Lecture IV.
Note 21. p. [118]. On Some Technical Terms In The History Of Unbelief.
There are a few terms, which are frequently used in reference to unbelief, of which it would be interesting to trace the meaning and history. A few notes in reference to this subject may both prevent ambiguity and throw some light on a chapter in the history of language. The words alluded to are the following: 1. Infidel; 2. Atheist; 3. Pantheist; 4. Deist; 5. Naturalist; 6. Freethinker; 7. Rationalist; 8. Sceptic.
1. Infidel.—This word began to be restricted as a technical term, about the time of the Crusades and throughout the middle ages, to denote Mahometan; as being par excellence the kind of unbelievers with which Christians were brought into contact. Perhaps the first instance of its use in the more modern sense, of disbeliever generally, is in the Collect for Good Friday, “all Jews, Turks, infidels, heretics;” which words were apparently inserted by the Reformers in the first Prayer Book (1547); the rest of the prayer, except these words, existing in the Latin Collect of the ancient Service-book from which it is translated. Ordinarily however, during the sixteenth century, it is found in the popular sense of unfaithful; a meaning which the increasing prevalence of Latin words was likely to bring into use. In writers of the seventeenth, the use of it in the sense of unbeliever becomes more common: an instance from Milton is cited in Richardson's Dictionary. In the beginning of the eighteenth century it becomes quite common in theological writers in its modern sense; and toward the end of the century was frequently appropriated to express the form of unbelief which existed in France; a use which probably arose from the circumstance that the French unbelievers did not adopt a special name for their tenets, as the English did, who had a positive creed, (Deism,) and not merely, like the French, a disintegration of belief.
2. Atheist.—This word needs little discussion. In modern times it is first applied by the theological writers of the sixteenth century, to describe the unbelief of such persons as Pomponatius; and in the seventeenth it is used, by Bacon (Essay on Atheism), [pg 414] Milton, (Paradise lost, b. vi.), and Bunyan (Pilgrim), to imply general unbelief, of which the disbelief in a Deity is the principal sign. Toward the end of the same century it is not unfrequently found, e.g. in Kortholt's De Tribus Impostoribus, 1680, to include Deism such as that of Hobbes, as well as blank Pantheism like Spinoza's, which more justly deserves the name. The same use is seen in Colerus's work against Spinoza, Arcana Atheismi Revelata. Tillotson (serm. i. on Atheism); and Bentley (Boyle Lectures) use the word more exactly; and the invention of the term Deism induced, in the writers of the eighteenth century, a more limited and exact use of the former term. But in Germany, Reimannus (Historia Univ. Atheismi, 1725, p. 437 seq.) and Buddeus (De Atheismo et Superstitione, 1723, ch. iii. § 2), use it most widely, and especially make it include disbelief of immortality. Also Walch, Bibliotheca Theol. Selecta, 1757, uses it to include the Pantheism of Spinoza, (vol. i. p. 676, &c.) This transference of the term to embrace all kinds of unbelief has been well compared with the extension of the term βάρβαρος by the Greeks.[1064] The wide use of the term is partly to be attributed to the doubt which Christian men had whether any one could really disbelieve the being of a God,—an opinion increased by the Cartesian notions then common concerning innate ideas; and whether accordingly the term Atheist could mean anything different from Deist. Compare Buddeus's Isagoge, p. 1203, and the chapter “An dentur Athei” in his work De Atheismo. (ch. i.) By the time of Stapfer's work, Instit. Theol. Polem. 1744, the two terms were distinguished; see vol. ii. ch. vi. and vii. and cfr. p. 587.
The term was subsequently applied to describe the views of the French writers, such as D'Holbach, who did not see the necessity for believing in a personal first Cause. In more modern times it is frequently applied to such writers as Comte; whose view is indeed atheism, but differs from that of former times, in that it is the refusal to entertain the question of a Deity as not being discoverable by the evidence of sense and science, rather than the absolute denial of his existence. The Comtists also hold firmly the marks of order, law, mind, in nature, and not the fortuitous concurrence of atoms, as was the case with the atheists of France.
