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AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT

BY

EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE

PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1912

TO
ADOLF HARNACK
ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY
BY HIS FIRST AMERICAN PUPIL

PREFATORY NOTE

It is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a larger work, in
which the Judgments here expressed may be supported in detail.
Especially, the author desires to treat the literature of the social
question and of the modernist movement with a fulness which has not been
possible within the limits of this sketch. The philosophy of religion
and the history of religions should have place, as also that estimate of
the essence of Christianity which is suggested by the contact of
Christianity with the living religions of the Orient.

PASQUE ISLAND, MASS.,
_July_ 28, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A. INTRODUCTION. 1.
B. THE BACKGROUND. 23.
DEISM. 23.
RATIONALISM. 25.
PIETISM. 30.
AESTHETIC IDEALISM. 33.

CHAPTER II

IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 39.
KANT. 39.
FICHTE. 55.
SCHELLING. 60.
HEGEL. 66.

CHAPTER III

THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION. 74.
SCHLEIERMACHER. 74.
RITSCHL AND THE RITSCHLIANS. 89

CHAPTER IV

THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT. 110.
STRAUSS. 114.
BAUR. 118.
THE CANON. 123.
THE LIFE OF JESUS. 127.
THE OLD TESTAMENT. 130.
THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE. 136.
HARNACK. 140.

CHAPTER V

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE SCIENCES. 151.
POSITIVISM. 156.
NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 162.
EVOLUTION. 170.
MIRACLES. 175.
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. 176.

CHAPTER VI

THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES; ACTION AND REACTION. 191.
THE POETS. 195.
COLERIDGE. 197.
THE ORIEL SCHOOL. 199.
ERSINE AND CAMPBELL. 201.
MAURICE. 204.
CHANNING. 205.
BUSHNELL. 207.
THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 211.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 212.
NEWMAN. 214.
MODERNISM. 221.
ROBERTSON. 223.
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 224.
THE BROAD CHURCH. 224.
CARLYLE. 228.
EMERSON. 230.
ARNOLD. 232.
MARTINEAU. 234.
JAMES. 238.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 243.

CHAPTER I

A. INTRODUCTION

The Protestant Reformation marked an era both in life and thought for
the modern world. It ushered in a revolution in Europe. It established
distinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. These
distinctions have been significant not for Europe alone. They have had
influence also upon those continents which since the Reformation have
come under the dominion of Europeans. Yet few would now regard the
Reformation as epoch-making in the sense in which that pre-eminence has
been claimed. No one now esteems that it separates the modern from the
mediaeval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. The perspective
of history makes it evident that large areas of life and thought
remained then untouched by the new spirit. Assumptions which had their
origin in feudal or even in classical culture continued unquestioned.
More than this, impulses in rational life and in the interpretation of
religion, which showed themselves with clearness in one and another of
the reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actually
repudiated, by their successors. It is possible to view many things in
the intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth century, even some
which Protestants have passionately reprobated, as but the taking up
again of clues which the reformers had let fall, the carrying out of
purposes of their movement which were partly hidden from themselves.

Men have asserted that the Renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism.
They have gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religious
revival which the Reformation was. Even these men will, however, not
deny that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the religious
reformation possible or, at all events, effective. Nor can it be denied
that after the Revolution, in the Protestant communities the
intellectual element was thrust into the background. The practical and
devotional prevailed. Humanism was for a time shut out. There was more
room for it in the Roman Church than among Protestants. Again, the
Renaissance itself had been not so much an era of discovery of a new
intellectual and spiritual world. It had been, rather, the rediscovery
of valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. That
thorough-going review of the principles at the basis of all relations of
the life of man, which once seemed possible to Renaissance and
Reformation, was postponed to a much later date. When it did take place,
it was under far different auspices.

There is a remarkable unity in the history of Protestant thought in the
period from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century. There
is a still more surprising unity of Protestant thought in this period
with the thought of the mediaeval and ancient Church. The basis and
methods are the same. Upon many points the conclusions are identical.
There was nothing of which the Protestant scholastics were more proud
than of their agreement with the Fathers of the early Church. They did
not perceive in how large degree they were at one with Christian
thinkers of the Roman communion as well. Few seem to have realised how
largely Catholic in principle Protestant thought has been. The
fundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have been the same.
The notions of revelation and inspiration were identical. The idea of
authority was common to both, only the instance in which that authority
is lodged was different. The thoughts of God and man, of the world, of
creation, of providence and prayer, of the nature and means of
salvation, are similar. Newman was right in discovering that from the
first he had thought, only and always, in what he called Catholic terms.
It was veiled from him that many of those who ardently opposed him
thought in those same terms.

