Problems of religion; an introductory survey

Preface

This book, like its predecessor, Problems of Conduct, represents a course of lectures given for several years to undergraduates of Wesleyan University. It is hoped that these lectures in printed form will be useful, not only for other college classes, but for the general reading public that is interested in the great and vital problems of religion. Their aim is to give a rapid survey of the field, such that the man who is confused by the chaos of opinions on these matters, and himself but little able to judge between conflicting statements, may here get his bearings and see his way to stable belief and energetic action. In so limited a space it will not be possible to attempt an adequate presentation of the arguments for each view advanced or a rebuttal of the infinitely numerous and shifting arguments by which the various current doctrines seek to justify themselves. All that can be done is to offer the results of the best scholarly work in the wide field covered, and thereby to present a general perspective of those truths, some old and some but recently acquired, which bear practically on our religion.

The carefully chosen lists of readings appended to each chapter, together with the more specific references in the footnotes, will serve — for those who are interested enough to pursue any topic further — as a check upon the author's conclusions and an initiation into the further aspects of the several problems. Practically all of this selected literature is in English, and is readable, as well as worth reading. The hopelessly antiquated literature is not cited, except occasionally, where it seems necessary for the sake of fairvi PREFACE

ness in presenting both sides of a long controverted matter. The literature that indulges in rhetoric rather than in solid argument is also omitted, and all that range of books once useful but now stranded by the onrushing tides of criticism. Such names as Edwards, Emmons, Hodge, on the one hand, and Strauss, Renan, Ingersoll, on the other, are absent; but whatever of their thought survives in contemporary discussion will be found represented in the more recent works referred to. The ideal of justice to all legitimate opinions has been kept in mind, but has not precluded the attempt to present as clearly as possible whatever conclusions seem to the author warranted by our present-day knowledge.

There are two fires between which the critical writer on religion stands. On the one side, his historical investigations and scientific attitude inevitably seem cold and unfriendly to him whose personal belief is, necessarily, treated as one of many forms of possible religious belief, springing originally, as all have, out of superstition and error, and developed largely through the forces of prejudice and emotion. From the other side come the murmurs of those who, standing outside of these beliefs, and feeling no pull of longing or loyalty toward them, feel an impatience at so much concern with what appears to them a mere conglomerate of preposterous and visionary ideas. In the introductory chapter that follows, I have essayed to defend what, fortunately, for most readers will now in these more tolerant times need no defense, an attitude toward religion that is both warm, sympathetic, reverent — and critical, open-eyed, resolute to follow the truth wherever it lead.

Parts of this book, in manuscript, have been read by Dr. Percy W. Long, of Harvard University, Professor Clayton R. Bowen, of the Meadville Theological School, President Albert Parker Fitch, of Andover Theological Seminary,

PREFACE vii

Professor J. W. Hewitt, of Wesleyan University, Professor C. B. Hedrick and W. P. Ladd, of the Berkeley Divinity School, and Professor D. C. Macintosh, of the Yale School of Religion. In an earlier form it was read, with sympathetic and illuminating comment, by that leader and inspirer of us all, William James. To all of these I render grateful acknowledgment; and to two others whose written and spoken words have been of the utmost service to me — Professor George Santayana, formerly of Harvard University, and Professor Dickinson S. Miller, of the General Theological School, New York. To none of these, however, must any responsibility be attributed for the opinions which I here espouse.

My thanks are due to the editors of the American Journal of Theology, the Biblical World, the Monist, and the International Journal of Ethics for permission to reprint various sentences and portions of chapters which have appeared as a part of earlier essays in these periodicals.

Durant Drake.

Contents

The importance of the study of religion.

The need of a critical attitude toward religion. |

Part I. Historical

CHAPTER I. The Origins of Religion .... 9 The sources of primitive religious ideas and practices: — I. The precarious situation of primitive man. II. The spontaneous attribution of life and will to inanimate objects.

III. Dreams and th e myste ry of death.

IV. Abnormal and mysterious experiences.

V. Reflection upon the origin of things.

VI. Man's need of deliverance from himself.

CHAPTER II. Greek and Roman Religion ... 20 In what striking ways did religion develop in Greece? What is the permanent significance of the classic Greek religion? What were the main currents in Roman religion?

