(Hall 1, September 21, 3 p. m.)
| Chairman: | Professor Thomas C. Hall, Union Theological Seminary, N. Y. |
| Speakers: | Professor Otto Pfleiderer, University of Berlin. |
| Professor Ernst Troeltsch, University of Heidelberg. | |
| Secretary: | Dr. W. P. Montague, Columbia University. |
THE RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO THE OTHER SCIENCES
BY PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER
[D. Otto Pfleiderer, Professor of Theology, University of Berlin since 1875. b. September 1, 1839, Stetten, Würtemberg. Grad. Tübingen, 1857-61. Post-grad. ibid. 1864-68. City Professor, Heilbronn, 1868-69; Superintendent, Jena, 1869-70; Professor of Theology, Jena, 1870-75. Author of Religion and its Essential Characteristics; Religious Philosophy upon Historical Foundation; and many other works and papers on Theology.]
In order to answer this question, we need to consider a preliminary question, namely, whether religion can be regarded as the object of scientific knowledge in the same manner as other processes of the intellectual life of the race, such as law, history, and art. It is well known that this question has not always received an affirmative answer, and indeed it can never be answered in the affirmative so long as the position is maintained that the only religion is that of the Christian Church, whose doctrines and teachings rest upon an immediate divine revelation, and that these must be accepted by men in blind belief. Under the position of an authoritative ecclesiastical faith there can indeed exist a theoretical consideration of the doctrines of faith, as it was the case with the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages, which with great earnestness sought to harmonize faith and knowledge; nevertheless, no one of the present day would give to the scholastic theology the name of science with the modern meaning of the term science. The scholastic theology used great formal acuteness and skill in the work of defining and defending ecclesiastical traditions, still there was lacking that which for us is the essential condition of scientific knowledge, the free examination of tradition according to the laws of human thought and the analogy of the general experience of humanity. The great hindrance to the progress of the knowledge of religion was the accepted position that the truth of the ecclesiastical doctrines was beyond human reason and outside of human examination, since their truth rested upon an immediate divine revelation. Whether this supernatural authority was ascribed to the Church or the Bible makes very little difference, for in either case the assumption of such an authority is a hindrance to the free examination of that which claims to be the divine revealed truth.
But is this assumption really justifiable in the nature of the case? Do the doctrines of the Church rest upon a supernatural divine revelation? So soon as this question was really earnestly considered, and the thinking mind could not always avoid the consideration, then there was revealed the inadequacy of the assumption. Two ways of examination led to a common critical result, the philosophical analysis of the religious consciousness and the historical comparison of various religions. The first to enter upon these ways and at the same time to become the founder of the modern science of religion was the keen Scotch thinker David Hume. Truly the thought of Hume was still a one-sided, disorganizing skepticism; even as his theory of knowledge disturbed the truth of all our previous commonsense opinions and conceptions, so also his philosophy of religion sought to demonstrate that all religion cannot be proved and is full of doubt, and that the origin of religion was neither to be found in divine revelation nor in the reason of man, but in the passions of the heart and in the illusions of imagination. As unsatisfactory as this result was, nevertheless it gave an important advance to the rational study of religion in two directions, in that of religion being an experience of the inner life of the soul and in that of religion being a fact of human history.
Kant added the positive criticism of reason to the negative skepticism of Hume; that is, Kant showed that the human intellect moved independently in the formation of theoretical and practical judgments, and that the various materials of thought, desire, and feelings were regulated by the intellect according to innate original ideas of the true and good and beautiful. Thus as a natural result there came the conception that the doctrines of belief arose not as complete truths, given by divine revelation, but, like every other form of conscious knowledge, these came to us through the activity of our own mind, and that therefore these doctrines cannot be regarded as of absolute authority for all time, but that we are to seek to understand their origin in historical and psychical motives. So far as one looked at the ceremonial forms of positive religion, these motives indeed were found according to Kant in irrational conceptions, but as far as the essence of religion was concerned they were rather found to be rooted in the moral nature of man. This is the consciousness of obligation of the practical reason or of the conscience, which raises man to a faith in the moral government of the world, in immortality and God. With the reduction of religion from all external forms, doctrines, and ceremonies and the finding of the real essence of religion in the human mind and spirit, the way was opened to a knowledge of religion free from all external authority. Those philosophers who came after Kant followed essentially this course, though here and there they may separate in their opinions according to their thought of the psychological function of religion. When Kant had emphasized the close connection between religion and the moral obligation, then came Schleiermacher, who emphasized the feeling of our dependence upon the Eternal, and who sought to find the explanation of all religious thoughts and conceptions in the many relations of the feeling to religious experience. Hegel on the other hand sought the truth of religion in the thought of the absolute spirit as found in the finite spirit. Thus Hegel made religion a sort of popular philosophy.
At present all agree that all sides of the soul-life have part in religion; now one side may be the more prominent, now another, according to the peculiarity of certain religions or the individual temperaments. The philosophy of religion has, in common with scientific psychology, the question of the relation of feeling to the intellect and the will, and as yet there may be many views of this question. Altogether the philosophy of religion is looking for important solutions to many of its problems from the realm of the present scientific psychology. Experiences, such as religious conversions, appear under this point of view as ethical changes in which the aim of a personal life is changed from a carnal and selfish end to that of a spiritual and altruistic purpose. These are extraordinary and seemingly supernatural processes; nevertheless in them there can still be found a certain development of the soul-life according to law. Modern psychology especially has thrown light upon the abnormal conditions of consciousness which have so often been made manifest in the religious experience of all times. That which religious history records concerning inspiration, visions, ecstasy, and revelation, we now classify with the well-known appearances of hypnotism, the induction of conceptions and motives of the will through foreign suggestion or through self-suggestion, of the division of consciousness in different egos, and in the union of several consciousnesses into one common mediumistic fusion of thought and will. The explanation of these experiences may not yet be satisfactory, but nevertheless we do not doubt the possibility of a future explanation from the general laws controlling the life of the soul. The fact that we can through psychological experiments produce such abnormal conditions of consciousness justifies us in taking the position, that certain psychical laws are at the foundation of these conditions which in their kind are as natural and regular in their functions as the physical laws which we observe in physical experiments. These solutions which modern psychology so far has given, and hopes still further to give, are of great importance to the philosophy of religion. They are an indorsement of the general principle which one hundred years ago had been advanced by critical speculation, namely, that in all experiences of the religious life the same principles which control the human mind in all other intellectual and emotional fields shall hold sway. Nothing therefore should hinder us in scientific research from following the well-defined maxims of thought, and unreservedly applying the same methods of scientific analysis in theology as is done generally in the other sciences.