3. Pantheist.—One of the first uses of this word is by Toland in the Pantheisticon, 1720, where however it has its ancient polytheistic sense. It is a little later that it passes from the idea of the worship of the whole of the gods to the worship of the entire universe looked at as God.
This exacter application of it is more modern. It is now used to denote the disbelief of a personal first Cause: but a distinction [pg 415] ought to be made between the Pantheism like that of Averroes, which regards the world as an emanation, and sustained by an anima mundi; and that which, like the view of Spinoza, regards the sum total of all things to be Deity. This distinction was noticed and illustrated in p. [107]. The account of the word in Krug's Philosoph. Lexicon is worth consulting.
4. Deist.—One of the first instances of the use of this word occurs in Viret, Epistr. Dedicat. du 2. vol de l'Instruction Chrétienne, 1563, quoted by Bayle, Dictionnaire, (note under the word Viret.) It is appropriated in the middle of the seventeenth century by Herbert to his scheme, and afterwards by Blount (Oracles of Reason, p. 99), to distinguish themselves from Atheists. In strict truth, Herbert calls himself a Theist; which slightly differs from the subsequent term Deist, in so far as it is intended to convey the idea of that which he thought to be the true worship of God. It is theism as opposed to error, rather than natural religion as opposed to revealed: whereas deism always implies a position antagonistic to revealed religion. But the distinction is soon lost sight of; and Nichols (1696) entitles his work against the deists, Conference with a Theist. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, and in the beginning of the eighteenth, the Christian writers sometimes even use Deist as interchangeable with Atheist, as shown above. It is also used as synonymous with one of the senses of the word Naturalist. See below, under the latter word; and cfr. Stapfer, Inst. Polem. vol. ii. p. 742, with p. 883.
5. Naturalist.—This word is used in two senses; an objective and a subjective. Naturalism, in the former, is the belief which identifies God with nature; in the latter, the belief in the sufficiency of natural as distinct from revealed religion. The former is Pantheism, the latter Deism. In the former sense it is applied to Spinoza and others; e.g. in Walch's Biblioth. Theol. Select. i. 745 seq. In the latter sense it occurs as early as 1588 in France, in the writings of J. Bodin (Colloq. Heptapl. 31. Rem. 2); and towards the end of the seventeenth century both in Germany and England, e.g. in Kortholt's De Trib. Impost. 1680; and the Quaker, Barclay's Apologia, 1679, p. 28. At the end of the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth, the name was applied in England to deists, (e.g. in Nichols's Conference with a Theist, pref. § 15); and in Germany it became a commonly known word, owing to the spread of the Wolffian philosophy. Stapfer (Instit. Theol. Polem. 1744, vol. ii. p. 881), using Wolffian phraseology, divides this latter kind of naturalism into two kinds, viz. philosophical and theological. The philosophical kind maintains the sufficiency of natural religion, and disbelieves revealed; the theological kind holds the truth of revelation, but regards it as unnecessary, as being only a republication of natural religion. The [pg 416] adherent of the former is the “Naturalist” of Kant; the latter his “pure Rationalist” (Verg. Religion Innerhalb, &c.); the former the Deist, the latter the Rationalist, of a school like that of Wegscheider, &c. (See Lect. [VI].)
Cfr. Bretschneider's Handbuch der Dogmatik; i. 72. note. Hahn, De Rationalismi Indole (quoted by Rose on Rationalism, 2d ed. Introd. p. 20) names writers who make a third kind of naturalism, viz. Pelagianism; but this is rare.
