men who inveigh against the Protestant
conception of Scripture commit themselves to a
principle which occasions many of them great em-
barrassment. I refer especially to those who wish
somehow to accord to Jesus Christ spiritual lord-

304 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ship in man's religious life. Sharing the demand
for a rigidly " scientific " theology, these thinkers
who are also Christians find themselves unable to
provide any definite or satisfactory place for Jesus
in their scheme of things. They are unwilling to
class him with other great religious leaders since,
to them, he obviously transcends all these in a
unique manner. As olDJective to the soul and his-
torical in the first instance, he comes to men from
without. And yet if, as coming from without, he is
accepted as an authority in religion, the much repro-
bated and wholly untenable Roman Catholic prin-
ciple thereby returns to torment them. The result
is that one wing of these opponents of authority
follow their logic and science to the only legitimate
outcome and take Jesus as simply one among the re-
ligious aristocrats of history and fall back on the
subjective principle entirely. The other wing, with
a more pronounced religious interest, adopt some
euphemism for the hated word authority and smug-
gle it in thus disguised, while proceeding to define
the religious life of the Christian as if the principle
of authority were wholly absent. We have seen
the operation of this tendency in Sabatier and
others. The soul is made the " seat " of authority
with a greater or less degree of indefiniteness as to
the meaning of " seat." With a writer like Mar-
tineau there is no inconsistency in this. The parts
of his general view may be made to hold together
because he frankly rejects Christ as sustaining any

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 305

such authoritative relation to the religious life of
man as evangelical Christianity has held. Not so,
however, with the other group who seek to abolish
authority and yet retain Christ. It is with these
that our discussion now has to do. There are at
least four respects in which their thought is unclear
and their general scheme inconsistent, (i) They
fail to grasp accurately and apply rigidly the scien-
tific criterion which they insist upon for theology.
(2) They fail to grasp the Christian and Protestant
conception of authority. (3) They fail to appreciate
the Christian ideal of religion itself as involving the
free development of human personality in fellow-
ship with God. (4) They fail in their definition of
Christ's relation to religion.

All these assertions will be justified as we pro-
ceed, although we shall not pursue formally the
order in which we have stated them. First of all
let us make clear the scientific method insisted upon.
In their assumptions and denials the school of theo-
logians we are dealing with stands for the method
of " rigor and vigor " in the application of the
scientific criterion to theology. A non-scientific
theology is untenable they urge. For them conti-
nuity is the scientific criterion implicitly or explicitly
kept in the mind's eye. It is this which has given
emphasis to the idea of the divine immanence; to
the tendency to reduce the biblical miracles to a
minimum or eliminate them entirely; to the many
compromises or evasions in explaining the resur-

306 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

rection of Christ ; and in general to the whole move-
ment against the supernatural in Christ's person
and work. Continuity is the scientific criterion of
truth and explanation which alone has significance
against these aspects of Christianity for which re-
construction has been sought. All the other methods
and ideals of science are applicable in Christianity as
elsewhere.

In accordance, then, with their rigidly scientific
point of view, Christianity is reduced to what we
shall call a minimum gospel. The reader is referred
to the summary of the view given elsewhere in our
discussion of Sabatier and kindred writers. In
brief, they confine the gospel to our religious in-
tuitions. God is our Father who cares for us. We
have a sense of sonship. We find in him forgive-
ness of sins and justification, and the hope of eternal
life springs up in our hearts. Now Christ is the
mediator of this knowledge of God to us because he
enjoyed perfect fellowship with God. As we re-
produce in ourselves Christ's consciousness, we real-
ize his blessedness and enter into fellowship with
God. This is the meaning of redemption. Christ
never, however, transcends the purely human. We
do not worship Christ in any sense. All this is ex-
plicit and clear in the writers named.

The view is not a satisfactory one from the point
of view of the scientific criterion. It is assumed
that in and through Christ we really know God as
personal and paternal. But assuredly we do not

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 307

know him as thus demonstrated in the scientific
sense. The scientific demand is for knowledge
arising in a particular way. The older arguments
for God's existence, the cosmological and teleo-
logical and the ontological, are rejected because they
nowhere show an actual causal nexus between the ef-
fect and the cause. We pursue an endless regress
of effects and causes, but never rise above the causal
chain. Or we may strive to deduce God from the
necessary laws of thought, claiming that thought
finds no resting-place until it rests in God, that God
is the presupposition of all thought or reason. Or
we may endeavor to prove him from will by showing
that the uncaused energy which must lie in the
background of all physical and derived energy is the
energy of a personal will. But science as such is
not convinced and cannot be convinced by such argu-
ments, since none of them yields the form of ex-
planation which science demands. All of them come
short of explanation in terms of continuity. As a
part of the law of continuity, science insists that we
never know wholes, but only parts. All scientific
knowledge then is accurately defined knowledge of
parts and only of parts.

If this is true, it follows clearly that a purely
human Jesus does not reveal God to men. Such a
Jesus has not capacity to be the organ of a com-
plete divine revelation. He has only the prophet's
vision, and all visions of prophets are partial.
None of them is exhaustive. Jesus thus becomes a

308 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

human searcher for God rather than a divine reveal-
er of God. If God is to reveal himself, it is needful
that he take the initiative and come to man, and
not remain aloof to be found to a greater or less
extent by man. If religion is to be completed, both
sides of the relationship, the divine as well as the
human, must come into articulate expression. A
Jesus v^ho knov^^s only the effects of a superior
povirer in his consciousness as man, v^ho interprets
them in the human and personal terms of his own
inner life and needs, may indeed give the correct
version of the power from without which works in
and upon him. But the critical student of science
does not hesitate and in the past has not hesitated to
deny the final validity of even Christ's interpre-
tation of religious experience. Everything over and
above what we find in consciousness itself is over-
belief from his standpoint. Thus it is clear that
if we assume a simply human consciousness and
capacity for Jesus in the ordinary scientific way and
in order to a scientific theology, then we have no
right to claim that we know God as paternal and
personal and redemptive in and through Christ. For
the scientific theologian, therefore, who adopts the
method of " rigor and vigor " with his principle of
continuity there is no knowledge of God in any
such sense and degree as is claimed by them. They
smuggle it into their systems without scientific jus-
tification. Their proper place is with Ritschl, who
quite consistently held that an agnostic attitude

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 309

toward the ultimate truths of reHgion is the only
scientifically justifiable one. But religious agnosti-
cism in this radical sense is rapidly becoming an anti-
quated point of view for theology. It is wholly
inadequate for the purposes of religion. Religion
requires reality in its object as imperiously as science
demands it.

Here it will be insisted that the sinlessness of
Jesus is the basis of our confidence in the truth of
his revelation of God. Of course we concede his
sinlessness, but we deny the sufficiency of the force
of the argument. Sinlessness in a man does not
enlarge capacity above the human. Sinlessness gives
no inclusive knowledge of God. But first and
chiefly sinlessness itself is a breach of continuity.
The transcendence of Christ's person above the
human and his sinlessness are parts of a whole;
they are of a piece according to the New Testament
representations. The testimony for the one is as
solidly based as that for the other, as we have seen.
But even if the transcendence is denied and the sin-
lessness maintained, the principle of continuity is
broken upon that fact. How humanity has risen
to the plane of sinlessness in one member of it while
submerged in evil in all the antecedents and con-
sequents continuity cannot explain. Theology fails
at this point also to be scientific according to the
method of " rigor and vigor " with the principle of
continuity. It does not and cannot explain a sinless
Jesus. The failure then is twofold: First, we fail

310 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

to get God, the Father, through a sinless Christ,
on the principle of continuity ; and secondly, we fail
to get a sinless Christ thus.

There is more to be said as to the sinlessness
of Christ in relation to human redemption. The
school of thought we are now dealing with holds
to Christ's redemptive function in the sense in-
dicated. But a sinless human Christ is both too
far from us and too near us to act as our redeemer
from sin. Such a Christ is too far from us in his
sinlessness. His sinlessness puts him in a class by
himself apart from us. The conditions of that sin-
lessness are beyond our reach. His friendliness
toward sinners does not avail, for he cannot impart
his sinlessness to them or remove their sense of
guilt. As human he is too near us to help us.
Redemption calls for a divine power grasping and
lifting us.

We find in consequence of the situation we have
just outlined that writers on theology in our day
follow one or another of the following courses:
(i) If they face squarely and consistently the task
which a reconstruction of theology on the principle
of continuity demands, they nearly always abandon
everything distinctive in the religion of the New
Testament and cancel the interests of personality in
the interests of the cosmos and physical causation.
(2) Or they abandon the effort to arrive at truth in
religion and seek to maintain religion on an agnos-
tic basis. (3) Or they compromise both the religious

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 3 II

and scientific principles and set up systems which
come short of both ideals. (4) Or in the fourth place
they recognize that in religion and physical science
we are dealing with diverse criteria of truth and
explanation as well as radically diverse forms of
reality. It must be abundantly clear to the reader
that the last view is that which we advocate.

We pause here to consider an example of the
compromise view. Professor Herrmann, in his
treatise ** The Communion of the Christian with
God," presents one of the most attractive forms of
it. We must of course state it briefly and in its
essential points only. It is as follows: We cannot
know God through a teaching, but only through a
fact. Faith thus includes knowledge. The fact
essential to faith is the appearance of Jesus in his-
tory. Jesus alone makes it certain that God com-
munes with us. He regenerates us by coming to us
as the power of God in us transforming us morally."
In short, Jesus is as God to us and he is such be-
cause he is God, revealed not in a teaching, but in
a person, who was a fact of history. This is, of
course, in line with Paul and the Epistles of the
New Testament so far as it goes. God revealed
in a person, God acting on us through a person,
personalized grace, this is the New Testament teach-
ing. The law zvas given, and grace and truth came.
Observe further, however, some of Herrmann's de-
nials. We do not know that Christ rose from the

*" Communion with God," pp. 225, 226, 64, 65, 63, 282f.

312 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

dead, since this is merely the report of others. If
we believe he lives and rules it is simply an in-
ference. We have no ground for asserting that
Christ now lives and communes with us.^

How then does this revelation, this power of God
in a person, reach us ? Herrmann replies that faith
in Christ is not dependent upon a historical judg-
ment. The Gospel histories are thus dependent, since
criticism settles many questions regarding them.
We reach Christ in another way. It is through the
portrait of Jesus given in the Gospels. When we
study that portrait, gaze upon it, yield ourselves to
it, we know it is a true portrait of an actual his-
toric Christ, because of the power of God to redeem
which it brings to us.* So far as Christ is an object
of historical criticism he is not an object of faith.^
Yet we know of his actual existence in the past
through the awakening power of his portrait.

Now it is not difficult to see the contradictions in
Herrmann's view. God can only be known through
a personal medium, not through a teaching or rec-
ord. Yet there is no existing personal medium
through whom God reaches us, whom we call Christ.
All we have Is a literary portrait of such a medium
who once existed. It is asserted that a personal
medium is necessary, and then it is asserted that a
portrait alone is necessary. Next it is asserted
that faith is not dependent on a historical judgment,

^ " Communion with God," pp. 290-292.

* " Communion with God," pp. 67, 70, T2, 283, 284.

5 P. 70.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 3I3

and at once we are referred to a portrait to be found
imbedded only in a historical record. Herrmann,
unlike most Ritschlians, has a strongly mystical
vein, a sense of the divine presence and power.
God acts upon him through Christ's portrait exactly
as if Christ were alive and acting upon him as he
did upon those in the New Testament period.
Herrmann seeks in vain to combine the idea that
grace comes only through a person, with the con-
tradictory idea that grace comes through a portrait.
Personalized grace is the New Testament teach-
ing everywhere. Paul expounds the gospel on this
basis throughout his Epistles. God reaches men
through the personal, living, and present Christ after
as well as before his death and resurrection. He is
thus consistent with himself and the rest of the
New Testament. Herrmann's failure is due to an
unfruitful effort to apply a scientific criterion in
a sphere where it does not belong. Even then he
does not escape the principle of authority, since
the portrait of Jesus remains the authoritative
source and guide in religion.

It is not surprising that Ritschlians tend not to
remain consistently Ritschlian, but to go forward
or backward. The imperious demand of their scien-
tific principle calls for less and the urgency of the
religious need calls for much more than their
standpoint yields. The present situation, which they
have largely created, cannot be clarified without a
readjustment of view as to how science and religion

314 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

are related to each other. If Jesus is redeemer we
must grant to him the attributes and functions of
redeemer. Such a Christ alone suffices for the re-
ligious need and as a religious authority.

Since the minimum Christ of the minimum gos-
pel fails to yield a principle of authority which
allows for the free development of our personality ;
since the sainthood of Jesus alone is incompatible
with the burden of redemption which men have im-
posed upon him, we proceed to interpret his person
and his authority in other and larger terms. We
must not forget that religion is the communion of
God and man under such conditions that due rever-
ence is paid to God and due provision made for
man's free spirit, and that authority in religion must
take account of both sides of the religious relation-
ship.

We observe first then that Jesus Christ is the true
revelation of God. The problem and the despair of
philosophy before Christ was to find God. The
problem and despair of religion before Christ was
to find God. There were insights intellectual and
spiritual, but no commanding and arresting revela-
tion of God or discovery of God had appeared. This
is the distinctive Christian truth. Before Christ
men sought God if haply they might find him. In
Christ God was seeking men. Here was revelation
from the divine side of the religious relation. It
was not God speaking to another man simply who
in turn spoke to us. It was God himself objectify-

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 315

ing himself in a human Hfe, visuaHzing himself to
us, emerging from the obscurity of the infinite into
distinct form and approaching man for his redemp-
tion. Of course men may deny a priori the pos-
sibility of an incarnation, but in so doing they imply
the impossibility of any effective personal form of
revelation of God to men. Incarnation is the high-
est possible form of divine revelation to us since
human personality is the highest created form of
existence known to us. Nature and all between
nature and man are inadequate as media for the
expression of personality.

Now the New Testament sets forth in the life and
work of Jesus the principle of revelation and re-
demption through personalized grace; not, be it
observed, grace personalized for a time and then
enshrined in a record merely, but grace permanently
personalized, first in the earthly, and later in the
risen and ascended and reigning Christ. This work
is not primarily an apologetic, but rather an exposi-
tion of the unitary Christian principle of freedom
and authority. Hence we omit many things appro-
priate in a defense of Christianity. We may remark
in passing, however, that the finality of the syn-
thesis which Christianity gives of the principle of
freedom and authority is itself no mean factor in
an apologetic for Christianity.

Jesus Christ then is the " seat " of authority in
religion. In him God sits, or rather in and through
him God acts for our redemption. This is the New

3l6 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Testament teaching throughout. Now there are no
terms in which the highest ideal of rehgious au-
thority may be set forth, no ideal conditions for the
protection and free unfolding of human person-
ality which are not personally embodied in Jesus
Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of men. His
task begins precisely where that of physical science
ends. He alone is Master in dealing with the in-
tractable residues of science which we have pre-
viously discussed. He reveals God and brings life
and immortality to light. In short, he is the demon-
stration under historical conditions of two great
realities : First, that God and immortality are facts ;
and secondly, that continuity is not the ultimate
principle of the universe. Thus he opens to men
a sphere of the real into which they escape from
the prison-house of the cosmos.

In opening up this new sphere of reality for man
Jesus also puts an end to the unstable equilibrium
of philosophy which we have seen is inherent in in-
tellectualism as such. He does this not by an arbi-
trary arrest of thought, but simply by supplying new
material for thought and by creating a new world of
experience, and showing that only a total reaction
of our nature, will as well as reason, upon ultimate
reality, yields the whole truth. In all this we per-
ceive clearly the relation of Jesus to the free un-
folding of personality. He alone vindicates the
assumptions which underlie the conception of per-
sonaHty and freedom. Science and philosophy have

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 317

often unwisely disparaged Christ because of his
alleged hostility to the free unfolding of our per-
sonal life. Yet science never gives us more than
a phenomenal personality and is helpless to establish
it on its deeper grounds. Philosophy can only give
us a group of hypotheses, some of which indeed
imply the grounds of our personal life, but others
with equal vigor deny them. Jesus alone is the
true champion of the personal life and its free
development, and this not in what he claims merely,
but in what he achieves and in achieving reveals as
to God and man. The cosmos with its relentless
law of continuity forever impends, ready to crush
us or quench our personal life until Jesus eman-
cipates us into the glorious liberty of the children
of God. He creates the kingdom of freedom over
against the necessitarian reign of law in the cosmos.

