The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858. - - - given of their discovery is by any means circum gtantiated to such a po . int as . to silence scepticism. But their best credentials lie in themselves. For it is utterly imp ossible to conceive any one clever eno ugh to concoct such a work, producing an autobiography .of Catherine 11., with so very little of Catherine init. METAPHYSICAL THEOLOGY. The Limits of Religious Thought Eaamined. lu Eight Lectures, preached before the Uni versity of Oxford, in the year 1858, on the Foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, m.A., Canon of Salisbury. By Henry Longue ville Mansel, B.D. Oxford : J. H. and J. Parker. THE University of Oxford, and the Church at large, are much indebted to Mr. Mansel for the courage and ability with which he has laid the axe of rigid logic to the root of the spurious phi losophy which, under the specious guise of free inquiry, has, both in Germany and in this coun try, overgrown the simplicity and confused the evidences of the Christian religion. He is entitled also to the gratitude of scholars for making a powerful effort to rescue the character of the Bampton Lectures from the imputation of mediocrity which recent performances have only too justly deserved. The study of pure theology, in its deeper principles, has been so long dormant in both Universities, and the unmeditative tone of the theological mind of the present day is so unfavourable to logical investigation, that the Bampton Lecturer in selecting for his subject - The Limits of Religious Thought" had to face the risk of unpopularity in Oxford and severe criticism in the world of letters. These, how ever, have not daunted him ; and now that his performance is before the world, he has no rea son, we are sure, to regret having applied the energies of his powerful and well-trained intellect to the investigation of such an important and pertinent theme. . . . The assumption on which modern speculations in religion have proceeded is that the human in tellect is capable of grasping the sum of neces sary truth, and therefore of sitting in judgment upon Revelation, and determining its accuracy, sufficiency, and pertinence to human life and cir cumstances. Out of this assumption are de veloped dogmatism on the one hand and rationalism on the other. Both systems, how ever, have failed in attempting to construct a philosophical theology. Rome, in adopting the one, would destroy the free action of the intel lect; Germany, in adopting the other, destroys the very principle of submission to accredited revelation, which is the whole basis of our theology. The one results in superstition, the other in infidelity. Plainly, then, there is a defect in both, and it becomes necessary to search for the clue which shall point out their weakness, and set us in the right direction of in quiry for the certainty after which, notwith standing all our boasted light, we are groping. This is what the Bampton Lecturer has at tempted—with how much success we have yet to examine. Ills purpose is to pursue, in relation to theology, what Kant essayed in relation to metaphysics—viz., " How are synthetical judg ments a priori possible?" (p. 7). And he thus states his thesis in other words : Does there exist in the human mind any direct faculty of religious knowledge, by which, in its speculative exer cise, we are enabled to decide, independently of all external revelation, what is the true nature of God, and the manner in which He must manifest Himself to the world ; and by which, in its critical exercise, we are entitled authorita tively to decide for or against the claims of any professed revelation, as containing a true or a false representation of the Divine nature and attributes? And if it can be shown that no such faculty exists, but that the conclusions arriv eil at in this respect are gained indirectly, by transferring to the region of theology judgments which properly belong to another province of human thought, there then arises a second inquiry —namely , what cautions are necessary to he observed in the process of transferring, and what is the value of the judgments when transferred? The moral and theological writings of Kant and his followers are so far from furnishing a satisfactory answer to these questions that they rather seem as if they had been written expressly for t he Purnlse of reversing the method carried out with such good effect in relation to metaphysics.