The Freedom of Science

It is easy to understand that one who has for a long time mentally abandoned his Christian faith, cannot carry in mind its picture as undistorted as he did in his better days, and as would conform to reality. But it is reprehensible to exhibit in public this picture, without having previously and conscientiously examined the main lines, to see whether they are not caricatures. And they are caricatures, traced by a hand that is led by the mood of a secret anti-Christianity.

A treatment identical with that of its view of life is accorded to the doctrine and history of the Christian religion. Not science and uncorrupted truthfulness, but antipathy, presumption, harsh denial of everything divine, only too often point the way. Let us listen again to the author named above, since he knows to express modern thought with a clearness and precision almost unequalled by any one else.

It made a painful impression to find in the Christmas number, 1908, of the liberal-theological “Christliche Welt” a posthumous article by Fr. Paulsen: “What think you of Christ: Whose Son is He?” The article was without doubt one of the last he had written. It contains the program of modern liberal science. “With the seventeenth century,” we read there, “begins the reorganization of the theory of the universe by science. Its general tendency may be described by the formula: Elimination of the supernatural from the natural and historical world.” “Consequently, no miracles in history, no supernatural birth, no resurrection, no revelation, in fact no interference by the Eternal in temporal events.” Hence, the man who “thinks scientifically in this wise can have no doubt that the old ecclesiastical dogma cannot be reconciled with scientific thought.” This, of course, amounts to a complete renunciation of positive Christianity.

This scientific thought, in the words of Baumgarten, “rejects any projection of the supernatural into tangible reality”; especially is “the metaphysical genesis and nature of the Saviour highly offensive to our ethical consciousness,” even “absolutely unbearable.” The Christian religion can no longer be permitted to overtower other religions by its supernaturalness. “The distinction between a revealed and a natural religion becomes an impossibility,” says W. Bousset. And Wundt declares: “Christianity, as an ‘absolute’ or a ‘revealed’ religion, would stand opposed to all other religious development, as an incommensurable magnitude. This point of view, evidently, cannot be competent for our speculations.”

Having become the ruling mode of thought, these presumptions determine from the outset the results to be obtained by “research,” and they force it to violate its own method, so that it may be dragged along the by-ways and false ways of a mistaken, philosophical a-priorism, thereby making freedom of science a mockery. From the abundant material at our disposal let us take only one example, viz., the Modern Criticism of the Gospels.

The Gospels contain many records of facts of a supernatural character, of miracles and prophecies. That these records are necessarily false is the first principle of the historical, or critical, method, as it is called. “As a miracle of itself is unthinkable, so the miracles in the history of Christianity, and in the Christianity of the New Testament, are likewise unthinkable. Hence, when miracles are nevertheless narrated, these narratives must be false, in as far as they report miracles: that is, either the relation did not happen at all, or, if it did, there was a sufficient natural explanation”; “the historian must under all circumstances answer, ‘No,’ to the question whether the report of a miracle is worthy of belief” (T. Zeller). Thus instructed, “unprejudiced” research proceeds to construct its results of the investigation of the genuineness, time and date, of the writing of the Gospels and of the Acts, as well as of their credibility. Let us see how this is done.

The tradition of the early Church, as well as intrinsic evidence, testify that the first Gospel was really written by the Apostle Matthew, and this certainly before the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberal-Protestant criticism, however, assigns its origin to a time after the year 70, chiefly for two reasons: First, the striking prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, conforming so accurately to the actual event, could have been written only after the year 70; otherwise it would have amounted to a real prophecy subsequently fulfilled, a conclusion that cannot be accepted. The second reason is this: The contents of St. Matthew's Gospel is already wholly Catholic, hence it must have been written during a later, Catholic, period. For as there can be no influences from above, and as everything is evolved in a natural way, the principle must govern: that the more supernatural and the more dogmas, so much later the period in question; at first there could have been only a religion of sentiment without dogma, which gradually developed into Catholic dogmatism. Similar are the presumptions which direct modern research in respect to the genuineness of the other Gospels and the Acts. A few proofs:

Prof. Jülicher thinks that, “While we cannot go prior to the beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100…” Why? “Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem” – a prophecy, namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem cannot be admitted. “But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious position of Matthew. Despite his conservative treatment of tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has written a Catholic Gospel… To Matthew the congregation, the Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential features the early Catholicism is completed.”

