But men do not always stop to make the necessary distinctions. On the one side they see a traditional view of religion which they cannot harmonise with the highest morality; on the other, they see a morality, which, though it has grown up under the shadow and shelter of religion, seems strong enough to stand alone. And their first thought is 'Away with religion. We have outgrown it. Henceforward we will have morals unencumbered by religion.' What would be the effect on the morals of a nation of thus renouncing the religious sanction it is not safe to predict. In individuals certainly it sometimes has disastrous results. But there is one thing which those who talk about the 'secularization of morals[95]' seldom take into account, and that is the effect on what, in contrast to morals, they call religion. The religious consciousness always refuses to be treated as defunct, and the religious emotions, if they no longer find their object in a God of Righteousness, and are no longer controlled by morality, will not be satisfied with the worship of the Unknowable or of idealized humanity, but will avenge themselves, as they have done again and again, in superstition[96].
And the attempt to do without religion in morals is as unphilosophical as it is dangerous. It is parallel to what, in the region of morality proper, we all recognise as a false asceticism. It is the attempt to crush out, rather than to purify. When men realize the danger of giving the rein to the animal passions, there are always to be found moralists who will treat these passions as in themselves evil, and advocate the suppression of them. And only after an antinomian revolt against that false teaching do men realize that morality is not the destruction, but the purification and regulation of the passions. So with religion and the religious emotions. The function of morality is to purify the religious idea of God, and religion and morality are strong and true in proportion as each uses the help of the other. But neither can treat the other as subordinate. God is more than what Kant makes Him, the ultimate justification of morality: morality is more than what some religious people would have it, obedience to the positive commands of even God Himself. In experience we find them separate and even opposed: ideally they are one, united not confused. Separated, religion tends to become superstitious, morality to degenerate into a mere prudentialism, or at least an expanded utilitarianism. United, religion gives to right that absolute character which makes it defiant of consequences; morality safeguards the idea of God from aught that is unworthy of the worship of moral beings.
As the result of all the conflicts which have raged round the idea of God so far as morals are concerned, one truth has burned itself into the consciousness of both the apologists and opponents of religion, a truth as old indeed as the religion of Israel, but only slowly realized in the course of ages, the truth, namely, that the religious idea of God must claim and justify itself to the highest known morality, and no amount of authority, ecclesiastical or civil, will make men worship an immoral God. And already that truth has thrown back its light upon questions of Old Testament morality. We no longer say, 'It is in the Bible, approved or allowed by God, and therefore it must be right.' It was this view which, in every age, has given its protection to religious wars and intolerance and persecution. But we look back and see in the perspective of history how God in every age takes man as he is that He may make him what he is not. We see in the Old Testament not only the revelation of the Righteousness of God, but the record of the way in which, in spite of waywardness and disobedience, He raised His people to the knowledge of the truth.
VI. But the religious idea of God in our day, as in former ages, is challenged not only by conscience, but by the speculative reason. And there is a close parallelism between the two conflicts. When religion and morals are opposed, men naturally say, 'Give us morals; away with religion.' And the answer is—True religion is moral; that which is not moral is not true; and morality without religion will not only leave the religious consciousness unsatisfied, but fall short of its own true perfection. So when religion and philosophy are opposed, men say once more, 'Give us reason; away with religion.' And the answer again is—True religion is rational: if it excludes reason, it is self-condemned. And reason without religion fails of its object, since, if philosophy can find no place for religion, it cannot explain man.
But here again nothing is gained by confusing the issue, or denying the actual fact of the collision. We may say with Lacordaire, 'God is the proper name of truth, as truth is the abstract name of God.' But it is not a matter of indifference from which point we start, whether with religion we approach God first as a moral Being, or with philosophy seek for Him as the truth of man and nature. The motto of Oxford University, Dominus Illuminatio mea, altogether changes its meaning if we read it Illuminatio Dominus meus. As Réville says, 'A religion may become philosophical, but no philosophy has ever founded a religion possessing real historical power[97].' And it is a fact patent to the observation of all, that it is easier to make religion philosophical than to make philosophy in any real sense religious. The reason of this is obvious. Religion is not only first in the field, it covers the whole ground before either morals or science have attained their full development, or even emerged into conscious life. But when we speak of philosophy, we have reached a stage in which the reason has already separated itself from, and set itself over against, the religious consciousness, and must either absorb religion into itself, in which case religion ceases to be religion, or must leave religion outside, though it may borrow and appropriate religious terms. If, then, the idea of God is to appeal to both the religious consciousness and the speculative reason it must be by claiming philosophy for religion, not by claiming religion for philosophy. It is from within, not from without, that religion must be defended.
