But while it is true that science, as the ground of the possibility of its knowledge of the truth, must presuppose the same general principle of intellectual knowledge which religion has as the object of its practical belief, then by principle the apprehension is excluded that any possible progress on the part of science in its knowledge of the world can ever destroy religion. We are rather the more justified in the hope that all true knowledge of science will be a help to religion, and will serve as the means of purifying religion from the dross of superstition.
Truly it can easily be shown that a divine government of the world breaking through, and now and then suspending the regular order of nature through miraculous intervention, would not be more majestic, but far more limited and human, than such a government which reveals itself as everywhere and always the same in and through its own ordained laws in the world. And again, that a revelation prescribing secret and incomprehensible doctrines and rites, demanding from humanity a blind faith, would far less be in harmony with the guiding wisdom and love of God, and far less could work for the intellectual liberty and perfection of humanity, than such a revelation which is working in and through the reason and conscience of humanity, and is realizing its purpose in the progressive development of our intellectual and moral capacities and powers. When therefore science raises critical misgivings against the supernatural and irrational doctrines of positive religion, then the real and rightly understood interests of religion are not harmed but rather advanced; for this criticism serves religion in helping it to become free from the unintellectual inheritance of its early days, in helping religion to consider its true intellectual and moral essence, and to bring to a full display all the blessed powers which are concealed within its nature, to press through the narrow walls of an ecclesiasticism out into the full life of humanity, and to work as leaven for the ennoblement of humanity. Not in conflict with science and moral culture, but only in harmony with these, can religion come nearer to the attainment of its ideal, which consists in the worship of God in spirit and in truth. Even though they may not be conscious of their purpose, but nevertheless in fact all honest work of science and all the endeavors of social and ethical humanity have part in the attainment of this ideal.
It is the work of the philosophy of religion to make clear that all work of the thinking and striving spirit of humanity, in its deepest meaning, is a work in the kingdom of God, as service to God, who is truth and goodness. It is the work of the philosophy of religion to explain various misunderstandings, to bring together opposing sides, and so to prepare the way for a more harmonious coöperation of all, and for an always hopeful progress of all on the road to the high aims of a humanity fraternally united in the divine spirit.
MAIN PROBLEMS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: PSYCHOLOGY AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
BY PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH
(Translated from the German by Dr. J. H. Woods, Harvard University.)
[Ernst Troeltsch, Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Heidelberg, since 1894. b. February 17 1865, Augsburg, Bavaria. Doctor of Theology. Professor University of Bonn, 1892-94. Author of John Gerhard and Melanchthon; Richard Rubbe; The Scientific Attitude and its Demands on Theology; The Absoluteness of Christianity, and of the History of Religion; Political Ethics and Christianity; The Historic Element in Kant's Religious Philosophy.]
The philosophy of religion of to-day is philosophy of religion so far only, and in such a sense, as this word means science of religion or philosophy with reference to religion. The science of religion of former days was first dogmatic theology, deriving its dogmas from the Bible and from Church tradition, expounding them apologetically with the metaphysical speculation of the later period of antiquity, and regarding the non-Christian religions as sinful derangements and obscure fragments of the primitive revelation. This lasted sixteen centuries, and is confined to-day to strictly ecclesiastical circles. Next, science of religion became natural theology, which proved the existence of God by the nature of thought and by the constitution of reality, and also the immortality of the soul by the concept of the soul and by moral demands, thus constructing natural or rational dogmas and putting these dogmas into more or less friendly relations with traditional Christianity. This lasted about two centuries, and is to-day of the not strictly ecclesiastical or pietistic circles, which still wish to hold fast to religion. Both kinds of science of religion exist no longer for the strict science. The first was, in reality, supernaturalistic dogmatics, the second was, in reality, a substitution of philosophy for religion. The first was demolished by the criticism of miracles in the eighteenth century, the second by the criticism of knowledge in the nineteenth century, which, in its turn, rests upon Hume and Kant.
The science of religion of to-day keeps in touch with that which without doubt factually exists and is an object of actual experience, the subjective religious consciousness. The distrust of ecclesiastical and rationalistic dogmas has made, in the thought of the present, every other treatment impossible. So the spirit of empiricism has here as at other points completely prevailed. But empiricism in this field means psychological analysis. This analysis is pursued by the present to the widest extent: on the one side by anthropologists and archæologists, who investigate the life of the soul in primitive peoples and thus indicate the particular function and condition of religion in these states; on the other side, by the modern experimental psychologists and psychological empiricists, who, by self-observation, and especially by the collection of observations by others and of personal testimony, study religion, and then, from the point of view of the concepts of experimental psychology, examine the main phenomena thus found.
Now, such an empirical psychology of religion has been constructed with considerable success. In this German literature, it is true, has coöperated to a slight degree only. The German theologians have held to the older statements of the psychology of Kant, of Schleiermacher, of Hegel, and of Fries, alone, which, in principle, were on the right path, but which combined the purely psychological with metaphysical and epistemological problems to such a degree that it was impossible to reach a really unprejudiced attitude. German psychologists remain, furthermore, under the spell of psycho-physiology and of quantitative statements of measure, and have, consequently, not liked to advance into this field, which is inaccessible to such statements. More productive than the German psychology for this subject is the French, which has attacked the complex facts far more courageously. Here, however, under the predominance of positivism, there prevails, on the whole, the tendency to regard religion, in its essence, anthropologically or medically and pathologically in connection with bodily conditions. This is the confusion of conditions and origins with the essence of the thing itself, which can be determined only by the thing, and is, by no means, bound exclusively to these conditions. Notwithstanding, the works of Marillier, Murisier, and Flournoy have considerably aided the problem. More impartially than all of these, the English and American psychology has investigated our subject. Here we have a masterpiece in the Gifford Lectures of William James, which collects into a single reservoir similar investigations such as have been carried on by Coe and Starbuck. There is here no tendency to a mechanism of consciousness, or to the dogma of the causal and necessary structure of consciousness. And to just this is due the freshness and impartiality of the analyses which James gives out of his enviable knowledge of characteristic cases. James rightly emphasizes the endlessly different intensity of religious experiences, and the great number of points of view and of judgments which thereby results. He also rightly emphasizes the connection of this different intensity with irreducible typical constitutions of the soul's life, with the optimistic and the melancholy disposition; hence there arise constantly, even within the same religion, essentially different types of religiousness. Limiting himself, then, to the most intense experiences, he decides that the characteristic of religious states is the sense of presence of the divine, which one might perhaps describe in other terms, but which still continues the specifically divine, with the opposed emotional effects of a solemn sense of contrast and of enthusiastic exaltation. He pictures these senses of presence, and illustrates them by visionary and hallucinatory representations of the abstract. With this are connected impulsive and inhibitive conditions for the appearance of these senses of presence and of reality, descriptions of the effects upon the emotional life and action, and, above all, the analysis of the event usually called conversion, in which the religious experience out of subconscious antecedents becomes, in various ways, the centre of the soul's life. All this is description, but it is based upon a mass of examples and explained by general psychological categories which, by the occurrence of the religious event only, receive a thoroughly specific coloring. It is a description after the manner of Kirchhoff's mechanics; permanent and similar types, and, likewise, similar conditions for their relations to the rest of the soul's life are sought out everywhere, without maintaining to have proven at the same time, in this way, an intellectual necessity for the connection. But the characteristic peculiarity of religious phenomena is thus conceived as in no other previous analysis.