History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant TheologyHurst, J. F. (John Fletcher)
History
History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology
Hurst, J. F. (John Fletcher)
Protestantism; Rationalism -- History
From Germany we turn to France. The latter country has been the
traditional purveyor of revolutionary material for the rest of the
Continent. No great popular movement west of the Rhine has been without
its influence upon the eastern side. The July Revolution of 1830, which
effected the overthrow of the Restoration represented by Charles X.,
set the German masses in commotion. They were henceforth restless, and
ready, whenever occasion offered, to overturn the government and
establish a national constitutional basis. The Rationalists were
insurrectionary, and, the more rapid their decline in all religious
sentiment the more decided was their opposition to constituted
authorities. Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, great in its influence upon
theology, was equally powerful over the political mind. Every new
publication which befriended infidelity was not without its support of
faction and discontent.
In connection with the revolutionary tendency, Rationalism assumed also
a more pantheistic, and subsequently a more atheistic form. The second
important work of Strauss, his _System of Doctrine_, was even more
adapted than his first to sap the foundations of faith and social
security. It was the embodiment of all the worst features of the
Hegelian philosophy. It was frank and bold in all its statements. No man
could mistake a single utterance. In it doctrines are traced to their
genetic development, and held to be the luxuriant growth of the seeds of
error. The truths of Christianity are surrounded by a halo to which it
is no more entitled than the sagas of the Northmen. The old dogma was
born of prejudice and error, hence the modern conception of it is sheer
illusion. Faith and science are irreconcilable foes, for faith is the
perversion, and science the development of human nature. Believing and
knowing, religion and philosophy, are born antagonists, and man can make
no rapid progress if he grovel in the errors of faith. The personality
of God is not that of the individual but of the universal. The pantheism
of Spinoza is the best solution of God's existence; "for," says
Strauss, "God is not the personal, but the infinite personifying of
himself."
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