In Greece the traditional polytheism was challenged, as we have seen, at once on the side both of morals and metaphysics. To Xenophanes, indeed, the unity of God is even more essential than His morality, and the attack on anthropomorphism is as much an attack upon the number of the gods of Hesiod as upon the immoral character attributed to them. In the unity, however, which Xenophanes contends for, the religious idea of God is so attenuated, that we hardly know whether the One God is a person, or an abstraction. Indeed, it is hard to see how a champion of Eleaticism could consistently have held the personality of God, as we understand it, without falling under his own charge of anthropomorphism. In Plato the same difficulty appears, only complicated or relieved by the fact that while from the moral side he talks like a theist, from the metaphysical his teaching is pantheistic. Is the 'Idea of Good' personal? Is it a God we can love and worship, or only a God we can talk about? Is the vision of Er a concession to popular views, or the vehicle of moral and religious truth? The question is hardly more easy to decide with regard to Aristotle. The religious atmosphere, which lingers on in Plato, has disappeared. What of the religious belief? Did Aristotle in any intelligible sense hold the personality of God? Great names are ranged on both sides of the mediaeval controversy. Who shall decide? But whether or no anything of religion survived in philosophy, it was not strong enough to withstand the attack of the moral and the speculative reason, still less to claim these as its own. It is not on the side of religion, but of speculation, that we are debtors to the Greeks.
Among the Jews, on the other hand, speculation seems hardly to have existed. Religion was satisfied to make good her claim to the region of morals. God was One, and He was Righteous, but the mystery which enveloped His nature the Old Testament does not attempt to fathom. 'Clouds and darkness are round about Him,' yet out of the thick darkness comes the clear unfaltering truth that 'Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.' Jewish religion and Greek speculation had little contact, and less kinship, till the best days of both were passed. But in the days of the dispersion we get the beginning of the mingling of those streams which were only united under the higher unity of Christianity. 'With the Jews of the East,' it has been said, 'rested the future of Judaism: with them of the West, in a sense, that of the world. The one represented old Israel, groping back into the darkness of the past; the other young Israel, stretching forth its hands to where the dawn of a new day was about to break[98].' The Septuagint translation threw open to the Greek world the sacred books of Israel. The Apocrypha, with all its glorification of Judaism, was both an apology and an eirenicon[99]. It seemed as if in Wisdom personified might be found a middle term between the religion of Israel and the philosophy of Greece, and the life of righteousness might be identified with the life of true wisdom. The Jews of Alexandria were thus willing to find a strain of truth in Greek philosophy, and Alexandrian Greeks were found ready 'to spiritualize their sensuous divinities[100].' But the result was a compromise, in which the distinctive elements of each were not harmonized but lost. There was no fusion as yet of Jewish and Greek thought, only each was learning to understand the other, and unconsciously preparing for the higher synthesis of Christianity.
Whether we think of Christ as the 'Son of Man,' or as the Revealer of God, Christianity is bound to transcend national distinctions, and to claim not only the whole of humanity, but the whole of man, his reason, no less than his heart and will. And this Christ did in a special way. He not only speaks of Himself as 'the Truth,' and as having come 'to bear witness to the Truth,' but the very complement (if we may say so) of His revelation of the Father was the sending 'the Spirit of Truth,' who should teach His disciples all things. This possession of 'truth' is always spoken of by Christ as a future thing, implicit indeed in Himself, Who is the Truth, but only to be explicitly declared and brought to remembrance when the Spirit of Truth should come. He was to guide them 'into all truth.' 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' It was inevitable, then, that the question should arise,—Will this religion, which has broken through the narrowness of Judaism, and yet by its belief in a God of righteousness and love combated and triumphed over heathen immorality, have the power to assimilate and absorb the philosophy of Greece? The great crisis in the world's history, as we see it, looking back from the security of eighteen centuries, was this:—Will Christianity, with all its moral triumphs, become a tributary to Greek philosophy, as represented by the Schools of Alexandria, or will it claim and transform the rational, as it has transformed the moral, progress of humanity? The answer of Christianity is unhesitating. Christianity is truth, and there is only one truth. Christianity is wisdom, and there is only one wisdom; for the wisdom of the world is not wisdom but folly. And at once the rival claim is made. Why not a division of territory? Knowledge for the philosopher; faith for the Christian. The Gnostics taught, as a modern philosopher teaches, that religion is 'reason talking naively,' and that, good as it is for ordinary people, the Gnostic can afford to do without it. Every one knows the answer of the Apostles to the insidious suggestions of Gnosticism. To S. Peter it is 'a damnable heresy, even denying the Lord who bought us[101].' To S. Paul it is the 'science falsely so called[102]' the 'knowledge which puffs up[103];' the 'wisdom of this world[104].' To S. John, Cerinthus was 'the enemy of the truth[105].' To S. Polycarp, Marcion is 'the firstborn of Satan.' It never occurred to the Apostles, or the Apologists after them, to retreat into the fastnesses of a reasonless faith. For with them faith was implicit knowledge, and the only knowledge that was true.
