Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
“But it will be said that this natural solution of the problem
implies a foregone conclusion—the rejection of the Orthodox or
supernatural solution. Of course it does; and accordingly Strauss
has been accused of dogmatical or unphilosophical assumption. But
the rejection of the theological solution is not the result of
ignorant prejudice, but of enlightened investigation.
Anti-supernaturalism is the final irreversible sentence of
scientific philosophy, and the real dogmatist and hypothesis-maker
is the theologian. That the world is governed by uniform laws is
the first article in the creed of science, and to disbelieve
whatever is at variance with those uniform laws, whatever
contradicts a complete induction, is an imperative, intellectual
duty. A particular miracle is credible to him alone who already
believes in supernatural agency. Its credibility rests on an
assumption—the existence of such agency. But our most
comprehensive scientific experience has detected no such agency.
There is no miracle in nature; there is no evidence of any
miracle-working energy in nature; there is no fact in nature to
justify the expectation of miracle. Rightly has it been said by an
English _savant_ and divine, that testimony is a second-hand
assurance, a blind guide, that can avail nothing against reason;
and that to have any evidence of a Deity working miracles, we must
go out of nature and beyond reason.
“Strauss’s prepossession, therefore, is justifiable. It is the
prepossession of the rational theist, who does not believe in a
God who changes his mind and improves with practice—the prentice
maker of the world; it is the prepossession of the pantheist, in
whose theory of the perfect government of an immanent God, miracle
is an extravagance and absurdity; it is the prepossession of the
philosophical naturalist, whose experience of the operations of
nature recognizes no extra-mundane interventionalism.”
We have quoted this passage as containing the most distinct statement of
an extreme anti-supernaturalism. Admitting the death of Jesus as a fact,
it denies his resurrection as a fact, and that on doctrinal and theoretic
grounds. Declaring anti-supernaturalism to be the final irreversible
sentence of scientific philosophy, it assumes supernaturalism to be a
denial that the world is governed by uniform laws. It assumes the
resurrection of Christ to be at variance with those uniform laws. It
denies the existence of any supernatural agency in the affairs of this
world. It denies that there ever has been a miracle in nature, or any
extra-mundane intervention in the history of nature or man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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