It is impossible to write upon the theme which this book sets itself
without using the terms Catholic and Protestant in the conventional
sense. The words stand for certain historic magnitudes. It is equally
impossible to conceal from ourselves how misleading the language often
is. The line between that which has been happily called the religion of
authority and the religion of the spirit does not run between Catholic
and Protestant. It runs through the middle of many Protestant bodies,
through the border only of some, and who will say that the Roman Church
knows nothing of this contrast? The sole use of recurrence here to the
historic distinction is to emphasise the fact that this distinction
stands for less than has commonly been supposed. In a large way the
history of Christian thought, from earliest times to the end of the
eighteenth century, presents a very striking unity.

In contrast with this, that modern reflection which has taken the
phenomenon known as religion and, specifically, that historic form of
religion known as Christianity, as its object, has indeed also slowly
revealed the fact that it is in possession of certain principles.
Furthermore, these principles, as they have emerged, have been felt to
be new and distinctive principles. They are essentially modern
principles. They are the principles which, taken together, differentiate
the thinker of the nineteenth century from all who have ever been before
him. They are principles which unite all thinkers at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in practically
every portion of the world, as they think of all subjects except
religion. It comes more and more to be felt that these principles must
be reckoned with in our thought concerning religion as well.

One of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in true
critical fashion with problems of history and literature. Long before
the end of the age of rationalism, this principle had been applied to
literature and history, other than those called sacred. The thorough
going application of this scientific method to the literatures and
history of the Old and New Testaments is almost wholly an achievement of
the nineteenth century. It has completely altered the view of revelation
and inspiration. The altered view of the nature of the documents of
revelation has had immeasurable consequences for dogma.

Another of these elements is the new view of nature and of man's
relation to nature. Certain notable discoveries in physics and astronomy
had proved possible of combination with traditional religion, as in the
case of Newton. Or again, they had proved impossible of combination with
any religion, as in the case of Laplace. The review of the religious and
Christian problem in the light of the ever increasing volume of
scientific discoveries--this is the new thing in the period which we
have undertaken to describe. A theory of nature as a totality, in which
man, not merely as physical, but even also as social and moral and
religious being, has place in a series which suggests no break, has
affected the doctrines of God and of man in a way which neither those
who revered nor those who repudiated religion at the beginning of the
nineteenth century could have imagined.

Another leading principle grows out of Kant's distinction of two worlds
and two orders of reason. That distinction issued in a new theory of
knowledge. It laid a new foundation for an idealistic construing of the
universe. In one way it was the answer of a profoundly religious nature
to the triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalistic
movement had run out. By it the philosopher gave standing forever to
much that prophets and mystics in every age had felt to be true, yet had
never been able to prove by any method which the ordered reasoning of
man had provided. Religion as feeling regained its place. Ethics was set
once more in the light of the eternal. The soul of man became the object
of a scientific study.

There have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger factors
which enter into an interpretation of Christianity which may fairly be
said to be new in the nineteenth century. They are new in a sense in
which the intellectual elements entering into the reconsideration of
Christianity in the age of the Reformation were not new. They are
characteristic of the nineteenth century. They would naturally issue in
an interpretation of Christianity in the general context of the life and
thought of that century. The philosophical revolution inaugurated by
Kant, with the general drift toward monism in the interpretation of the
universe, separates from their forebears men who have lived since Kant,
by a greater interval than that which divided Kant from Plato. The
evolutionary view of nature, as developed from Schelling and Comte
through Darwin to Bergson, divides men now living from the
contemporaries of Kant in his youthful studies of nature, as those men
were not divided from the followers of Aristotle.

Of purpose, the phrase Christian thought has been interpreted as thought
concerning Christianity. The problem which this book essays is that of
an outline of the history of the thought which has been devoted, during
this period of marvellous progress, to that particular object in
consciousness and history which is known as Christianity. Christianity,
as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific reflection of
the age--this it is which we propose to consider. Our religion as
affected in its interpretation by principles of thought which are
already widespread, and bid fair to become universal among educated
men--this it is which in this little volume we aim to discuss. The term
religious thought has not always had this significance. Philosophy of
religion has signified, often, a philosophising of which religion was,
so to say, the atmosphere. We cannot wonder if, in these circumstances,
to the minds of some, the atmosphere has seemed to hinder clearness of
vision. The whole subject of the philosophy of religion has within the
last few decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted that
the aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a religious
spirit. On the contrary, the aim is to consider religion itself, with
the best aid which current philosophy and science afford. In this sense
only can we give the study of religion and Christianity a place among
the sciences.

It remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all events, of
those who have thought profoundly concerning Christianity will be found
to have been Christian men. Religion is a form of consciousness. It will
be those who have had experience to which that consciousness
corresponds, whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. That remark
is true, for example, of aesthetic matters as well. To be a good judge of
music one must have musical feeling and experience. To speak with any
deeper reasonableness concerning faith, one must have faith. To think
profoundly concerning Christianity one needs to have had the Christian
experience. But this is very different from saying that to speak
worthily of the Christian religion, one must needs have made his own the
statements of religion which men of a former generation may have found
serviceable. The distinction between religion itself, on the one hand,
and the expression of religion in doctrines and rites, or the
application of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is in
itself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century. It is
one which separates us from Christian men in previous centuries as
markedly as it does any other. It is a simple implication of the Kantian
theory of knowledge. The evidence for its validity has come through the
application of historical criticism to all the creeds. Mystics of all
ages have seen the truth from far. The fact that we may assume the
prevalence of this distinction among Christian men, and lay it at the
base of the discussion we propose, is assuredly one of the gains which
the nineteenth century has to record.

It follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have to deal will
have been, in their own time, of the number of avowedly Christian men.
Some who have greatly furthered movements which in the end proved
fruitful for Christian thought, have been men who in their own time
alienated from professed and official religion. In the retrospect we
must often feel that their opposition to that which they took to be
religion was justifiable. Yet their identification of that with religion
itself, and their frank declaration of what they called their own
irreligion, was often a mistake. It was a mistake to which both they and
their opponents in due proportion contributed. A still larger class of
those with whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves a
personal adherence to Christianity. But their identification with
Christianity, or with a particular Christian Church, has been often
bitterly denied by those who bore official responsibility in the Church.
The heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. There is
something perverse in Gottfried Arnold's maxim, that the true Church, in
any age, is to be found with those who have just been excommunicated
from the actual Church. However, the maxim points in the direction of a
truth. By far the larger part of those with whom we have to do have had
acknowledged relation to the Christian tradition and institution. They
were Christians and, at the same time, true children of the intellectual
life of their own age. They esteemed it not merely their privilege, but
also their duty, to endeavour to ponder anew the religious and Christian
problem, and to state that which they thought in a manner congruous with
the thoughts which the men of the age would naturally have concerning
other themes.

It has been to most of these men axiomatic that doctrine has only
relative truth. Doctrine is but a composite of the content of the
religious consciousness with materials which the intellect of a given
man or age or nation in the total view of life affords. As such,
doctrine is necessary and inevitable for all those who in any measure
live the life of the mind. But the condition of doctrine is its mobile,
its fluid and changing character. It is the combination of a more or
less stable and characteristic experience, with a reflection which,
exactly in proportion as it is genuine, is transformed from age to age,
is modified by qualities of race and, in the last analysis, differs with
individual men. Dogma is that portion of doctrine which has been
elevated by decree of ecclesiastical authority, or even only by common
consent, into an absoluteness which is altogether foreign to its nature.
It is that part of doctrine concerning which men have forgotten that it
had a history, and have decided that it shall have no more. In its very
notion dogma confounds a statement of truth, which must of necessity be
human, with the truth itself, which is divine. In its identification of
statement and truth it demands credence instead of faith. Men have
confounded doctrine and dogma; they have been taught so to do. They have
felt the history of Christian doctrine to be an unfruitful and
uninteresting theme. But the history of Christian thought would seek to
set forth the series of interpretations put, by successive generations,
upon the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of the
communion of men with God. These interpretations ray out at all edges
into the general intellectual life of the age. They draw one whole set
of their formative impulses from the general intellectual life of the
age. It is this relation of the progress of doctrine to the general
history of thought in the nineteenth century, which the writer designed
to emphasise in choosing the title of this work.