Jülicher arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on St. Luke's Gospel: “That Luke's Gospel was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a. d., is proven beyond any doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war are ‘foretold.’… All arguments in favor of a later date of writing concerning Matthewhold good also of Luke.” Even more unreserved is O. Pfleiderer, until recently a prominent representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: “In this Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the constitution of the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ … Catholic, the doctrine of Salvation … Catholic are the morals … Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to Peter as the foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the key.” In regard to this latter point Pfleiderer remarks expressly: “In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate this passage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains the solemn proclamation of Peter's Primacy.”The unsophisticated reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent concoction of a later time; “hence the origin of the Gospel of Matthew is to be put down not before the time of Hadrian; in the fourth century rather than in the third.”

A. Harnack fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70, because “Matthew, as well as Luke, are presupposing the destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage feast).” This is to be held also of Luke's Gospel. “This much can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by almost all critics, Luke's Gospel presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem.”

Remarkable is Harnack's latest attitude towards the Acts; it shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less the results of historical research than of philosophical presumptions. In his “Acts of the Apostles” Harnack admits: “Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties.” In substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical criticism. “These are opposed solely by the observation that the prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to decide… But it is not difficult to judge on which side the weightier arguments are” (viz., on the part of the contention for an earlier date). Yet Harnack is loath to accept the better scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions. He formulates his final decision in the following way: “Luke wrote at the time of Titus, or during the earlier time of Domitian (?), but perhaps (only perhaps, in spite of decisive arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties.” (Recently Harnack recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian's proof that the fourth Gospel could not have been written by John, the son of Zebedee; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come) cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the death of the favourite disciple. “The section xx. 20-23 obviously presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter, however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters 1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of Zebedee, whose death is there presupposed.” The whole argument again rests upon the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.

The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions testify to it as the writing of St. John, is, because it teaches so clearly the divinity of Christ: and this must be denied. Significant are, for instance, the words in which Weizsäcker sums up his objections to this gospel: “That the Apostle, the favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything that he once experienced, as the living together with the incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a divine being … of one of the original Apostles, it is unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the Gospel is subordinate.”This means, Christ cannot be admitted to be a Divine Being – impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him for it: therefore, this “miraculous picture of a Divine Being” cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.

Like the genuineness of the Gospels, so is also their credibility beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the narratives directly from the lips of eye-witnesses. Nor would any one doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But, this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite result.

The writers were frauds – this was long ago the hypothesis of the superficial Hamburg Professor, Samuel Reimarus, whose “Fragments” were published by Lessing. But even to a D. F. Strauss “such a suspicion was repulsive.” The Heidelberg Professor, H. E. Paulus, sought his salvation in trying to reduce the reports of miracles to a natural sense, by doing painful violence to the text: for instance, the Lord did not walk upon the sea, but only along the sea; the miracle of the wine at Cana was only a wedding joke. Then came D. F. Strauss (died 1874), and he tried it in a different way. “If the Gospels are really historical documents, then the miracle cannot be removed from the life of Jesus.” Hence, it is to remain? Indeed not! The Gospels must not be accepted as historical sources. They are products of purposeless poetic legends, the miracles are garlands of religious myths, gradually twined around the picture of Jesus. Myths, however, need time for their formation, hence Strauss fixes the date of the Gospels within the second century. He openly admits that his hypothesis would fall to the ground if but a single Gospel has been written in the first century. As a fact, more recent rationalistic criticism has found itself constrained to drop this hypothesis. F. Ch. Baur (died 1860) fell back upon the fraud-hypothesis of a Reimarus. It, too, has been laid among the dead. Thus they have exhausted themselves in the attempt to shake off the burdensome yoke of truth.

Influenced by Strauss, Baur, and other German critics, E. Renan (died 1892) wrote his “Life of Jesus,” a frivolous romance. Quite frank are the words he wrote down in the preface to the thirteenth edition of his “Vie de Jésus” (1883): “If miracle has any reality, then my book is nothing but a tissue of errors… If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are real things, then our method is abominable.” But he silences all doubts by the phrase: “To admit the supernatural is alone sufficient to place one's self outside of science.”

