Concerning Natural Religion

In present theological conditions, one who is called upon to discourse concerning “natural religion as it is commonly called and understood by divines and learned men” finds himself embarrassed at the outset by the difficulty of defining his subject in accordance with the requirement, since the term is variously understood by “divines and learned men.” In a recent issue of the Harvard Theological Review Professor Knight of Tufts College described three specific uses of the correlative terms “nature” and “supernatural,” each of which, moreover, comprises many subordinate varieties. The late Dr. C. C. Everett, to whom, by the way, Professor Knight does not refer, defined the natural as “the universe considered as a composite whole,” the world of cause and effect, one might say, in which the laws of Haeckel's “Substance” prevail, or the natura naturata of Spinoza, and the supernatural as the non-composite unity, Spinoza's natura naturans, which manifests itself in and through the natural. If this use be accepted, and with it Dr. Everett's definition of religion corresponding to the stage in the development of the discussion where the terms first appear, namely, as “feeling towards the supernatural,” it is difficult to find any meaning for the term natural religion save as it may denote religion awakened by contemplation of nature. Otherwise, it becomes a contradiction in terms, the adjective cancelling the noun or vice versa. In substantial agreement with these definitions is the habit of regarding the supernatural as covering the realm of free personality, both human and divine, while the world of things, in which law uniformly and inexorably rules, is styled nature. Here too, since religion resides in personality and, at least among those who employ this terminology, involves a relation to personality, natural religion becomes meaningless.