Reason and Authority in Religion (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1891 Excerpt: ... guiding Spirit in spiritually minded men and in the Christian community. It is letting doubt have its way while using it as an instrument to accomplish higher aims. The normal end of such doubt is a comprehension of the natural and persistent co-relation and co-working of the Divine and human spirit in historic process, which explains and vindicates at comparative worth all previous conceptions and institutions. Religious Knowlrdge Conditioned by the Incnrnution. This can, from the nature of the case, now come only fro n a genuine comprehension of the fact of the Incarnation and its historic effect in life, thought and institution. The religion o the Incarnation is the concrete form of reason that meets and fulfils the outworn abstract reason of this stage. It is born into a comprehension of that which is. Having proved to its satisfaction in agnosticism that its own subjective ideals were not rational, it turns to the real to find the concrete objective rational. If it arrives (at a comprehensive view) at a philosophy of history at all, it must find in the religion of the Incarnation the ripest and ultimate form of rationality. With Aristotle philosophy was a thoughtful comprehension of the encyclopaedia of Greek life and experience; with Hegel it was the same speculative comprehension of the concrete experience of Christendom. That is the objective matter of this phase of the activity of thought which we have called (c.) Comprehension, the highest form of knowing. We are chiefly concerned now with the mode of its activity, rather than with its contents. Its mode is that of insight, system, of correlation of all relativities into a self-related organic process. It is philosophy looking behind and before all previous phases and comprehending them as vital e...