The newer “historical-critical” school, while having disposed of many contentions of the old schools, is nevertheless in its research bound just as energetically by the postulate of conformity to natural laws. The fourth Gospel is pushed aside: in the others all miraculous occurrences are expounded away, till the “historically credible core” is reached.

The books of the Old Testament fare even worse, if possible.

“Does Genesis relate history or a legend?” asks Prof. Gunkel, and continues: “this is no longer a question to the historian.” Well, a legend, then. But how does the historian know this? From his own pantheistic philosophy, which recognizes no God differing from this world: “The narratives of Genesis being mostly of a religious nature, they continuously speak of God. The way, however, in which narratives speak of God is one of the most reliable standards to judge whether they are meant historically or poetically. Here, too, the historian cannot do without a world philosophy. We believe that God acts in the world as the latent, hidden motive of all things … but He never appears to us as an acting factor jointly with others(the italics are the author's), but always as the ultimate cause of all things. Quite different in many narratives of Genesis. We are able to understand these narratives of miracles and apparitions as the artlessness of primitive people, but we refuse to believe them.”

Analogous to Bible-criticism is the research in other branches of theology. The origin of Christianity, this wonderful power which so suddenly made its appearance in history and speedily vanquished a whole world, must of course not be a work of Heaven. Hence its origin must be explained at any cost in a natural way, or “historically,” as they put it. The religious notions of Christianity must not be conceded a supernatural certainty over all other religions; and “to understand an event historically means: to conceive it by its causal connection with the conditions of a given place and at a certain time of the human life. Hence science cannot consider such a thing as the appearance of a supernatural being upon the earth” (Pfleiderer).

And then they proceed to show that Christianity is a natural, evolutionary product of the Israelite religion, of Greek philosophy, of Oriental myths, and Roman customs. That it is far superior to all these, and that it is the opposite to them in various ways, is carefully hushed up. The inadequacy and impossibility of such an explanation is adroitly concealed. Nor could the Israelite religion of the Old Covenant, according to the naturalistic principle of liberal theology, have had its origin in revelation and the prophets; hence it comes from Babylon, as the product of natural evolution from Oriental myths and customs. Any old and new analogies, hypotheses, and fancies are good enough then to demonstrate this as “historical.”

The Truth is not in Them

We pause here. We might thus continue for a long time; but it is enough. The patient reader, who has accompanied us on the tedious way to this point, may begin to feel tired. May he excuse the detailed recital for the reason that we had to do some extensive reconnoitring, through the precincts of modern philosophical-religious research, to avoid the reproach that we were making accusations without furnishing proofs. Our contention was, that liberal science is trying to shake off the yoke of religious truth, and to explain it away by its self-made presumptions. We believe that we have proved our contention.

We are confronted by a science that boasts of monopolizing the spirit of truthfulness; as a matter of fact, we see that it uses all scientific devices to shirk the truth and to disguise its effort. In loquacious protests it rejects the “rigid dogmatism,” the “fixed views,” of the Christian faith, and it proclaims experience and reason as the sole criterions of scientific cognition; yet it always stands upon the platform of rigid presumptions, that are derived from no experience, and which no reason can prove. It clamours for research free from presumption, and, without winking an eye, substitutes its own presumption, secretly or openly. It is dishonest.

It promises to preserve for man the highest ideals and blessings for which his mind is yearning, yet it has no religion and no God. It recalls to mind the words spoken by St. Augustine of the philosophers whom he had followed in the false ways of his youth: “They said: truth, and always truth, and talked much of truth, but it was not in them… Oh, truth, truth, how deeply my inmost spirit sighed after thee, while they filled my ears incessantly with thy bare name and with the palaver of their bulky volumes.” Free it wants to be, this science. One of its disciples boasted: “It has taught its disciples to look down without dizziness from the airy heights of sovereign scepticism. How easy and free one breathes up there!” Aye, it has made itself free, – from the yoke of unpalatable truth. So much more firmly is it fettered, not with the holy bonds of belief in God, but by the more burdensome mental yoke of a disbelief that weakens and blinds the eyes against the cognition of the higher truth: – and bound by the chains of public opinion, which threatens anathema to every one who fails to stop at the border of the natural. Truly free is only the science that enjoys a clear and free perception for the truth. Unfree is a science that restrains the mental eye with the blinkers of theophoby. Our age seeks for the lost happiness of the soul, it seeks longingly God and the supernatural that have been removed from its sight. But science, so often its leader, loathingly dodges God, and refuses to fold the hands and pray. As long as our age does not break with a science that refuses to know a God and a Saviour, so long will it hopelessly grope about without result, and look in vain for an escape from the wretched labyrinth of doubt.

