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The philosophy of religion carries the inquiring mind beyond the sphere of natural causation to the recognition of the great personal First Cause and Source of all things, and shows that only in the recognition of God is a satisfactory interpretation of the universe attainable. It is the science which examines the value of religion, and investigates with careful scrutiny the grounds of theistic belief. In its method of procedure and choice of arguments, it shows considerable variation, due in large measure to the different theories of knowledge that obtain in the world of philosophers. Since Kant's criticism of the Scholastic arguments for the existence of God, there has been a strong tendency in many schools to neglect the cosmological and teleological arguments, and to see the evidence of Divine wisdom and goodness rather in the human mind than in external nature. A reaction is now setting in. Some of the leading exponents of biological science now recognize that evolution, as an adequate explanation of the variety of organic life, is necessarily teleological, and do not hesitate to declare that the universe is the manifestation of a creative, controlling mind.
Religion presents to man, with authority, the solution of man's problems which also concern philosophy. Such are the questions of the nature of God, of His relation with the visible world, of man's origin and destiny Now religion, which precedes philosophy in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into consideration the points of religious doctrine. Hence the close connection of philosophy with religion in the early stages of civilization, a fact strikingly apparent in Indian philosophy, which, not only at its beginning but throughout its development, was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books. The Greeks, at least during the most important periods of their history, were much less subject to the influences of pagan religions; in fact, they combined with extreme scrupulosity in what concerned ceremonial usage a wide liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its independent flight Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the common people believed; Plato does not banish religious ideas from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them entirely apart, his God is the Actus purus, with a meaning exclusively philosophic, the prime mover of the universal mechanism. The Stoics point out that all things obey an irresistible fatality and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus teaches cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to conclude that man can lay aside all fear of divine intervention in mundane affairs. The question takes a new aspect when the influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are brought to bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish theology (end of the first century), and, above all, neo-Platonism (third century B.C.). A yearning for religion was stirring in the world, and philosophy became enamoured of every religious doctrine Plotinus (third century after Christ), who must always remain the most perfect type of the neo-Platonic mentality, makes philosophy identical with religion, assigning as its highest aim the union of the soul with God by mystical ways. This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e.g. Jamblicus (d. about A.D. 330), who, on a foundation of neo-Platonism, erected an international pantheon for all the divinities whose names are known.
It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its monotheistic dogma and its serene, purifying morality, came in the fulness of time and appeased the inward unrest with which souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school, the religion which He founded supplies solutions for a group of problems which philosophy solves by other methods (e.g. the immortality of the soul). The first Christian philosophers, the Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of philosophy and religion. With them philosophy is incidental and secondary, employed only to meet polemic needs, and to support dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this Clement of Alexandria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued the same traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to have received neo-Platonic influences through the channel of the Fathers. John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), the most remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div. praed., I, I). But as the era advances a process of dissociation sets in, to end in the complete separation between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or the study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and Scholastic philosophy, based on purely rational investigation. To understand the successive stages of this differentiation, which was not completed until the middle of the thirteenth century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of capital importance.
(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early Middle Ages, must be sought within the domain of theology, in the sense that the philosophical discussions arose in reference to theological questions. The discussion, e.g. of transubstantiation (Berengarius of Tours), raised the problem of substance and of change, or becoming.
(2) Theology being regarded as a superior and sacred science, the whole pedagogic and didactic organization of the period tended to confirm this superiority.
(3) The enthusiasm for dialectics, which reached its maximum in the eleventh century, brought into fashion certain purely verbal methods of reasoning bordering on the sophistical. Anselm of Besata (Anselmus Peripateticus) is the type of this kind of reasoner. Now the dialecticians, in discussing theological subjects, claimed absolute validity for their methods, and they ended in such heresies as Gottschalk's on predestination, Berengarius's on transubstantiation, and Roscelin's Tritheism. Berengarius's motto was: "Per omnia ad dialecticam confugere". There followed an excessive reaction on the part of timorous theologians, practical men before all things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the dialecticians. This antagonistic movement coincided with an attempt to reform religious life. At the head of the group was Peter Damian (1007-72), the adversary of the liberal arts; he was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle Ages in general put philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim was current only among a narrow circle of reactionary theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were Manegold of Lautenbach and Othloh of St. Emmeram, in Germany.
