Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/355

 in another form, and in this connection it is a matter of great importance to determine whether this content, these ideas and principles, are true or not.

It is no longer the Bible which we have here, but the words as these have been conceived of within the mind or spirit. If the spirit gives expression to them, then they have already a form got from the spirit, the form of thought. It is necessary to examine this form which is thus given to the content of these words. Here again the positive element comes in. In this connection it means, for instance, that the existence of the formal logic of syllogistic reasoning, of the relations of thought belonging to what is finite, has been presupposed.

According to the ordinary view of the nature of reasoning, it is only what is finite, only what may be grasped by the understanding, that can be conceived of and known. Reason, as ordinarily understood, is not adequate to deal with a divine element or content. Thus this content is rendered totally useless.

As soon as theology ceases to be a rehearsal of what is in the Bible, and goes beyond the words of the Bible, and concerns itself with the character of the feelings within the heart, it employs forms of thought and passes into thought. If, however, it uses these forms in a haphazard way so that it has presuppositions and preconceived ideas, then its use of them is of an accidental and arbitrary kind, and it is the examination of these forms of thought which alone makes philosophy.

When theology turns against philosophy, it is either not conscious that it uses such forms, that it thinks itself, and that its main concern is to advance in accordance with thought, or else its opposition is not seriously meant, but is simply deception; it wishes to reserve for itself the right to think as it chooses, to indulge in thinking which does not follow laws and which is here the positive element.

The recognition of the true nature of thought lessens