—(p. viii. The "cautions" are found by our learned author to lie in " the limits of religious thought," Which he has undertaken to expound. The pur- Pose of his book ill • these limn id he himself tells us that the principle laid down by the late Sir William llamilton in his " Philo sophy of the Unconditioned "—viz., " that the " capacity of thought is not to be constituted into "the measure of existence, and that the domain " of our knowledge is not necessarily co-exten " sive with the horizon of our faith,"—is identical with what is enforced in these lectures. What Sir W. Hamilton expounded so philosophically as a theory, Bishop Butler, a century before, had acknowledged in practice, and exemplified with singular felicity in his " Analogy." Mr. Nlansel, in thllowing both, takes the surest pre cautions against errors on either side. We thus see the aim and scope of our authors work. A high and noble aim it is ; and never was effort of the kind more needed, for while Rome, as the highest type of the Dogmatists, presents for the acceptance of our belief the new doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, many of the leading writers on the Continent, and some at home, are largely, though perhaps sometimes imkierceptibly to themselves, under the influence of that rash spirit of speculation which till lately was the pre dominant phase of German theology. So much is this the case that writers who are not actually engaged upon theology, but are pursuing the totally different paths of history and criticism, are nevertheless insensibly working in the interest of a foregone philosophical conclusio-:. Strauss laid down the canon, that whatever is supernatural is necessarily unhistorical; and Hegel laid down a theory of progressive development, which Vatke and Baur have adopted. Any writer who com mences an inquiry on either of these principles will find himself fast on the way to the most advanced conclusions of the theological school. And even those who, without seeing the conclusions, incau tiously assume the premises, will exhibit in their writings, more or less directly, the dangerous leaven. But we must proceed to give a more detailed account of these masterly Lectures. The first lays out the subject, tracing the peculiarities of dogmatism and rationalism as methods of reli gious philosophy, and exposing the errors of each ; and as a right comprehension of this is necessary to an intelligent following of the author's subsequent argument we will give his philosophical discrimination of the two in his own clear language : I do not include under the name of dogmatism the mere enunciation of religious truths as resting upon authority and not upon reasoning. The Dogmatist as well as the Rationalist is the constructor of a system; and in constructing it, however much the materials upon which he works may be given by a higher autho rity, yet in connecting them together and exhibiting their systematic form it is necessary to call in the aid of human ability. Indeed, whatever may be their actual antagonism in the field of religious controversy, the two terms are in their proper sense so little exclusive of each other that both were originally employed to denote the same persons—the name dogmatist or rationalist being indifferently given to those medical theorists who insisted on the necessity of calling in the aid of rational principles to supposo or correct the conclusions furnished by experience. A like signification is to be found in the later language of philosophy, when the term dogmatists was used to denote those philosophers who endeavoured to explain the phenomena of expe rience by means of rational conceptions and demonstra• Lions, the intelligible world being regarded as the coun terpart of the sensible, and the necessary relaticns of the former as the principles and ground of the observed facts of the latter. It is in a sense analogotu to this that the tern; may be most accurately used in reference to theo logy.• Scripture is to the theological dogmatist what experience is to the philosophical. it supplies him with the facts to which his system has to adapt itself. 1t con tains in an unsystematic form the positive doctrines which further inquiry has to exhibit as supported by reason able grounds and connected into a scientific whole. Theological dogmatism is thus an application go* reason to the support and defence of pre•exisling statements of Scripture. Rationalism, on the other hand, so far as it deals with Scripture at all, deals with it as a thing to he adapted to the independent conclusions of the natural reason, and to be rejected where that adaptation cannot conveniently be made. By rationalism, without intending to limit the name to any single school or period in theological contro versy, I .neon generally to designate that system whose final test of truth is placed in the direct assent of the human consciousness, whether in the form of logical deduc tion, or moral judgment, or religious intuition—by what. ever previous process those faculties may have been raised to their assumed dignity as arbitrators.t The rationalist, as such, is not bound to maintain that a Divine revelation of religious truth is impossible, nor even to deny that it has actually been given. He may admit the existence of revelation as a fact—ho may acknowledge its utility as a temporary means of instruction for a ruder age—he may even accept certain portious as of universal anti pet manent authority. Dot he assigns to some superior tribunal the 1187 right of determining what is essential to religion, and what is not,: he claims for himself and his age the privilege of accepting or rejecting any given revelation wholly or in part, according as it does or does not satisfy the condi tions of some higher criterion to be supplied by the human consciousness.