6. Freethinker.—This term first appears toward the close of the seventeenth century. It is used of Toland, “a candid Freethinker,” by Molyneux, in a letter to Locke 1697 (Locke's Works, fol. ed. iii. 624); and Shaftesbury in 1709 speaks of “our modern free-writers,” Works, vol. i. p. 65. But it was Collins in 1713, in his Discourse of Freethinking, who first appropriated the name to express the independence of inquiry which was claimed by the deists. The use of the word expressed the spirit of a nation like the English, in which, subsequently to the change of dynasty, freedom to think and speak was held to be every man's charter. Lechler has remarked the absence of a parallel word in other languages. The French expression Esprit fort, the title of a work of La Bruyère, does not convey quite the same idea as Freethinker. Esprit expresses the French liveliness, not the reflective self-consciousness of the English mind of the eighteenth century: the fort is a relic of the pride of feudalism; whilst the free of the English Freethinker implies the reaction against it. The English term smacks of democracy; the French carries with it the notion of aristocracy. (Lechler, Gesch. des Engl. Deismus, p. 458.) There is no word to express the English idea in foreign languages, except the literal translation of the English term. Even then, in French the expression la libre pensée has changed its meaning; since it is now frequently used to describe the struggle, good as well as evil, of the human mind against authority. It thus loses the unfavourable sense which originally belonged to the corresponding English expression.
7. Rationalist.—The history of the term is hard to trace. The first technical use of the adjective rational seems to have been about the seventeenth century, to express a school of philosophy. It had probably passed out of the old sense of dialectical (cfr. Brucker's Hist. Phil. iii. 60.), into the use just named; which we find in Bacon, to express rational philosophy, as opposed to empirical, (see a quotation from Bacon's Apophthegms in Richardson's Dictionary, sub voc.); or, as in North's Plutarch, 1657, p. 984, for intellectual philosophy as opposed to mathematical and moral. The word Rationalist occurs in Clarendon, 1646 (State Papers, vol. ii. p. 40), to describe a party of presbyterians who appealed only to “what their reason dictates them in church and state.” Hahn (De Rationalismi Indole) states that Amos Comenius [pg 417] similarly used the term in 1661 in a depreciatory sense. The treatise of Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity caused Christians and Deists to appropriate the term, and to restrict it to religion. Thus, by Waterland's time, it had got the meaning of false reasoning on religion. (Works, viii. 67.) And, passing into Germany, it appears to have become the common name to express philosophical views of religion, as opposed to supernatural. In this sense it occurs as early as 1708 in Sucro, quoted by Tholuck, Vermischt. Schriften, ii. pp. 25, 26, and in Buddeus, Isagoge, 1730, pp. 213 and 1151. It is also used often as equivalent to naturalism, or adherence to natural religion; with the slight difference that it rather points to mental than physical truth.
The name has often been appropriated to the Kantian or critical philosophy, in which rationalism was distinguished from naturalism in the mode explained under the latter word. (See Kant's Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft, pp. 216, 17.) During the period when Rationalism was predominant as a method in German theology, the meaning and limits of the term were freely discussed. The period referred to is that which we have called in Lect. [VI]. p. [230] the second subdivision of the first of the three periods, into which the history of German theology is there divided; viz. from 1790-1810; occupying the interval when the Wolffian philosophy had given place to the Kantian, and the philosophy of Fichte and Jacobi had not yet produced the revival under Schleiermacher. This form of rationalism also continued to exist during the lifetime of its adherents, contemporaneously with the new influence created by Schleiermacher. (See Lect. [VI].) The discussion was not a verbal one only, but was intimately connected with facts. The rationalist theologians wished to define clearly their own position, as opposed on the one hand to deists and naturalists, and on the other to supernaturalists. The result of the discussion seemed to show the following parties: (1) two kinds of Supernaturalists, (α) the Biblical, such as Reinhardt, resembling the English divines of the eighteenth century;[1065] (β) the Philosophical, sometimes called Rational Supernaturalists, as the Kantian theologian Staüdlin: (2) two kinds of Rationalists, (α) the Supernatural Rationalists, like Bretschneider, who held on the evidence of reason the necessity of a revelation, but required its accordance with reason, when communicated; (β) the pure Rationalists, like Wegscheider, Röhr, and Paulus, who held the sufficiency of reason; and, while admitting revelation as a fact, regarded it as the republication of the religion of nature. It is this last kind which answers to the “theological naturalist,” named above, under the word Naturalist. It is also the form which is called Rationalismus vulgaris (as being opposed to the later scientific), though the term is not admitted by its adherents. This [pg 418] rationalism stands distinguished from naturalism, i.e. from “philosophical naturalism” or deism, by having reference to the Christian religion and church; but it differs from supernaturalism, in that reason, not scripture, is its formal principle, or test of truth: and virtue, instead of “faith working by love,” is its material principle, or fundamental doctrine. A further subdivision might be made of this last into the dogmatic (Wegscheider), and the critical (Paulus). Cfr. Bretschneider's Dogmatik, i. 81, and see Lect. VI. Also consult on the above account Kahnis, p. 168, and Lechler's Deismus, p. 193, note; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 279, note.
