Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135—“The infinite is not the quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated. … Both absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things.” Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10—“Religion has to do, not with anObject that must let itself be known because its very existence is contingent upon its being known, but with the Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon him, and waiting until he manifest himself.” James Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:346—“We must not confound the infinite with the total. … The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal itself. … However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite articulately speak in the finite.”
Perfect personality excludes, not self-determination, but determination from without, determination by another. God's self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution, gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The government of sinners by a holy God involves constant self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of divine forbearance; Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are limitations of the teacher also.” In inspiration, God limits himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation: Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God's promises are also self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:189, 195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh, Intuitions, 186; Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189–191.
G. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what we know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to our own senses and faculties. In reply: (a) We grant that we can know only that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say that we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we know only what we know. But, (b) We deny that what we come into mental contact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at all, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not merely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things. We conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that the laws of our thought are laws of God's thought, and that the results of normally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective reality.
Versus Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96–116, and Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 68–97. This doctrine of relativity is derived from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that a priori judgments are simply “regulative.” But we reply that when our primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature. The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not into nature, but in nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make all the world seem green: they are the lenses of a microscope, which enable us to see what is objectively real (Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding “the legislator of nature.” But it is so, only as discoverer of nature's laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it interprets the real meaning of the universe.
Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: “All judgment implies an objective truth according to which we judge, which constitutes the standard, and with which we have something in common, i.e., our minds are part of an infinite and eternal Mind.” French aphorism: “When you are right, you are more right than you think you are.” God will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote “No thoroughfare” over the reason in its highest exercise. Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:135, 136—“Over against Kant's assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself, we may set Comte's equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that they do not. … 79—That our cognitive faculties correspond to things as they are, is much less surprising than that they should correspond to things as they are not.” W. T. Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer's self-contradiction: “All knowledge is, not absolute, but relative; our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but absolute.”
Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:16–21, sets out with a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of Kant. Ritschl's statement may be summarized as follows: “We deal, not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either things or God apart from their phenomena or manifestations, as Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations alone, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed; but we do know both things and God in their phenomena or manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an intelligible order.”
But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl's Place in the History of Doctrine, has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His “value-judgments” are simply an application to theology of the “regulative” principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ's preexistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely subjective value-judgment—it is a coming in contact with objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:13; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297–336; J. S. Mill, Examination, 1:113–134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.: “Hamilton,” in Johnson's Encyclopædia; McCosh, Intuitions, 139–146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97–123; Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy, 48–79, esp. 71–79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868:341; Princeton Rev., 1864:122; Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev., March, 1878:445–448; Mind, April, 1878:257; Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109–113; Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:79, 120, 121, 135, 136.
3.