Philosophy of religion

“ At this point, it may be proper for me to state that we make a distinction between Religion and Theology—between Philosophy and Metaphysics. Religion, to us, means that intuitional realization of the existence of THE ALL, and one's relationship to it; while Theology means the attempts of men to ascribe personality, qualities, and characteristics to it; their theories regarding its affairs, will, desires, plans, and designs, and their assumption of the office of '' middle-men'' between THE ALL and the people. ”

“ Though we may look to philosophy to prepare the way, by exciting an appreciation of the wants which Christianity supplies, and an apprehension of the suitability of Christianity as the perfection of our spiritual nature; we must confess that it is to the unseen leadings of the Spirit of God that we trust, to make the heart feel the truth as well as perceive it, and love as well as appreciate it. ”

“ It is true that he takes the religion of Christendom as he finds it. The grounds of belief, the relation of faith to reason, the profounder inquiries into the basis of man's knowledge of the Eternal and Invisible, are out of the circle within which he works. What we now call the philosophy of religion is absent from his writings. ”

“ Philosophy alone is not religion, nor is sentiment alone religion; but religion is that which, based on an intelligent principle, teaches that principle as dogma, exhibits it in worship, and applies it in discipline. Dogma worship and discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the mind spirit, and body of religion.”—“Origin and Development of Religious Belief.” By S. Baring Gould, M.A. Rivingtons, 1869. Part i., p. 119.
Here it is said that “religion is the representative of a philosophic idea. It always reposes on some hypothesis.” ”

“ Divine philosophy, or natural theology, is that knowledge concerning God which may be obtained by the contemplation of His creatures; and in this I note an excess rather than a deficience, because of the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy have received by being mixed together, making an heretical religion and a fabulous philosophy. ”

“ Now there are two tendencies connected with Religion; one is speculative: here the man is intellectually employed in matters pertaining to Religion, to God, to Man's religious nature, and his relation and connection with God. The result of this tendency is Theology. This is not Religion itself. It is men's Thought about Religion; the Philosophy of divine things; the Science of Religion. ”

“ A religion must teach some moral code, must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devotion to that code, and in so doing must show something in the nature of things that answers to the code or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion is therefore practical, emotional, and theoretical; it teaches us to do, to feel, and to believe, and it teaches the belief as a means to its teaching of the action and of the feeling. ”

“ To state this more simply, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy.—These are psychologically entirely different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratiocination, whereas the other is the living work of a group of persons, or of a great inspired leader, calling into play the entire thinking and feeling organism of man. ”

“ RELIGION has two principle enemies, Fanatism and Infidelity, or that which is called Atheism. The first requires to be combatted by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy. ”

“ Some kind of philosophy, then, will inevitably accompany, follow, and stimulate religion, were it only as the, necessarily ever inadequate, attempt at giving a fitting expression to the essentially metaphysical character of belief in a super-sensible world, in God, in man’s spiritual capacities and in God’s redemption of man. ”

“ He held so strongly that the Christian religion was mainly a religion of facts, that he perhaps allowed too little to its also being a philosophy that was ready to meet, out of its own essence and its ever unfolding powers, any new form of unbelief, disbelief, or misbelief, and must front itself to them as they moved up. ”

“ Or if an Elder shall give us a lecture upon astronomy, chemistry, or geology, our religion embraces it all. It matters not what the subject be, if it tends to improve the mind, exalt the feelings, and enlarge the capacity. The truth that is in all the arts and sciences forms a part of our religion. Faith is no more a part of it than any other true principle of philosophy. ”

“ Now, there is one element of our active nature which the Christian religion has emphatically recognized, but which philosophers as a rule have with great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their pretension to found systems of absolute certainty. I mean the element of faith. ”

“ A little philosophy inclines man's mind to atheism: depth in philosophy brings men's minds back to religion. (44) While the mind of man looks upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them; (44) when it beholds the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs acknowledge a Providence. (44) That school which is most accused of atheism most clearly demonstrates the truth of religion."
(a) Insert a suspensive conjunction. ”

“ As human reason is rendered equal to religion itself, theological matters must be treated as philosophical matters. (Allocution, "Singulari quidem perfusi.") 9. All the dogmas of the Christian religion are indistinctly the object of natural science or philosophy, and human reason, instructed solely by history, is able by its natural strength and principles to arrive at a comprehension of even the most abstract dogmas from the moment when they have been proposed as objective. ”

“ The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth. ”

“ Religion is a life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, philosophy looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be in harmony. ”

“ A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy;— nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere History. ”

“ This double assertion, that there is a soul in the universe outside of ourselves, and that this soul makes for right conduct, is the basis of fundamental importance in all religions. There are many religions in the world, and many creeds of the one great religion of christendom. ”

