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      Rationalism in Theology

       Table of Contents

      MODERN RATIONALISM.

       Table of Contents

      Chapter I.

       RATIONALISM IN THEOLOGY.

       "The surrender to infidelity by the so-called Christian minister is the most alarming feature of the hour" are words which an eminent American preacher of the Evangelical school addressed to his congregation a few years ago. The words are true, with an apology for the crudity of the expression, not only of America, but of England, Germany, Holland, France, and Switzerland. Though it is scarcely correct to speak of this Rationalistic tendency as merely a feature of the present hour: it is one of the most interesting features of the century as a whole, and has, in our days, come to be accepted as a permanent phenomenon. There were, it is true, occasional indications of the same spirit in the preceding century. Dr. Berkeley constructed a philosophical system, which, if fully evolved, would have grave theological consequences; and Dr. Clarke even called himself humorously "a freethinking anti-Freethinker." Still, there was no evidence of a systematic effort to elevate reason or conscience to the dignity of arbiter of all truth, including revealed, and to deliberately modify or reject under its influence some of the most essential points of Christian doctrine. But at the very commencement of the nineteenth century that spirit reveals its operation. A powerful school is formed within the Church under its inspiration which makes such rapid progress that, in 1833, the thoughtful and anxious Newman, in the van of the opposing Tractarian movement, declared that "the nation was on its way to give up revealed truth." Since that date ​it has steadily grown, and has come at length to be accepted as a legitimate school within the Church; and legal enactments have been especially framed to accommodate it.

      Thus, side by side with the growth of Unitarianism and the rise and progress of Agnosticism, the Rationalistic spirit has penetrated into ecclesiastical circles and caused an interesting internal struggle. The history of the Broad Church, as the rationalizing section has been called since Mr. Conybeare's article, is an important chapter in the history of Rationalism, and its significance, in conjecturing the ultimate issue of the conflict of reason and authority, is very profound. For the present it has had the effect of preserving the numerical strength of the Established Church; it has been found a most effective safety-valve under hostile pressure. Since that effect has only been attained by an important sacrifice and the admission of the very spirit which has raised up inimical bodies, it is probable that there will be further interesting developments. Private judgment in the seventeenth century became, by a logical evolution, Deism in the eighteenth century and Agnosticism in the nineteenth. What is likely to be the evolution of Christian Rationalism?

      The influences which have engendered and nourished that rationalizing and concessive tendency are numerous and complex, and, on the whole, peculiar outcomes of the present marvellous century. Two different schools of philosophy, one of German origin and the other a development of the sensism of Locke and Hume, have had a large share in producing it. The astonishing progress of physical science, and its exposure of many quasi-religious traditions, has had a great influence. The vivid light which has been thrown upon non-Christian and pre-Christian religions, the saner reconstruction of the history of Christianity itself, the elaboration of an ethical system on an exclusively humanitarian basis, and especially the flood of light which has been thrown on Christian sacred literature, are other important factors in the development. All these have been operative in the growth of all kinds of Rationalism; but the influence which may be peculiarly associated with the growth of Rationalism in theology is the candid application of reason, both moral and speculative, to the doctrines of ​traditional Christianity in themselves. The history of this influence is the history of the Broad Church of the Anglican Establishment which we trace in this chapter.

      In the eighteenth century English Rationalism had been allied with France. At the great Revolution that alliance ceased, and much hostility was shown to the Deistic tenets which were considered to have brought on the political trouble in France. The noble and strenuous figure of Paine lingers on the threshold of the nineteenth century, amid a storm of calumny and persecution, as the last representative of the old school. After his imprisonment by the Republic for interference on behalf of the unfortunate king, he returned to England and met with a fierce hostility on publishing his "Age of Reason;" in fact, as late as 1819, Richard Carlile was sentenced to three years imprisonment and £1,500 fine for publishing it. Paine returned to America in 1802, and the old form of Rationalism only survived, as a system and with modifications, in Unitarianism.

      English scholars then began to seek in Germany that original thought of which England seemed barren and Germany was then especially prolific. Among them was one who was destined to be the founder of the Broad Church, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Ever since that profound thinker assumed a fixed position," says Hurst, "a re-action against orthodoxy has been progressing in the Established Church;" and J. Mill calls him one of our chief "seminal" thinkers. Coleridge was already imbued with a culture which effectively predisposed to liberal speculation. At Christ's Hospital and at Cambridge he had been an ardent Hellenist, and had familiarized himself with Plato, and afterwards with the Alexandrian philosophy and theology—the idealistic school of the early Church. He went to Germany in 1798, and attached himself to the philosophy of Kant. For a time he was converted to Hegel; but, dreading the Pantheistic element of Hegel's teaching, he returned to Kant. With the speculations of the Alexandrian Greeks and the principles of the "religion within the limits of reason" acting on his own poetical temperament, his theological opinions soon began to undergo a transformation.

      When he returned to England he began at once to ​introduce German literature to his countrymen; he and De Quincey were the first English interpreters of German thought. The prevailing heresy at home at that period was Benthamism, and to this Coleridge opposed the idealized and somewhat mystic form of Christianity which he had now conceived. The High Church form of Anglicanism

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