It was the collision of Christianity with Greek thought which gave rise to Christian theology in the strict sense of the term. Its necessity was the claiming of Greek as well as Jew; its justification was the belief in the presence of the Spirit of truth; its impulse the desire 'to know the things which are freely given to us by God[106].' The first Christians were not theologians. They were 'unlearned and ignorant men.' When Christ preached, the common people heard Him gladly, the publicans and the harlots believed Him, the poor found in His teaching 'good news,' and a few fishermen devoted their lives to Him. But the Scribes and Pharisees stood aloof; and the rationalistic Sadducees asked Him captious questions; and the Herodians, the Erastians of the day, tried to involve Him with the secular power. It was only when challenged by an earnest, but non-religious philosophy, that reason came forward, in the strength of the Spirit of truth, to interpret to itself and to the world the revelation of Christ. Religion and theology in different ways have to do with the knowledge of God and of spiritual truth. They have the same object, God, but their aims and their methods are different. Religion knows God; theology is concerned with the idea of God. Religion sees; theology thinks. Religion begins and ends in an almost instinctive attitude of worship; theology rationalizes and defines the characteristics of the Object of worship. As reason seeks to interpret feeling, so theology interprets religion. It makes explicit what is implicit in religion. 'As the intellect is cultivated and expanded, it cannot refrain from the attempt to analyse the vision which influences the heart, and the object in which it centres; nor does it stop till it has, in some sort, succeeded in expressing in words, what has all along been a principle both of the affections and of practical obedience[107].' It takes the facts which the religious consciousness has seized, seeks to bring them into distinctness before the mental vision, to connect them with one another in a coherent system, and find in them the explanation and unity of all that is. Christian theology grows naturally out of the Christian religion. But religion is a divine life; theology a divine science.
This explains the fact that though both religion and theology have to do with the knowledge of God, and ideally work in perfect harmony, yet they are often found opposed. Theology is always in danger of becoming unreal. What is an interpretation for one age becomes 'a tongue not understanded' in the next. Hence when a revival of religious life comes, it frequently shews itself in an attack on the received theology. Theology is no longer regarded as the scientific expression of the very truths which religion values; it is conceived of as the antithesis of religion, and reformers dream of a new theology which shall be for them what, though they know it not, the old theology was to their predecessors, the handmaid and guardian of religious truth. When Martin Luther said that 'an old woman who reads her Bible in the chimney corner knows more about God than the great doctors of theology,' he was emphasising the severance which, in his day, had come, to exist between a religious life and theological orthodoxy. And when in his Table Talk he says, 'A Jurist may be a rogue, but a theologian must be a man of piety,' he touches a real truth. A hundred years later, amid the confusions and unrealities of the seventeenth century, John Smith[108], the Cambridge Platonist, said the same: 'They are not always the best skilled in divinity,' he says, 'that are most studied in those pandects into which it is sometimes digested.' 'Were I to define divinity, I should rather call it a divine life than a divine science.' Technically, no doubt, he was wrong, for theology is a science and not a life, but, like Luther, he was vindicating the truth that it is possible for quite simple people to know God, though they have no knowledge of theology, and that theology, when it becomes speculative and abstract, ceases to be theology. A theologian, as Mazzini says of an artist, 'must be a high-priest or a charlatan.'