Chapter II. The Unscientific Method

The efforts of liberal science, to remove more and more from its scope the supernatural powers, show clearly that man may feel the truth to be a yoke, and that he may attempt to free himself from this yoke by opposing the truth and by substituting postulates for knowledge. Sceptical, autonomous subjectivism, the philosophy of liberal free thought, has changed the nature of human reasoning, and its relation to truth, and perverted it to its very opposite. No longer is the human mind the vassal of Queen Truth, as Plutarch put it, but the autocratic ruler who degrades truth to the position of a servant. Thus liberal freedom of thought becomes the principle of an unscientific method, because it loses, by false reasoning and false truth, the first condition of solid and scientific research; furthermore, by treating the highest questions with consequent levity, it betrays a lack of earnestness which again renders it unfit for scientific research in serious matters.

False Reasoning

“The philosophical thinkers of to-day,” says an admirer of Kant, A. Sabatier, “may be divided into two classes, the pre-Kantian and those who have received their initiation and their philosophical baptism from Kant's Critic.”

The Christian philosophy of a St. Thomas, which is, as even representatives of modern philosophy are constrained to admit, “a system carried out with clear perception and great sagacity” (Paulsen), contains many a principle, the intrinsic merit of which will be fully appreciated only when contrasted with the experiments of modern philosophy. An instance is the principle of the old school, that cognition is the likeness of that which is cognized. Apart from the cognition by sense, we are given here the only correct principle, coinciding with the general conviction that reasoning is the mental reproduction of an objective order of existence, independent of us, even in our conception of the metaphysical world. Thinking does not create its object, but is a reproduction of it; it is not a producer, but a painter, who copies the world with his mental brush within himself, sometimes only in the indistinct outlines of indefinite conception, often, however, in the sharp lines of clear cognition.

If, according to its nature, thinking is subject to standards and laws given it by an objective world, then subjective arbitrariness, a method of thought which, while pretending to be a free producer of truth, yet determines it according to necessity or desire; and, even more so, a method of thought which feels itself justified to hold an opinion upon the same question in one way to-day, and another and entirely opposite one to-morrow, is wholly incomprehensible: just as incomprehensible as if a draughtsman, attempting to draw a true picture of St. Peter's Church, would not follow the reality but prefer to draw the picture at random, according to his fancy and mood.

We have stated these fundamental principles already at the beginning of our book, we have also set forth how greatly liberal freedom of thought is lacking the first presumption of any proper science, namely, the clear perception that there is an objective truth in philosophical-religious questions, to which we must submit, there, in fact, most of all.

No! We also want autonomy of thought, especially in questions of metaphysics, where, anyway, there can only be postulates! so shouted Kant to the modern world on the threshold of the nineteenth century. There are no stable truths, everything is relative and changing, adds the modern theory of evolution. At last there is freedom for thought and research, freedom from the yoke of absolute truth! Behold the aberrations of an unbridled rush for freedom which moves the world of to-day. This unruly hankering for a freer existence than allowed by their nature and position, makes unbearable to many modern children of man the idea of iron laws of truth and marked boundaries of thought. Revelling in the consciousness of their sovereign personality, they want to measure all things by their individuality, even religion, philosophy, truth, and ethics. Only that what is created and experienced by them within the sanctuary of their personality, only what is made important and legitimate by their sentiment, is truth and of value to them. Autonomism thus changes unnoticeably into individualism; the own individuality, in its peculiar inclinations, moods, and humours, its exigencies and egotistical aims, its infirmities and diseases – they have, under the name of individual reason, become the law of thinking and reasoning.