Edmund Thomas Shanahan

“ We are living beings, not pure reasoning machines, and our whole nature cooperates vitally in the acceptance of the divine word. "Man is a being who thinks all his experience and perforce must think his religious experience."—Sterrett, "The Freedom of Authority" (New York, 1905) p.N 56.—Where reason does not enter at all, we have but caprice or enthusiasm. Faith is not a persuasion to be duly explained by reference to subconscious will-attitudes alone, nor is distrust of reason one of its marks. ”

“ It is not a question of degrading God to our level, but of not conceiving Him below that level as unconscious energy. Spencer's further attempt to empty religion and science of their respective rational contents, so as to leave only a blank abstraction or symbol for the final object of both, is a gross confusion, again, of the indefinite of thought with the infinite of reality. A religion wholly cut off from belief, worship, and conduct never existed. Religion must know its object to some extent or be mere irrational emotion. All religion recognizes mystery ”

“ It is true that the will, the conscience, the heart, and divine grace co-operate in the production of the act of faith, but it is no less true that reason plays an essential part. Faith is an act of intellect and will ”

“ The word knowledge is restricted to the results of the exact sciences; the word belief is extended to all that cannot be thus exactly ascertained. The passive attitude of the man of science, who suspends judgment until the evidence forces his assent, is assumed towards religious truth. The result is that the "will to believe" takes on enormous significance in contrast with the "power to know", and faith sinks to the level of blind belief cut off from all continuity with knowledge. ”

“ This assumption begs the whole question. No valid reason exists for regarding the physical stimulus of sensation as "reality pure and simple", or as the ultimate object of knowledge. To conceive of knowledge as altering its object is to make it meaningless, and to contradict the testimony of consciousness. We cannot, therefore, know the existence of a thing and remain in complete ignorance of its nature. ”

“ From the fact that we can form no conception of infinity, as we picture an object or recall a scene, it does not follow that we have no apprehension of the Infinite. We constantly apprehend things of which we can distinctly frame no mental image. Spencer merely contrasts our picturesque with our unpicturable forms of thought, using the former to criticize the latter adversely. The contradictions which he discovers are all reducible to this contrast of definite with indefinite thoughts and disappear when we have in mind a real Infinite of perfection, not a logical Absolute. ”

“ The existence of Absolute Reality must therefore be affirmed. Spencer thus made a distinct advance upon the philosophy of Comte and Mill, which maintained a non-committal attitude on the question of any absolute existence. Hamilton and Mansel admitted the existence of the Infinite on faith, denying only man's ability to form a positive conception of it. Mansel's test for a valid conception of anything is an exhaustive grasp of its positive contents—a test so ideal as to invalidate knowledge of the finite and infinite alike. Spencer's test is "inability to conceive the opposite". ”

“ The Agnostic, by treating the question of God's nature apart from the question of God's existence, cuts himself off from the only possible natural means of knowing, and then turns about to convert his fault of method into a philosophy of the Unknowable. It is only by studying the Absolute and the manifestations together that we can round out and fill in the concept of the former by means of the latter. The idea of God cannot be analyzed wholly apart from the evidences, or "proofs". ”

“ It presupposes the philosophical truth that a personal God exists who can neither deceive nor be deceived, and the historical truth of the fact of revelation. The two sources of knowledge—reason and revelation—complete each other. Faith begins where science ends. Revelation adds a new world of truth to the sum of human knowledge. This new world of truth is a world of mystery, but not of contradiction. ”

“ On the assumption that the knowledge and the definable are synonymous terms, the "first principles of thought" are transferred from the category of knowledge to that of belief, but the transfer is arbitrary. It is too much to suppose that we know only what we can explain. The mistake is in making a general philosophy out of a particular method of scientific explanation. This criticism applies to all systematic attempts to divide the mind into opposite hemispheres of intellect and will, to divorce faith completely from knowledge. Consciousness is one and continuous. ”

“ Thus understood, the doctrine of relativity states the actual human method of knowing the world, the soul, the self, God, grace and the supernatural. Who would hold that we know God, naturally, in any other way than through the manifestations He makes of Himself in mind and nature? ”

“ The attitude of "solemnly suspended judgment" shades off first into indifference towards religion, as an inscrutable affair at best, and next into disbelief. The Agnostic does not always merely abstain from either affirming or denying the existence of God, but crosses over to the old position of theoretic Atheism and, on the plea of insufficient evidence, ceases even to believe that God exists. While, therefore, not to be identified with Atheism, Agnosticism is often found in combination with it. ”

“ The process of knowing God thus becomes a process of correcting our human concepts. The correction consists in raising to infinite, unlimited significance the objective perfections discernible in men and things. This is accomplished in turn by denying the limiting modes and imperfect features distinctive of created reality, in order to replace these by the thought of the All-perfect, in the plenitude of whose Being one undivided reality corresponds to our numerous, distinct, partial concepts. ”

“ It is rather the Gnostic and the Agnostic who are the real extremists; the former extending the bounds of knowledge, and the latter narrowing them, unduly. Natural theology, or theism, occupies the middle ground between these extremes, and should have been disassociated both from the Gnostic position, that the mind can know everything, and from the Agnostic position, that it can know nothing concerning the truths of religion. ”

“ Agnosticism, as a general term in philosophy, is frequently employed to express any conscious attitude of doubt, denial, or disbelief, towards some, or even all, of man's powers of knowing or objects of knowledge. ”

