Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/282

Rh and of inference, are the only discoverable expression of its lawgiver's "thus far." When it violates any of these laws it has gone too far, but only then, and then simply because it has ceased to be rational. As long as it conforms to them the farther it goes the better. All this holds good not less in regard to religion than to any other object of investigation, and is an essential condition of the possibility of religious science. (4) In the study of religion, as in every other department of study, reason should admit nothing as true without sufficient evidence, while rejecting nothing sufficiently proved by evidence of any kind although it cannot be proved by evidence of another kind, or although it may be imperfectly understood or have unsolved difficulties connected with it. Theology is sometimes said to be a doctrine or science of belief or faith (a "Glaubenslehre"). Not a few, however, of those who say so regard belief or faith as essentially inclusive of reason, in the form of an immediate apprehension of primary truth or self-evident fact; in which case theology is only a Glaubenslehre in common with other sciences, and belief or faith is in no special mode or measure its foundation. But, whenever by belief or faith is meant mere belief or faith, a belief or faith independent of and unconformed to reason, the apprehension and appreciation of truth,—to affirm that theology is based on such belief or faith is to represent it as so unlike every other science that it clearly cannot be a science at all. For all belief or faith we are bound to have real evidence, and enough of it. But we have no right to reject any real evidence because there is not more or because there is not evidence of some other kind,—no right to neglect to follow any light there is because it may be dim, and much around it may be dark,—no more right to refuse to accept any well-established conclusion as to God and religion because there is great uncertainty as to the essence of religion, and because God in His absoluteness and infinity immeasurably transcends our highest thoughts, than we have to ignore or contest the conclusions of physical science because we cannot tell what matter is, and because we find that every hypothesis as to its nature brings with it many doubts and difficulties.

The foregoing conditions are perhaps the most general and fundamental of those to which reason must conform if it would originate and follow a scientific method in theology. The next question which demands an answer is, Whence are the data to be derived on which reason must operate in religious apprehension and theological investigation? What are the sources of religious truth? Reason has not the truth in itself, but in order to possess it must find it. As the eye has not physical light within itself, but merely so corresponds to it as to apprehend it, not otherwise is it with reason and intellectual light. By sources of religious truth can only be meant the media through which God manifests Himself,—the ways by which He makes himself known; and the physical world, finite minds, human history, Scripture, and the testimonium Spiritus Sancti may all be maintained to be such sources. The atheist and the agnostic will not allow that there are any sources of religious truth; the deist and the rationalist will only admit the claims of general revelation, the exclusive Biblicist only of Scripture; and the mystic will trust chiefly to special spiritual illumination; while the theologian of broader view will hold that all the ways indicated are sources, seeing that in and through them all knowledge and experience as to God and religion may be acquired, and must contend that in the study of theology none of them is to be ignored or excluded, underestimated or overestimated, but all are to be duly considered, and the information supplied by each to be taken in connexion with that supplied by the rest. The sources are distinct, but not isolated. The light from each combines and harmonizes with the light from all the others. The revelation of God in nature is presupposed by that in Scripture, and Scripture contributes to unveil the spiritual significance of nature. Without the light which the human mind supplies there can be no illumination from any other source, and yet all the light of the human mind is gained in connexion with the light from external sources. History gradually evolves the significance of nature, mind, and Scripture, yet cannot be understood if dissevered from the creation in which it is placed, from the mind of man in the principles and faculties of which it is rooted, or from Scripture as the record of the development of a plan of redemption which gives unity and meaning to the whole historical movement. However deep and full a source of religious truth the Bible may be, it is neither independent of other sources nor a substitute for them; on the contrary, while casting light on them all it likewise receives light from them all. The living apprehension of spiritual realities presupposes a discernment which the Divine Spirit alone can give; yet that Spirit, according to the testimony of Scripture, speaks not of Himself, but only in conformity with what has already been uttered by the Father and the Son. It would obviously neither be consistent with the scope nor possible within the limits of an article like the present to determine the distinctive features, natural spheres, and various relationships of the media of revelation or sources of religious truth, but a sufficiently thorough investigation having this aim may safely be pronounced to be one of the chief desiderata of theological science.

The process of theological method itself has next to be considered. Its first step is the ascertainment of the relevant facts. But these are all the facts of nature and history, all the truths of Scripture, and all the phases of religion. The various departments of theology are based on and inclusive of various orders of these facts, and each order of facts must be ascertained and dealt with in appropriate special ways. Thus the relevant data of natural theology are all the works of God in nature and providence, all the phenomena and laws of matter, mind, and history,—and these can only be thoroughly ascertained by the special sciences. The surest and most adequate knowledge of them is knowledge in the form called scientific, and therefore in this form the theologian must seek to know them. The sciences which deal with nature, mind, and history hold the same position towards natural theology which the disciplines that treat of the composition, genuineness, authenticity, text, development, &c., of the Scriptures do towards Biblical theology. They inform us, as it were, what is the true text and literal interpretation of the book of creation. Their conclusions are the premisses, or at least the data, of the scientific natural theologian. All reasonings of his which disregard these data are ipso facto condemned. A conflict between the results of these sciences and the findings of natural theology is inconceivable. It would be a conflict between the data and conclusions of natural theology, and so equivalent for natural theology to self-contradiction. Then, the data of Biblical theology are all the words contained in the Bible, viewed in their appropriate positions and historical connexions, and what these are and signify can only be ascertained by the processes of historical criticism and of hermeneutics. Biblical theology is the delineation of a section of the history of religious ideas, that section of which the traces and records remain in the Bible. But the Bible comprehends many strata of writing, deposited at different times, and collocated and connected in various ways, and the history of its composition, the age and succession of its parts, must be ascertained before we can exhibit the history of its contents, the course of the