This account of the term being the result of the controversy as to the meaning of the words, it only remains to name some of the works which treated of it.
The dispute on the word Rationalism is especially seen at two periods, (1) about the close of the last century, when the supernaturalists, such as Reinhardt and Storr, were maintaining their position against rationalism. One treatise, which may perhaps be considered to belong to this earlier period, is J. A. H. Tittmann's Ueber Supernaturalismus, Rationalismus, und Atheismus, 1816; (2) in the disputes against the school of Schleiermacher, when supernaturalism was no longer thrown on the defensive. This was marked by several treatises on the subject, such as Staüdlin's Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus 1826, (see the definitions given in it, pp. 3 and 4;) Bretschneider's remarks in his Dogmatik (i. pp. 14, 71, 80 ed. 1838); and Historische Bemerkungen Ueber den Gebrauch der Ausdrücke Rational. und Supernat. (Oppositions-Schrift. 1829. 7. 1); A. Hahn, De Rationalismi qui dicitur Verâ Indole, 1827, in which he reviews the attempts of Bretschneider and Staüdlin to give the historic use of the word; Röhr's Briefe Ueber Rationalismus, pp. 14-16; Paulus's Resultate aus den Neuesten Versuch des Supernat. Gegen den Rationalismus, 1830; Wegscheider's Inst. Theol. Christianæ Dogmaticæ (7th ed. 1833. §§ 11, 12, pp. 49-67), which is full of references to the literature of the subject. The controversy was aggravated and in part was due to the translation of Mr. H. J. Rose's Sermons on Rationalism. He was answered by Bretschneider in a tract, in which that theologian entered upon the defence of the rationalist position. Mr. Rose (Introd. to 2d ed. 1829, p. 17) enters briefly upon the history of the name. Krug (Philos. Lexicon) also gives many instances of its use in German theology.
To complete the account it is only necessary to add, that it is made clear by Lectures [VI.] and [VII.] that if subsequent theological thought in Germany to the schools now described, be called Rationalism for convenience by English writers, the term is then used in a different sense from that in which it is applied in speaking of the older forms.
8. Sceptic.—This term was first applied specifically to one school [pg 419] of Greek philosophers, about B.C. 300, followers of Pyrrho of Elis (see Ritter's Hist. of Phil. E. T. iii. 372-398; Staüdlin's Geschichte des Scepticismus, vol. i; Tafel's Geschichte und Kritik des Skepticismus, 1836; Donaldson's Greek Lit. ch. xlvii. § 5); and also to a revival of this school about A.D. 200. (See Ritter. Id. iii. 258-357; Donaldson, ch. lvi. § 3.) The tenet was a general disbelief of the possibility of knowing realities as distinct from appearances. The term thus introduced, gradually became used in the specific sense of theological as distinct from philosophical scepticism, often with an indirect implication that the two are united. Walch restricts the name Sceptic to the latter kind. Writing about those who are called Indifferentists (Bibl. Theol. Select. i. 976), he subdivides them into two classes; viz. those who are indifferent through liberality, and those who are so through unbelief. The former are the “Latitudinarians,” the latter the Sceptics above named. Cfr. also Buddeus, Isagoge, pp. 1208-10. In more recent times the term has gained a still more generic sense in theology, to express all kinds of religious doubt. But its use to express philosophical scepticism as distinct from religious has not died out. In this sense Montaigne, Bayle (cfr. Staüdlin's Gesch. des Scept. p. 204), Huet, Berkeley, Hume, and De Maistre, were Sceptics; i.e. sceptical of the certitude of one or more branches of the human faculties. Sometimes also it is used to express systems of philosophy which teach disbelief in the reality of metaphysical science; e.g. the positive school of Comte; but this is an ambiguous use of the term. For philosophical scepticism may be of two kinds; viz. the disbelief in the possibility of the attainment of truth by means of the natural faculties of man; and the disbelief of the possibility of its attainment by means of metaphysical, as distinct from physical, methods. The former is properly called Philosophical Scepticism, the latter not so. Pyrrho in ancient times, and Hume in modern, represent the former; the Positivists of modern times, and perhaps the Sophists of the fifth century B.C., represent the latter. It is hardly necessary to repeat that the philosophical scepticism proper of Berkeley and Hume must not be confounded with religious. They may be connected, as in Hume, or disconnected, as in Berkeley or De Maistre. See on this subject Morell's Hist. of Philos. i. p. 68, ii. ch. vi.