It is clear also how Jesus sets us free from other
forms of illegitimate authority in religion. All ec-
clesiastical or institutional, sacramental or priestly
forms of authority which in any degree interfere
with the direct and free intercourse of man with
God in Christ, are thereby adjudged unworthy of
place in man's religious life.'

In yet another way Jesus serves the ends and
provides for the free unfolding of personality. He
saves us from mysticism. This is a form of bond-
age which now and then modern scientific students
of religion insist upon. Embarrassed by the attempt
to apply in a thorough-going way the scientific prin-
V

3l8 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

ciple, and yet feeling deeply the religious need, they
fly to mysticism as a refuge in time of storm. But
mysticism represses and paralyzes instead of free-
ing and unfolding the personal life. The mystical
view, therefore, escapes embarrassment only by can-
celing the factors of the real in personal charac-
ter. Absorption in the Infinite, as proposed by
mysticism, is only another form of statement for
absorption in the cosmos which materialism pro-
poses. Jesus, on the contrary, opens up to man
an infinite vista for the free development of his
personality. Jesus brings God near to men in their
religious life, and thus bridges the chasm which
deism creates. Yet in bringing God into our life
he leaves our total personality inviolate. The mys-
tical and the personal thus blend in a complete
harmony.

We may note next the extent of the authority of
Jesus as the revealer of God and the founder of
the kingdom of God on earth. We require only a
very brief statement, since our theme does not deal
so much with the practical bearings of the authority
of Christ in the kingdom of God as with the prin-
ciple of authority. Jesus revealed God to men. He
declared what God is and how he feels toward men,
God's purpose of redemption for men, and the com-
ing of God's kingdom on earth.^ He also declared
himself to be the sole organ or medium of the
saving revelation of God to men.'^ He declared the

« Matthew 5 to 7; Mark i : 15- 'Luke 10 : 21-24.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 319

worth of man in God's sight and the destiny of
.men.® He declared himself to be the final Judge
'of men ; the Arbiter of their eternal destiny.*^ These
points have already been brought out in our dis-
cussion of the modern criticism of the Gospels and
we need not dwell upon them here.^^

There are certain qualities which are self -evi-
dently required in any form of religious authority
which shall allow play for human freedom and the
unconstrained development of the personal life.
These are as follows: (i) Moral loftiness. Herr-
mann is right in saying that our souls would revolt
at any religious power which might seek to assert
its authority over us unless in it we recognize the
presence of eternal moral law. (2) Universality.
The authority must be in its essential character
applicable to humanity as such regardless of race,
climate, civilization, or stage of moral or mental
development. (3) Nearness. It must not be a re-
mote and inaccessible authority, but close to us and
available practically in time of need. (4) Benignity.
It cannot use compulsion. There must be in it no
element of harshness or arbitrariness. ( 5 ) Winsome-
ness. This is an aspect of the preceding mark.
Yet a benign power might conceivably be unattract-
ive, whereas in the highest form of religion win-
someness is essential to the free development of our

8 Luke 1 5.
» Matthew 25 : 31 f.

10 See also the author's work, " Why is Christianity True?" Chap.
VII to XV.

320 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

personality. (6) Tangibility. By this is meant such
definiteness of outline and concreteness as to bring
it into human life as an actual force for guidance
and moral power. (7) Inspirational value. It must
so touch us as to awaken the slumbering possi-
bilities within us and lead us out of ourselves to
higher attainments. (8) Majesty and dignity. It
must command us as well as appeal to us. It must
awaken our respect and reverence as well as our
admiration. It must evoke obedience as well as
praise. (9) Dynamic power. This means that the
authority must not be static or stereotyped. It must
possess an inner wealth, a breadth and range which
will allow for all the stages of human growth.
Moreover, it must be vital in the sense that its corre-
spondence with the worshiper is not broken at any
stage, but is capable of being maintained always in
living union with him. (10) Finality. Of course,
any form of religious authority which can be tran-
scended by the progress of thought or the exi-
gencies of the moral and spiritual life would thereby
lose its significance and value for men. (11) We
may add as a further mark of the ideal religious
authority that it will duly respect all other legitimate
forms of authority. There are many lower forms
of authority in the family and State, and in society
generally.

These marks of the ideal religious authority will
scarcely be gainsaid by any. Indeed, an authority
which possesses these marks is free from every

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 32I

objection which can possibly be urged against the
principle of authority. One chief objection is the
stereotyping of authorities as in creeds and eccle-
siasticisms and hierarchies. The objection is valid.
No stereotyped form of authority can permanently
serve man's religious life, since he outgrows each
of them in turn. Life is more than the stereotyped
form and through its inherent force bursts the shell
asunder. But in our ideal as outlined the authority
is dynamic, and is so related to the religious man
that it keeps pace with his progress. Stereotyped
authorities, then, in so far as they have any justi-
fication at all, are all relative and temporary.

Another chief objection to authority in religion is
arbitrariness and disregard of personal and indi-
vidual traits. But if the authority is benign and
universal, this objection loses its force. Another
objection to authority in religion is that it represses
rather than develops the will and personality. But
an authority which is winsome and inspirational
does nothing of the kind. In such an authority the
soul recognizes the object of its own strivings and
the realization of its own ends. There can certainly
be no tyranny in this form of authority. Again,
a religious authority may be near and tangible
and yet lacking in moral elevation and dignity;
or it may possess the latter quality and remain re-
mote. But if it possesses all four of these, the
objection ceases to have point. Externality is
also urged as a fatal objection to the principle of

2^22 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

authority in religion. But externality per se cannot
be a valid objection save on the assumption that
there is nothing true or real outside of man, or that
he has already assimilated all that is external to
him. The first assumption lands him in an absurd
solipsism, the second converts him into a god. Ex-
ternality can only be an objection in religious au-
thority when it is incongruous with man's inner life
or repressive of his true development. When the
external authority simply vocalizes the eternal it
ceases to be a bar to the realization of human
destiny and becomes instead a beacon-light for
man's guidance and deliverance. Men who admire
Jesus as a moral teacher, but reject him as the final
authority in religion, are quite consistent in their
thinking, but shut themselves of¥ from any adequate
knowledge of God. Those who, on the other hand,
strive to retain Christ as authority and leave him on
the human plane cut the ground from beneath their
own feet. For in religion no merely human au-
thority is lawful in the full sense, nor can it be
final. Only a Christ who stands above the human
plane can be a legitimate authority in religion.

Now it is already obvious to the reader that in
the preceding outline of the ideal religious authority
we have set it forth in three groups of qualities, the
divine, the human, and the personal, although of
course the latter is implied in both the former. Ulti-
mately, of course, it goes without saying, God is
the supreme authority in religion. But as we have

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 323

pointed out in manifold ways, the idea of God is
an exceedingly variable and unsatisfactory one until
revealed to us in human form. Philosophy never
gets beyond an unstable equilibrium of thought, and
religious subjectivism never gets beyond an unstable
equilibrium of feeling. The race, therefore, apart
from revelation, can only flounder or sprawl in its
moral and religious life until the moral and religious
sanctions are fixed by the coming of the divine into
the human life in a determinate way. Jesus Christ,
then, and he alone fulfils all the requirements of an
authority in religion. By virtue of his historical
character, and his externality and objectivity to us,
he is essentially an authority, and his religion is in-
herently a religion of authority. But by virtue of
his method of approach to men, his intimacy and
nearness, his deference to human personality, his
dynamic quality in human life, his religion is also
preeminently the religion of the Spirit. Thus
Sabatier's antithesis between religions of authority
and the religion of the Spirit ceases to have sig-
nificance in the highest range of religion, that of
Jesus Christ.

We recur here to what was said about religious
knowledge in the last chapter. We found that in
religious experience there was a definite content
of knowledge. The scientific student of religious
experience recognizes and defines this knowledge, as
in the " Varieties of Religious Experience " by
Professor James, and by others. Certain results in

324 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

consciousness are produced by a power outside of
consciousness. Thus we concluded that reHgion is
a form of knowledge based on facts of experience
and not merely rational beliefs deduced from what
is observed outside of experience. But at this point
ordinary scientific explanation stops. The power
which produces the inner experience remains un-
known.

Why then may we not leave the matter thus and
give up all attempts to explain the object of wor-
ship? We reply, because this degree of knowledge
by itself is inadequate for the religious life. Re-
ligion would remain too vague for practical pur-
poses. Besides this it includes only half the truth
about religion. We hold further that this arrest of
thought is due to the failure of physical continuity
only and not to the failure of explanation in per-
sonal terms. Here we have not physical but free
causation.

*' Very well then," it may be said, '' what you
propose is to select one out of a number of possible
causes of religious experience and declare that it is
a personal God, after the manner of rationalism in
deducing world- views generally." Not at all, we
reply. We begin with the actually given historical
Jesus of the New Testament and his revelation of
God. It is not the method of speculative philosophy
at all. Nor is it the method of Herrmann, who
seeks to find in a portrait the divine energy and re-
demptive grace of a personal revelation of God.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 325

Beginning then with the historical Jesus of the
New Testament, we find that he interprets our re-
ligious experience for us. He tells us what it means.
Not only so; he prescribes the conditions for its
realization. He goes even further. He claims
to originate that experience in us, and after it is
originated he maintains our religious life. He de-
clared himself to be the organ of the divine revela-
tion and medium of the divine power to men. Paul
thus interprets Christianity just as Jesus interpreted
it. Nineteen centuries of Christian experience con-
firm it. Jesus Christ thus becomes the solution of
two human problems, first the religious and secondly
the intellectual problem. He completes and inter-
prets the imperfect forms of religious experience.
He also stretches his hand across the apparent
chasm and binds God and men together where con-
tinuity fails. He has entered the realm of free
causation and is building up the kingdom of God
among men.

Well, then, do we take religious experience apart
from its cause as the key to Christianity ? No. Do
we take the historical Jesus apart from his power in
our experience? No. We take both. Each is im-
plicated in the other. Neither comes in fulness with-
out the other. Jesus thus becomes an objective
authority for us, not because he gives us a theory
about God which we accept. This would be a form
of deductive philosophy on his part and ours. Nor
because he left us a portrait which appeals to us.

326 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

This would offer an ideal without the dynamic for
its realization. He is our authority because he is
God's truth and God's power to us in our redemp-
tion. His inner power and his outward authority
are bound up in an indissoluble unity for his people.
He offers himself to the world as the key to its
speculations about God and the answer to its re-
ligious search for God.

We note next Christ's manner of approach to
men and his method of evoking their spiritual re-
sponse. We may sum up his method in a three-
fold paradox, i. His revelations of truth to us are
so given as to become discoveries of truth by us.
One needs only to trace his dealings with his dis-
ciples in the synoptic record to be convinced of the
truth of this statement. Nothing was farther from
Christ's thought than to impose a dogma of his
person upon the unwilling minds of his followers.
His method seemed to be rather to repress the early
and immature expressions of faith in him. Slowly
he would unfold his personality and mission to them.
Slowly and patiently he led them to the discovery of
himself. He dawned upon them as it were. Finally
Peter confesses his Messiahship on the way to
Csesarea Philippi ^^ and his memorable benediction
follows. He perceived the growth of Peter's spir-
itual faculty and rejoiced in it. As only the artistic
faculty in an observer can appreciate the genius
reflected in a masterpiece of art, so also moral

" Matthew 16 : 16-20.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 327

and spiritual discernment are necessary to an ap-
preciation of Jesus. This explains the reserve in
Christ's teaching. The " many things " ^^ which he
had to say to the disciples could only be imparted
at a later stage of their development. Much cold-
blooded " scientific " exegesis in modern times has
been strangely mechanical and unappreciative of
this point. Men have argued that because Jesus said
comparatively little about his atoning work on the
cross, for example, we must conclude that the ex-
positions of the atonement in the Epistles are wholly
without his warrant. But there was fitness in the
reserve of Christ here. When one of us is going
to render a great service to a friend we do not keep
reminding him of it beforehand. Delicacy of feel-
ing alone forbids. Such obtrusiveness on our part
would rob the deed of much of its value. We leave
the friend to discover and appreciate our deed after
it is done. So with Jesus. He meant for the dis-
ciples through the memory of his teachings and by
his spiritual presence through the Holy Spirit to
discover and appreciate his death for them. He
knew well that their minds would expand after his
departure and that the full view of his person and
work could not be prematurely communicated to
them. The Epistles, therefore, constitute a fitting
supplement to the Gospels.

It is clear from the foregoing that the method
of Jesus is to appeal to the judicial faculty in men.

" John 16 : 12.

328 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

He calls upon men to pass judgment upon his own
message. Paul emphasizes this judicial faculty in
a striking manner in his letter to the Corinthians.^^
This is peculiarly the Protestant point of view in
interpreting Christianity as distinguished from the
Roman Catholic. The papal and priestly authority
represses and indeed quenches the judicial faculty
entirely. This it does formally and theoretically
because it proceeds on the assumption of the in-
competency of the soul in religion. Men need and
must have human intermediaries to tell them what
is the mind of God. The assumption of Christ and
of Protestantism is precisely the reverse, viz., that
man is capable of direct intercourse and fellow-
ship with God. Christ does not indeed assume that
man can find God apart from his revelation of God,
for he expressly asserts the contrary. But the
method by which Christ makes God known to man
involves a spiritual process in which man's moral
discernment becomes active. It is never a mere fiat
authority enacting decrees and laws in the statutory
sense. Here we have a vital distinction between the
Roman Catholic and Protestant conceptions of au-
thority. Protestantism does not at all abolish au-
thority in religion, which would be a relapse into
rationalism. Yet Protestantism so conceives au-
thority in religion that it pays the utmost respect to
individuality and personality. Christ is personal-
ized grace and truth, whose relation to men is not

^3 I Corinthians 2 : 14-16.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 329

that of a statute or institution, but rather that of an
awakening energy, a dynamic force. Yet he remains
objective and historical and final, and, therefore,
authoritative.

The nature of Christ's authority appears the mo-
ment we contrast it with other kinds of authority.
The Romanist submits because a high ecclesias-
tical authority commands ; and he foregoes the
exercise of his reason because of his incapacity
and by virtue of the right of command in the ec-
clesiastical superior. Rational beliefs arise on the
contrary when the reason perceives convincing
grounds for their acceptance. In the case of the
Romanist, the rational faculty slumbers. In the
case of the other, it is intensely active. In so far,
however, as this activity of thought is purely ra-
tional, our nature is touched at a single point only.
In the soul's response to Jesus Christ as redeemer,
on the contrary, there is an awakening of the entire
nature, reason, will, emotions. In a word, it is a
life-adjustment and not a logical process merely.
On our part it is a testing and proving of the moral
and spiritual universe by a plunge into it, a reac-
tion upon it as a whole by our whole being. On
God's part it is a demonstration to man of his
own capacity for the divine life through the im-
partation of that life. There is a kinship between
this conception and that of Schleiermacher whereby
he defines religion as the feeling of absolute de-
pendence— a feeling based on the reaction of the

330 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

soul upon the universe as a whole. Schleiermacher
touched a central truth, but its weakness was in con-
ceiving the universe as impersonal and, as a con-
sequence, making religion consist in feeling alone.
Schleiermacher was thus shut up to consciousness
as the sole norm and standard of truth, since his
fundamental thought provides for no such standard
outside of consciousness. He vainly sought to graft
Christianity on a pantheistic stock and left an ir-
reconcilable dualism in his system. Christianity
cannot escape subjectivism and its emptiness except
when construed in the light of its own theistic
ground. In it God becomes the spiritual universe
upon which man's nature reacts, but Jesus Christ is
the point of contact, the revelation and mediation
of God to the soul. His authority is not weakened,
but greatly enhanced by the fact that he stirs the
emotional, moral, and mental faculties in man into
the most intense exercise. He creates a throne
for himself by creating a new life and a new uni-
verse for the soul of man.

