Rationalism
(Latin, ratio -- reason, the faculty of the mind
which forms the ground of calculation, i. e. discursive reason. See
APOLOGETICS: ATHEISM; BIBLE; DEISM; EMPIRICISM; ETHICS; EXEGESIS, BIBLICAL;
FAITH; MATERIALISM; MIRACLE; REVELATION).
The term is used: (1) in an exact sense, to designate a
particular moment in the development of Protestant thought in Germany; (2)
in a broader, and more usual, sense to cover the view (in relation to which
many schools may he classed as rationalistic) that the human reason, or
understanding, is the sole source and final test of all truth. It has
further: (3) occasionally been applied to the method of treating revealed
truth theologically, by casting it into a reasoned form, and employing
philosophical Categories in its elaboration. These three uses of the term
will be discussed in the present article.
(1) The German school of theological Rationalism
formed a part of the more general movement of the eighteenth-century
"Enlightenment". It may be said to owe its immediate origin to the
philosophical system of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), which was a
modification, with Aristotelean features, of that of Leibniz, especially
characterized by its spiritualism, determinism, and dogmatism. This
philosophy and its method exerted a profound influence upon contemporaneous
German religious thought, providing it with a rationalistic point of view in
theology and exegesis. German philosophy in the eighteenth century was, as a
whole, tributary to Leibniz, whose "Théodicée" was written principally
against the Rationalism of Bayle: it was marked by an infiltration of
English Deism and French Materialism, to which the Rationalism at present
considered had great affinity, and towards which it progressively developed:
and it was vulgarized by its union with popular literature. Wolff himself
was expelled from his chair at the University of Halle on account of the
Rationalistic nature of his teaching, principally owing to the action of
Lange (1670-1774; cf. "Causa Dei et reilgionis naturals adversus atheismum",
and "Modesta Disputatio", Halle, 1723). Retiring to Marburg, he taught there
until 1740, when he was recalled to Halle by Frederick II. Wolff's attempt
to demonstrate natural religion rationally was in no sense an attack upon
revelation. As a "supranaturalist" he admitted truths above reason, and he
attempted to support by reason the supernatural truths contained in Holy
Scripture. But his attempt, while it incensed the pietistic school and was
readily welcomed by the more liberal and moderate among the orthodox
Lutherans, in reality turned out to be strongly in favour of the Naturalism
that he wished to condemn. Natural religion, he asserted, is demonstrable;
revealed religion is to be found in the Bible alone. But in his method of
proof of the authority of Scripture recourse was had to reason, and thus the
human mind became, logically, the ultimate arbiter in the case of both.
Supranaturalism in theology, which it was Wolff's intention to uphold,
proved incompatible with such a philosophical position, and Rationalism took
its place. This, however, is to be distinguished from pure Naturalism, to
which it led, but with which it never became theoretically identified.
Revelation was not denied by the Rationalists; though, as a matter of fact,
if not of theory, it was quietly suppressed by the claim, with its
ever-increasing application, that reason is the competent judge of all
truth. Naturalists, on the other hand, denied the fact of revelation. As
with Deism and Materialism, the German Rationalism invaded the department of
Biblical exegesis. Here a destructive criticism, very similar to that of the
Deists, was levelled against the miracles recorded in, and the authenticity
of the Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless, the distinction between Rationalism
and Naturalism still obtained. The great Biblical critic Semler (1725-91),
who is one of the principal representatives of the school, was a strong
opponent of the latter; in company with Teller (1734-1804) and others he
endeavoured to show that the records of the Bible have no more than a local
and temporary character, thus attempting to safeguard the deeper revelation,
while sacrificing to the critics its superficial vehicle. He makes the
distinction between theology and religion (by which he signifies ethics).
The distinction made between natural and revealed religion
necessitated a closer definition of the latter. For Supernaturalists and
Rationalists alike religion was held to be "a way of knowing and worshipping
the Deity", but consisting chiefly, for the Rationalists, in the observance
of God's law. This identification of religion with morals, which at the time
was utilitarian in character (see UTILITARIANISM), led to further
developments in the conceptions of the nature of religion, the meaning of
revelation, and the value of the Bible as a collection of inspired writings.
The earlier orthodox Protestant view of religion as a body of truths
published and taught by God to man in revelation was in process of
disintegration. In Semler's distinction between religion (ethics) on the one
hand and theology on the other, with Herder's similar separation of religion
from theological opinions and religious usages, the cause of the Christian
religion, as they conceived it, seemed to be put beyond the reach of the
shock of criticism, which, by destroying the foundations upon which it
claimed to rest, had gone so far to discredit the older form of Lutheranism.