CHAPTER III. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism ... 36 What was the soil from which Buddhism grew? What was the nature of Buddha's mission? .

What were the striking aspects of his teaching? What was the subsequent history of Buddhism? What was the essence of Zoroastrianism?

CHAPTER IV. The Hebrew Religion 49

How did the Hebrew monotheism arise?

What are the striking features of the religion of the prophets and

psalmists?

How did the Messianic hope arise?

CHAPTER V. Jesus the Christ 63

What are the sources of our knowledge of the life of Christ? What were the salient events of his life?

x CONTENTS

What were the striking features of his personality? What were the striking features of his teaching?

CHAPTER VI. Paul and the Founding of the Church 82 How did the Christian Church originate?

What are the salient facts of Paul's life and personality? j

What was the gist of Paul's teaching? P

CHAPTER VII. Early Christianity 96

What were the causes of the triumph of Christianity? Under what influences did the Church evolve her creeds? What was the origin of the conceptions of I. The Atonement?

II. The Trinity?

III. Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory?

CHAPTER VIII. Later Christianity; Mohammedanism 113 By what process did the Roman Church become dominant? What was the significance of the Reformation? What have been the subsequent tendencies of Christianity? What are the essential features of Mohammedanism?

SUMMARY OF PART I 128

What has been the trend of religious evolution?

Part II. Psychological

CHAPTER IX. The God of Experience .... 135

How does God appear in human experience?

I. God in nature.

II. God in our hearts — the Holy Spirit.

III. God in Christ.

What is the nature of God as thus revealed?

CHAPTER X. Sacrifice and Sin 151

W T hat is the history of the concepts of sacrifice and sin? What are their dangers?

What is their permanent value?

The doctrine of Original Sin.

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XI. Salvation, Conversion, and Atonement 166

What is the meaning of salvation?

What is the meaning and value of conversion?

The doctrine of the Atonement.

CHAPTER XII. Faith and Prayer 180

What is the nature and value of faith?

What has been the evolution of prayer?

What is the function and value of prayer?

CHAPTER XIII. Religious Love and Peace . . .197

The spirit of love and service in religion.

Religious peace.

Mysticism and Christian Science.

CHAPTER XIV. The Essence of Religion . . .213

How shall we determine the essence of religion? What is the relation of religion to theology? What is the relation of religion to morality? What is the essential nature of religion?

CHAPTER XV. The Christian Religion .... 229 Is Christianity the true religion?

The Gospel of Christ.

The Gospel about Christ.

The Christian life and Christian creeds.

Who is the true Christian?

SUMMARY OF PART II 243

What function does religion have in the life of man?

Part III. Philosophical

CHAPTER XVI. Theological Method and the Scientific Spirit 249

The three methods of theology : — I. Authority.

II. A priori reasoning.

III. The scientific method.

The opposition of the Church to the scientific spirit.

xii CONTEXTS

CHAPTER XVII. The Interpretation of the Bible 264 How did the conception develop of the inerrancy of the Bible? What facts have altered our conception of the Bible? Is the Bible inspired, the Word of God, authoritative? Wherein consists the greatness of the Bible 3

CHAPTER XVIIL Miracles 280

What considerations have weakened the belief in mirpcles? Of what value is the belief in miracles?

What should be our attitude toward miracles?

CHAPTER XIX. Creation and Design .... 295 Can we draw theological inferences from I. The sheer existence of the universe?

II. The existence of certain classes of facts? III. Marks of design or purpose?

CHAPTER XX. The Interpretation of Religious Experience 312

What cautions should be observed in interpreting religious experience?

I. The voice of conscience.

II. Conversion.

III. Faith-healing.

IV. Mysticism and intuition.

CHAPTER XXI. Pragmatic Arguments .... 332 Can we trust a belief :

I. Because its untruth would be intolerable? II. Because our hearts vouch for it?

III. Because it "works"?

CHAPTER XXII. The Counter-Attack upon Science 351

Is reason untrustworthy because the product of blind forces? Is science based upon unproved and self-contradictory postulates? Is science based upon purely subjective data? Is science restricted in its scope?