It thus appears that the relation of Christ's au-
thority to the reason is not one of exclusion, but of
inclusion. The judicial faculty in man, the reason,
becomes active in a new context and as the result of
a new life-adjustment through Christ. Not the
bare rational faculty at work with objective data,
but that faculty imbedded in the heart of a new
experience most intimate and personal in which
Christ's person is central, and in which our entire

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 33 1

nature is active. We may say then that Christ's
authority is that of fact and reahty, first, as ob-
jective to us; secondly, as a personal and living fact
vi^hich seeks us; and thirdly, as fact to whose per-
sonal approach we respond, whose reality we grasp,
and whose redemptive relations to us we understand
at least in part. As objective fact Christ and his
kingdom are like the cosmos, constituting a moral
and spiritual order or universe whose laws and
forces we discover and recognize as our own uni-
verse, that for which we are made. As we cannot
annul the cosmos, so we cannot annul him. As we
cannot escape the action of physical law, so we can-
not escape the action of the laws of his kingdom.
Our interaction with the cosmos yields scientific
truth; our interaction with Christ yields religious
truth. This objective or " cosmic " reality of Christ
is that which makes him final as the religious au-
thority. But as personalized grace and truth, ap-
proaching, awakening, arousing the whole nature,
intellect, emotions, and will, he is the source and
fountainhead of human freedom as well. Thus w^e
find in him the complete synthesis of authority and
freedom in religion.

2. The second paradox of Christ's authority is
that he exerts it by making men free. Paul rejoiced
in calling himself the bond-slave of Jesus Christ,
and yet his whole career as an apostle echoes with
his psean of victory and freedom. It was this sense
of freedom coupled with submission to Christ which

332 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

gave energy to the Reformers. They had escaped
the bondage and tyranny of a false form of re-
hgious authority. There was a swing of the pen-
dulum from one authority that was false to another
that was true. That was a winged word which lay
behind their movement: " The right of private judg-
ment." With it all forms of human sovereignty in
Church and State were destined to be brought to the
bar of human judgment, and many of those sover-
eignties would be shaken to their foundations and
others destroyed. And now while yet under the
spell of the right of private judgment men return to
Jesus and exercise that judgment on him. And with
what result ? The same as in New Testament times.
They listened to his teachings and said : " Never
man spake as this man." They gazed on his moral
and spiritual beauty and declared : " He is the chief
among ten thousand, and the One altogether lovely."
They followed his majestic figure upward into the
divine heights and in the exercise of their right of
private judgment they proclaimed : " He is the ef-
fulgence of the Father's glory and the image of his
substance." The whole Reformation movement was
carried on in this mood. Men swung away from
papal and priestly authority, but they gathered up
the broken fragments of shattered thrones and
erected another more absolute than any the world
ever saw and seated Christ upon it. They wove
a crown of their thanksgiving and praise and obedi-
ence and loyalty and placed it on his brow. The

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 333

hymnology of Christendom in the periods of great
spiritual power since show the same combination
of subjection and freedom, slavery and exultation.
Christ put his chain on Edward Caswell, and this is
what Caswell wrote:

Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast;

But sweeter far thy face to see
And in thy presence rest.

Christ subjected Samuel Stennett to his sway, and
Stennett in his strange bondage sang :

Majestic sweetness sits enthroned

Upon the Saviour's brow,
His head with radiant glories crowned;

His lips with grace o'erflow.

The modern man is equally intense in his assertion
of loyalty and freedom in Christ. Richard Watson
Gilder has said :

H Jesus Christ is a man —

And only a man — I say
That of all mankind I cleave to him,

And to him will I cleave alway.

If Jesus Christ is a God — •
And the only God — I swear

I will follow him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air!

Now it is impossible that such loyalty could be
evoked by any illegitimate form of authority.
When the ethical fruits accompany the professions

w

334 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

of loyalty we have a religious phenomenon which
cannot be explained as other than the expression of
reality in the religious sphere. Men know Jesus
as they submit to him. This is voluntarism. He
comes to them in response to their adjustment of will
to him. Thus he verifies the New Testament form
of religious life. Religion is the adjustment of
wills, the establishment of correct relations between
persons in the universe of persons. The reason
why faith is the deepest of all truths is that it is
the instinctive adjustment of the deepest of all rela-
tions, that between man and God. The reason
why we perceive that Christ is the Truth is that he
brings about this adjustment. Religious faith then
is the original but undefined and unexpressed de-
mand of man's whole nature for the restoration of
a lost relationship. That relationship can only be
adequately expressed in terms of life. Faith is
simply the spiritual equivalent of life in a moral
order disturbed by sin. It is the revolt of the soul
against sin in its effort to find life. Hence the
gospel makes it the condition of life.

There is, therefore, no scientific or philosophic, no
theoretical or practical ground whatsoever on which
the authority of Christ may be questioned in the life
of those who have found him to be an authority. To
question it is to question the right of men to free-
dom of choice in religion. It is to question the
right of personal adjustment in the religious sphere,
to question our privilege of seeking emancipation

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 335

on the religious side of our nature. The cosmos
reveals mechanism. Christ reveals sonship. In his
face shines the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in its moral and spiritual depth and reality.
In nature is reflected his power. Our life-adjust-
ments in the cosmos are no more valid, or phil-
osophically justifiable, than are our life-adjust-
ments to the higher revelation. Science and religion
are coordinate forms of life-adjustment. Both are
necessary. Each is autonomous in its own sphere.
The dualism in the criterion of explanation in
science and religion is not primarily a dualism of
thought, but a dualism of fact. Thought cannot be-
come self-consistent until it recognizes the diverse
data of the personal and physical spheres of reality.
3. The third paradox of Christ's authority is that
he exerts his authority over us by transferring his
authority to us. We have seen with what deference
he approaches our personality. He claims us gently
as the vine the trellis. He never overrides our will.
His energy is delicate and multiform, pursuing the
devious windings of thought and desire, percolating
through to the inner recesses of our being. It is so
varied, so intimate, and so personal, so restrained
and yet so boundless; his authority is so absolute
and yet so deferential and considerate of the pecu-
liarities of our individuality, of that particular ex-
pression of the image of God in each of us that men
rise up in their joy and run to meet it. Thus his
lordship over us is not imposed upon men, but

336 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

discovered and chosen by them, and proclaimed as
the true secret of being and defended as the final
goal of life and pursued with passionate devotion.
Now out of these experiences men rise into a sense
of power. The sense of subjection to the lordship of
another takes on the sense of the possession of much
of the lordship of the other. Christ communicates
his lordship to his church and thus she conquers the
world. Nothing is more striking than this sense
of spiritual lordship in the New Testament litera-
ture after the Gospels. The writings of Paul are
simply amazing in this respect if we have the his-
torical imagination necessary to perceive and feel
their relations to their environment. His freedom
in dealing with the greatest themes of life and
destiny carries everywhere the note of authority.
His language almost breaks down as he strives to
express the fulness of the moral energy which is
at work in him ^* and in the church. Thus it appears
that men who think of submission as the sole atti-
tude required by Jesus miss one of the chief points
of his service for us. Submission to him is indeed
involved in our relations to him, but properly under-
stood that submission is simply conformity to the
eternal law of our own being and of the moral
universe. He makes us its discoverers; he eman-
cipates, and because he emancipates his followers
submit to him in undying loyalty.

And yet more is to be said. The method of

^*£phesians i, 2.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 2>2>7

Christ's lordship in a most gracious manner was
designed in manifold ways to divest itself of every-
thing which could shame us or affront our self-
respect. The impulses to which he appeals in us all
belong to the upper ranges of our nature. He tells
men that their coming to him is due to their own
response to light, their love of truth. ^^ In receiv-
ing him men exercise the royal human prerogative
of free choice, and a king's seal is employed as the
symbol of that choice.^*^ When the many forsake
him through failure to find in him their carnal
ideal, he turns to his own disciples, not with harsh
rebuke or command, but with a magnanimous op-
tion, ''Will ye also go away?" Their reply is:
*' To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life." ^^ Jesus says, indeed, that God gave
him authority over all flesh, but adds at once the
eternal vindication and glorification of the authority
in the statement of its end : '' That whatsoever thou
hast given him, to them he should give eternal
life." ^^ His authority he makes synonymous with
friendship and deals with his own on the level of a
royal friendship.^^

As if to forestall any and all attacks upon the
nature of his authority, he expressly defines it thus
on the basis of friendship. He assumes their
capacity for truth as enabling them to grasp his

"John 3 : 21. ^s John 17 : 2.

^«John 3 : 33. i^John 15 : 15.

" John 6 : 67, 68.

338 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

revelation. He told them all that the Father told
him.-^ The untold things will yet be told and the
Comforter will be sent to make them plain.^^ They
are to be given power to do greater works than he
had done, and thus in practical efficiency his lordship
was to be transferred to them.-- He and the
Father would come, he declared, and take up their
abode in the believing heart.^^ As if his royalty
would disrobe itself utterly of every vestige of the
purple and the gold, he lives the incarnate life.
He takes the form of a servant and achieves a new
sovereignty over man by the things he suffered.^*
Self -emptying is thus the divine law and in our
obedience and submission to him we simply imitate
God. This was and is the method of the lordship
of Jesus. It is the absolutely final and irreproach-
able authority of the supremely spiritual religion.

The completeness with which Jesus Christ ful-
fils the conditions of man's religious life appears in
a striking saying in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus says :
" I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." ^^ If
Christianity were a religion of authority only, it
might be a way. If it were a philosophy or thought-
system only, it might be the truth. If it were a
spiritual inward experience without determinate
form or meaning, such as mysticism seeks to estab-
lish, it might be a life. But since Christianity is not

20 John IS : I5- 23 John 14 : 23.

21 John 15 : 26. 24jo]ju j^ . j^j Philippians 2 : sf.

22 John 14 : 12. -5 John 14 : 6.

THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST 339

one of these alone, but all three in conjunction, its
Founder could sum up his functions in the religious
life of man as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Religion must for its complete realization be a way,
because it is ethical. A determinate course of con-
duct, an ideal of action, for the individual and so-
ciety is part and parcel of religion. Again religion
is and must be truth. For a determinate course of
action, a way, is impossible save on the basis of a
definite view of the world and of its ultimate mean-
ing. Yet we have seen that speculative thought
never yields a world-view stable enough or strong
enough to carry the weight of man's religious life.
Such world-views are always open to attack from the
point of view of the opposite assumptions, so that
the religions which build on philosophic world-
views never get beyond the apologetic stage. They
are not deeply and organically rooted and grounded
in man's inner nature. They are rationalistic
merely in their appeal. Hence the third of the func-
tions asserted by Christ for himself in the above
saying. He is the Life as well as the Truth and
the Way. Now as life, primarily and fundamen-
tally, Jesus becomes the truth and the way. As
life he transcends ethics by grounding ethics first
in God and then in the divine life in the soul. As
life also, he transcends speculative thought by crea-
ting a new universe for the soul wherein new mate-
rial is supplied for the construction of a new world-
view. I have said that he transcends ethics and

340 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

philosophy. Yet we must add, he validates both.
As the life he gathers up into himself all the
phases, or momenta, of human culture into a new
unity. The scattered fragments of life and thought
he gathers up into himself and communicates in a
living unity to those who obey him. Every lawful
and proper form of culture Jesus includes in the
noble synthesis of life which he brings to the spirit
of man and to society.

As life in man of course Jesus must be inter-
preted. Thus arises our formulations of truth
about him. The Truth then mediates between the
Life and the Way. Thus also the religion of Christ
becomes a religion of authority, since it is the re-
ligion of the way and of the truth. But it remains
forever the religion of the Spirit also since it is the
religion of the Life.

CHAPTER X

THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY

In approaching the consideration of the place of
the Bible in the Christian religion we need first to
recall a few of the principles previously expounded
which supply the foundation of the discussion:
First, the general assumption that man's faculties
are so related to the objective world that truth is
discoverable by him; secondly, that in religious in-
teraction with his spiritual environment, just as in
his interaction with the cosmos, man acquires real
knowledge; thirdly, the will is included in man's
religious interaction with his spiritual environment,
not, of course, to the exclusion of the intellect and
emotions, all of which enter into the knowing proc-
ess, but as an essential factor in our acquirement of
religious truth; fourthly, the social law that the
experience of one tends to become the experience
of the many; fifthly, the inevitable crystallization
or objectification of truth thus acquired in authori-
tative forms — forms which are authoritative and
final precisely in the degree in which they are true.

Now in the foregoing truths, which, I trust, have
been made sufficiently clear in the preceding pages,
we have a complete vindication of the principle of

341

342 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

authority. Religion is no exception to the uni-
versal law. Authority arises in all spheres in the
degree in which acquired truth finds legitimate out-
ward forms of expression, whether in institutions,
laws, or literatures. The character of the authority,
of course, varies with the nature of the relationships
involved. The Bible, then, is to be regarded as the
outward literary expression of the truths acquired
in man's interaction with the spiritual universe.
Particular questions of revelation and inspiration
will be considered farther on ; here we seek to estab-
lish the principle of authority itself as applied to the
Bible. Meantime we may declare that we are fully
justified in employing the Bible as an authority in
religion just in so far as it is the source whence
we derive truth as to man's relations with God.
The nature of religion, as we have seen, involves a
personal relationship, on one side of which is God
and on the other man. Personality and individuality
must be respected in the ideal religious life. The
Bible, however, as a literary expression of truth,
may be privately and individually interpreted and
verified. Moreover, it is the output, in its " divers
portions and divers manners," of individual experi-
ence of God and his grace.

I. The Interdependence of the Literature and
THE Life

Our first conclusion then as to the authority of
the Bible is that its authoritativeness is due to the

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 343

fact that it preserves and brings to us in literary
form the truths acquired by mankind in the free in-
teraction of its individual units with God. Of
course there is a great deal more than this to be said.
But it will help to clear the atmosphere if we per-
ceive distinctly that a fundamental law of life and
progress underlies the whole subject of an authori-
tative Bible.

The next point to be noted is the fundamental
life-process by means of which this knowledge of
God contained in the Bible arose. We saw in a
previous chapter that religion is a life-adjustment;
that it inevitably arises in man's unfolding life in
some form or other. There is no more superficial
view of religion than that which assumes that it only
exists in legitimate forms as the result of a logical
process. Logic does not create, it simply interprets.
Life and life-adjustments supply the data which
logic manipulates in a particular way for special
ends. Logic does not and cannot create any of this
material. That it must precede religion, or that
nothing is justifiable in religion which we may not
cast in syllogistic form and demonstrate mathe-
matically, is one of the illusions of intellectualism.
Truth and reality become known to us in all spheres,
including the religious, in a far more organic and
vital way. In his theory of thought and knowledge
Professor Bowne says: "The method of rigor and
vigor would doubt everything that can be doubted.
The actual method is to assume the truthfulness of

344 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

our own nature and the nature of things, and to
doubt nothing until we are compelled to doubt, to
assume that everything is what it reports itself until
specific reasons for doubt appear." He goes on
to say that all fruitful work proceeds under this
law. " Most speculative criticism and closet phi-
losophy proceed under the contrary assumption.
Hence their perennial barrenness." Professor
Bowne says further : " Man is will, conscience, emo-
tion, aspiration; and these are far more powerful
factors than the logical understanding. Man is a
practical being ; , . before he argues he must live. . .
This practical life has been the great source of
human belief and the constant test of its practical
validity ; that is, of its truth." As to beliefs, he says :
" While reason may be implicit in them, the reflect-
ive, analytic, and self-conscious reason commonly
has little to do with their production. A good de-
scription of their origin would often be : they grew.
This growing is the mind's reaction against its
total experience, internal and external; it is the
mental resultant of life." ^

The next assertion concerning the Bible is that
it came into existence in accordance with this prin-
ciple which has been urged in so many ways in the
pages of this work. This is a simple matter of fact.
Behind the Bible lies a history. God spoke to Is-
rael through the prophets with a view to immediate
practical ends. All the revelation is rooted thus in

^ " Theory of Thought and Knowledge," pp. 375, 376.

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 345

life. God was in the history first; then in the
writers and speakers who delivered his messages to
his people. Criticism has done nothing more valua-
ble than to emphasize this relation of the truth to
the life of Israel. The literature arose then as the
expression of the life-adjustments and life-experi-
ences. These experiences cover many centuries.
They all belong to a particular type. Jehovah and
man's relations to him are conceived in a particular
way. There is a progressive unfolding of truth.
There is advance in ethical ideals and standards.
But the literature is homogeneous; allowing for
varieties and levels of experience, the unity of the
parts of this literature is unquestionable. Professor
Sanday, after a very able historical discussion of the
doctrine of inspiration points out how this collection
of writings called the Bible and covering many cen-
turies exhibits strong evidences, not only of a living
relation of the Book to the life of the people, but
also evidences of the presence of a " larger Mind,"
a '* central Intelligence " which directs and gives
unity and purpose to the scattered movements and
driftings of men. He refers to such events as the
recording of the messages of the prophets, and to
the written Epistles of the New Testament, to
many unquestionably Messianic prophecies of the
Old Testament, and other things, as illustrating and
evincing the presence of this guiding central Intel-
ligence.^ We need not exhibit here the striking

2 Sanday, " Inspiration," p. 402^.

34^ FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

details which show the unity and homogeneity of the
Scriptures. This has often been done. The essen-
tial point we proceed to note.

