Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation,: 10th Edition, 1890
Religion
Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation,: 10th Edition, 1890
Christianity; Incarnation
(1) Of these the first is a suggested division of territory, in which
religion is allotted to faith, and philosophy and science to reason.
Such an expedient, though not uncommonly, and perhaps even wisely,
adopted by individuals, who refuse to give up either of two truths
because they cannot harmonize them, becomes ridiculous when seriously
proposed as a solution of the difficulty. Moreover the proposed
division of territory is unfair to start with. 'Give us the Knowable,
and you shall have the rest, which is far the larger half,' sounds
like a liberal offer made by science to religion, till we remember
that every advance in knowledge transfers something from the side of
the unknown to the side of the known, in violation of the original
agreement. Mr. Herbert Spencer calls this division of territory a
'reconciliation[61].' But if anything in the world could make religion
hate and fear science and oppose the advance of knowledge, it is to
find itself compelled to sit still and watch the slow but sure
filching away of its territory by an alien power. We say nothing here
of the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer's division ignores the truth that
knowledge of correlatives must be of the same kind[62], and that if
knowledge has to do with one and faith with the other, either faith
must be a sort of knowledge, or knowledge a sort of faith. We merely
notice the unfairness of a division which assumes rationality for
science, and leaves irrationality to religion.
Curiously enough, however, there are many devout people, who would be
horrified at the thought that they had borrowed from Agnosticism, and
who have nevertheless made a similar division of territory. They are
the people who stake all upon what reason cannot do. They have no
interest in the progress of knowledge. The present gaps in science are
their stronghold, and they naturally resist every forward step in
knowledge as long as they can, because each new discovery limits the
area in which alone, according to their imperfect view, faith can
live. Every triumph of science on this theory, as on Mr. Herbert
Spencer's, becomes a loss, not a gain, to religion. The very existence
of God is bound up with that part of His work in nature which we
cannot understand, and, as a consequence, we reach the paradox that
the more we know of His working, the less proof we have that He
exists. Modern apologetic literature abounds in this kind of argument.
It is the devout form of the worship of the unknowable. Yet it is no
wonder that people who take refuge in gaps find themselves awkwardly
placed when the gaps begin to close.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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