CHAPTER XXIIL The Problem of Evil .... 366

Can evil be conceived as a partial view of the good? Is evil necessary for character-building? Is evil necessary at a stage in the evolution of humanity? Is evil the result of man's perverse use of his free will? Is evil to be attributed to God at all?

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER XXIV. Immortality 383

The evolution of the belief in a future life. What considerations make against the belief? What are the leading arguments for the belief?

CHAPTER XXV. The Venture of Faith .... 397 Which is the higher ideal, loyal belief or impartial investigation? Should we accept or reject beliefs of whose evidence we are uncertain?

May non-evidential motives properly influence belief?

SUMMARY OF PART III ........ 412

What is the present status of theology?

INDEX 417

PEOBLEMS OF RELIGION

The importance of the study of religion

(1) Practically, if not absolutely, all known races of men have been in some sense or degree religious; and to many of them religion has been the most vital of all matters. Hence, the study of this great tract of human interest is essential for all who would comprehend what the life of man historically has been. And Christianity, the faith, confessed or potential, of the great majority of the probable readers of this book, deserves particular attention — just as school geographies properly lay special stress upon the topography of the State in which they are to be used, or historical curricula upon the history and traditions of the fatherland. But, indeed, objectively considered, if we may judge by its results achieved and its evident vitality and promise, Christianity is the greatest of all religions, and bids fair to be more and more the dominant religion of the world. The purely scientific interest in religious phenomena, and particularly in Christian experience, should, then, be at least as great as that in any other field open to our research.

(2) But more than this. Religion is a very precious possession, and a study of it should attract those who feel the lack in their own lives of its comfort and inspiration. There is in most men a great reservoir of potentiality of the religious life; not wholly suffocated by material interests, not quite choked by the increase of knowledge and the crumbling of antique doctrines, it awaits the spreading of a comprehension of the possibilities of religious living apart from discredited dogmas, to flood society with renewed enthusiasm and power. A study of religion is practically of supreme importance when it can tap this latent spirituality and lead to an espousal of the religious life.

(S) Again, it is important for those who are disturbed in their faith, who are .groping for light, or clinging desperately to doctrines they cannot whole-heartedly believe because they cannot see how to get along without them; for those who have lost their childhood's creed and turned their backs to religion because that creed represented the only religion they knew. Something to clarify the clouded minds of such men and women, ^religious in their hearts but confused in their outlook and paralyzed in their worship, — some way of harmonizing the conflicting ideals that beset them, — should come from a careful study of facts as they are.

(4) Even those who are happy in a dogmatic slumber, but through their dogmatism are retarding the influence of religion in the world, and making it harder for others to find peace and religious fellowship, may be urged for the general good to question their presuppositions and look at religion with greater detachment from prejudice and desire. Only by willingness to criticize our own beliefs and confess our individual bias can we hope to approach to anything like a mutual understanding and working agreement.

(5) Finally, a realization of the dynamic in religion should be a summons to those who are not helping in the work Christianity has to do in the world; should reenlist the interest of the earnest, intelligent, able men and women who have in such numbers abandoned the churches. Their help is needed, badly needed, to free the Church from those outgrown conceptions that once aided, but now hamper her; to win for her again the full respect of the thinking world; and to keep her through these bewildering changes infused with such earnest idealism that she may be the power for righteousness of which the world, with its permanent temptation to selfishness and lust and greed, stands now, as always, in need.

The need of a critical attitude toward religion

Truth is not the only good in life; nor is criticism, however valid, necessarily desirable. The religious spirit, in whatever fantastic garb it be clothed, and however irrational the doctrines by which it seek to justify itself, is more beautiful and valuable than any accuracy of knowledge; and it were better to leave those doctrines uncriticized — if that were possible — than to weaken or maim that spirit. But there are definite and important reasons why a scientific attitude toward religious dogmas has become our imperative duty.