Kant's (1724-1804) criticism of the reason, however, formed a turning-point
in the development of Rationalism. For a full understanding of his attitude,
the reader must be acquainted with the nature of his pietistic upbringing
and later scientific and philosophical formation in the Leibniz-Wolff school
of thought (see KANT, PHILOSOPHY OF). As far as concerns the point that
occupies us at present, Kant was a Rationalist.
For him religion was
coextensive, with natural, though not utilitarian, morals. When he met with
the criticisms of Hume and undertook his famous "Kritik", his preoccupation
was to safeguard his religious opinions, his rigorous morality, from the
danger of criticism. This he did, not by means of the old Rationalism, but
by throwing discredit upon metaphysics. The accepted proofs of the existence
of God, immortality, and liberty were thus, in his opinion, overthrown, and
the well-known set of postulates of the "categoric imperative" put forward
in their place. This, obviously, was the end of Rationalism in its earlier
form, in which the fundamental truths of religion were set out as
demonstrable by reason. But, despite the shifting of the burden of religion
from the pure to the practical reason, Kant himself never seems to have
reached the view --; to which all his work pointed --; that religion is not
mere ethics, "conceiving moral laws as divine commands", no matter how far
removed from Utilitarianism --; not an affair of the mind, but of the heart
and will; and that revelation does not reach man by way of an exterior
promulgation, but consists in a personal adaptation towards God. This
conception was reached gradually with the advance of the theory that man
possesses a religious sense, or faculty, distinct from the rational (Fries,
1773-1843; Jacobi, 1743-1819; Herder, 1744-1803; -- all opposed to the
Intellectualism of Kant), and ultimately found expression with
Schleiermacher (1768-1834), for whom religion is to be found neither in
knowledge nor in action, but in a peculiar attitude of mind which consists
in the consciousness of absolute dependence upon God.
Here the older
distinction between natural and revealed religion disappears. All that can
be called religion -- the consciousness of dependence -- is at the same time
revelational, and all religion is of the same character. There is no special
revelation in the older Protestant (the Catholic) sense, but merely this
attitude of dependence brought into being in the individual by the teaching
of various great personalities who, from time to time, have manifested an
extraordinary sense of the religious. Schleiermacher was a contemporary of
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whose philoasophical speculations had
influence, with his own, in ultimately subverting Rationalism as here dealt
with. The movement may be said to have ended with him -- in the opinion of
Teller "the greatest theologian that the Protestant Church has had since the
period of the Reformation". The majority of modern Protestant theologians
accept his views, not, however, to the exclusion of knowledge as a basis of
religion.
Parallel with the development of the philosophical and
theological views as to the nature of religion and the worth of revelation,
which provided it with its critical principles, took place an exegetical
evolution. The first phase consisted in replacing the orthodox Protestant
doctrine (i. e. that the Sacred Scriptures are the Word of God) by a
distinction between the Word of God contained in the Bible and the Bible
itself (Töllner, Herder), though the Rationalists still held that the purer
source of revelation lies rather in the written than in the traditional
word. This distinction led inevitably to the destruction, of the rigid view
of inspiration, and prepared the ground for the second phase. The principle
of accommodation was now employed to explain the difficulties raised by the
Scripture records of miraculous events and demoniacal manifestations (Senf,
Vogel), and arbitrary methods of exegesis were also used to the same end
(Paulus, Eichhorn). In the third phase Rationalists had reached the point of
allowing the possibility of mistakes having been made by Christ and the
Apostles, at any rate with regard to non-essential parts of religion. All
the devices of exegesis were employed vainly; and, in the end, Rationalists
found themselves forced to admit that the authors of the New Testament must
have written from a point of view different from that which a modern
theologian would adopt (Henke, Wegseheider). This principle, which is
sufficiently elastic to admit of usage by nearly every variety of opinion,
was admitted by several of the Supernaturalists (Reinhard, Storr), and is
very generally accepted by modern Protestant divines, in the rejection of
verbal inspiration. Herder is very clear on the distinction -- the truly
inspired must be discerned from that which is not; and de Wette lays down as
the canon of interpretation "the religious perception of the divine
operation, or of the Holy Spirit, in the sacred writers as regards their
belief and inspiration, but not respecting their faculty of forming ideas. .
." In an extreme form it may be seen employed in such works as Strauss's
"Leben Jesu", where the hypothesis of the mythical nature of miracles is
developed to a greater extent than by Schleiermacher or de Wette.