“ Man can certainly know God by the "physical" power of reason when the latter is rightly developed, even though revelation be "morally" necessary for mankind in the bulk, when the difficulties of reaching a prompt, certain, and correct knowledge of God are taken into account. What conditions were necessary for this right development of reason, how much positive education was required to equip the mind for this task of knowing God and some of His attributes with certainty, the Council did not profess to determine. ”

“ The extreme of Anthropomorphism, or of defining God in terms of man magnified, is thus avoided, and the opposite extreme of Agnosticism discounted. Necessity compels us to think God under the relative, dependent features of our experience. But no necessity of thought compels us to make the accidental features of our knowledge the very essence of His being. ”

“ The extreme view that knowledge of God is impossible, even with the aid of revelation, is the latest form of religious Agnosticism. The new theory regards religion and science as two distinct and separate accounts of experience, and seeks to combine an agnostic intellect with a believing heart. ”

“ The Eastern Fathers of the Church, in their so-called "negative theology", refuted the pretentious knowledge of the Gnostics on this very principle, that the Absolute transcends all our schemes of classification. But Spencer was wrong in neglecting to take into account the considerable amount of positive, though not strictly definable, knowledge contained in the affirmations which he makes in common with the Theist, that God exists. The Absolute, studied in the light of its manifestations, not in the darkness of isolations, discloses itself to our experience as Originating Source. ”

“ Modern Agnosticism is thus closely associated with Kant's distinction and Hamilton's principle of relativity. It asserts our inability to know the reality corresponding to our ultimate scientific, philosophic, or religious ideas. (5) Agnosticism, with special reference to theology, is a name for any theory which denies that it is possible for man to acquire knowledge of God. It may assume either a religious or an anti-religious form, according as it is confined to a criticism of rational knowledge or extended to a criticism of belief. ”

“ He frequently describes the Unknowable as the "Power manifesting itself in phenomena". This physical description is a surrender of his own position and a virtual acceptance of the principle of Theism, that the Absolute is known through, not apart from, its manifestations. If the Absolute can be known as physical power, surely it can be known as Intelligent Personal Power, by taking not the lowest, but the highest, manifestations of power known to us as the basis for a less inadequate conception. Blank existence is no final stopping-place for human thought. ”

“ Modern Agnosticism differs from its ancient prototype. Its genesis is not due to a reactionary spirit of protest, and a collection of sceptical arguments, against "dogmatic systems" of philosophy in vogue, so much as to an adverse criticism of man's knowing-powers in answer to the fundamental question: What can we know? Kant, who was the first to raise this question, in his memorable reply to Hume, answered it by a distinction between "knowable phenomena" and "unknowable things-in-themselves". Hamilton soon followed with his doctrine that "we know only the relations of things". ”

“ Religion would be deprived of all foundation in reason, the motives of credibility would become worthless, conduct would be severed from creed, and faith be blind, if the power of knowing God with rational certainty were called in question. The declaration of the Council was based primarily on scripture, not on any of the historic systems of philosophy. The Council simply defined the possibility of man's knowing God with certainty by reason apart from revelation. The possibility of knowing God was not affirmed of any historical individual in particular ”

“ Our inability to know such an Absolute, being simply our inability to define the indefinite, to condition the unconditioned, is an irrelevant truism. The absolute in question with Theists is the real, not the logical; the Infinite in question is the actual Infinite of realized perfection, not the Indefinite of thought. The All-perfect is the idea of God, not the All-imperfect, two polar opposites frequently mistaken for each other by Pantheists and Materialists from the days of the Ionians to our own. ”

“ The assumption that every idea is "symbolic" which cannot be vividly realized in thought is arbitrary as to be decisive against his entire system; it is a pre-judgment, not a valid canon of inductive criticism, which he constantly employs. ”

“ The variable element in the term is the group of objects, or propositions, to which it refers; the invariable element, the attitude of learned ignorance it always implies towards the possibility of acquiring knowledge. (3) Agnosticism, as a term of modern philosophy, is used to describe those theories of the limitations of human knowledge which deny the constitutional ability of the mind to know reality and conclude with the recognition of an intrinsically Unknowable. The existence of "absolute reality" is usually affirmed while, at the same time, its knowableness is denied. ”

“ The function of denial, which the Agnostic overlooks, is a corrective, not purely negative, function; and our idea of God, inadequate and solely proportional as it is, is nevertheless positive, true, and valid according to the laws which govern all our knowing. ”

“ It is also true that the attitude of the believer, as compared with that of the scientific observer, is strongly personal, and interested in the object of belief. But this contrast of personal with impersonal attitudes affords no justification for regarding belief as wholly blind. It is unfair to generalize these two attitudes into mutually exclusive philosophies. The moral ideal of conscience is different from the cold, impartial ideal of physical science. ”

“ The Theist, however, recognizing that the limits of human knowledge are to be determined by fact, not by speculation, refuses to prejudge the issue, and proceeds to investigate what we can legitimately know of God through His effects or manifestations. ”

“ The Agnostic, therefore, displaces the whole Theistic problem when he substitutes a logical Absolute, defined as "that which excludes all relations outer and inner", for the real. Examination of our experience shows that the only relation which the Absolute essentially excludes is the relation of real dependence upon anything else. ”

“ Our distinctions should never amount to separations, nor should the "pragmatic" method now in vogue be raised to the dignity of a universal philosophy. "The soul with its powers does not form an integral whole divided, or divisible, into non-communicating compartments of intellect and will ”