(1) The insistence upon irrational views interferes badly with the spread of accurate knowledge; and, more than that, the spirit of dogmatism, the reluctance to criticize and reconsider beliefs in the light of observation and experiment, stifles that free and impartial study of evidence which has been the greatest contribution of the physical sciences to civilization. As will be shown in chapter xvi, historic religion — and notably Christianity — has been a very disastrous barrier to intellectual progress. For this reason, then, we must be willing to scrutinize critically our deepest beliefs, because we want the truth; and we cannot be sure that we have the truth, that we are not, instead, standing in the way of enlightenment, unless we seriously undertake so to do.

(2) But for the sake of our eventual assurance and peace, we must purge our religion of its superstition and error. For however we may cover our eyes and our ears, the truths that are being taught by archseologists and anthropologists, by historians and naturalists, are likely sooner or later to trickle into our consciousness and torture us with misgivings. And when a man whose religion has been based upon unwarranted postulates or intertwined with illusory assurances finds that he has been in so far deceived, he is apt to lose his faith entirely and drift into skepticism and despair. It does not pay, in the long run, to found our hopes upon what the best thought of the age disproves or renders doubtful.

(3) And finally, for the sake of the religion itself that we love, and its future in the world, we must submit it to the surgical operations of criticism. Nine tenths of the attacks upon Christianity are directed against the unessential and untrue accretions that are really separable from its inner kernel of living truth. Thus, our faith has become to some a derision and a laughing-stock, and by others has been cast impatiently aside, simply because the churches have stood in the way of that surgical work which alone can save it — and must save it before it is too late. Pious ignorance hurts the cause of religion almost as much as worldliness and sin; no cause can be safely guarded by an organization or a spirit of dogmatism that ignores facts and turns its back upon probabilities. And it is precisely because the battle with worldliness and sin is so desperately hard and long that religion must rid itself of its impediments, must strip for the struggle. It is entirely needless that so many of our finest should be alienated from the Church; but unless we accept the situation, excise the vulnerable portions of our creeds, and adjust our doctrines to the demands of the contemporary intellect, these men and women are bound to drift in greater and greater numbers away from the Church, and, very often, away from the precious truths of which she is the appointed teacher and custodian.

It was the vivid realization of this situation that drew Matthew Arnold into writing critically of religion; and his essays, though superseded in many matters by the work and thought of later scholars, are a notable example of reverent attempt to prune the luxuriant growths of religion, and by pruning to save it. There were those who expostulated with him, saying, as he tells us, "Why meddle with religion at all? Why run the risk of breaking a tie which it is so hard to join again?" And he replies: "The risk is not to be run lightly, and one is not always to attack people's illusions about religion merely because illusions they are. But at the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is." l

Matthew Arnold was regarded in his day as a dangerous heretic; but to-day there are very many in the churches who realize as keenly the need in which our religion stands of revision and restatement. Dean Farrar, for example, writes : "He who helps to disencumber Christianity from dubious or false accretions is rendering to it a service which may be more urgently necessary than if he composed a book of evidences." It is only imposture that has need to fear the light; and the Church ought not merely to admit the truth reluctantly, step by step, but to take the lead in seeking the truth, whatever time-honored arguments or even precious assurances it may have to discard.

It is not pride of knowledge, then, or a scientific dogmatism, that demands a revision of our religious ideas, but a realization that there is much error in our traditional conceptions, and that the truth alone ultimately serves. The results of such a revisory work will by many be stigmatized as iconoclastic, as irreligious, as mischievous. The world's progress has always been accompanied by such cries. But

1 Preface to God and the Bible. This preface, and that to Literature and Dogma, admirably state the point here insisted upon.

the world does progress, and if we are to keep our religion abreast of it we must air our beliefs in all currents of modern thought, we must question them freely, we must express the results of our reflection fearlessly and openly. To be afraid to think or to speak out our thoughts would be to stifle religion and bring about inevitable decay. And then, what seems daring and subversive to-day will be taken for granted to-morrow; as Arnold says, "The freethinking of one age is the commonplace of the next."

But, after all, it does not rest with us to decide whether religion shall be criticized or no. Destructive criticism has long been abroad, criticism that fails to do justice to the truths it discards, that throws away the kernel with the husk. This anti-religious propaganda is having its ill effects upon the religious spirit of the age. To save religion itself — or so much of it as is true and worthy our allegiance — demands our efforts. And to accomplish a just and adequate reconstruction we need first to go through the purgatorial fires of criticism. Religion must be solidly based on fact; unless it is willing to look science and history in the face and adjust itself to their results, it cannot long continue to live.