The Scriptures are unified for us in Jesus Christ.
He is the keystone in the arch. Without him the
whole fabric loses its strength, and the Bible would
lose its unique significance and value for us. But
for Christ the messages of the prophets concerning
God would not possess finality for the human race.
Those messages were true, but they were not all the
truth about God at any time. The revelation of
Jesus was required to complete and validate them
and to interpret and complete the Mosaic legislation
also. We have already pointed out the fact that,
apart from the revelation of God in Christ, all other
forms of God's revelation of himself would be open
to question for the reason that they might be re-
garded merely as so many attempts of man to find
God. The Old Testament writers, we hold, were
truly inspired of God. But the scientific critic, as-
serting that they were men like ourselves without
capacity for the infinite and influenced in their views
by tradition and environment, alleges that they
simply give us one variety of human thought about
God and not authoritative truth on the subject.

But Jesus Christ alters this situation. The New
Testament is continuous with the Old. Its rela-
tion to the Old Testament is not one of opposi-
tion or contradiction, but of completion. Christ
fulfils the Old Testament in the widest and pro-

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 347

foundest sense. We judge the beginnings and in-
termediate stages of the revelation by its crown.
Jesus is the crown and goal of the Old Testa-
ment and the center of the New. Christ's revela-
tion of God is authoritative and final because it
comes to us from the divine side. We have
shown that criticism, after doing its utmost,
leaves the synoptic record of the transcendent
Christ unshaken. We have also shown how
Christ's present action in consciousness is a di-
vine work. This divine work in us requires an
interpretation of his person in terms inapplicable
to any other, both in his relations to God and to
man. Unless we thus construe his person from
his function, what he is from what he does, then
we have not only no theory of knowledge, but
no knowledge. We deliver religion over to ag-
nosticism and label it as a make-believe, and thus
write its doom in an age which hates shams.

As a consequence of the revelation of God in
Christ, we have then two things: First, a life, and
secondly, a literature. The literature is the record
of the life and its experiences, its interpretation
and explanation. We have a history in which
God was revealing himself to man, and a record
of his dealings and the truths revealed. The life
of the New Testament believers was continuous
with that of the inner and higher element in the
life of Israel in its essential features. The spir-
itual life of Christians to-day is continuous with

348 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the life of Old and New Testament saints. This
unique and clearly defined type of spiritual ex-
perience has thus become deeply rooted in human
history.

Now, in the view of the present writer, the
doctrine of Scripture can best be stated and justi-
fied only as we keep in mind the two facts in-
volved, the existence of a spiritual order on the one
hand, and of a literature of that order of life on
the other. Most of the confusion of thought re-
garding the authority of the Scriptures has grown
out of a failure to discriminate clearly these two
facts and their relations to each other. The
literature has been treated as if it were the life,
or the life has been confounded with the litera-
ture. The cause which produced both the life
and the literature has been identified with the
literature. So also the disputants have often over-
looked the point just how the literature is de-
pendent on the life and how the life is dependent
on the literature. The life has been exalted as if
the literature were nothing, or the literature has
been exploited as if the life were nothing.

How then are the life and the literature related
to each other? First, we say the life preceded the
literature historically. The power of the risen
Christ created the early church before the latter
created the literature of Christian experience which
we have in the New Testament. Jesus is often
preached in a saving way to men who never read

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 349

the Bible. Missionaries gain converts often prior
to the existence of a Bible in the language of the
converts. Herrmann emphasizes the synoptic pic-
ture of Jesus as the medium of God's regenerating
grace. And so it may be and often is. But God
in Christ acts directly on the soul. He is not
limited to the written record. The truth proclaimed
by the living voice and the divine energy in the soul
work the change. The authority of Christ and
his power then are primary, underneath the record
as a bedrock supporting it.

Looking at the matter from the other side we also
assert that the literature is indispensable to the life.
The life under the Spirit's guidance produced the
literature as its necessary expression. The rise
of the life in turn always creates a demand for the
literature in order that it may be nourished and
guided. Literature is essential to the life in another
vital sense, viz., that only a literature could give us
the original form of the revelation in its purity
and distinctness. This is a very important fact
overlooked by many. Literature, or recorded
thoughts, is the nearest approach to the nature of
spirit which we possess which is at the same time
reliable as a medium of transmission. Tradition
is utterly unsafe. The Roman Catholic doctrine of
tradition is the concrete proof of the assertion.
Unwritten tradition is always colored and trans-
formed by the medium through which it passes. An
unwritten gospel would be subject to all the fluctua-

X

350 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tions of the spiritual life of man and most likely
to gravitate downward from the spiritual to the
carnal and formal. Institutions may symbolize or
embody truth, but without a written standard they
always tend to become external means of grace,
or sacraments. They are ladders on which we may
climb up or down. Without a corrective it is
usually down.

Again, reason could not be trusted to preserve the
truth about Christ after the incarnation and com-
pleted revelation. Unless the revelation through the
life was reported by those in close relations with the
Redeemer, the preservation of the redemptive truth
could scarcely be expected. For so soon as the
revelation became a fact lying in a past age, the
same necessity for a revelation and incarnation as
that which originally existed would reassert itself,
A new incarnation would be required in order to
bring God to man. A reliable record of the original
revelation, however, obviates this necessity. This
is not to put the literature in the place of the Re-
deemer, but only to assert that the literature is a
necessary medium for the transmission to us of a
knowledge of him. Thus, in the first instance, for
generations subsequent to Christ, the literature
comes as the vehicle of objective truth about him
and his salvation ; but, in the second place, it serves
as a means for the expression of the life we have
in Christ.

It thus appears that the relations between the

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 35 1

literature and the life of which it is the expression
must never be overlooked in defining the function
of the Bible, if we are to avoid confusion of thought
and an unsatisfactory conclusion. In the light of
those relations it appears how very groundless are
the charges often made by the subjectivists against
those who hold to the doctrine of an authoritative
Bible. One charge is that they are " bibliolaters,"
worshipers of a book, or that they interpose a
book between the soul and God. It is easy to
understand how the charge arises. The objector
proceeds rationalistically against one or another of
the various theories of inspiration. '' It is absurd,"
he argues, '' to thrust anything between the soul
and God, even an alleged sacred book." The argu-
ments in support of inspiration are not convincing
to him, and until his reason is convinced he has
no ground for a rational belief in the Bible as an au-
thority. The conclusion is inevitable, and the Bible
is rejected as in any sense authoritative.

Now what has the objector done in this method of
approach to the Bible? He has simply severed the
literature from the life which gives it significance,
and has judged the literature thus isolated from its
true context in the life, and apart from its function.
The outcome is directly opposed to the facts. For
the literature cannot be understood in isolation from
the life. The Bible is not an opaque veil thrust be-
tween the soul and God. It is the record rather of
the experiences of the men who have had the

352 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

direct vision of God. Christ is the revelation of
God and the key to all Scripture. Scripture then is
not a veil, but a rent in the veil between man and
God, for its function is to lead to Christ. Here
were men who found God in a living experience.
They must needs record what they saw and felt and
knew. The Bible is the result. Their written
records are thus the fastenings which hold open
the sides of the rent veil, not a veil obscuring God.
The telescope is interposed between the eye and the
heavenly body. The astronomer is not accused of
worshiping the telescope or advised to pursue the
science of astronomy without its aid. The tele-
scope tells him what he could never discover with-
out it. He relies upon it as an " authority," and
carries forward the discoveries of science. Thus it
appears that the objector to an authoritative Bible
is on the wrong scent altogether. He is unconvinced
by arguments for an infallible or inerrant Bible, or
he is unwilling to accept the decree of the early
councils which may be supposed to have fixed the
canon of Scripture. From these premises he pro-
ceeds to the attempt to convict the others of bib-
liolatry. But he has missed the point entirely. He
has torn the Bible away from its true context in
its own spiritual order and judged it thus.

If, however, men look through this rent in the
veil, that is, the biblical writings, and thus obtain the
vision of God and find redemption through his power
in their lives, they simply repeat the experiences of

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 353

the men who first had the experiences and were in-
spired to write the Bible. For them the Bible is
authoritative because it leads them to God and re-
lates them to the redemptive forces. To argue
against the authority of the Bible, therefore, to men
who have had the life-adjustment and life-experi-
ence which it enshrines, is like arguing against the
symmetry of the Venus de Milo or the beauty of the
Sistine Madonna to the artistic soul, on the ground
of some defect in the material or the mechanical
execution.

Suppose, on the other hand, we reject the litera-
ture in the interest of the life and seek to maintain
the life apart from the literature. Not a few would
fain pursue this method. Why not go directly to
Christ, since he is available apart from the Scrip-
tures, and be rid once for all of controversies about
a book ? The reply is supplied by history. The pro-
posed program has been carried out in several ways.
I name two. First, the ecclesiastical. Roman
Catholicism pursued its course through the Mid-
dle Ages in practical independence of the written
records. What was the result? The worship of
the Virgin Mary and the saints, along with the
development of a sacramental system which eclipsed
the Christ of the New Testament, and of a hier-
archy which destroyed human freedom.

A second attempt has been the rationalistic. Who
and what was Jesus Christ? This is the permanent
question of rationalism. It has not answered the

354 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

question finally after two thousand years. This is
inevitable apart from an authentic record of Christ's
life and work. A very little reflection shows that
without such a record the problem of Christ becomes
as inconclusive as the speculative problem as to God.
Approached rationalistically the problem of God al-
ways ends in an unstable equilibrium of theories,
as we have abundantly seen. In the same manner
precisely the problem of Jesus, apart from an au-
thentic record, ends in a permanently unstable
equilibrium. The outcome of this method then is
the end of the spiritual order of experience of which
the New Testament is the organ and literary ex-
pression. That is to say, historical Christianity
would be destroyed. It ought to be plain, then, to
all that the question of destroying belief in the au-
thority of the Bible is primarily a deeper question
altogether, viz., whether it is possible to destroy
that order of spiritual life and experience which
we call Christian. And to those who share in the
life and experience the proposal to abolish it is
about equivalent to the proposal to abolish the
daylight.

2. The Formation of the Canon of Scripture

So much for the relations between the life and the
literature in general. We propose now to pursue
the subject further in connection with certain spe-
cific problems.

First as to the formation of the canon of Scrip-

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 355

ture. It does not fall within our plan to trace the
history of the canon. We simply offer an inter-
pretation. We begin by the statement that early
church councils which made declarations as to the
canon of Scripture are no more authoritative than
any other similar councils. This means that they
had no authority at all to legislate for the con-
science. Yet the reproach is constantly thrown at
Christians that they pin their faith in the canon
to groups of ecclesiastics who sat in council in
the early centuries, and thus build the whole fabric
of faith on the infallibility of these councils. This
method of arguing, however, reverses the facts of
history. Early church councils are misunderstood
if they are thought of as bodies possessing binding
authority to which modern believers must bow. In
so far as their decisions are intelligently accepted by
Christians of to-day, they simply registered the
common convictions of the Christian community.
Here again the life explains the literature. The
books retained in Scripture were homogeneous books
expressive of the spiritual Hfe-experiences of the
Christian community. Books alien in spirit to these
books were excluded from the canon. Sometimes
books found place in the canon which were alien
in spirit or defective in the claim to apostolicity,
or unsuited to purposes of worship, and they were
afterward excluded. The Apocrypha constitutes
such a collection of books. If the present canon of
Scripture should be disintegrated, no doubt the

356 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

parts would coalesce again into the living unity of
the Bible, since they are parts of a congruous
whole. This would require no authority of council
or ecclesiastical decree. It would take place through
the operation of a law of spiritual affinity. There
are those who doubt whether Second Peter and one
or two other New Testament books along with
Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon in
the Old Testament are entitled to a place in the
canon. But this does not affect the larger fact of a
homogeneous Bible. There was included a twofold
criterion in the formation of the New Testament
canon ; first, apostolicity and, secondly, spiritual con-
gruity or agreement with the Christian experience.
The books accepted were those regarded as being
derived from apostles or apostolic men, eye-wit-
nesses or the associates of the eye-witnesses of Jesus
in his earthly life. This was the external principle.
Along with it, however, was the inward principle
which corresponds to the outward. The agree-
ment of the life with the literature is manifest to us
to-day, since we possess both.^

Now the above is not set forth as a process of
reasoning to prove a point logically. It is simply
the statement of facts.* The spiritual life behind
and underneath along with the apostolicity of the
books was the guiding principle in the formation of

3Cf. Wescott, "The Canon of the New Testament," introduction
and pp. so8f.

* See Wescott, " The Canon of the New Testament," pp. 12, 13,
56-58, 273-275, 333-335, 345, 352f., 355f.

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 357

the New Testament canon, not plenary ecclesiastical
authority. This does not at all make of the Chris-
tian consciousness the ultimate authority. It is not
as if men apart from God fixed the canon. The
divine cause which created the life created also the
literature, but it created the literature in and through
the medium of the life. There is more to be said
on this point farther on. Meantime we clear the
point that the life and the literature are the joint
product of the Spirit revealing God in Christ to
men. Other and subsequent literature of Christian
experience is not inspired or authoritative in the
same sense for various reasons. One is that other
literature was produced farther from the causal
energy, the historic Christ. The historic foundation
of Christianity gives its unique position to the orig-
inal literature. No later writings can compete with
the New Testament because none of these can give
first-hand information as to the historic facts.
Copies of a photograph, or copies of copies of the
photograph of a man cannot be exalted in reliability
above the negative made by the photographer from
the original himself. Observe also that subsequent
literature is on a lower level. The spiritual and
intellectual inferiority of sub-apostolic literature is
an outstanding fact of the most remarkable kind.
The power has departed. Again, it is strikingly
true that this original literature has a creative power
unparalleled by any other. It was created along
with the life and continues to possess the creative

358 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

power, or rather continues to be the creative in-
strument of the original power. It is this parity of
the Hterature with the Hfe, this divine level of the
literature which identifies it in origin with the
original creative energy which made the Christian
religion.

3. The Function of Criticism

We consider next the function of criticism in the
light of the principle we are advocating, viz., the in-
terdependence of the Christian life and the Christian
literature. Criticism, as we have previously seen,
is an inalienable intellectual right of man. To deny
this is as foolish as it is futile. Much might be
said of the follies of criticism. Yet on the whole
it has done excellent service and achieved very sub-
stantial results. The revised theories as to the au-
thorship and dates of certain books are by no means
fully established at all points. The composite na-
ture of some books seems to be clearly made out;
that is, the view that the writers employed pre-
viously existing documents in composing them. In-
spiration did not create what was unnecessary. It
employed what was found ready to hand. These re-
sults of criticism, however, are not the most valua-
ble. Certainly nothing so far achieved excludes
necessarily the inspiration of Scripture. Other and
higher results of criticism are: First, the clear ex-
hibition of the progress of revelation from lower to
higher stages ; secondly, the unity and homogeneous-

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 359

ness of the Bible as a collection of sacred writings;
thirdly, the presence of a superhuman power in the
life of the people from which the biblical literature
came; and fourthly, the close connection between
the literature and the life. Criticism has also served
to emphasize the presence of the human medium of
revelation and human forms of expression with
which the truth clothed itself.

We may sum up by saying criticism has been a
rational process applied to the sacred literature. But
this rational, critical process has not obscured the
fact that there has proceeded all along the life-ex-
periences and life-adjustments of the spiritual order
in which the literature took its rise. With what
result? One result has failed of proper recogni-
tion, viz., that the life-experiences have, by means
of criticism, been brought into extraordinary clear-
ness over against criticism. The things that can-
not be shaken have been demonstrated, have been
made to stand forth in distinctness of outline and
granitic strength amid the disturbances and con-
fusion of critical theories. In other words, a
counter-criticism has sprung up, the criticism of
rationalism by life. Since the Bible arose in and
through a spiritual life, and in turn creates Hfe;
and since life is always more than rationalism, as
inclusive of all human interests and enlisting all
human faculties and powers; and since life always
has the last word against rationalism, therefore,
criticism could not prevail against life. Criticism

360 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

at first thought it would disintegrate the Bible and
it accomplished certain other results. But it was
shattered, in its radically destructive tendencies,
against life itself, and has in large measure become
a spent force. The fiery furnace in which the Bible
has been tried, the profoundest and most searching
of all criticism of the Bible has been, not ration-
alism or the historico-scientific method, but man's
religious life itself.

