Philosophy and Religion

Philosophy and Religion, by
Hastings Rashdall

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Rashdall
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Title: Philosophy and Religion Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge
Author: Hastings Rashdall

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Language: English
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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge
by
HASTINGS RASHDALL
D. Litt. (Oxon.), D.C.L. (Dunelm.) Fellow of the British Academy
Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford

London: Duckworth & Co. 3 Henrietta St. Covent Garden 1909 All
rights reserved

{v}
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology; none deeper, for
however much he may change, he never loses his love of the many
questions it covers; and none wider, for under whatever law he may
live he never escapes from its spacious shade; nor does he ever find that
it speaks to him in vain or uses a voice that fails to reach him. Once the
present writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame as a
statesman and a man of letters, and he said, 'Every day I live, Politics,
which are affairs of Man and Time, interest me less, while Theology,
which is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me more.' As with him,
so with many, though the many feel that their interest is in theology and
not in dogma. Dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions framed
by a council or parliament, which they do not respect any the more

because the parliament was composed of ecclesiastically-minded
persons; while the theology which so interests them is a discourse
touching God, though the Being so named is the God man conceived as
not only related to himself and his world but also as rising ever higher
with the notions of the self and the world. Wise books, not in dogma
but in theology, may therefore be described as the supreme {vi} need
of our day, for only such can save us from much fanaticism and secure
us in the full possession of a sober and sane reason.
Theology is less a single science than an encyclopaedia of sciences;
indeed all the sciences which have to do with man have a better right to
be called theological than anthropological, though the man it studies is
not simply an individual but a race. Its way of viewing man is indeed
characteristic; from this have come some of its brighter ideals and some
of its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical or social, and
would make of earth a heaven, creating fraternity amongst men and
forming all states into a goodly sisterhood; the dreams may be
represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the will
of God on the other. But even this will cannot make sin luminous, for
were it made radiant with grace, it would cease to be sin.
These books then,--which have all to be written by men who have lived
in the full blaze of modern light,--though without having either their
eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility,--are intended
to present God in relation to Man and Man in relation to God. It is
intended that they begin, not in date of publication, but in order of
thought, with a Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the circle
of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, though all will be
viewed as related to its central or main idea. This relation of God to
human knowledge will then be looked at through mind as a communion
of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship {vii} with concrete man.
On this basis the idea of Revelation will be dealt with. Then, so far as
history and philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which are
here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, who is also a
divine, views them; in other words, the Old and New Testaments,
regarded as human documents, will be criticised as a literature which
expresses relations to both the present and the future; that is, to the men

and races who made the books, as well as to the races and men the
books made. The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family which
gave it being,