Yet let us throughout remember that to live the religious life is more important than to understand the truth about religion; and while willing ourselves to sacrifice whatever may be required to the attainment of that truth, let us, wherever we have to do with what has inspired and comforted men, walk reverently and with unshod feet; for the ground whereon we tread is holy ground.

Chapter I

Religion, as we view it historically, is a complex composite, woven of many strands that stretch back into the remote past. Our task in this chapter is to trace some of the more important of these sources, and give a rapid pen-pic-' ture of the mental attitudes of primitive man that combined to make him religious.

The sources of primitive religious ideas and practices

I. The precarious situation of 'primitive man. When man, scarcely yet more than a brute, begins to think about his needs and to strive consciously for those ends toward which blind instinct has hitherto driven him, he finds himself in a precarious and uncertain situation. He rears a rude shelter — the storm batters it, the winds shake it, the lightning threatens to destroy it; he plants a few seeds to insure himself food — the sun scorches them and the drought spoils the fruit of his labors; the tempest buffets him, the thunder terrifies him — he realizes his helplessness before these powers that are so much greater than he, and on whose kindly aid he is dependent for his prosperity, nay, his very existence.

Lucretius observes that men "much more keenly in evil days turn their minds to religion." 1 And, indeed, that robust old atheist elsewhere confesses, "Who is there whose mind does not shrink into itself with fear of the gods, whose limbs do not creep with terror when the parched earth rocks under the terrible blast of the thunderbolt, and the roaring sound 1 De Rerum Natura, in, 53.

sweeps across the heavens? ... Or when the full fury of the wild wind scours the sea and drives across its expanse the commander with his brave legions and his elephants, does he not in prayer seek peace with the gods?" 1 Thus it was commonly repeated in antiquity that fear made the gods; fear, and, we may add, hope; that despair of man at his own frail faculties that cries out to some one, to any one, for help. When it is fear of his fellow man, or of the brutes, he is not without means of self -protection; but when his apprehension is of those physical forces by which he is surrounded, which so often menace his welfare and his life, he knows not how to save himself. Ignorant for the most part as yet how to meet these dangers by physical means, and under the need of doing something to ward off the evil, he cries out, he gesticulates, he commands, he beseeches these Powers not to harm him. 2

All this is prior to any definite formulation of the idea of a god or spirit; it is mere spontaneous psychological reaction. Magic, — the attempt to coerce the surrounding Powers by incantations and mysterious rites, — prayers, sacrifices for appeasement, vows — all such activities antedated articulate belief; it was in his quieter and more reflective moments, no doubt, and as an explanation and justification of these instinctive acts, that primitive man attained to a definite and steady belief in quasi-human Beings behind the blessings and catastrophes that befell him. Indeed, among many savage races but lately studied, there has been no real personalizing

1 De Rerum Natura, v, 1210.

2 Animals also may whine and tremble in the presence of danger. But man alone, with his dawning self-consciousness, remembers the danger, reflects upon it, realizes the precariousness of his situation and his dependence upon the Powers about him. It is man's faculty of imagination, constructive thought, and auto-suggestion, his ability to react to unperceived and merely imagined objects, that develops out of these otherwise transitory and vague moods a permanent, if nickering, conception of superhuman Powers besetting him.

of nature-forces. We have in the Algonkin "manitou" and the Melanesian "mana" a mysterious potency, a vital power, recognized in things, to be reckoned with and dealt with cautiously, but not clearly personal. Of the aborigines of Australia we are told by various observers that they offer no sacrifices or prayers to any personal Beings. But "even though they appeal to no spirits in their ceremonies, these ceremonies do express valuational attitudes of a definitely religious character." l That cultural stage characterized by vague fears of the supernatural, when man was as yet hardly conscious of the fact of personality in himself, and so hardly postulating personality of natural forces, has been termed by recent writers the pre-animis tic stage. 2

