is made
between _Historical_ and _Systematic Theology_. The former traces the
various doctrines of the faith in question through the different epochs
and stages of culture, showing their historical process of growth and
development; the latter presents these same doctrines in comprehensive
form as a fixed system, as they have finally been elaborated and accepted
upon the basis of the sacred scriptures and their authoritative
interpretation.

2. Theology and Philosophy of Religion differ widely in their character.
Theology deals exclusively with a specific religion; in expounding one
doctrinal system, it starts from a positive belief in a divine revelation
and in the continued working of the divine spirit, affecting also the
interpretation and further development of the sacred books. Philosophy of
Religion, on the other hand, while dealing with the same subject matter as
Theology, treats religion from a general point of view as a matter of
experience, and, as every philosophy must, without any foregone
conclusion. Consequently it submits the beliefs and doctrines of religion
in general to an impartial investigation, recognizing neither a divine
revelation nor the superior claims of any one religion above any other,
its main object being to ascertain how far the universal laws of human
reason agree or disagree with the assertions of faith.(2)

3. It is therefore incorrect to speak of a Jewish religious philosophy.
This has no better right to exist than has Jewish metaphysics or Jewish
mathematics.(3) The Jewish thinkers of the Spanish-Arabic period who
endeavored to harmonize revelation and reason, utilizing the Neo-Platonic
philosophy or the Aristotelian with a Neo-Platonic coloring, betray by
their very conceptions of revelation and prophecy the influence of
Mohammedan theology; this was really a graft of metaphysics on theology
and called itself the "divine science," a term corresponding exactly with
the Greek "theology." The so-called Jewish religious philosophers adopted
both the methods and terminology of the Mohammedan theologians, attempting
to present the doctrines of the Jewish faith in the light of philosophy,
as truth based on reason. Thus they claimed to construct a Jewish theology
upon the foundation of a philosophy of religion.

But neither they nor their Mohammedan predecessors succeeded in working
out a complete system of theology. They left untouched essential elements
of religion which do not come wit