Here again, therefore, we see how very closely
intertwined and interrelated are the welfare of the
literature and that of the life of which it is the ex-
pression. While thus closely related the spiritual
experience is not to be confounded with the Bible.
Spiritual energies are at work in the soul of the
Christian directly and immediately. This consti-
tutes the most vital and fundamental fact for him.
No sort of altered views of other things alters his
knowledge of this fact. This is not to assert that
if the Bible were destroyed, his faith would remain.
There is no need to present such an alternative.
For him the Bible cannot be destroyed, since it per-
forms a function in his life which the rational-
critical process never touches at all. Now if his
faith were really what is so often falsely alleged,
that is, nothing more than a " holding for true " a
certain book called the Bible, a belief established by
means of ordinary logic and expressed in some
elaborate formal theory, it might indeed be quite
vulnerable from critical attacks, the degree of vul-

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 361

nerability being dependent upon the weakness or
strength of the logical process supporting the par-
ticular form of theory. But this is not at all the
process by which the Christian arrives at his belief
in the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He has
the life apart from the Bible, and a Bible apart from
the life. But the Bible so clearly expresses the life
and so clearly claims for itself divine origin, and it
has in addition such power to produce the life in
others, that the life and the book of life mutually
reenforce and confirm each other. It is at once the
apartness and the interdependence of the life and
the book which gives such power to the Christian
conviction, despite all rationalistic processes which
m_ay be applied to the Scriptures. The one thing
criticism has done has been to demonstrate the vital
manner in which the biblical writings are rooted in
the Hfe of the biblical people.

In connection with this topic of criticism, we may
answer another question already referred to else-
where. It is whether or not faith is dependent upon
a historical judgment ; whether, as Lessing asserted,
we are independent of the historical in our spiritual
life. We have seen how Herrmann sought to an-
swer the question. He strives hard to emancipate
Christianity from the historical judgment and com-
plains that his adversaries falsely charge him with
so doing. Yet he makes faith dependent on the
synoptic portrait of Jesus. The true state of the
case was not clearly apprehended by Herrmann. It

362 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

is this : Faitli is not dependent upon a bare historical
judgment; yet the historical judgment is indispen-
sable to faith. The reasons are as follows: First,
it is not because the historical judgment as to Christ
is unconvincing, so far as the evidence is concerned.
No historical judgment ever was more convincing.
The utmost criticism can do leaves it unshaken.
Men withhold assent not on the score of evidence,
but because the '' option " is so vital, the issue is so
tremendous. The whole meaning of history, and of
the cosmos, and of human destiny is at stake in the
question as to the person of Christ. Men instinct-
ively draw back from a bare historical judgment in
the decision of so momentous an issue. That the
evidence as such is convincing we have seen, since
critics by the score eliminate the factors of the mo-
mentous option, the supreme issue, and then pro-
ceed without hesitation to accept the evidence in
proof of other matters. The evidence in their view
is ample for a merely human Christ, but not for a
transcendent Christ. Again, we assert, faith is not
dependent upon a bare historical judgment because
a judgment of this kind, if there were nothing more,
would convert faith into rational belief merely. It
is against this that Herrmann so strongly protests.
Faith is far more than rational belief, although of
course it implies and involves rational beliefs. Ra-
tional beliefs about religion, however, might exist
in any degree without the necessary presence of re-
ligion at all. Implicit in Herrmann's protest against

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 363

the historical judgment is this reaction against
rationaHsm, and along with this the demand for
the immediately given, the empirically real, in the
momentous issues of religion.

Now our own solution of the problem is found
in the principle we are here advocating: First, the
apartness, and secondly, the interdependence of the
life and the literature. The Christian religion is
not merely a " holding for true " of the Bible or
anything else, although it does hold the Bible as
true; it is rather the living experience of God in
Christ. Yet we must have the revelation of God in
Christ in order to the experience. The living experi-
ence and not the historical judgment is the sphere
in which the momentous issues are finally settled.
Without the living experience the historical judg-
ment would not convince. But this would not be
due to lack of evidence, but to the character of the
objects to which the evidence refers. We have then
the immediately given, the empirical evidence in liv-
ing experience, which is essential to the effectiveness
of the historical judgment. Our religious life, then,
is not dependent on a historical judgment nor is it in-
dependent of that judgment. Or we could state it
positively by saying it is both dependent on and inde-
pendent of the historical judgment: dependent, be-
cause we must be brought into relations with the
historical Christ in order to the vital experience;
independent, because the experience is distinct from
the historical belief, being an immediately given fact.

364 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

a creation of the living Christ in our life and con-
sciousness. Each then requires the other and each
is insufficient without the other.

4. The Reformation Doctrine of Authority

Our next topic is the Reformed doctrine of an
authoritative Scripture. Here, again, we do not
trace the history in detail, but interpret simply. It
is often urged to-day that Luther and Calvin were
essentially subjectivists in their views of religious
truth, and that modern Protestantism is wrong in
claiming them as advocates of an authoritative
Bible. Two tendencies in fact have marked thought
on the subject during the last few generations. One
has been that characterized as Protestant Scholas-
ticism. It has wrought out elaborate rationalistic
schemes to prove the authority of the Bible. These
have in some instances been so complex and in-
tricate as to expose them to attack at many points.
The Bible thus accepted as a rational belief has
been made to take the place of Christ in effect if
not avowedly. On the other hand has been the
tendency to an exclusively subjective criterion of
religious truth, and the Reformers, especially Luther
and Calvin, have been claimed as having abolished
once for all the idea of an objective authority in
Christianity. Sabatier asserts this with vigor. Re-
ferring to the Reformers he says : " Their title to
fame is that they established a new conception of
religion by removing the seat of religious authority

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 365

from without to within, from the church to the
Christian consciousness." ^

The situation which has arisen out of these two
tendencies is that on the one hand we have an
undue minimizing of vital experience, and on the
other a misleading construction of the Reforma-
tion view of Scripture. The rationalistic scholastics
exalt the letter of outward Scripture and the Bible
as an objective fact, in a way which fails to ob-
serve the necessary inwardness and vitality of the
Christian religion. The subjectivists on the other
hand refuse to recognize the function of the Bible
in and for the spiritual life, and set forth a radical
view of the criterion of truth which logically under-
mines Christianity. The true view is to be found
here again by taking into account the apartness and
the interdependence of the literature and the life.
This distinction explains also the views of Luther
and Calvin. It is true that neither of these Re-
formers developed the doctrine of an authoritative
Scripture fully. Yet their writings yield sufficient
evidence as to the main point.

Now so far as the evidence goes there is no in-
dication that the Reformers formally adopted a sub-
jective as opposed to an objective criterion of truth.
Such an antithesis did not occur to them at all.
Sometimes indeed they made reference to the Bible
apart from the inward witness of the Spirit, and at

^ Sabatier, " Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit,"
p. 160. See also pp. 156, 157, 161.

366 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

others to the inward witness of the Spirit apart from
the Bible. But they held the written word and the
word within as correlatives, not as opposing mem-
bers of an antithesis. In Luther's treatise on
" Christian Liberty " this is especially manifest.
Everywhere he makes faith depend on the " word
of God " which comes from without. And yet
everywhere through this word which faith grasps
the Christian is made free. He says : " One thing,
and that only, can affect the life, the righteousness,
the liberty of the Christian — and that is the most
holy word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ." ^
Again : " This then we may consider as a fixed and
absolute certainty, that the soul may endure the
want of everything but the word of God. Deprived
of this, it cannot receive benefit from any one thing;
but having this, it is rich, wanting nothing." Luther
defines the word as the '' Gospel of God concerning
his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," etc."^ Everywhere
in these passages and throughout the treatise Luther
cites numerous passages from the Bible to prove
each point in his argument. Repeatedly he shows
that the outward word is the necessary medium
and instrument of the grace of God. But with equal
uniformity and force he asserts the inward and
vital nature of Christian experience and the direct
action of God in Christ upon the soul. The outward

* " Sacrosanctum verbum dei, evangeUum Christi."

"^ Cited from translation of Luther's treatise, " De Libertate Chris-
tiana," in Wace's " Foundations of Faith," p. 342!

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 367

word and the inward life are correlatives. The
word comes to man; faith responds to it, and life
enters the soul.

Calvin, in the " Institutes," outHnes his view of
the Bible more fully and formally than does Luther.
He makes the witness of the Spirit within our chief
evidence for the truth of Scripture, but he clearly
regards the external Scriptures as performing their
own independent function in Christianity. For ex-
ample, he says : *' The light of the divine countenance
is like an inexplicable labyrinth to us, unless v/e
are directed by the line of the word; so that it
were better to halt this way than to run with the
greatest rapidity out of it." * Again he says : " But
since we are not favored with daily oracles from
heaven, and since it is only in the Scriptures that
the Lord hath been pleased to preserve this truth
in perpetual remembrance, it obtains the same com-
plete credit and authority with believers, when they
are satisfied of its divine origin, as if they heard the
very words pronounced by God himself." ^ Never-
theless Calvin insists that the internal witness of the
Spirit to the truth of the Scriptures is the most
fundamental evidence of their truth : "If we wish
to consult the true interest of our consciousness, that
they may not be unstable and wavering, the subjects
of perpetual doubt; . . this persuasion must be
sought from a higher source than human reasons or

8 " Institutes," Vol. I, p. 74, Memorial Ed., 1909.
«Ibid., p. 75.

368 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

judgments or conjectures — even from the secret
testimony of the Spirit." ^* Again : " I reply, that
the testimony of the Spirit is superior to all reason.
For, as God alone is sufficient witness of himself in
his own word, so also the word will never gain
credit in the hearts of men, till it be confirmed by
the internal testimony of the Spirit." ^^

We need not multiply citations. Calvin leaves no
room for question as to the relative places of the
inner witness of the Spirit and the outward word.
He never dreams of abolishing the external authority
of Scripture or of merging it in the inner witness of
the Spirit. Nor does he dream of making men see
the truth of the external word apart from the in-
ternal witness of the Spirit. He gathers up both
ideas into the unity of a larger conception, namely,
the redeeming activity of God in Christ. Then he
thinks of the resultant life of the redeemed, and of
a Scripture which is the authentic and authoritative
record and interpretation of the life. It is the or-
ganic unity, as it were, of both the literature and
the life in the redeeming Christ who stands behind
and above both, which explains the view of the Re-
formers. The modern rationalistic subjectivist who
seeks to interpret the facts apart from this supreme
fact inevitably goes astray.

It is often argued that because Luther and Cal-
vin adopted a critical attitude toward the prevailing
views as to the canon of Scripture that they were

oibid., p. 78. "Ibid., p. 79.

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 369

subjectivists on the question of authority in re-
ligion. Calvin omitted the Second and Third
Epistles of John and the book of Revelation from
his commentary, and doubted whether Peter wrote
the Second Epistle bearing his name. Luther, as
is well known, was very free in his dealing with cer-
tain New Testament books. His characterization
of the Epistle of James as " a right strawy epistle "
has been quoted innumerable times in recent dis-
cussions. The Lutheran Church even to-day has no
recognized definition of canonicity and no express
list of the sacred books.

But we must keep clearly in mind here that
the question of an authoritative Scripture cannot
be confounded with the question of the method
of obtaining a definitely fixed canon. It would be
absurd to assert, for example, that if the non-
apostolic origin of Second Peter were to be proved
beyond a peradventure, this would discredit the
whole of the New Testament. From the very
days which followed the death of the apostles there
has been a narrow borderland of discussion with
reference to a very few of our New Testament
books. The evidence was not equally convincing to
all regarding all the books. In the view of this
writer the final view which gave us our present
New Testament was essentially the correct one.
Yet had the decision of the matter been different
in some particulars, could any one on that score
logically conclude that the doctrine of an authorita-

370 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

tive Scripture was destroyed? The truth is that
no matter how the canon of Scripture is settled its
authoritativeness abides when it is settled. And
even if the final resultant canon should consist of
a fixed core and a somewhat indefinite fringe around
it, we would still have an authoritative Scripture.
Some apocryphal books crept into the canon in the
early centuries, and they were gradually eliminated.
The same process is conceivable now, though not
likely; yet it would not undermine the authority of
the Bible. Even in a case like that of the Lutheran
Church, where the question of the canon has never
been formally settled, there may be and is a very
workable and real principle in operation. The actual
use of the books in such a case would be the prac-
tical method of fixing the canon.

5. The Protestant and Roman Catholic Doc-
trines OF Authority

We consider next the question whether Protestant-
ism in standing for an authoritative Bible adopts
the Roman Catholic principle of authority. This
is the standing charge of the subjectivists against
the evangelical wing of modern Christians. Let it
be asserted then at the outset that the charge is
groundless. Indeed, nothing could be farther from
the truth.

First, we point out that it is based primarily on an
abstract and quite general assumption which is false.
The assumption is that all forms of authorit)r in

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 37I

religion are necessarily alike. Since the Roman
Catholic form is the most thorough-going and com-
plete, therefore, all religious authorities are essen-
tially identical in character with the Roman Catholic.
This is a totally false view. The only point of
agreement is the bare fact of an external norm or
standard. This, indeed, keeps the Bible in the place
of an authority and brings it as such under the
fire of the subjectivists. But when this is said all
is said which is in any way analogous to the Roman
Catholic principle. We have previously developed
this thought in part. Here we continue it.

Let us keep in mind the thought of the apartness
and interdependence of the literature and the life.
This will shed light on the antithesis between the
two principles of authority. First, then, Roman
Catholic authority has to do with institutionalized
grace, while the biblical authority has to do with
personalized grace. Salvation on the Roman Catholic
view requires union with the Church. The Bible
requires, be it observed, not formal belief of its
teachings, but union with Christ. The function of
the Bible is not at all primarily to get its teachings
accepted, but rather to lead the soul to living con-
tact with the Redeemer, and thus to an awakening
of the whole nature, emotional, volitional, intellec-
tual. To get men to bow down to the mere letter of
Scripture apart from vital faith would be a melan-
choly defeat of all the Bible stands for. A sub-
mission of this kind, however, is just what the

372 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

Roman Catholic authority requires. The sacraments
have power in themselves, as do the priests. The
inner awakening and response of the soul is not
only not required, it is actually forestalled by the
nature of the submission required. The less
thought, the less mental activity, the more absolute
and implicit the faith, the greater the efficacy.
Priests, sacraments, and institutions are not re-
ligious objects which require as their correlatives a
spirit awakened in all its powers, but rather passive
and submissive.

The function of the Scriptures on the contrary
is to correlate the soul with the living Redeemer.
Its plea is not for a grace mediated indirectly
through material sacraments, but directly in and
through the living Spirit. Grace then becomes a
fact in the realm of mind and spirit, while in
the case of Romanism it is alleged to be a fact
in the realm of matter. No antithesis could be
more complete. In the one case the soul is incom-
petent, in the other it is competent to deal directly
with God. In the Roman Catholic scheme a sacra-
mental veil is hung between the soul and God; in
the Protestant a rent is made in the veil in order
to the direct vision of God in Christ. It is only
by ignoring the relations between the Bible and
the spiritual life, their apartness and interdepend-
ence, that a Roman Catholic function can be plausi-
bly attributed to it. If salvation were simply the
" holding for true " of Bible statements, then it

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 373

might be so argued. But since this is quite the
reverse of the truth in the matter, since the func-
tion of the Bible is to carry men entirely beyond
itself to a fundamentally new adjustment of the
soul and life, no such interpretation is at all legiti-
mate.

Another sharp contrast between Roman Catholic
and biblical authority is that the former suppresses
while the latter exalts the individual. Roman
Catholicism is first social and then individual ; Prot-
estantism is first individual and then social. The
history of civilization since the Reformation proves
this. The solidarity which exists and is required
in Romanism proves it. The diversity which exists
and is inevitable in Protestantism proves it. The
distinction accounts for the diverse ideals of the
Roman Catholic and Protestant forms of modern
civilization. Protestantism creates a social order
based on intelligence and individualism. Romanism
produces a social order based on submission and
the suppression of individualism. The Modernist
movement in the Roman Catholic Church proves
this.