On the subject of the words explained in this note see, besides the works referred to, Walch's Bibl. Theol. Select. i. ch. v. sect. 5, 6, 7, 11, and iii. ch. vii. sect. 10. § 4. 1757: Pfaff's Introd. in Hist. Theol. lib. ii. b. iii. § 2. 1725: Stapfer's Inst. Theol. Polem. ii. ch. vi, vii, x; iv. ch. xiii. 1744: Reimannus' Hist. Univ. Ath. sectio i. 1725: J. F. Buddeus's De Atheismo, 1737, ch. i. and ii: J. F. Buddeus's Isagoge, 1730, pp. 1203-1211: Lechler's Gesch. des Deismus, 1841; Schlussbemerkungen, p. 453 seq.: J. Fabricius, 1704, Consid. Var. Controv. p. 1: Staüdlin's Gesch. des Skepticismus vorzüglich in Rücksicht auf. Moral. und Religion. 1794: J. F. [pg 420] Tafel's Gesch. und Kritik des Skepticismus und Irrationalismus, with reference to Philosophy, 1834.
Note 22. p. [136]. Woolston's Discourses On Miracles.
In addition to the notice of these Discourses given in the text, it may be well to give a brief account of their contents.
In Discourse I. Woolston aims at showing (α) that healing is not a proper miracle for a Messiah to perform, and that the fathers of the church understood the miracles allegorically: (β) that a literal interpretation of miracles involves incredibility, as shown in the miracle of the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the temple, the casting out devils from the possessed man of the tombs, the transfiguration, the marriage of Cana, the feeding the multitudes: (γ) the meaning of Jesus when he appeals to miracles. In Discourse II. he selects for examination the miracle of the woman with the issue of blood, and also her with the spirit of infirmity; also the narrative of the Samaritan woman, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the temptation, the appearance of the spirits of the dead at the resurrection. In Discourse III. he selects the cursing of the fig-tree, and the miracle of the pool of Bethesda. It may be allowable to give one illustration of the coarse humour with which he rationalizes the sacred narrative in his explanation of this last miracle. He says of the healed man, “The man's infirmity was more laziness than lameness; and Jesus only shamed him out of his pretended idleness by bidding him to take up his stool and walk off, and not lie any longer like a lubbard and dissemble among the diseased.” It will be perceived, that if the coarseness be omitted, the system of interpretation is the naturalist system afterwards adopted by the old rationalism (rationalismus vulgaris). In Discourse IV. he selects the healing with eye-salve of the blind man, the water made into wine at Cana; where he introduces a Jewish rabbi to utter blasphemy, after the manner of Celsus; and the healing of the paralytic who was let down through the roof, which, as being one of the most characteristic passages of Woolston, Dean Trench has selected for analysis. (Notes on Miracles, Introduction, p. 81.) In Discourse V. he discusses the three miracles of the raising of the dead; and in Discourse VI. the miracle of Christ's own resurrection.
His conclusion (in Disc. I.) is, that “the history of Jesus, as recorded in the evangelists, is an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the soul of man; and his miracles figurative of his mysterious operations;” that the four Gospels are in no part a literal story, but a system of mystical philosophy or theology.