If less burning, the problem of the relations of dogmatics to philosophy is perhaps more difficult to solve than the problem just discussed. It has given rise to quite as many controversies. The danger is twofold. On the one hand, there is the pretension of scholasticism, the attempt to absorb philosophy in theology and make it subservient. It is still the pretension of a certain simple Protestant orthodoxy, for which there is no philosophy outside the Christian faith. At the other extreme is the attempt of rationalism to include the Christian religion in general ethics and philosophy. In the first case it is dogmatics which absorbs philosophy; in the second it is philosophy which absorbs dogmatics. But, in both cases, the specifically religious phenomena are lost sight of, the original character of Christian piety is misconceived, and theology, no longer having any special domain, succumbs and vanishes. It is the merit of the Reformation of Luther, in the sixteenth, and of the thought of Schleiermacher and Vinet in the nineteenth century, to have brought out and rendered manifest, among all other psychological phenomena, the character sui generis of Christian faith and life, and thus to have assigned to theology an object of study, eminent no doubt, but very special and very circumscribed. A task was thus marked out for theology widely different from that of philosophy—a task which consists, not in explaining everything in heaven and earth, but, more modestly and usefully, in giving an account of the religious experience of the Christian Church. Saved at once from scholasticism and rationalism, dogmatic theology may therefore build itself up in its own domain by the side of the other sciences without menacing or fearing any of them.
Its relations to philosophy will become clear if we call to mind a very simple distinction. Philosophy to-day comprises two parts very different in nature: a study of the thinking subject, or, as it is sometimes called, a critique of reason, or a theory of knowledge; in the second place, a doctrine on the essence and the necessary relations of beings, a metaphysic, or a theory of the universe.
It is easy to see that all the positive sciences are differently related to these two parts of philosophy. None of them, for instance, can dispense with the first, with the criticism of our faculty of knowing and of our means of reasoning, under penalty of mistaking the worth of its own hypotheses, and even the regularity of its processes. It is clear that a physicist cannot dispense with correct syllogisms or with vigilance against illusions of the senses and other errors of method. But, on the other hand, no savant would accept the yoke of any metaphysic whatever which should come to him à priori to dictate to him its conclusions. Upon indications of this nature he desires to form hypotheses and make new experiments; but, as a savant, he will never pronounce before that supreme and decisive consultation of facts.
It is exactly the same with the relations of dogmatics to philosophy. It will have recourse to it for all that regards the theory of knowledge in general and the theory of religious knowledge in particular. Like every other science it needs to ascertain the scope of its instrument in order that it may be under no illusion as to the worth of the work it accomplishes. But also, like every other science, it has the right and the duty to challenge and neglect all general metaphysic which, flowing from another principle than that of the Christian religion, would dictate to it articles of faith or rules of morality.
Let it not be said that every theory of knowledge soon begets a metaphysic in its own image. We know theories which deny the very possibility of metaphysics, and it is a question whether a truly Christian dogmatic accommodates itself to it better than any other theory. It may be maintained in fact that the act of faith which is the expression of the conservating energy of the ego and the principle of all religion is accomplished all the more freely when there is no knowledge, properly speaking, there to hinder it. A common prejudice requires that we should have metaphysics as a support to religion. It is on religion, on the contrary, that metaphysics and ethics rest. Man did not become religious when he heard that there were gods; he only had the idea of God and believed in Him because he was religious. Mystery was the natural cradle of piety. Faith is much less an acquisition of knowledge than a means of salvation and a source of strength and life. It is one thing to speculate on the universal problem; it is another to place one's self by the heart in a living relation of trust, of fear, or of love to the mysterious Being on whom all other beings depend. Religion may possibly be under the necessity of ending in a metaphysic, but a metaphysic does not necessarily end in religion, for there are some kinds of metaphysic which either exclude religion or render it impossible.
A theory of religion, dogmatics can have no other starting point than religious phenomena themselves. From this concrete and experimental principle, from this state of soul produced by the immediate feeling of a necessary relation to God, the entire system should spring and develop. What is not in religious experience should find no place in religious science, and should be banished from it.
It would only be to its detriment, then, that the science of dogmas should throw away its liberty by espousing beforehand metaphysical theses or the final conclusions of any philosophy whatsoever. These theses, springing from another source than religion, have no right, in that religion, to become articles of faith. Rational truths not born of religious feeling would be in dogmatics so many dead weights and heterogeneous elements, which would lead to the greatest incoherence. To build up a professedly revealed theology on a professedly natural one is to construct a system without either unity or profound connection. Such a dualism of principles is as intolerable to science as to piety. Instead of dogmatics subordinating itself to metaphysics, metaphysics ought to include dogmatics as well as the results of all the other sciences.
It is altogether different with the criticism of our means of knowing. In every order of science it is mere levity of mind to commence or to conclude researches a little general without having first determined the precise conditions of real knowledge. The absence of a philosophical critique of this nature explains why savants, so rigorous in their special studies, show a philosophical naïvety so great in the conclusions that they draw from them, and so readily crown their discoveries by a pseudo-metaphysic that they impose upon the multitude with all the authority and prestige of science. More than any others, theologians are guilty of this abuse when they wish to make their science the sum of universal knowledge. They would be more soundly religious were they more modest and more reserved. An excellent means of putting ourselves on our guard against this illusion and its deplorable consequences will be to institute, without further delay, a rigorous criticism of religious knowledge. This task, I believe, has never been seriously attempted in France. It is, however, as indispensable to the right conduct of the mind as it is fitted radically to cure us of our dogmatic pride and to inspire us with tolerance and humility. This will be the object of the following chapter.