—(pp. 4.5.) Long as this extract is, it will repay the readers attention as unfolding to him the two great lines of ,religious thought and the branch of religious philosophy to which these eight lec tures are directed. It is clear that Revelation has not given us a complete system of scientific theology; whether such could have been given consistently with the existing laws of human thought is ques tionable, but since it is not given, it must be con structed by human interpretation of what is revealed. And it is, as Mr. Manse! shows, in attempting such a construction that dogmatism and rationalism exhibit their most striking con trasts. It is not our author's purpose to prove both of these systems wrong, but only the ex cessive straining of them ; and it is to correct this that he desires to ascertain with more definite ness the limits of man's thought. Since human conceptions are unavoidable in theology, there is need of some principle to determine their proper place in it, and that principle is involved in the author's investigation. With great ability he shows that the first and chief object of criticism is not religion itself, but the human mind in relation to religion. A direct criticism of religion, as such, involves a previous construc tion of a philosophy of the Infinite. The ques tion is whether the powers of human thought admit of this. One answer is in the failure of all who have attempted it, but as that is only partially conclusive the resort must be to first principles, so far as analogy will allow us to get at them. And with marvellous clearness does Mr. MANSEL follow out his inquiry, pro ceeding from the ground already descnbed at such length to show the mazes of contradic tion in which both systems involve themselves, and the necessary failure of all attempts to con struct a metaphysical theology. Thence he passes on to show the impossibility of construct ing a rational theology, and, further, that our religious knowledge is regulative, not specula tive, and, finally, that no explanation is possible of those difficulties which arise from the univer sal laws of human thought; that such difficul ties are inherent in our mental constitution, and form part of our training and discipline in this life; and that the office of philosophy is not to give us a knowledge of the absolute nature of God, but to teach us to know ourselves and the limits of our faculties. We have no space for a fuller analysis. We have shown the importance of the inquiry, both as to subject matter and as to time—we have shown at sonic length the author's starting point—we have indicated the line that he has taken and the point that he has reached. But at the risk of length we cannot withhold one or two passages of great merit which show the author's rhe toric to be no way inferior to his logic. Here is a splendid exhibition of the absurdity of those who seek for a metaphysical exposition of Clod's nature and attributes : They want a truer, a juster idea of the Deity as He is than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Him self; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to dream that man can escape f►om himself, that human reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God ! they do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one exalted and entire ; they add nothing to their con ception of God as He is, but only take away a part of their conception of man. Sympathy, and love, and fatherly kindness, and forgiving mercy have evaporated in the crucible of their philosophy ; and what is the caput ',tortuous that remains but only the sterner features of humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness ? The God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the likeness of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who does not listen but the likeness of human obstinacy? Do we ascribe to Him a fixed purpose? Our conception of a purpose is but human. Do we speak of Him as continuing unchanged? Our conception of continuance is human. 1)o we conceive Him as knowing and deter mining ? What are knowledge and determination but modes of human consciousness? And what know we of consciousness itself but as the contrast between sun cessive mental states ? But our rational philosopher stops short in the middle of his reasoning. He strips off from humanity just so much as suits his purpose, and the residue he maketh a god—less pious in his idolatry than the carver of the graven image, in that he does not fall down unto it and pray unto it, but is content to stand afar off and reason concerning it. Aod why does he retain any conception of God at all but that he retains some portions of our imperfect humanity ? Man is still the residue that is left; deprived indeed of all that is amiable in humanity, but, as the darker features which remain, still man. Man in his purposes, man in his inflexibility which he has undertaken to - The our- I auth superior authority. But be assigns to some to the - I in . humanity, but, as the darker features w hich remain, Pose of his book is to illustrate these limits; and • The hallos' are ours. st4 ll man. Man 111 Ins purposes, man in h i s inflexibility,