(4) At the same time a new tendency becomes discernible in the eleventh century, in Lanfranc, William of Hirschau, Rodulfus Ardens, and particularly St. Anselm of Canterbury; the theologian calls in the aid of philosophy to demonstrate certain dogmas or to show their rational side. St. Anselm, in an Augustinian spirit, attempted this justification of dogma, without perhaps invariably applying to the demonstrative value of his arguments the requisite limitations. In the thirteenth century these efforts resulted in a new theological method, the dialectic.
(5) While these disputes as to the relations of philosophy and theology went on, many philosophical questions were nevertheless treated on their own account, as we have seen above (universals, St. Anselm's theodicy, Abelard's philosophy, etc.).
(6) The dialectic method, developed fully in the twelfth century, just when Scholastic theology received a powerful impetus, is a theological, not a philosophical, method. The principal method in theology is the interpretation of Scripture and of authority; the dialectic method is secondary and consists in first establishing a dogma and then showing its reasonableness, confirming the argument from authority by the argument from reason. It is a process of apologetics. From the twelfth century onward, these two theological methods are fairly distinguished by the words auctoritates, rationes. Scholastic theology, condensed in the "summae" and "books of sentences", is henceforward regarded as distinct from philosophy. The attitude of theologians towards philosophy is threefold: one group, the least influential, still opposes its introduction into theology, and carries on the reactionary traditions of the preceding period (e.g. Gauthier de Saint-Victor); another accepts philosophy, but takes a utilitarian view of it, regarding it merely as a prop of dogma (Peter Lombard); a third group, the most influential, since it includes the three theological schools of St. Victor, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, grants to philosophy, in addition to this apologetic role, an independent value which entitles it to be cultivated and studied for its own sake. The members of this group are at once both theologians and philosophers.
(7) At the opening of the thirteenth century one section of Augustinian theologians continued to emphasize the utilitarian and apologetic office of philosophy. But St. Thomas Aquinas created new Scholastic traditions, and wrote a chapter on scientific methodology in which the distinctness and in dependence of the two sciences is thoroughly established. Duns Scotus, again, and the Terminists exaggerated this independence. Latin Averroism, which had a brilliant but ephemeral vogue in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, accepted whole and entire in philosophy Averroistic Peripateticism, and, to safeguard Catholic orthodoxy, took refuge behind the sophism that what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and conversely -- wherein they were more reserved than Averroes and the Arab philosophers, who regarded religion as something inferior, good enough for the masses, and who did not trouble themselves about Moslem orthodoxy. Lully, going to extremes, maintained that all dogma is susceptible of demonstration, and that philosophy and theology coalesce. Taken as a whole, the Middle Ages, profoundly religious, constantly sought to reconcile its philosophy with the Catholic Faith. This bond the Renaissance philosophy severed. In the Reformation period a group of publicists, in view of the prevailing strife, formed projects of reconciliation among the numerous religious bodies. They convinced themselves that all religions possess a common fund of essential truths relating to God, and that their content is identical, in spite of divergent dogmas. Besides, Theism, being only a form of Naturism applied to religion, suited the independent ways of the Renaissance. As in building up natural law, human nature was taken into consideration, so reason was interrogated to discover religious ideas. And hence the wide acceptance of Theism, not among Protestants only, but generally among minds that had been carried away with the Renaissance movement (Erasmus, Coornheert).
For this tolerance or religious indifferentism modern philosophy in more than one instance substituted a disdain of positive religions. The English Theism or Deism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries criticizes all positive religion and, in the name of an innate religious sense, builds up a natural religion which is reducible to a collection of theses on the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The initiator of this movement was Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); J. Toland (1670-1722), Tindal (1656-1733), and Lord Bolingbroke took part in it. This criticizing movement inaugurated in England was taken up in France, where it combined with an outright hatred of Catholicism. Pierre Bayle (1646-17O6) propounded the thesis that all religion is anti-rational and absurd, and that a state composed of Atheists is possible. Voltaire wished to substitute for Catholicism an incoherent mass of doctrines about God. The religious philosophy of the eighteenth century in France led to Atheism and paved the way for the Revolution. In justice to contemporary philosophy it must be credited with teaching the amplest tolerance towards the various religions; and in its programme of research it has included religious psychology, or the study of the religious sentiment.
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(John Scott Eriugena, 9th century) "True religion is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div. praed., I, I).