An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant | Page 6

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 It may be amended or superseded, and our theology with it.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.
Our most profitable mode of procedure would seem to be this. We shall seek to follow, as
we may, those few main movements of thought marking the nineteenth century which
have immediate bearing upon our theme. We shall try to register the effect which these
movements have had upon religious conceptions. It will not be possible at any point to do
more than to select typical examples. Perhaps the true method is that we should go back
to the beginnings of each one of these movements. We should mark the emergence of a
few great ideas. It is the emergence of an idea which is dramatically interesting. It is the
moment of emergence in which that which is characteristic appears. Our subject is far too
complicated to permit that the ramifications of these influences should be followed in
detail. Modifications, subtractions, additions, the reader must make for himself.
These main movements of thought are, as has been said, three in number. We shall take
them in their chronological order. There is first the philosophical revolution which is
commonly associated with the name of Kant. If we were to seek with arbitrary exactitude
to fix a date for the beginning of this movement, this might be the year of the publication
of his first great work, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, in 1781.[1] Kant was indeed himself,
both intellectually and spiritually, the product of tendencies which had long been
gathering strength. He was the exponent of ideas which in fragmentary way had been
expressed by others, but he gathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses of his
age. Out from some portion of his works lead almost all the paths which philosophical

thinkers since his time have trod. One cannot say even of his work, _Der Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_, 1793, that it is the sole source, or even the
greatest source, of his influence upon religious thinking. But from the body of his work
as a whole, there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed completely the
notion of revelation. There came also a view of the universe as an ideal unity which,
especially as elaborated by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, has radically altered the
traditional ideas of God, of man, of nature and of their relations, the one to the other.
[Footnote 1: In the text the titles of books which are discussed are given for the first time
in the language in which they are written. Books which are merely alluded to are
mentioned in English.]
We shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and critical movement. It is the effort
to apply consistently and without fear the maxims of historical and literary criticism to
the documents of the Old and New Testaments. With still greater arbitrariness, and yet
with appreciation of the significance of Strauss' endeavour, we might set as the date of
the full impact of this movement upon