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.

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).

Francis Aveling

Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter

Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII

Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org