All the preceding is simply another way of saying
that the biblical authority requires the exercise of
the judicial quality in the individual, while the
Roman Catholic suppresses it. The biblical appeal
is a challenge to all our powers. No one thinks of
compelling acceptance of the Bible. Critics and
deniers exist all about us. The biblical ideal never

374 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

for a moment, if it is consistently applied, questions
the right of men to freedom of thought. It rather
assumes m.an's capacity through grace to know God
and urges men to claim the knowledge, to judge the
revelation, to enter upon the life. A fallacy which
lurks in many minds is that the judicial faculty has
but one function, viz., that of criticism, and that to
judge Scripture is necessarily to reject it. This is
wholly erroneous. The judicial process involves ap-
proval as well as rejection. In it a man may discover
truth or error. Thousands upon thousands of men
have passed through all stages of the judicial proc-
ess in their dealing with the truths of Scripture.
Doubt, rejection, and unbelief have been succeeded
by acceptance and a most buoyant spiritual life.
Here again the Bible functions not as urging itself
upon men's acceptance on rationalistic grounds, but
by pointing away from itself and the letter to the
spiritual readjustment in and through Christ, to the
spiritual life of which it is the literary expression.
There are two rights involved then in our attitude
to the Bible, the right to reject and the right to
approve and accept. In the latter case its truth
and authoritativeness are discovered. The soul
knows that in it God speaks. To bow to his au-
thority as thus revealed is the supreme joy of life.
This book is then seen to be the result of the exer-
cise of the right of men to record freely under
God's guidance the meaning of their life in Christ.
The reverence for the literature arises from the

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 375

identity of the life of the writers and the readers of
the Bible. Moreover, in opposition to the Roman
Catholic principle, thenceforth the life is a free life
in Christ — free in all respects — from priests and
sacraments and ecclesiasticisms ; from civic au-
thorities in religion; from scientific absolutism;
free from all forms of tyranny, indeed. It is free,
moreover, on the positive side: to investigate, to
accept any truth from any source, free to live its
own life " under the eye and in the strength of
God," free in short to adjust itself to the new spir-
itual universe in which it finds itself. As it cannot
and desires not to escape the operation of the laws
of nature, so it desires not to escape the operation
of the life-principle in Christ. And as life must
have its literature, so the Bible stands secure as
the authoritative literature of the life.

6. Theories of Inspiration

We consider briefly next the conception of an
authoritative Bible and theories of inspiration.
Here we are in a position to simplify the discussion
by means of a fundamental distinction. All modern
views of inspiration take their departure from the
person and work of Christ. All other questions are
merely incidental and subsidiary to this fundamental
issue. If Jesus was simply the " prince of saints "
and nothing more, a merely human Christ with no
transcendent relations to God and man, then we
have a minimum gospel, which requires only a

376 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

synoptic portrait, and which can easily dispense
with the Pauline and Johannine elements in the
New Testament.

Let us make this point perfectly clear that it is
the question of the person and work of Christ
which modern theories of inspiration either ex-
plicitly or implicitly assume as the starting-point.
All parties are agreed in holding that in the Old
Testament we have a gradual disclosure of truth;
that the ethical ideals and the conception of God
and religion in Israel were gradually clarified and
slowly lifted into greater purity. But all alike per-
ceive that the decision of the question of whether
or not Old Testament literature is to be regarded
as a merely natural development or a supernatural
revelation will turn very largely on the view which
is held as to Christ's relations to the Old Testament.
He is its crown and goal. But the question is
whether he is its natural or its supernatural crown
and goal. Again the question whether the eschato-
logical elements in the synoptic Gospels are to be
regarded as in any sense authoritative declarations
of truth will hinge especially on the prior question
of who and what was Jesus. So also the inspira-
tion of the apostle Paul and other New Testament
interpreters of Jesus apart from the writers of the
synoptic Gospels will in great measure depend upon
the view held as to the relations they sustained to
Christ : was he simply the " prince of saints " and
they earnest students of religion who were drawn

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 2>77

within the circle of his influence; or was he divine
Redeemer and Lord, risen and reigning, and guid-
ing them into truth? I do not think the point I
am here emphasizing will be seriously questioned.
Certainly it could be easily established, if it were
necessary, by a general survey of recent literature
on the inspiration of the Bible.

Keeping in mind then the central place of Jesus
in theories of inspiration we may classify those
theories in a threefold way. First, the radical view ;
secondly, the conservative view; and thirdly, the
compromise view. We need not spend much time
on the radical view. It rejects the authority of
Jesus in religion altogether and therewith the au-
thority of the Bible. In this view Jesus takes his
place along with Socrates, Plato, and Gautama as
one of the many religious geniuses of history. The
Bible represents simply one type of the general phe-
nomena of religion with no unique or supreme ex-
cellence as compared with the books of other re-
ligions. If revelation be a fact at all, it is simply
the disclosure on the ordinary natural plane of ex-
perience of such truths as man in his struggle for
existence may be able to grasp. The underlying
world-view emphasizes the immanence to the ex-
clusion of the transcendence of God. It admits of
no conception of revelation and inspiration con-
sistent with a genuine theism, but rather carries at
its heart a pantheistic view of the world. It applies
in a thorough-going way the scientific criterion of

37B FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

continuity, and with this as its chief tool of thought,
seeks to build up a completely rational view of re-
ligion. Of course, this view rejects wholly the idea
of authority in religion. Martineau and more re-
cently Prof. G. B. Foster in America and Professor
Bousset in Europe are among the many advocates
of this general type of opinion, not to mention nu-
merous idealistic philosophers who ignore the value
of the historical elements of Christianity altogether.
Dominant in the thinking of all this group is the
rationalistic rather than the experiential and em-
pirical ideal for the establishment of religious truth.

Now, as this work is not primarily an apologetic,
we do not undertake to refute this view beyond
what has appeared in our previous argument. We
are concerned here with the principle of authority.
We have justified that principle on universally valid
grounds. Unless truth in religion becomes objective
and authoritative, then there is no real discovery
of truth in religion, much less revelation. And if
there is no objective truth in religion, then there is
no known object in religion, and religion thus be-
comes a mere subjective play of the emotions. The
rationalistic view leaves religion unreal and empty
and devoid of real power. We, therefore, pass to
the consideration of the other two views, the con-
servative and the compromise view as to the in-
spiration and authority of the Scripture.

First, we note the conservative view. This pre-
sents itself in two forms which proceed in very

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 379

different ways, but which arrive at results which do
not radically differ. These are what we shall de-
scribe with Professor Sanday in his work on " In-
spiration " as the Inductive and the Traditional
theories of inspiration. The traditional view is that
built up by scholastic Protestantism. We outline it
briefly in its extreme form in order to indicate its
essential characteristics, as follows: It begins with
an abstract principle not derived from Scripture,
which conceives of the biblical writers as mere
unintelligent instruments or pens used by the Holy
Spirit to dictate the truths of revelation. The Bible
speaks, according to this view, with equal authority
on science and related subjects as upon religion. A
single mistake in matters of science would invalidate
the authority of the Bible. Even the Hebrew vowel-
points were inspired of God in the Old Testament
equally with the consonants and the language gen-
erally. This will sufficiently characterize the view.
There are, of course, various modifications of it as
stated needless to mention here. Its laudable aim is
to preserve and maintain the authority of the
Scripture as the word of God.

The Inductive view proceeds in another way,
but arrives at a similar general result. It refuses to
adopt any abstract or a priori starting-point, but
rather goes directly to the Bible itself for the evi-
dence of its own inspiration. Its watchword is con-
formity to the testimony of Scripture as to the in-
spiration of Scripture. In other words, it gathers

380 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the data from the Bible and on them builds up its
view of the authority of the Bible. This view
recognizes that God was in the history as well as
in the literature ; that he spoke to Israel through the
prophets ; that Jesus Christ is the supreme and final
revelation of God; that miracles and the super-
natural must be admitted as a part of God's method
of revelation; that the Scriptures are the final and
sufficient and authoritative record of God's revela-
tion; and that when we have correctly interpreted
the Scriptures we have found God's truth for our
religious life. This view emphasizes the fact, how-
ever, that the biblical writers employed the lan-
guage and forms of speech in common use in their
own age to convey their religious message from
God; that primarily the Bible is a rehgious and
not a scientific book; that we must not look for
authoritative deliverances on questions about phys-
ical nature in the Bible; and, indeed, that pre-
mature revelations of science through prophets
and apostles would not only have robbed man of
his own proper task of investigation, but would
have defeated the ends of revelation by intro-
ducing a needless confusion of science and re-
ligion.

On the other hand this must not be taken
to justify the sweeping assertions as to error and
discrepancy so often made about the Scripture. As
Dr. James Orr, who holds the inductive view, well
says : " Ascribe it to ' Providence,' to * superin-

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 38 1

tendence/ to ' suggestion/ or what one will — and in-
spiration is probably more subtle and all-pervading
than any of these things — it remains the fact that the
Bible, impartially interpreted and judged, is free
from demonstrable error in its statements, and har-
monious in its teachings, to a degree that of itself
creates an irresistible impression of a supernatural
factor in its origin." ^^ The inductive view of course
takes account of the various literary forms and
media, such as the parable and the allegory ; it allows
for the distinction between literal and figurative
passages; and for the pedagogic adaptation of the
method and means of revelation to the state of mind
and degree of religious maturity of hearer and
reader. The advocates of the inductive view make
Jesus Christ the core and center of the revelation;
and while they allow for the instances in which
Christ adopted the language of his contemporaries
in order to instruct or refute them on the basis
of their own assumptions, they hold him free from
all error in his revelation to men of the mind and
will of God. The inductive view holding, as it does,
the higher view of the person of Christ, finds no
difficulty in accepting the Old Testament revelation,
since it was all preparatory to, and derives its
chief significance from, its relations to Jesus. It
also accepts the inspiration of the New Testament
books other than the synoptic Gospels, since it com-
ports with its general view of Christ that he should

"James Orr, "Revelation and Inspiration," pp. 215, 216.
Z

382 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

have given the promise of future guidance recorded
in John 16: 13, 14, and fulfilled the promise in the
subsequent history.

It appears from the foregoing very condensed
account of the two views, the traditional and the
inductive, that they both stand for the authoritative-
ness of the Scriptures. As Professor Ramsay says
in his closing chapter, his own view involves an in-
spiration quite as real and quite as fundamental as
the traditional view. The differences between the
two views refer to matters of detail, to the way in
which God employs the human factors in revelation,
and to similar points which do not touch the funda-
mental issue. One is rather rigid and mechanical in
its view of how the Bible came into existence; the
other regards it as a living thing, like an organism,
full of Hfe and power, instinct with the life of God
in human experience. Between the two views there
is no difference as to the reality of the supernatural
revelation; as to its sufficiency for our religious
needs; and as to the finality and authoritativeness
of the Bible.

Now a great deal has been gained when we reach
this point. For it shows clearly that the doctrine of
the authority of Scripture is not at all bound up
with the abstract theories and elaborate philosophic
attempts to explain inspiration. Logic never did
and never will succeed fully in expressing all the
meaning of God's action in and upon the men who
wrote the Bible. Men may vary as they will in

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 383

these attempts, the main point has to do with the
question, What function is assigned to the Bible in
the rehgious Hfe; is it authoritative or is it not?
The simplest and most direct method for reaching a
conclusion is the inductive, which takes into account
all the facts of Scripture and all the facts of ex-
perience.^^

We consider briefly in the next place the com-
promise view. We have previously shown the in-
consistency and untenableness of Sabatier's attempt
to combine the subjective criterion of truth with
any sort of authority in the Scriptures. The sub-
jective principle goes with the radical view on
authority. It is impossible to make the Christian
consciousness final and then in turn subject it to the
Scriptures. The true method leaves an authorita-
tive Scripture which Christian experience does not
and cannot transcend. It assigns to the Scriptures a
function which enables them to connect the soul
with the sources of divine life and thus leads to
the experience. The experience in turn confirms the
truth of the Scriptures. The Christian conscious-
ness, in other words, does not first determine what
is true in religion and then go to the Bible and cull
from it those parts which harmonize with the indi-
vidual consciousness as authoritative and reject the

" Among recent works which present the inductive view, the fol-
lowing may be cited: James Orr, " Revelation and Inspiration "; W.
Sanday, "Inspiration"; Marcus Dods, "The Bible; its Origin and
Nature." These writers do not hold identical views at all points,
but they all agree in fundamental points of view and in the general
method of arriving at the result.

384 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

rest. On the contrary, the Bible sets forth a form
of religious experience which meets the total re-
ligious needs of man, and is used of God in repro-
ducing that experience in the world through the
church and the operation of the Holy Spirit in
teaching and preaching.

Here, however, we wish to consider briefly an-
other form of the compromise view, viz., that which
accepts Jesus Christ as transcendent, as God
manifest in the flesh, as Redeemer and Lord of
men. But after accepting thus the transcendent
Christ, it claims that the authority of the Bible is
limited to what it gives us directly from Christ, or
what is in harmony with this, and then proceeds
to decompose it into a Christian and non-Christian
part. In one very attractive writer the view is
expressed quite clearly as follows : The Bible is
authoritative, but it is not equally authoritative in
all its parts. The core of it is Christ's teachings
about God as Father. All other teaching in Scrip-
ture which is of permanent validity agrees with this
central truth. Some of Paul's teachings must be
rejected, especially those which represent Christ's
work of atonement in legal or Jewish altar forms,
as a propitiation ofifered to God and required by
God. There is a Christian element in the Bible
which must be found and accepted, the rest is not
permanently binding. Even in the words of Christ
about future things we must discriminate between
the Christian and non-Christian elements.

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 385

The view we are outlining is that of the late Prof.
W. N. Clarke, as set forth in his volume entitled
" The Use of the Scriptures in Theology." Interesting
as is Doctor Clarke's discussion, much of it appears
to be irrelevant to his main point. For example, it is
urged that in the use of Scriptures we must reject
all anthropomorphic conceptions of God; the idea
of localized worship ; ^* questions as to circumcision ;
the idea of salvation by works, ^^ and other related
things. Now these points are really without per-
tinency to Doctor Clarke's argument. We do not
of course hold to any of the conceptions enumerated.
Yet, on the other hand, we do accept all of them
in the senses and for the uses originally intended.
Surely all will admit that anthropomorphic con-
ceptions of God did have a value at certain stages
of religious development. Our nurseries should
make this plain. Circumcision and localized worship
had their uses, which were quite legitimate, and
Paul presents a view as to the relation of works to
salvation in the Old Testament, which shows that
God employed the idea for pedagogic purposes of
very high value. The Bible itself in its later
revelations cancels those earlier and lower stages.
It is rather a mechanical view of Scripture which
treats it as a dead level everywhere instead of a
gradual ascent, and then takes credit to the Chris-
tian consciousness for rejecting the earlier and

" Pp. 92-95.

IS " The Use of the Scriptures in Theology," pp. 96-98.

386 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

lower for the later and higher truths. The Chris-
tian consciousness indeed accepts the higher, but it
is left no option in the matter so long as it accepts
the total message of Scripture on the points in ques-
tion. When the New Testament abolishes circum-
cision, it is not to be inferred that the Old Testa-
ment view of circumcision was false and that it was
left to us to pick out the true and leave the false.
Circumcision had its use and function in the Old
Testament revelation, and what we do is to recog-
nize its validity and use there, while passing to the
higher New Testament standpoint.

Let it be understood that we are not here arguing
against the need of discrimination and spiritual in-
sight in the interpretation of the Bible ; nor in favor
of the view that the Bible is an automatically self-
interpreting book in the use of which no one can
possibly go astray. Christian history abounds in
proofs to the contrary. Certainly we are not assu-
ming that there is any conflict between the true Chris-
tian consciousness and the true gospel message.
Our immediate point is to make clear the fact that
we are not justified in ascribing to the Christian
consciousness in the use of the Scriptures a task
which the Scriptures themselves have already per-
formed. We must indeed discern the final truths
of a progressive revelation and accept them in their
finality as distinguished from the earlier stages.
But this is simply a matter of interpretation, not the
finding of a false and a true so intermingled that we

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 387

are in hopeless darkness until an inward principle
leads us out.

