RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Rationalism
Kant's statements on the relation of Christianity to the religion of reason lent themselves to the support of two opposite views: that his- 3. Differ- toric Christianity has brought into entiation. reality the pure religion of reason; or, that the pure religion of reason makes all revelation dispensable. These gave rise to two theological tendencies, both capable of being unified with Kant's critical deductions, inasmuch as he neither unconditionally affirmed nor denied the claims of Christianity to revelation. The one allowed the character of Christianity as revelation to stand, but employed the principle of the reason for its justification and critical simplification; the other took reason as the unconditional critical norm and the adequate source of religious truth as well. The first may be termed critical supernaturalism, while the second beginning with critical rationalism gradually passes over into dogmatic rationalism. The critical supernaturalists, a small group, preferred to accept the synoptic teachings of Jesus as the picture of real Christianity. Foremost of these was J. H. Tieftrunk (q.v.) who interpreted Christian revelation according to moral postulates without, however, resolving it into mere moral truths. Especially does he aim to preserve the position of redemption as presupposed to Christian ethics. By representing the moral ideal in his person, Christ makes possible the realization of the final purpose of the world and he is the foundation of grace without which a happy observance of the moral law is impossible (cf. A. Ritschl). Akin to this K. L. Nitzsch (q.v.) professed the supernatural form of Christianity, treating its content, however, ethically, not in accordance with the empirical but the pure reason. Along the other tendency, critical rationalism first undertook the criticism of traditional religious truth. In the spirit of Lessing and Sender, it sought to ascertain the simple original forms as appearing in the example and proclamation of Jesus. But the other view pushed more and more to the front, that reason was the productive source of religious truth. Thereby natural revelation, which was still retained, was made a mere name for a content of knowledge at all times accessible to the human reason. The chief representative of critical rationalism was H. P. K. Henke (q.v.) who essayed to combat superstition in its threefold form of Christolatry, bibliolatry, and onomatolatry (or dependence on an antiquated terminology and form of doctrine) . For him Christian dogmatics had been too discursive in Messianic doctrine, impertinent suppositions of the New-Testament writers, and Platonic representations. In fact only a simple matter is involved; to bring Christ's example and teaching into effect. The proof of the divine origin of this doctrine asserts itself by its correspondence with the principles of reason and by the experience of its inherent truth and excellence. Thus critical simplification serves the necessary course of all religious revelation, to lead revealed religion gradually over into the rational. A similar point of view of starting out with religious faith from the practical reason is taken by J. C. R. Eckermann (d. 1837), with, however, a solicitous concern for " popular religion." He
doubts if this can dispense with divinely sent bearers of revelation. In the person of Christ he would admit a mystery, namely, his union with God, never quite to be established.
Completely dogmatic is the rationalism of J. A.
L. Wegscheider (q.v.), who maintained that the
progress of history, the knowledge of nature, and
philosophy had overtaken supernat-
4. Post- uralism. Reason can admit only a Kantian natural revelation, such as is manifest
Dogmatic in the ordinary course of the world and Rational- its action upon human knowledge. He ism. would insist strenuously upon the distinction of rationalism and naturalism, inasmuch as the latter denied all revelation, even the natural. Belief in a supernatural revelation concerns an age of inferior civilization, when, without premonition of the real range of the human intellect, the spontaneous perceptions of truth were misapprehended as divinely wrought. Later such belief proved itself useful in a political and moral way. From this, however, the absolute necessity for such a revelation does not follow. Reason in this sense is evidently not the critical organ in the sense of Kant, who finds the open way to religion only through the moral law; it is thoroughly dogmatic. Beside the moral argument for the existence of God are set up the cosmological, physicotheological, and even the ontological arguments. Moral debility takes the place of radical sin. Christ is the herald of reason and the wholly inspired prototype of man. A labored effort is made to shelter a compromised notion of the concept of forgiveness. Others reject this as morally impossible and not to be represented in the Church (J. F. C. Loeffler; d. 1816). This type of rationalism degenerated to the common or popular type. Its classical memorial is J. F Roehr's (q.v.) Briefe ilber den Rationalismus (1813) in which he argues Christianity as the universal religion on the basis of its self-evidence and reasonableness for common human sense and excludes Christology from the religious system.
More harsh than in dogmatics appeared the forced
and unhistorical rationalistic interpretation of
Christianity in exegesis. To the necessity imposed
by Kant upon interpretation, of finding the fixed
a priori moral truths in Scripture, was
5. Post- now added the object of bringing it Kantian into harmony with a clarified view of Biblical nature. Thus the narratives of mir-
Rational- acle were brought into the light of ism. natural occurrences, for which in addition to the already available means of electricity also magnetic powers were pressed into service. The didactic content was submitted to the accommodation hypothesis. With the assumption that Jesus and his apostles, to facilitate their access, conformed to Jewish representations and the general opinions of the day, it was presumed to distinguish between kernel and husk ad libitum. This was, in fact, nothing else than attributing one's own theory of revelation, as the introducing medium of the truth of pure reason, to the supposed consciousness of the bearers of revelation themselves. Old-Testament exegetes of this order were
Rationalism