“ In a work that professes to deal with the Christian faith—The Truth of Religion—and which indeed presents a powerful vindication of historical Christianity, we miss any philosophical interpretation of the nature and power of prayer, adoration, or worship, or any account, indeed, of the intimacies of the soul which belong to the very essence of the Christian faith. ”

“ But this thought of natural religion, and that of a fundamental truth which is common to all religions, may not seem identical. The connecting thought is that of the rationality of that which forms the basis of all religions. ”

“ The second of our three conceptions views Religion less as a doctrine to be proved or disproved through a study of the external world than as a kind of consciousness whose justification lies in its rank amongst the various inner manifestations of our human nature. ”

“ The theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested. ”

“ Let us take each one of these three elements of religion—belief, worship, conduct—and try them all in turn as applicable to the Unknowable. How mere a phrase must any religion be of which neither belief, nor worship, nor conduct can be spoken! Imagine a religion which can have no believers, because, ex hypothesi, its adepts are forbidden to believe anything about it. Imagine a religion which excludes the idea of worship, because its sole dogma is the infinity of Nothingness. ”

“ This ultimate ground of right, thus found, makes plain why ethics, in its full meaning and issue, is so closely allied to religion. Religion, in its spirit and aim, means fellowship with God, accordance of desire, will, and life with him. ”

“ But the spirit in which we are to apply our doctrine to the theory of our knowledge of particular facts, and to the interpretation of such facts, interests us here in much the same way in which practical religion is interested in the spirit that the faithful ought to preserve amidst the cares and sorrows of daily life. ”

“ You know what I call religion: that which unites in man all his ideas of the universal and the eternal, those two forms of God. Religion, in the ordinary sense of the word, is but the binding together of certain moral and disciplinary formulas with the fine poetic imagery of the great biblical and Christian philosophies. ”

“ And in order thereto, we should so far divest ourselves of the incumbrances of this world, (which are too apt to engross our attention) as to inquire a consistent system of the knowledge of religious duty, and make it our constant endeavor in life to act conformably to it. The knowledge of the being, perfections, creation and providence of God, and of the immortality of our souls, is the foundation of religion ”

“ Religion becomes the worship of the God who is the source and standard of goodness, the love of the Eternal who loveth righteousness, the child's crying out into the dark—O righteous Father.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. ”

“ If then you would know whether christianity be true, it is first of all needful that you read and ponder the Christian books. These books prove themselves. The religion of Christ is felt to be true, as you read the writings in which it is recorded. Just as the works of nature prove to the contemplative mind the being of a God, so do the books of the Christians prove the truth of their religion. ”

“ Religion prostrates men before a being, who, without extension, is infinite, and fills all with his immensity; a being, all-powerful, who never executes his will; a being, sovereignly good, who creates only disquietudes; a being, the friend of order, and in whose government all is in confusion and disorder. What then, can we imagine, can be the God of theology? ”

“ From the age of fifteen dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion; I know no other religion. I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. ”

“ The religious spirit, the consciousness of the Absolute, and the reverence for it, should permeate all. Not unfrequently, however, we find that what is meant by religion is theology, or the church ceremonial, and these are only one-sided phases of the total religious process. ”

“ Your deepest nature—the divine Adjuster—creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good.
The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. ”

“ THE RELIGION OF THE IDEAL
You have told me that your Master regards genuine human religion as the individual’s experience with spiritual realities. I have regarded religion as man’s experience of reacting to something which he regards as being worthy of the homage and devotion of all mankind. In this sense, religion symbolizes our supreme devotion to that which represents our highest concept of the ideals of reality and the farthest reach of our minds toward eternal possibilities of spiritual attainment. ”

“ I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. ”

“ What we have to work with, before we can approach the teaching of what is called revealed religion, is the mind of man and the material universe. Do these furnish us with the rational basis for a belief in God? ”

“ It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while ago when I said that personal religion, even without theology or ritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure and simple does not contain. ”

“ But it is necessary at the outset to define, in general and provisional terms, the nature and the principle of that element in the Church's faith and life which is here under consideration, and in which especially this amplitude and catholicity of dealing with human nature is to be sought. ”

“ For all men, then, who have religious beliefs, and especially for all men who have Christian beliefs, these questions, What evidence is there for God's existence? and, What is known of His nature? are of primary importance. The answers given to them must determine whether religion and Christianity ought to be received or rejected. ”

“ To answer the question, we must go back to the primitive facts of religious consciousness within us. Then we find religion is voluntary obedience to the law of God, inward and outward obedience to that law he has written on our nature, revealed in various ways through Instinct, Reason, Conscience, and the Religious emotions. Through it we regard Him as the absolute object of Reverence, Faith, and Love. ”