But Doctor Clarke insists that we have not only a
pre-Christian, but a non-Christian element in the
New Testament — in the writings of Paul and even
in the eschatological teachings of Jesus himself.
Here he is not referring to matters of detail which
are often urged, such as Paul's use of rabbinic
methods of argumentation and the like. He refers
to that which is organic in Paul's thought and
fundamental to his message regarding Christ and
the gospel. Here we cannot agree with Doctor
Clarke. Space forbids comment on Doctor Clarke's
statements as to the eschatological teaching of Jesus.
But we must note briefly the non-Christian element
alleged by him in Paul's writings.

Doctor Clarke has much to say against the idea
of propitiation and the altar form of the doctrine of
salvation, found especially in the writings of Paul.^^
Everything legal in character he thinks is out of
place in the true doctrine of man's relations to
God. Now it is a curious contradiction of Doctor
Clarke's view that Paul defined his doctrine of the
law and its function directly in antithesis to the
Jewish or merely legalistic standpoint. Formally
and consciously Paul outlines the Christian experi-
ence as to Christ's redemptive work against the Jew-
ish manner of regarding salvation, and yet he retains
the idea of propitiation and in some real sense he

^« Pp. I oof.

388 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

retains the idea of satisfaction to the requirements
of the divine law. Luther's tremendous protest
against a false legalism was the assertion of the vital
principle of justification by faith based on propitia-
tion. The truth is that the legal is a genuine ele-
ment in human experience of redemption, an ele-
ment in the process itself, an element indeed in the
constitution of the world. The legal does not con-
tradict the filial; it is rather an element in it. The
personal universe in which we realize sonship to
God is not devoid of a constitution because it is
personal and vital. The filial is higher than the
legal, as the apex is higher than the base of the
pyramid. But the apex needs the base nevertheless.
The insistence upon the filial as exclusive of the
legal overlooks the nature of the experience of sin
and guilt. Sin is a descent to the legal plane of
experience as opposed to the filial, indeed, and the
legal consciousness carries in it the sense of guilt.
But to wipe out the legal aspect of experience, that
is, the real significance of the sin and guilt con-
sciousness, is to cheapen the filial. Redemption is
significant both in respect to what it delivers us
from and also in respect to its positive contents. It
is no gain to theology to treat that which is last and
highest as if that which is first and lowest had no
existence at all. The sphere in which the sinner
moves is a morally constituted sphere as truly as
that in which a son of God moves. Sin and
grace are correlatives, and it is wholly illusory to

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 389

imagine that we enhance the value or meaning of
the one when we endeavor to empty the other of
significance. The choice of sonship by us is pre-
sented in the New Testament as of the highest value
in God's sight. This is because it is correlative to
the deliberate choice of sin. These two choices are
the foci on the human side where the deepest sig-
nificance of the redemptive process appears. The
choice of sin is the expression of mere creaturehood
as distinguished from sonship. Yet sons retain
their creaturehood. Creaturehood rests on the legal,
since, on the one hand, it cannot escape the universe
of God and, on the other, it cannot as such rise
to sonship. There is then a genetic relationship
between the legal and filial aspects of experience.
Each sheds light on the other, each interprets the
other. Certainly Paul's gospel shows this; the
Reformation theology shows it; the hymnology of
Christian history illustrates it, and Christian experi-
ence to-day confirms it. There are millions of
Christians whose experience of the grace of God in
Christ would be emptied of half its meaning if
this side of it were destroyed. Paul's account of
the death of Christ is the form of teaching which is
the ground and warrant of that experience.

Our conclusion, therefore, is not that Doctor
Clarke's assumption of an agreement between the
true Christian experience and the New Testament
message is false. In this he is correct. The error
of his view is in assuming that a particular type

390 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

of experience is exhaustive and exclusive of all
others and contradictory to them — in particular that
the final and highest cancels the earlier stages of
experience, and that the earlier may not be gath-
ered up in the later. Nor do we combat his general
assumption that the Bible must not be regarded as
a book filled with teachings which awaken no re-
sponse in us, which are incongruous with our re-
ligious cravings, and must be accepted on sheer
authority. He is quite right in repudiating such
a view. But we hold against his view that valid
Christian experience is broader and richer than
he makes it; the response of the religious con-
sciousness of man to God's revelation in Christ
includes elements which Doctor Clarke omits
altogether from his view of the gospel.

Doctor Clarke recognizes a real objective au-
thority in the Bible. ^^ Along with this he accepts
the fulness and finality of God's revelation in Christ.
He accepts the transcendent Christ and refuses to
class him with other men. Now it seems clear to
the present writer that Doctor Clarke's views are
inconsistent if not self -contradictory at one vital
point, n his view of the larger and higher Christ
is correct, he should hold a different view of the
authoritativeness and inspiration of the New Testa-
ment as a whole. If his subjective criterion of truth
is the sound and correct one, then he will with dif-
ficulty maintain his faith in the transcendent Christ.

" *' Use of Scriptures in Theology," p. 76f.

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 39I

Harnack and Bousset and scores of others apply
the subjective criterion and find another kind of
Christ in the Gospels. The " Christian element "
which they find strikes at the roots of the Christian
element which Doctor Clarke finds with regard to
the vital point as to who and what Jesus was. The
Christian element which Luther found and which
shook the civilized world to its foundations strikes
at the roots of the Christian element which Doctor
Clarke finds at another vital point.

The majority of modern evangelical Christians,
if they should rest in a subjective criterion, would
inevitably insist on those elements in Paul's teach-
ings rejected by Doctor Clarke, since they are ele-
ments vital to their own experience. Each and all
of these opponents of Doctor Clarke are as vehement
and enthusiastic in the certainty of their " Chris-
tian element " as is Doctor Clarke in his. In fact,
when we apply the criterion of experience to Scrip-
ture as a whole we must take experience as a whole.
We must make of experience a synthetic principle,
not an individualistic one. The failure to do this is
the underlying fallacy of most of those who agree
with Doctor Clarke's type of opinion on this point.

Now, so soon as we apply Christian experience
in this synthetic way, as inclusive of all the varying
phases of that experience, we obtain a principle
which harmonizes with the larger conception of
Christ and of inspiration. If Jesus was miraculous,
transcendent, divine, we can easily accept the report

392 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

of John, as previously cited, in which he promises
the future guidance of the Holy Spirit to disciples
in their efforts to understand and teach concerning
him and his Gospel. A full and final gospel can
scarcely be found in and through Christ on any
other view. If he was what Bousset claims, a man
like other men simply, then he was just one among
the many seekers after God. His disciples under-
stood him as best they could. But we test the
truth of his teaching, and therewith of their report,
by another criterion altogether. The measure of
authoritativeness in the final result will depend upon
the degree in which we discover that there were
elements of real truth in his teachings. But this in
no sense implies necessarily that he brought us the
final truth about God. Doctor Clarke's subjective
criterion for discovering the Christian element in
the New Testament, consistently applied, would
class him with Bousset and Harnack. But his
view of the person of Christ logically classes him
with Sanday, Dods, and Orr. To hold the view of
a transcendent Christ, a final revelation and re-
demption, and along with these to assume a radically
erroneous New Testament written by those nearest
to him, and then the secure recovery of this tran-
scendent and divine Christ in an age of scientific
unbelief in spite of the radically erroneous record,
is, to say the least, an inconsistent juxtaposition of
assumptions and beliefs. We assert then that the
subjective criterion goes with the radical view as

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 393

to Christ, and that the compromise conception of
the inspiration and authority of the New Testa-
ment fails in consistency and convincing power.
Doctor Clarke, always charming as a writer and
spiritual in his appeal, seems clearly to come short
in his view of the true Christian experience, and
therewith he fails in his conclusion as to the
authority of Scripture.

7. Conclusion as to the Authority of the
Scriptures

We have made the statement in the preceding
pages that the Bible is the " final authority in re-
ligion." We have also asserted that Christ, as
Revealer of God and Redeemer of men, is the seat
of authority in religion and absolutely final for
human needs. It remains to reconcile the two state-
ments. The Scriptures do not and cannot take
the place of Jesus Christ. We are not saved by
belief in the Scriptures, but by a living faith in
Christ. To understand what is meant by the phrase
the " authority of the Bible " we need only to re-
member that in so expressing ourselves we are not
speaking in vacuo, and apart from any sense of the
function of a literature as distinct from that of a
personal object in religion. The authority of Scrip-
ture is that simply of an inspired literature which
interprets a life. Our previously expounded dis-
tinction between the life and the literature which
explains it and introduces to it should have made

394 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

the point clear. F. D. Maurice, in his work en-
titled " The Kingdom of God," distinguishes be-
tween " a gospel of notions and a gospel of facts."
Now the Christian life belongs to the fact side of
the gospel; the Bible lies on the notion (i. e., idea,
truth) side. Or to employ a kindred distinction:
The gospel may be regarded as ideas or as power.
The Bible is authoritative for the determinative
ideas, but Christ is determinative for power. Or
once more we may say the gospel may be regarded
as revelation or as union with the personal object
in religion. The Bible is the revelation; the life
is union with Christ. Again, the gospel may be
described as the operation of spiritual forces in a
moral kingdom of persons, or the description of the
forces of that kingdom. The life involves the
forces, the Bible is the description thereof. In
short, Christ as the Revealer of God and Redeemer
of men is the seat of authority in religion and above
and underneath and before the Bible. But the
Bible is the authoritative literature which leads us
to Christ. As such the Bible is not something inter-
posed between God and the soul. It is rather the
thoughts and truths and description of the life-
adjustments required to give us the vision of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.

Just as the principle of freedom and that of au-
thority, as we have seen, meet and are reconciled
in Christ, so also do they come together and
mutually fulfil each other in the Bible. The

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 395

authority of the Scriptures is precisely analogous in
this respect to that of Jesus. The authority of
Scriptures possesses none of the marks of illegiti-
mate authorities in religion. The Bible is not a
statute book in the legalistic sense. If so, it would
necessarily be boundless in its details, an infinite
code in fact, to meet all the varying conditions
of human life. The Bible came not by legislation,
but by revelation. It is not even a book of rules,
but rather of principles, infinitely expansive and
adaptable. It is not a book of general decrees to
be enforced in their details by an authoritative
priesthood. This would be Roman Catholicism.
The Bible is not a book of ritual, which, if made
the chief thing in religion would leave it empty of
vitality and power. The Bible might be any or all
of these things and fail to produce the essential
religious quality, vital union with God. Its finality
as an authority in religion is due not to the
presence, but to the absence of these things in
its teachings.

We search in vain in the teachings of the
New Testament for any forms of interference with
human freedom. The individual, the family, the
church, the civilization, are left intact. The play
of individualism in the moral, social, intellectual,
and religious life of man is left to work itself out
from within. Endless variety has resulted in the
lives of individuals and the development of society,
wherever the New Testament ideal has prevailed.

396 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

In the constitution of the church itself the New
Testament gives no inkHng of any authority which
arms one set of ecclesiastical officials with power
over others. Freedom and autonomy are the law
at the basis of the organization of the Church.
The State has no authority over the conscience, and
all men are equal in the right of direct approach
to God. In other words, God's method in bringing
men to himself is the method of freedom, a method
necessarily slow. The bruised reed he will not
break and the dimly burning flax he will not quench.
The true and final authority can only be one which
is expansive and elastic enough to widen with the
growth of man and yet remain close and vital
enough to meet his needs at each step along the
way. The choicest element in man's development
and training, viz., his free choice of right, and
free imitation of God, would be destroyed by a
statutory form of religion.

Now the question presents itself: If the Bible is
not a statute book merely, nor a rule book merely,
nor a decree book merely, and if it leaves the indi-
vidual and the family and the Church and the
State entirely free, how comes it to possess finality
as authority in religion? The reply is that its
finality as authority is due to its unique power of
showing the way without compelling man ; or rather
its capacity for revealing destiny and then of con-
straining man to it ; or yet again, its disclosure of
the inner constitution of the moral and spiritual

PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIANITY 397

universe, while leaving man free to conform to it.
It is not statute or rule or decree ; it is a moral and
spiritual constitution. The Bible is the revelation
of the constitution of the personal kingdom which
includes God and man. Just as the attainment of
power and the realization of human destiny in
relation to the physical universe keeps pace with
man's progressive knowledge of its constitution
through the researches of science, so also man's
moral and religious destiny is realized as his life
progressively conforms to the constitution of the
personal kingdom of free spirits. In this kingdom
religion is the fundamental fact; and revelation is
the completion of the religious relationship, since
it is God responding to man, or God seeking man.
Without revelation religion would remain one-
sided and incomplete. Christianity is the response
of God to man's quest for God, and it is thus the
fulfilment of all other forms of religious yearning
and desire. The truths of Scripture, since they
come through the free interaction of man's spirit
with God in the struggles and experiences of life,
possess the authority of all truth which man dis-
covers for himself; and since they are due also to
God's activity in revealing himself to man they
possess a unique authority above other forms of
truth. As these truths of Scripture reveal the con-
stitution of the moral and personal universe, they
bring God and man together, and are thus unlike all
fictitious and illegitimate authorities which separate

2A

398 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

God and man. The truths of Scripture are like
a circle which encompasses all personal beings,
including God and man. They define the boundaries
and give the clue to the free interaction of God
and man. The true doctrine of an authoritative
revelation needs only the assumption that we have
in the Bible such a moral constitution as we have
described. This leaves it not only the final authority
in religion, but the only clue to man's freedom
and future culture, both intellectual and religious.

CHAPTER XI

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We may now very briefly sum up our general
conclusions. There are certainly two spheres of
human knowledge, the scientific and the religious.
We have knowledge of the mechanical universe of
law and energy. Here science has achieved her
greatest triumphs. We also have knowledge in the
supra-mechanical and supra-scientific realm of per-
sonal relationships, and in particular in the relig-
ious realm of divine and human fellowships.

The term science, then, will either expand in
meaning so as to include more than one criterion of
truth, or else it will cease to be a word of catholic
import inclusive of all knowledge, and become in-
stead a technical term of narrower meaning like
chemistry or geology and descriptive merely of a
single form of knowledge. The religious life of
man contains elements of real knowledge. In it
man deals with an objective world of truth and
reality just as in physical science. As such it is
autonomous and free and in no sense subject to the
jurisdiction of other forms of human culture with
principles of explanation alien to the religious life.

There have been in human history two tyrannies

399

400 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

growing out of the abuse of two forms of freedom
which will cease when the totality of man's experi-
ence is thus recognized. The two forms of free-
dom are the scientific and the religious, and the two
forms of tyranny are the tyranny of science and
that of religion. Science is the foe to freedom
when it seeks to forestall man's intercourse with the
spiritual universe; and religion is the foe to free-
dom when it seeks to trammel science in the study
of nature. Human culture then must be as broad as
human life. All legitimate forms of culture are
forms of freedom. God's method with the race is
the method of freedom, since this method alone is
compatible with man's highest development.

Since God's method with man is the method
of freedom, all the particulars of his providential
and paternal dealings must conform ultimately to
the ideal of freedom. But his method will vary
in detail in accordance with the form of human
development he seeks to promote. Religion, for
example, calls for self-revelation on God's part,
first, because only thus is the religious relationship
completed, a relationship calling for reciprocal ac-
tivity as between God and man; and secondly, be-
cause self -revelation or self-projection of God into
man's life in the form of truth is the only method
of freedom in the religious life. It alone evokes a
full and free response of man to God. But here
truth is more than the self-disclosure of God to
the cognitive faculty in man. To regard it as cog-

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 4OI

nitive merely in this sphere is to confound rehgion
with a single form of scientific knowledge. The
essence of religion being redemption, religious truth
becomes identical with the redeeming activity of
God. The freedom of man in his response to God,
the integrity of the judicial process within him,
appears in the Amen of his whole nature, intellect,
emotions, and will, to this redemptive activity of
God. The philosophy of religion must find its
starting-point in the data supplied by the vital ex-
periences of the religious life itself, just as other
forms of philosophy must build on the results
achieved by the science of nature. Without this
basis of vital experience the philosophy of religion
can never become more than an abstraction. It
can never grip men powerfully since it never ad-
vances beyond the unstable equilibrium of all purely
rationalistic systems.

