Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/204

Rh 190 APOLOGETICS Under this head comes every discussion concerning the capacities in man for the knowledge of God, and concerning the actual amount of knowledge which man has had of God apart from revelation. The apologist endeavours to show from psychology, metaphysics, and other sources of knowledge capable of aiding him in his research, that man is a religious as well as an intelligent being, that theology on its formal side has a real basis in the human mind, and that whenever the objects of theological science are presented to the mind, they may be assimilated by these faculties. Many delicate questions arise here the whole question of anthropomorphism, for example. It is argued that because our knowledge of God and of divine things must pass through and be assimilated by human faculties, it must necessarily be as much human as divine, and in this way the divine is more or less transformed into the human, and becomes anthropomorphic. The doctrine of the personality of God is often instanced as a notable example of anthropomorphism in theology. Apologetics vindicates theology from this charge by ascertaining from psychology whether the human factor tends to vitiate all human knowledge, and what is the precise influence of the formal element, or that element which the mind supplies, upon the material of human knowledge ; and in this way tries to show that theology, while it is knowledge which passes through the mind of man, is not necessarily anthro pomorphic. But man has not merely capacity to know God and divine things, he actually does know something about these things ; they have actually become objects or material of human knowledge. This brings us within the range of natural theology, which is just the sum of the knowledge which man, apart from revelation, has about God. Natural theology may be studied and its results presented in two different ways. Paley, Butler, and Chalmers, for example, have endeavoured, from an analysis of the human mind and character, to describe the kind and amount of knowledge which man has of the being and attributes of God, of the moral government of the world, of the immortality of the soul, and of the future state of reward and punishment. This method of inquiry is open to the objection, that it is very difficult to separate between what man has acquired by revelation and what he possesses without revelation, if the mind analysed be one already impregnated by Christi anity. Hence it is well to supplement and correct the knowledge obtained in this way by an historical survey of what man has actually known and taught concerning God and divine things in the great natural religions which have existed, and still exist. Natural theology, in this sense of the word, is the result of a comparative history of religions, and contains a methodical summary of all the various religious ideas which have been evolved in the religious experience of mankind. The historical method is useful to correct the analytic, and the analytic gives order and method to the historical. This historical method is as yet in its infancy, but few historical sciences are engaging more attention than the new science of religions, and its growth cannot fail to have a considerable effect upon the future course of Apologetics. It looks upon all religions as more or less related to each other, and seeks to find the real course of the development of religious ideas, and natural theology becomes in this way the orderly statement of the various religious truths which each natural reli gion has contributed to the sum of the religious knowledge of the race ; and every great religion is conceived to leave behind it a residuum which is its contribution to natural theology. But while Christian Apologetics thankfully acknowledges the contributions made by natural theology to our knowledge of God and His relations to us, it is always much more disposed to regard them as of indirect than of direct value. They are of more use in show ing that man has capacities whereby he may arrive at a knowledge of theology, that he has aspirations which can only be satisfied by theology, than in furnishing actual and reliable information about God and His relations to us. They serve to prove that man is able to learn truths about God if the true materials of information were pre sented to him; or, in other words, in Apologetics natural theology has & formal rather than a material value. 2. Does man know God 1 Is the Christian theology true ? Christianity is founded on certain presuppositions, can these be vindicated ] The most important of these is the presupposition of the possibility and actual existence of a divine revelation, or a superhuman source of knowledge of God and His relations to us, and the most important task of Apologetics is to vindicate the possibility and exist ence of the Christian revelation. It is because it possesses this revelation that Christianity claims for itself a position altogether different from other religions, and hence the possibility and fact of a revelation have always been attacked by antichristian speculation. The precise point of attack has varied continually, but in the present day the chief objection to a revelation, in the Christian sense of the word, is based upon the fact, that an historical study of religions shows that every religion has professed to be founded upon a divine revelation, and claims for itself the same supernatural sanction which the Christian theologian declares to be the exclusive possession of Christianity. To this the apologist answers, that the fact that numberless false claims have been made is not a sufficient ground for summarily rejecting the claim of Christianity, which has to be judged upon its own merits ; he then proceeds to point out, that just as Christianity professes to be different. in kind, and not in degree only, from other religions, so the Christian revelation is one generically distinct, even in the external form which it assumes, from all other supposed revelations. While most pretended revelations claim to be the promulgation of divine truths, the Christian revelation is the manifestation of a divine life in the world, the intrusion into human history of a divine force, which, flowing on from generation to generation, at last condenses itself in the presence and person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect revelation of God. It is sufficient to disprove the claims of any pretended revelation, to show that the truths it teaches might have been reached without any special and supernatural communication ; but before the Christian revelation can be discredited, it must be shown that the divine life in the world, which reached its most perfect development in Jesus Christ, is not specifically different from the life of man, that Jesus Christ was a mere man, not different in kind from other men. The great difference, then, between the Christian and other so- called revelations is, that it ends and is summed up in the person and work of Christ, and so is a consistent whole ; while they do not end in a life like that of Christ, and lacking this to bind them together into a unity, are merely a more or less disjointed series of statements not even the record of supernatural manifestation, still less that manifestation itself. The first thing, therefore, that Apologetics has to do, in this its second and most important division, is to describe the character and meaning of revelation, discuss the pos sibility of the thing from all sides, logical, metaphysical, and moral, show that it can be known by man, and prove its necessity for the religious life of mankind. The apologist must describe carefully the character and course of this divine life which has entered into history for the purpose of redemption, explaining it both on its objective side of manifestation and on its subjective side of inspiration. He has to show how it appears in