Robert Flint

“ If some reduce it to a mere analysis of the religious consciousness, and overlook or deny that there is an objective religious revelation in nature and Scripture as well as a religious susceptibility in the mind of man, this is no logical consequence of the statement that theology is the science of religion. There needs, perhaps, no other proof that the definition to which Dr Hodge objects is of some use than to consider for a moment his own definition. "Theology is the science concerned with the facts and the principles of the Bible." ”

“ The more comprehensive an idea is from the more points can it be assailed, and the idea of God, being comprehensive of all ultimate ideas, may be assailed through them all, as, for example, through the idea of being, or of infinity, or of causality, or of personality, or of rectitude. Then, in another way, the unique fulness of the idea of God explains the prevalence of agnosticism in regard to it. The ideas are not precisely in God what they are in man or nature. God is being as man or nature is not; for He is independent and necessary being, and in that sense the one true Being. ”

“ When religion is assumed to consist merely of beliefs, emotions, and actions which have no objective grounds, no real and rational basis, its development can only be an object of history and of psychological analysis, and there can be no philosophy of religion, but simply a science of religions, which, seeing that it deals entirely with certain forms of mental disease and delusion, must be deemed merely a department of mental pathology. A philo sophy essentially religious must combine with a theology essentially rational in order to yield what deserves to be called a philosophy of religion. ”

“ In the sphere of religion, as in every other sphere, to confound history with science is to eliminate and destroy science ; but in no sphere is knowledge of history more a condition of the attainment of science, and historical research, properly conducted, more serviceable to scientific investigation, than in that of religion. To the historical method we owe, not only the historical disciplines of theology, but also in a considerable measure the recent progress of its positive or theoretical disciplines. ”

“ Reason cannot investigate too deeply any matter whatever, cannot possibly go too far, so long as it remains reason. Its own laws, the laws of evidence and of inference, are the only discoverable expression of its lawgiver's "thus far." When it violates any of these laws it has gone too far, but only then, and then simply because it has ceased to be rational. As long as it conforms to them the farther it goes the better. All this holds good not less in regard to religion than to any other object of investigation, and is an essential condition of the possibility of religious science. ”

“ It is no accident that in every age and nation thoughtful men have reflected on their religious convictions, and sought to trace them to their grounds, and to harmonize and systematize them, or that the Christian church has anxiously studied and debated for centuries problems concerning God, Christ, sin, salvation, &c.,—no accident, but the necessary consequence of those fixed laws of human nature by which man ever seeks, once that his intellect has been truly awakened, to define and complete his knowledge. ”

“ Geology shows the vast antiquity of man, and nothing proves that he may not have been awed or comforted by thoughts of the Divine ages before the invention of the oldest Aryan or Semitic words. It is merest conjecture to assign the formation of the conception of deity to the dawn of historic time. Between primitive speech, primitive religion, the primitive condition of man, and the little streak of light called human history there stretches an immeasurable expanse of darkness. ”

“ Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, traces the idea of God to a special faculty of religion "a subjective faculty for the apprehension of the infinite," "a mental faculty, which, independent of, nay, in spite of, sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the infinite under different names and under varying disguises." This view will not bear, perhaps, a close scrutiny. The infinite, as an implicit condition of thought, is not more involved in religious than in other thought. We cannot think anything as finite without implying the infinite. ”

“ Man is not only, however, disposed by all his chief sentiments for religion, but all these sentiments, when normally and healthfully developed, tend towards theism. It is only in a theistic form of religion that they can find true rest and satisfaction. One God can alone be the object of the highest devotional fear, can alone be regarded as ideally perfect, or as a being on whom the worshipper is absolutely dependent, can alone be loved with the whole heart and esteemed with undivided reverence, can alone be recognized as the sole author of the moral law, the alone good. ”

“ But, whenever by belief or faith is meant mere belief or faith, a belief or faith independent of and unconformed to reason, the apprehension and appreciation of truth,—to affirm that theology is based on such belief or faith is to represent it as so unlike every other science that it clearly cannot be a science at all. ”

“ It affirms the unity of God, but requires us to conceive of His unity, not as an abstract or indeter minate self-identity, not as "sterile, monotonous simpli city," but as a unity rich in distinctions and perfections, the unity of an infinite fulness of life and love, the unity of a Godhead in which there are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a trinity of persons, a diversity of properties, a variety of offices, a multiplicity of operations, yet sameness of nature, equality of power and glory, oneness in purpose and affection, harmony of will and work. ”

“ Why has their proof or disproof been so different a process from that of the establishment of the law of gravitation ? Largely because they are in themselves so different in nature. Laws of evolution can only be reached through the minute investigation of a far greater number of changes and appearances than laws of persistence. The discovery of truths of becoming may not be a more difficult but it is certainly a more delicate and complex process than the discovery of truths of being. Now this distinction not only emerges in theology but pervades it. ”