Now since God's method is that of freedom and
his instrument truth, the rise of authority in religion
is inevitable. Through the operation of funda-
mental psychological and social laws, truth achieved
by man, or derived otherwise, becomes objectified
in forms which guide him in his upward course.
This indeed is the sole condition and warrant of
progress. This objective and authoritative truth is
our sole means of relating or adjusting ourselves
to the universe, physical and spiritual, as we pro-
gressively discover its meaning through interaction
with it. Otherwise we remain infants, or blind and

402 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

dumb creatures floundering aimlessly in a quagmire.
Since subjectivism postpones indefinitely the dis-
covery of truth or cancels its meaning entirely, it
arrests thought and progress and breaks down as
the sole criterion of religious truth. Authoritative
truth is the response which the universe yields to
man's search, and freedom is the response which
man yields to that self -disclosure of the universe,
physical and spiritual. Freedom and authority are
thus correlative terms, neither of which in and
of itself is adequate to set forth the meaning of
man's life in relation to his cosmic and spiritual
environment.

Fundamentally the religious relationship is per-
sonal on both sides. Religious authority, therefore,
is the authority of the religious object, the personal
God. The authority of truth, however, is a quite
legitimate conception, since truth is significant only
in relation to its personal ground and source. But
since it is the personal object in religion and our
adjustment to that object which is vital and funda-
mental, we must be on guard against misconceiving
authoritative religious truths as statutory or eccle-
siastical or mandatory merely, as distinguished from
revelation. No creedal or ecclesiastical forms of
religious authority are legitimate which thwart the
vital interaction of man and God. The function of
authoritative religious truth is to lead men to God.
This is precisely the use of the Bible. Being the
literary expression of living experience in the

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 403

religious life, the spontaneous and free output of
that experience under the guidance of God's Spirit,
it is precisely adapted to reproduce that experience
in men to-day. Science discloses the constitution of
an indifferent cosmos. The Scriptures reveal the
constitution of a spiritual universe in which a loving
God seeks man and in which the yearning heart of
man finds God.

It is this seeking and finding which is the char-
acteristic law of the spiritual universe in which
man moves and with which he interacts. The seek-
ing God disclosed himself finally and fully in the
redeeming Christ. Man's thought expanded to the
breaking-point in his philosophic efforts to grasp the
infinite and human personality collapsed in one or
another form of pantheism. In Christ the process
was reversed and the Infinite disclosed himself as
like unto those who so vainly sought him, yet as un-
speakably more than man had dreamed. In Christ
the beatific vision was first realized for man since
he focalized the eternal in his personal human life.
His authority is not one which crushes or com-
pels, but one which yearns and waits. Out of the
dim and distant into the near world he came. As
weary men have turned their faces toward him,
they have found in him the answer to all their
questionings. He does not strive nor cry aloud.
The process by which he draws men must be moral
and spiritual, not physical or political. His authorit}'
is the authority of moral and spiritual preeminence.

404 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION

The nations of the world, even the most backward,
are feeHng the tug of his moral energy in the sub-
conscious region of their minds. He shall not faint
nor be discouraged till he has set judgment in the
earth.

GENERAL INDEX

Anderson, K. C, referred to,
104.

Assertions, in Christian experi-
ence, 260.

Authority: how it arises, 168;
manifestation of, 189; em-
ployed by both religion and
science, 272; a universal law,
287; of Christ contrasted with
other kinds of authority, 329-
331; of Christ cannot be ques-
tioned, 334, 335; Reformation
doctrine of, 364-370; Protes-
tant and Roman Catholic doc-
trines of, 370-375; of the
Scriptures, 393-398.

Authority in religion: Roman
Catholic conception of, 15;
as held by Gallican school, 15;
as held by Ultramontane
school, 15; Christian con-
sciousness is seat of, 16; with-
in the human spirit, 18; as
held by Sabatier, 18; subjective
conception of, 26; both sub-
jective and objective, 31, 32;
conception of, not sufficiently
analyzed by subjectivists, 40;
Bible is expression of, for
Protestants, 41 ; as conceived
by Lobstein, 55, 56; Scriptures
as source of, 180, 303; ideal
of, 190; subjective principle of,
fails, 286; forms of, 302; Jesus
Christ is "seat" of, 315;
marks of the ideal, 319, 320;

objections to, 321, 322; God
is the supreme, 322; Roman
Catholic and Protestant con-
ceptions of, 328, 370-375; the
rise of, 401.

Bergson: on monistic philos-
ophy, 146, 147; mentioned, 215,
284, 285.

Bible: authoritativeness of,- 342,
353; life-process behind, 343;
history behind, 344, 345; uni-
fied in Christ, 346; record of
life, 347; relations of life and,
348f. ; preserves truth, 350; the
objector and the, 351; function
of, 352, 371-373; results of
rejecting, 353, 354; formation
of, 354-358; what it is not,
395.

Bousset: mentioned, 78, 106, 378,
391, 392; his view of the per-
son of Jesus, 96-98,

Bowne, Borden P.: on the phi-
losophy of religion, 143-145;
quoted, 343, 344.

Buddhism: factors of religious
activity in, 116; as a religion,
197, 198.

Burton, E. D., on source of Gos-
pels, 70.

Butler, on the nature of the
religious life, 283.

Caird, Edward, on the philosophy
of religion, 140-143.

4o6

GENERAL INDEX

Calvin: referred to, 364, 365,
368, 369; his view of the
Bible, 367.

Canon. (See Bible.)

Caswell, Edward, wrote, 333.

Christ: our example, 24; of faith
continuous with Jesus of syn-
optics, 105; objections to, of
faith not scientific, 109, no;
personalized religion, 202; is
men's religious horizon, 271;
unique place of, 299, 300; the
true revelation of God, 314;
is the " seat " of authority in
religion, 315; demonstrates two
great realities, 316; fulfils all
requirements, 323; his religion
that of authority and of the
Spirit, 323; the solution of
two problems, 325; his method,
326-337; the synthesis of free-
dom and authority, 331; his
friendship, 337, 338.

Christian consciousness: defined,
23; first expresssed as seat of
authority by Schleiermacher,
53; in religion, 296-300.

Christianity: considered a dis-
ease, 61 ; is the personal re-
ligion of Jesus, 94; the crown
of religion, 141; limited by sub-
jectivists, 157; phases of, 201,
202; superior to other religions,
211; religion of authority and
freedom, 288; the supreme
criticism of religions, 292; re-
duced to minimum gospel, 306;
completeness of, 338-340.

Church and State, separation of,
II.

Clarke, W. N.: his views, 384,
38s, 387, 389, 390, 391, 393;
classified, 392.

Clement of Alexandria, on au-
thority in religion, 16.

Coleridge, on the nature of the
religious life, 283.

Conflict, between religion and
reason, 293-295.

Continuity, the scientific crite-
rion, 305, 306.

Courses, taken by writers on
theology, 310, 311.

Creeds: authority of, 301; peril
of, 302.

Critic, courses open to, 108.

Criticism: implications of, 183,
184; right of, unquestioned,
192; two forms of, 291, 292;
function of, 258, 264.

Democracy, in the State, 11.

Denney, James: referred to, 73,
108; quoted, 80; on the per-
son of Jesus, 101, 102.

Descartes: " consecrated doubt,"
118; on the soul and God,
119, 120; mentioned, 260, 280.

Ethics: theories of, 224, 225; and

religion, 226-234; related to

Christian theism, 251.
Evolutionism: speculative, and

religion, 50-53; a principle of

explanation, 240.

Failings, summed up, 305.

Fiske, John, referred to, 209.

Foster, G. B. : his definition of
religion, 205, 206; mentioned,
378.

Freedom: a winged word, 11;
ideal of, 11, 12; qualifications
of ideal of, 13; as opposed to
absolutism, 13; as opposed to
Roman Catholic authority, 16;
modern principle of, 16; one
of the foundations of the re-
ligious structure, 115; lies be-
yond the frontier of science,

GENERAL INDEX

407

122-124; how attained, 187,
188; reassertion of, 257; of
reason, 293; two forms of, 400.

Gilder, Richard Watson, men-
tioned, 333.

God: one of the foundations of
the religious structure, 115;
the fundamental assumption
of religion, 126; personal
knowledge of, 227; his method
of freedom, 396, 400.

Gospel: the law of human con-
sciousness, 19; corrupted by-
Greek philosophy, 98.

Gospels: criticism of, 67-92;
Logia the source of first and
third, 68; supplemented by
Epistles, 327.

Haeckel, mentioned, 206.

Harnack: on the document desig-
nated Q, 68, 69; on purpose
of Logia, 71 ; referred to, 73,
106, 391, 392; on canonical
version, 84, 85: his view of
the person of Christ, 98, 99.

Hawkins, Rev. J. C., on the
synoptic Gospels, 69.

Hegel, mentioned, 148, 282.

Herrmann: on mysticism, 200;
mentioned, 229, 319, 324, 349,
361, 362; his compromise view,
311; his own contradictions
and failure, 312, 313.

Hofding, H,: on the philosophy
of religion, 136-140; on the es-
sence of religion, 138; his view
refuted, 139; his view of re-
ligion, 205; mentioned, 214,
238, 250.

Hoffman, F. S., defines religion,
195.

Holtzmann, H. H., his view of
the person of Jesus, 99.

Huxley, T. H.: on first com-
mandment of science, 20, 21;
his theological method identical
with that of Sabatier, 21; men-
tioned, 118, 260; does not ac-
cept Cartesian reasoning, 120.

Idealism, of Prof. Edward Caird,
140-143.

Immortality: one of the founda-
tions of the religious struc-
ture, 115; considered, 124-126.

Individual: autonomy of, 12; a
part of the Absolute, 12; doc-
trines of Roman Catholic
Church and, 15.

Individualism: sources of, 12;
finds no recognition in Roman
Catholic Church, 16; carried to
an extreme, 40.

Inspiration: theories of, 375-393;
radical view of, 377; conserva-
tive view of, 378; traditional
view of, 379; inductive theory
of, 379-383; compromise view
of, 383-393.

James, William: on free will, 123,
124; on three forms of func-
tion of brain, 126; on plural-
ism, 147-149; referred to, 183,
251, 260, 261, 278, 283, 323.

Jesus: the consciousness of, 64-
113; absolute authority as-
sumed and asserted by, 72-86;
note of judgment in utterances
of, 86, 87; his miracles, etc.,
recorded by Mark, 91, 92;
critical views of the person of,
92-104; of the synoptic records,
105; the Light of the world,
iii; of faith, 286; sinlessness
of, 309, 310; true champion of
free personal life, 317; saves
from mysticism, 317; the re-

4o8

GENERAL INDEX

vealer of God, 318; fulfils the Orr, James: quoted, 380, 381
Old Testament, 346, 347. mentioned, 392.

Kant, referred to, 12, 248, 254,
280, 281.

Knowledge: defined, 259; in re-
ligious experience, 262-265,
272-286; sensation theory of,
279; supplies a fact-basis, 287;
two spheres of, 399.

Kiihl, Ernst: on Jesus as Mes-
siah, 100, loi; referred to, 108.

Law, of the spiritual universe,
403-

Lessing, mentioned, 361.

Lobstein: referred to, 17, 42, 54,
63; quotations from, 25, 26; on
religious authority, 55-57; de-
fines inner experience, 57.

Logia, Messianic character of,
87, 88.

Lotze, mentioned, 151.

Luther: referred to, 364, 365,
368, 369, 388, 391; on the
word of God, 366.

Martineau: his view of religious
authority, 26, 27; quoted, 27-
29; his view of the person of
Jesus, 79, 93-96; on the au-
thentic sayings of Jesus, 83,
84; mentioned, 106, 182, 304,
378; his view inadequate, 167.

Maurice, F. D., referred to, 394.

Meyer, Frederic, mentioned, 125.

Monism, Critical, of Professor
Hofding, 136-140.

More, L. T., quoted, 132, 133.

Munsterberg, Hugo, quoted, 220-

Nietzsche: Superman of, 12; re-
ferred to, 12, 61, 183.

Papias, referred to, 68, 69.

Pascal, on the nature of the
religious life, 283.

Personalism, of Professor
Bowne, 143-145.

Pfleiderer, mentioned, 103, 107,
108.

Philosophy: supplements religion,
236; unstable, 323; of re-
ligion, 401.

Pluralism, of Prof. William
James, 147-149.

Pragmatism: the claims of, 151-
154; and logic, 161, 162; supe-
rior to Ritschlianism, 165.

Principles, summed up, 341.

Progress: basis of, 174; law of,
in religious sphere, 178.

Psychology: physiological, 217,
218; and religion, 222-224.

Qualities, required, 319, 320.

Ramsay, mentioned, 382.

Reason, limits of, 295.

Reformers: referred to, 20, 364,
365; lapse of modern Protes-
tantism from position of, 30.

Regeneration, defined, 23.

Religion: goal of, 38; begins with
self-renunciation, 43; independ-
ence of, lis; foundation of,
IIS, 128; and science, 128-134,
213-217; and philosophy, 135,
136, 234-258; Hofding's view
of, 138; Caird's view of, 140-
143; Bowne on the philosophy
of, 143-145; James' view of the
philosophy of, 147-149; prag-
matism and, 151-154; grounded
in truth, 154, 155; does not
demand logical proof, 163, 164;

GENERAL INDEX

409

is universal, 193; fallacies in
defining, 193-19S, i99, 205-209;
moral elements in, 196; per-
sonal, 200-203; and redemp-
tion, 204, 205; definition of,
210-213, 288; facts in, 217;
and psychology, 217-224; and
ethics, 224-234; supreme func-
tion of, 243; characteristics of
Christian, 263; undermined,
281; sphere of, 284, 285; re-
quires personality, 287; the
right of, 289, 290; the Chris-
tian, 363; philosophy of, 401.

Religions: revealed, 28; apoc-
alyptic, 28; approach of Chris-
tianity to other, 292.

Results, summarized, 173, 174,
191, 192.

Ritschl: on authority in religion,
17; mentioned, 44, 165, 282,
308; his view of religious truth
not satisfactory, 49.

Royce, on the vital elements of
Christianity, 104.

Sabatier: his views on authority
in religion, 14, 18; on the re-
ligion of the Spirit, 19; his
theological method identical
with that of Huxley, 21; his
analysis of the Christian con-
sciousness, 23; his conception
of the gospel, 24; distinguishes
between faith and belief, 35;
on religion and science, 38; his
view of authority, 40, 41 ;
classed with French school, 44;
and radical subjectivism, 54;
on Scripture and on the per-
son of Christ, 58; quoted, 59;
mentioned, 63, 182, 303, 304,
306, 323, 383; his view in-
adequate, 167; as to Reform-
ers, 364.

Sanday, referred to, 345, 379,
392.

Schiller, mentioned, 175.

Schinz, referred to, 245, 246.

Schleiermacher: on authority in
religion, 16; first expressed
Christian consciousness as seat
of authority, 53; his definition
of religion, 194, 195; panthe-
istic, 199; on performance of
moral acts, 231, 232; men-
tioned, 282, 329, 330.

Schmiedel, denies authenticity of
Gospels, 61, 62.

Science: first commandment of,
20, 21; and theology, 21; and
religion, 37-39. 128-134, 213-
217; function of, in relation to
religion, 1 17-134; ideal of, 117;
has no message as to existence
of soul, 1 19-122; cannot deal
with freedom, 122-124; can
prove nothing in regard to im-
mortality, 124-126; limit of
function of, 127-129; has no
ontological value, 133.

Scripture. (See Bible.)

Soul: one of the foundations of
the religious structure, 115; is
outside the field of science,
119-122.

Spinoza, referred to, 199, 227.

Stennett, Samuel, mentioned,
333.

Subjectivism: reactionary doc-
trine, 179; conflicts with, 181;
has caused confusion, 181; un-
warranted assumption of, 182;
impossible in education and re-
ligion, 186; unstable, 323,
breaks down, 402.

Summary, of conclusions, 399.

Symbolo-Fideism: held in France.
17; explained and discussed,
44-50.

410

GENERAL INDEX

Synoptic problem, sketch of, 67- Voluntarism; contrasted with

70,

Truth: uses of objective, 33-37;
assimilation of, 156-166; logic
and religious, 268; scientific,

Truth, Criterion of: as held by
some, 30; subjective, 33; re-
ligious, 267.

logic, 159, 160; and rational-
ism, 186, 187; explained, 334.

Weiss, Bernard, mentioned, 103.
Wellhausen: referred to, 69, 71,

106; his view of the person of

Jesus, 94.
Wrede, mentioned, 106.

y

NOV 1 7 1930

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