Revealed Religion Its Claims On The Intellect

Author : Franz Hettinger
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781979782906
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (829 download)

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Download or read book Revealed Religion written by Franz Hettinger and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the PREFACE. The claims of Christianity are to be tested, according to the modern scientific method, like those of any human Creed. Its origin must be sought in the ideas, political, philosophical, religious, current at its birth, and their influence on the mind of its Founder. Its moral worth will be determined by its agreement with the conclusions of reason, and its power of satisfying the higher needs of mankind. Thus, religion is treated like a philosophy or a language, as merely the product of human thought, and the notion of Revelation is set aside. Now Reason may indeed reject a creed as worthless, if its doctrines, though professedly revealed, are manifestly absurd or licentious, as are those of Mahomedanism. But where the morality is undoubtedly pure, as is the case with Christianity, the only logical mode of inquiry is to examine, not the nature of the doctrines, in themselves professedly incomprehensible, but the external evidence for the fact that those doctrines are a revelation from God. Such is the method pursued by the earlier Christian apologists, and adopted in the present volume. Revelation necessarily presupposes the truth of God's existence. The evidence, therefore, for this fundamental doctrine formed the subject of the first volume of Dr. Hettinger's work, of which the English version, entitled "Natural Religion," was published in 1892, and is now in its second edition. As natural religion is founded on reason, so is revealed religion on faith; and since this term is variously understood, a preliminary introduction on its precise theological sense, the nature and motive of the assent required, has been prefixed by the Editor to the present volume. The treatise itself begins by showing that a revelation is neither impossible in itself, nor incompatible with the attributes of God already established, especially His immutability; and again, that such a communication is naturally desired by man. Though the rationalists assert that the perfectibility of the human race is to be attained by merely natural evolution, unaided by grace, a consideration of the heathen world, and of the failure of its best philosophers to overcome its idolatry and superstition, prove further that a revelation is a moral necessity for fallen man....