II. The spontaneous attribution of life and will to inanimate objects. As man's mental life became more acute, there was an inevitable tendency toward the genuine personification of the powers of nature. William James tells us 3 how irresistibly he was dominated by the impulse to think of the great San Francisco earthquake — which he felt at Palo Alto — as a living being. It was The Earthquake; it stole into his room, it shook him as a terrier shakes a rat; it exulted in its power. He reports, further, that practically every one experienced a similar psychological reaction, even those who, like him, were most accustomed to scientific concepts and abstract analysis. It is, thus, only our sophistication and intellectual maturity that prevent us from feeling all natural forces, or at least the violent and dangerous ones, as endowed with personality. So an English writer, describing his own experience as a boy: "Sitting on the hillside when the hot season was coming near its end he saw the

1 King, p. 171, footnote. Throughout this book, works named in the bibliography at the close of a chapter will be referred to in the footnotes of that chapter by the author's name only.

2 See Marett, chaps, i, rv.

3 "The Earthquake," in Memories and Studies.

thunderstorms come across the hills. From far away they came, black shadows in the distance, and the thunder like far-off surf upon the shore. Nearer they would grow and nearer, passing from ridge to ridge, their long white skirts trailing upon the mountain-sides, until they came right overhead and the lightning flashed blindingly, while the thunder roared in great trumpet tones that shuddered through the gorges. The man watched them and he saw how gods were born. It was Thor come back again — Thor with his hammer, Thor with his giant voice. Thus were born the gods. Thor and Odin, Balder, God of the Summer Sun, Apollo and Vulcan, Ahriman and Ormuz, night and day." 1

We must remember that all those physical events, the intricate causes of which our modern science explores, are to the savage pure mystery, inexplicable and arbitrary. Having no idea of natural causation, as we now understand it, he instinctively regards all the moving objects about him after the nearest analogy he has, his own life. When they harm him he ascribes to them the feelings he has when he injures another; when they favor him he imagines them kindly disposed; by a naive and natural fallacy he reads into them his own emotions and thinks of their activity, now beneficent, now baneful, as caused by intermittently friendly and malicious impulses such as he finds in his own heart. The burning, warming sun, the portentous and muttering thunderhead, the broad, majestic river that brings fertility or flood

1 H. Fielding Hall, The Hearts of Men, p. 72. Cf. Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 25: "The process of making winds and rivers into anthropomorphic gods is, for the most part, not the result of using the imagination with special vigour. It is the result of not doing so. The wind is obviously alive; any fool can see that. Being alive, it blows; how? why, naturally; just as you and I blow. It knocks things down, it shouts and dances. It whispers and talks. And, unless we are going to make a great effort of the imagination and try to realize, like a scientific man, just what really happens, we naturally assume that it does these things in the normal way, in the only way we know."

to his soil, the treacherous, rushing winds — these are all living beings to him, beings greater and more powerful than he; they are his gods. 1

277. Dreams and the mystery of death. Another source of the belief in spirits is the inability of primitive men to realize the fact of death. Having no comprehension of the actual relations of mind and body, or of the hopeless finality, for our mundane experience, of death, they are slow to grasp the fact that he who was greatly honored or feared but the other day is now utterly non-existent and without power for their weal or woe. Do not men lie as still when heavy with sleep, or in a drunken stupor, when stunned or fainting or in an epileptic trance? Yet these still live, for they return to action. Moreover, in one's own dreams has one not left one's body lying still and traveled afar, unseen and unheard by others? Perhaps, then, while this hero's body is lying as if in sleep, the real person that feels and acts, inside of the body, has but left it lying here and is still about, continuing a sort of dream life, wherefrom he may perchance still help or harm the living. If his personality was powerful and made a deep impression upon men, they will still see him and talk with him in dreams; the nervous and emotional will fancy they see him as ghost or apparition while awake; these rumors, quickly magnified as they spread, will leave no doubt in the minds of those who feared or revered him. Ought he not, then, to be propitiated, to be besought for help? If an untoward misfortune befalls the tribe, perhaps he is angry at being so soon forgotten; if good fortune comes, perhaps it was his unseen assistance. The tribe unites in offering him sacrifices, he becomes a tribal god.