As was indicated in the closing paragraphs of the preceding volume of
this series, the issue of the age of rationalism had been for the cause
of religion on the whole a distressing one. The majority of those who
were resolved to follow reason were agreed in abjuring religion. That
they had, as it seems to us, but a meagre understanding of what religion
is, made little difference in their conclusion. Bishop Butler complains
in his _Analogy_ that religion was in his time hardly considered a
subject for discussion among reasonable men. Schleiermacher in the very
title of his _Discourses_ makes it plain that in Germany the situation
was not different. If the reasonable eschewed religious protests in
Germany, evangelicals in England, the men of the great revivals in
America, many of them, took up a corresponding position as towards the
life of reason, especially toward the use of reason in religion. The
sinister cast which the word rationalism bears in much of the popular
speech is evidence of this fact. To many minds it appeared as if one
could not be an adherent both of reason and of faith. That was a
contradiction which Kant, first of all in his own experience, and then
through his system of thought, did much to transcend. The deliverance
which he wrought has been compared to the deliverance which Luther in
his time achieved for those who had been in bondage to scholasticism in
the Roman Church. Although Kant has been dead a hundred years, both the
defence of religion and the assertion of the right of reason are still,
with many, on the ancient lines. There is no such strife between
rationality and belief as has been supposed. But the confidence of that
fact is still far from being shared by all Christians at the beginning
of the twentieth century. The course in reinterpretation and
readjustment of Christianity, which that calm conviction would imply, is
still far from being the one taken by all of those who bear the
Christian name. If it is permissible in the writing of a book like this
to have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, the
author may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes with the earnest
hope that in some measure he may contribute also to the establishment of
an understanding upon which so much both for the Church and the world
depends.

We should say a word at this point as to the general relation of
religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in
clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the
study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that
apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of
Christianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this
true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts.
It is a positive religion. It is connected with personalities, above all
with one transcendent personality, that of Jesus. It sprang out of
another religion which had already emerged into the light of
world-history. It has been associated for two thousand years with
portions of the race which have made achievements in culture and left
record of those achievements. It is the function of speculation to
interpret this phenomenon. When speculation is tempted to spin by its
own processes something which it would set beside this historic
magnitude or put in place of it, and still call that Christianity, we
must disallow the claim. It was the licence of its speculative
endeavour, and the identification of these endeavours with Christianity,
which finally discredited Hegelianism with religious men. Nor can it be
denied that theologians themselves have been sinners in this respect.
The disposition to regard Christianity as a revealed and divinely
authoritative metaphysic began early and continued long. When the
theologians also set out to interpret Christianity and end in offering
us a substitute, which, if it were acknowledged as absolute truth, would
do away with Christianity as historic fact, as little can we allow the
claim.

Again, Christianity exists not merely as a matter of history. It exists
also as a fact in living consciousness. It is the function of psychology
to investigate that consciousness. We must say that, accurately
speaking, there is no such thing as Christian philosophy. There are
philosophies, good or bad, current or obsolete. These are Christian only
in being applied to the history of Christianity and the content of the
Christian consciousness. There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as
Christian consciousness. There is the human consciousness, operating
with and operated upon by the impulse of Christianity. It is the great
human experience from which we single out for investigation that part
which is concerned with religion, and call that the religious
experience. It is essential, therefore, that those general
investigations of human consciousness and experience, as such, which are
being carried on all about us should be reckoned with, if our Christian
life and thought are not altogether to fall out of touch with advancing
knowledge. For this reason we have misgiving about the position of some
followers of Ritschl. Their opinion, pushed to the limit, seems to mean
that we have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance of
science. Religion is a feeling of which he alone who possesses it can
give account. He alone who has it can appreciate such an account when
given. We acknowledge that religion is in part a feeling. But that
feeling must have rational justification. It must also have rational
guidance if it is to be saved from degenerating into fanaticism.

To say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends in our having to
do with a bad philosophy. In that case we have a philosophy with which
we operate without having investigated it, instead of having one with
which we operate because we have investigated it. The philosophy of
which we are aware we have. The philosophy of which we are not aware has
us. No doubt, we may have religion without philosophy, but we cannot
formulate it even in the rudest way to ourselves, we cannot communicate
it in any way whatsoever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy.
In the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this is merely
the deposit of the regnant notions of the time. It may be amended or
superseded, and our theology with it. Yet while it lasts it is our one
possible vehicle of expression. It is the interpreter and the critique
of what we have experienced. It is not open to a man to retreat within
himself and say, I am a Christian, I feel thus, I think so, these
thoughts are the content of Christianity. The consequence of that
position is that we make the religious experience to be no part of the
normal human experience. If we contend that the being a Christian is the
great human experience, that the religious life is the true human life,
we must pursue the opposite course. We must make the religious life
coherent with all the other phases and elements of life. If we would
contend that religious thought is the truest and deepest thought, we
must begin at this very point. We must make it conform absolutely to the
laws of all other thought. To contend for its isolation, as an area by
itself and a process subject only to its own laws, is to court the
judgment of men, that in its zeal to be Christian it has ceased to be
thought.

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