III.

REASON, CONSCIENCE, and revelationN.

R

BY HERMANN CREMER, D. D.,

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT GREIFSWALD.

EASON,

are regarded by some as an invincible dissonance, the key-note of which is wrong; by others as a dissonance which, though it may be and ought to be overcome, requires for this end a diminution of the intervals; while we unhesitatingly affirm that we discern here a harmony such as no earthly music can offer, such as the masters of sacred art have believed they heard, when attempting to imitate in their creations celestial choruses, in whose · manifold complications there is still a prevailing harmony, comprehending and uniting the world of sounds.

With distinct consciousness, the bearers and the adherents of divine revelation perceive and affirm the sharp contradiction which this revelation offers to the methods and results of merely natural thinking, and with which it shoves aside, and passes by, not, it is true, as superfluous, but yet as vain and useless, the achievements, great as they seem to us, of the human intelligence. At the same time, however, they claim that divine revelation, and this regarded as an unveiling of hidden truth, is not merely to be received on trust, but apprehended and recognized with conscious clearness; and thus they seem to require a self-denial on

the part of the human intelligence, on which many, from fear of losing what is noblest and best in them, find it difficult to decide. 1

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, by the representatives and adherents of this human reason and wisdom so severely rebuked, the claim of divine revelation, that is, of the Sacred Scriptures, to be the truth, is decidedly opposed, and that the disparagements received are richly' repaid. E. g., the reasonableness of that which calls itself a revelation is disputed, and belief in or recognition of the same is referred to a certain spiritual indolence, or, in the most pardonable case, to a defective schooling in the use of the reason. In no case is such a belief allowed to be compatible with sound reason, while the practice of insisting upon a recognition of revelation is characterized as obscurantism and an enslavement of the spiritual life.

1 The Scripture expressions alluding thereto are familiar. When Peter says, "We believe and are sure;" and John, "We have known and believed," (John 6:69; 1 John 4:16); when Paul writes, "By manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Cor. 4:2), -we see the question is not concerning a faith accepted on insuflicient grounds, but concerning a faith based upon and requiring knowledge, as Paul says in another place, "That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus" (Phile. 6). Assent of the rationally observing and reflecting man, recognition, full, uncondi tionally free, and yet inwardly necessitated assent of the conscience, this the revelation whose register we have in the Sacred Scriptures -this the Bible requires. For reason and conscience are not otherwise free than that they are bound by the truth; and to furnish truth, the sole, complete truth, is the object of revelation. As to these claims understanding is possible, but more difficult is it when Paul lescribes the opposing "wisdom of this world" as foolishness, when he admonishes the Colossians not to allow themselves to be spoiled through the philosophy and vain deceit of human teaching, when he has so poor an opinion of the wisdom held so high in the world that in one place he says, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools;" and in another sets up the requirement, "If any man seemeth to be wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise." The worst, however, appears to be when he makes it a reproach of the reason that it causes men to be at enmity with God by wicked works. (Comp. 1 Cor. 1: 20 ff.; Col. 2:8; Rom. 1: 22; Eph. 2: 3, and 4: 18; Col. 1: 21.)

As we are fully aware of these reproaches, nay, as we profess to understand them, and would only the more decidedly defend the claims of divine revelation, we are in duty bound to consider the former, and both to become clear ourselves as to the just grounds of these claims, and to show our opponents that divine revelation really has no need to fear a thorough examination before the tribunal of reason and conscience. We recognize ourselves as bound to investigate the claims of divine revelation to reasonableness and complete truth, to inquire into the possibility of a rational recognition on the part of man of these claims, and of a conscientious subjection of himself to them, and to judge by the requirements which reason and conscience everywhere make, whether we are to understand that the revelation of God meets, and perhaps more than meets, all these requirements, or whether humanity would have ground, in the name of reason and as it has only recently been perfected- of conscience, to protest against this obtrusive intermingling of a revelation in the restless labor and development of the human spirit.

We shall have, then, first, to consider what it is that reason and conscience require of that which they should recognize as according to reason and conscience, thus what agrees with reason and conscience. Secondly, we must ask, how much of that which agrees with reason and . conscience has been found, without the intervention of divine revelation, by our race, in the progress of its spiritual development; and, lastly, our theme will lead us to notice, whether divine revelation, as attested for us in the Sacred Scriptures, is entitled to demand, as it does, unconditional recognition, or whether its requirement is so much the more immoderate, the more decidedly and definitely it professes by itself alone to furnish the truth.

I.

It is not accidental, or merely required in some way by the constellations of the present, that we do not now, as was formerly the custom, inquire into the relation of reason and revelation simply; but the assent of conscience also is in these times considered requisite. We should be tempted did the matter not have a very dark reverse side - to characterize it as a decided advance, that the old one-sided opposition, in the name of reason, has changed into a stronger one in the name of both reason and conscience. For since it is the aim of revelation to furnish not merely truth, something that is true, but the truth,— that which alone is true, it addresses itself not merely to our reason, but to reason and conscience, the organs and capabilities of our being which we have for the truth. As to the nature of the reason, we can and must, as will undoubtedly on all sides be admitted, describe it as not merely in general the ability to know, but more particularly the ability to know the truth, to distinguish between seeming and being, to penetrate into the nature of things. The truth, however, is that which was, and is, and is to be, according to the original signification of the word1 in our golden German vernacular; that which has continuance and value, when all else perishes and is of worth no longer, the eternal and unchangeable above all that is temporal and transitory; thus also the law that rules over all, and commits to destruction whatever does not adjust itself to it. Accordingly, the truth preserves for us a moral interest, and in the conscience now we feel, and by the conscience become aware of, the relation between our

1 Wahrheit.

2 It is deeply grounded, that humanity sets nothing more readily than gold, mammon, with its value, in the place of God and his truth (Matt. 6: 24).

selves and the truth, of the unconditional demand of the truth upon us for its practical recognition and the subjecting of our entire selves to it, on the one hand, and of the distance at which we find ourselves from full compliance with that demand on the other. The conscience adds to

the idea of the truth, as its necessary counterpart, the idea of righteousness, of the truth translated into life. (Comp. 1 John 1: 6, 8). Where truth is, there righteousness must be, and only where truth is can righteousness be. With the truth, therefore, it is that reason and conscience have to do. This is their unifying centre and aim.‹ Where reason is, there is conscience; where conscience is, there is reason. They must not be separated from each other, and cannot be separated. We are necessitated to think morally and act rationally; by which, however, it is by no means said that all thinking is moral, or all acting rational. That is determined by the relation into which we enter, of our own free choice, regarding the truth, as also by the extent to which reason and conscience accept the truth.

Now, since reason and conscience capacitate us for the truth, for its apprehension and its transference into life, they require the truth, both for us and of us. With the capacity for it is closely connected its need, and only when man has abandoned the morally earnest use of his reason, and foolishly and wilfully separated himself from the impulses and requirements of his conscience, can he become insensible of this need, and, as a beggar, who insanely imagines himself to be a king, be proud in the rags of his poverty, or he can substitute, in fanaticism, falsehood and unwisdom for the truth.

Hence, whatever comports with reason and conscience must spring from the truth, and only the whole truth can satisfy reason and conscience. Reasonableness and neces