(2) Rationalism, in the broader, popular meaning of
the term, is used to designate any mode of thought in which human reason
holds the place of supreme criterion of truth; in this sense, it is
especially applied to such modes of thought as contrasted with faith. Thus
Atheism, Materialism, Naturalism, Pantheism, Scepticism, etc., fall under
the head of rationalistic systems. As such, the rationalistic tendency has
always existed in philosophy, and has generally shown itself powerful in all
the critical schools. As has been noted in the preceding paragraph, German
Rationalism had strong affinities with English Deism and French Materialism,
two historic forms in which the tendency has manifested itself. But with the
vulgarization of the ideas contained in the various systems that composed
these movements, Rationalism has degenerated. It has become connected in the
popular mind with the shallow and misleading philosophy frequently put
forward in the name of science, so that a double confusion has arisen, in
which;
- questionable philosophical speculations are taken for scientific
facts, and
- science is falsely supposed to be in opposition to religion.
This Rationalism is now rather a spirit, or attitude, ready
to seize upon any arguments, from any source and of any or no value, to urge
against the doctrines and practices of faith. Beside this crude and popular
form it has taken, for which the publication of cheap reprints and a
vigorous propaganda are mainly responsible, there runs the deeper and more
thoughtful current of critical-philosophical Rationalism, which either
rejects religion and revelation altogether or treats them in much the same
manner as did the Germans. Its various manifestations have little in common
in method or content, save the general appeal to reason as supreme. No
better description of the position can be given than the statements of the
objects of the Rationalist Press Association. Among these are: "To stimulate
the habits of reflection and inquiry and the free exercise of individual
intellect . . . and generally to assert the supremacy of reason as the
natural and necessary means to all such knowledge and wisdom as man can
achieve". A perusal of the publications of the same will show in what sense
this representative body interprets the above statement. It may be said
finally, that Rationalism is the direct and logical outcome of the
principles of Protestantism; and that the intermediary form, in which assent
is given to revealed truth as possessing the
imprimatur of reason, is
only a phase in the evolution of ideas towards general disbelief. Official
condemnations of the various forms of Rationalism, absolute and mitigated,
are to be found in the Syllabus of Pius IX.
(3) The term Rationalism is perhaps not
usually applied to the theological method of the Catholic Church. All forms
of theological statement, however, and pre-eminently the dialectical form of
Catholic theology, are rationalistic in the truest sense. Indeed, the claim
of such Rationalism as is dealt with above is directly met by the counter
claim of the Church: that it is at best but a mutilated and unreasonable
Rationalism, not worthy of the name, while that of the Church is rationally
complete, and integrated, moreover, with super-rational truth. In this sense
Catholic theology presupposes the certain truths of natural reason as the
preambula fidei, philosophy (the ancilla theologiæ) is employed
in the defence of revealed truth (see APOLOGETICS), and the content of
Divine revelation is treated and systematized in the categories of natural
thought. This systematization is carried out both in dogmatic and moral
theology. It is a process contemporaneous with the first attempt at a
scientific statement of religious truth, comes to perfection of method in
the works of such writers as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Alphonsus, and is
consistently employed and developed in the Schools.
THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS CONDEMNED BY PIUS IX
Against Absolute & Moderate Rationalism
HAGENBACH, Kirchengesch. des 18. Jahrhunderts in
Vorlesungen über Wesen u. Gesch. der Reformation in Deutschland etc.,
V-VI (Leipzig, 1834-43); IDEM (tr. BUCH), Compendium of the History of
Doctrines (Edinburgh, 1846); HASE, Kirchengesch. (Leipzig, 1886);
HENKE, Rationalismus u. Traditionalismus im 19. Jahrh. (Halle, 1864);
HURST, History of Rationalism (New York, 1882); LERMINIER, De
l'influence de la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1833); SAINTES,
Hist. critique du rationalisme en Allemagne (Paris, 1841);
SCHLEIERMACHER, Der christl. Glaube nach der Grundsätzen der
evangelischen Kirche (Berlin, 1821-22): SEMLER, Von freier
Untersuchung des Kanons (Halle, 1771-75); IDEM, Institutio ad
doctrinam christianam liberaliter discendam (Halle, 1774); IDEM,
Versuch einer freier theologischen Lehrart (Halle, 1777); STAÜDLIN,
Gesch. des Rationalismus u. Supranaturalismus (Göttingen, 1826); THOLUCK,
Vorgesch. des Rationalismus (Halle, 1853-62); BENN, History of
Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1906)
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII
Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1911.
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