ight seem to warrant) that the essence
of Christianity is an ethical theism. While he thus created a new and
more ethical "rationalism," Kant's many-sided influence, alike in
philosophy and in theology, worked to further issues. He (and other
Germans, but not G.W.F. Hegel) was represented in England in a
fragmentary way by S.T. Coleridge (1772-1834), probably the most typical
figure of his period--another layman. His general thought was that
"rationalism" represents an uprising of the lower reason or
"understanding" against the higher or true "reason." The mysteries of
theology are its best part--not alien to reason but of its substance,
the "logos." This is to upset the compromise of Aquinas and go back to a
Christian platonism. Of course the difficulty revives again: If a
philosophy, why supernaturally revealed? Thomas Arnold, criticizing
Edward Hawkins, appeals rather to the atonement as deeper neglected
truth. So in Scotland, Thomas Erskine and Thomas Chalmers--the latter in
contradiction to his earlier position--hold that the doctrine of
salvation, when translated into experience, furnishes "internal
evidence"--a somewhat broader use of the phrase than when it applies
merely to evidence of date or authorship drawn from the contents of a
book. This gives a new and moral filling to the conception of
"supernatural revelation" The attempt to work out either of the
reactions against Thomism in new theological systems is pretty much
confined to Germany. Hegel's theological followers, of every shade and
party, represent the first, and Schleiermacher's the second.
Schleiermacher rejects natural religion in favour of the positive
religions, while the school of A. Ritschl and W. Herrmann reject natural
theology outright in favour of revelation--a striking external parallel
to early Socinianism. British and American divines, on the other hand,
are slow to suspect that a new apologetic principle may mean a new
system of apologetics, to say nothing of a new dogmatic. Among the
evangelicals, for the most part, natural theology, far from being
rejected, is not even modified, and certain doctrines continue to be
described as incomprehensible mysteries. No Protestant, of course, can
agree with Roman Catholic theology that (supernatural) faith is an
obedient assent to church authority and the mysteries it dictates. To
Protestantism, faith is personal trust. But the principle is hardly ever
carried out to the end. Mysterious doctrines