“ Reason in its investigation of religion must be completely free, i.e., subject to no other laws than those which are inherent in its own constitution. In regard to most sciences there is no need to insist that the method of science is one in which reason is free, because all who occupy themselves with these sciences acknowledge it. But in regard to theology it is otherwise. All who call themselves theologians are by no means disposed to admit that reason, in its search for religious truth and in its efforts to construct theological science, must be absolutely free ”

“ In their view God is immanent in all things, expresses Himself through all things, and is the essence of every human soul. There is not only no God but God, but no being, life, or spirit except the being, life, and spirit of God; and every man may be God s prophet, and more even than His prophet. For a man to know God is to see that God is immanent in himself, and that he is one with God, the universal life which breathes through all things. Such knowledge or vision must glorify all nature, and must dilate and rejoice the heart of him who possesses it. ”

“ From the very nature of religion the science or philosophy which treats of it as a whole must obviously be roost comprehensive. Religion is a relation between a worshipping subject and a wor shipped object. It implies both distinction and unity. Were there no distinction between the subject and the object there would be no religion, whether the self-identical unity were named God or man. Were there only distinction between them were God and man absolutely separate from and indifferent to each other, religion must be in this case also impossible. ”

“ But how may man hope to succeed in his efforts to arrive at a scientific understanding of his religious beliefs, feelings, and practices? How may he educe and elaborate from the phenomena of religion a system of theology entitled to be called science? Only, it is obvious, by following a truly scientific method. What then is a truly scientific method in theology? ”

“ There may be many strata of language buried too deep for human excavation in the abysses of unrecorded time. By no possibility, therefore, can the analysis of existing languages disclose to us the oldest name for deity or the historical origin of the idea of deity. ”

“ Hegel and Schelling, Krause and Baader, and their associates, all felt themselves to have the one mission in life of making manifest that God was thus the truth, the light of all knowledge, self-revealing in all science, the sole object of all philosophy. ”

“ It alone completely sophy of answers to the idea and definition of theology. It is the one religion, general theological science, comprehends and dominates the special theological sciences, so as to be the science of these sciences, and hence, in accordance with the true distinction between philosophy and science, is properly called philosophy rather than science the philosophy of religion. All philosophy is science, but all science is not philosophy. Philosophy, as distinguished from science, is general or universal as distinguished from particular or special science. ”

“ Yet there is much in the theory of cognition on which it proceeds which the theist can utilize. Indeed, no theory of cognition can afford a satisfactory basis to theism which does not largely adopt and assimilate that of Kant. He has conclusively shown that all our knowledge is a synthesis of contingent impressions and necessary conditions ; that without the latter there can be neither sense, understanding, nor reason; that they constitute intelligence, and are the light of mind ; that they also pervade the whole world of experience and illuminate it ”

“ Hegel expressed not only his own conviction, but the central and vital thought of the whole anti-agnostic movement which culminated in him when he wrote, "The object of religion is, like that of philo sophy, the eternal truth itself in its objective existence : it is God, and nothing but God, and the explanation of God. Philosophy is not a wisdom of the world, but a knowledge of the unworldly ; not a knowledge >of outward matter, of empirical being and life, but knowledge of that which is eternal, of that which is God and which flows from His nature, as that must manifest and develop itself. ”

“ That result was a faith in God singularly comprehensive, sublime, and practical, a faith which rested, not on speculation and reasoning, but on a conviction of God having directly revealed Himself to the spirits of men, and which, while ignoring meta physical theorizing, ascribed to God all metaphysical as well as moral perfections ; a faith which, in spite of its simplicity, so apprehended the relationship of God to nature as neither to confound them like pantheism nor to separate them like deism, but to assert both the immanence and the transcendence of the divine ”

“ The theories which trace the origin of religion to feeling have the merit of recognizing that religion is not an affair of mere intellect ; that the Divine could not even be known by men if they had not feelings and affections as well as intellectual powers ; that, if God be love, for example, He can only be known by love ; that, if He have moral attributes, we must have moral feelings in order to be able to recognize them. ”

“ True faith is living faith, and true life is the life of faith. Dogmatics and ethics are so intimately related that it is not surprising that they should have been long left undifferentiated, or that a few eminent theologians should still deny that they can be properly treated apart. Theology at this stage is commonly designated systematic, although the term is not a good one, and others, little if any better perhaps, as didactic, theoretical, positive, thetic, &c., have been suggested as substitutes. ”

“ Any philosophy which is in thorough earnest to show that God is the ground of all existence and the condition of all knowledge must find it difficult to retain a firm grasp of the personality and transcendence of the Divine and to set them forth with due prominence. ”

“ Many speak of theology as a science of religion because they disbelieve that there is any knowledge of God to be at tained. Dr Martineau, in his lecture on Ideal Substitutes for God, protests against this tendency, and contends that the older view of theology, as the doctrine or rational apprehension of God, ought not to be abandoned, seeing that the new "science of religions," i.e., "the systematic knowledge of what men have believed and felt on things sacred to them," can be no proper substitute for the old "theology." ”