The Philosophy of the Christian Religion
- ISBN-10
- 1230250557
- ISBN-13
- 9781230250557
- Pages
- 188
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2013-09
- Publisher
- Theclassics.Us
- Author
- Andrew Martin Fairbairn
Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION A. Principles: The Idea And Origin Of Religion PHILOSOPHY, understood as reflexion on our ultimate ideas, is almost as old as religion, and began to be the moment man consciously enquired concerning beliefs that had unconsciously arisen, What do they mean? He had to live much longer, forget much and learn more, before he could ask, What do I mean by my beliefs? A yet vaster revolution of time and mind had to happen before he framed the questions: What do my beliefs mean to me? and have their many changes of form and setting since the days of my youth left them still the old beliefs and still mine? But all these might be discussed as problems in religious philosophy without ever raising the distinctive questions in the philosophy of religion. The two are distinguished thus: the former is concerned with religious ideas, but the latter with concrete religion; the one deals with beliefs, their basis, psychological genesis, and intellectual forms, but the other enquires why religion as an objective fact and living organism has appeared, and how it has behaved; what are its sources and elements, its ideas and customs; what its dependency on man and on environment; what functions it has fulfilled, and with what results, and for what reasons in personal, tribal, national, and collective history. It recognises religion as a universal fact which has to be construed through what is universal in human nature; and it seeks to discover the forces and the factors that modify the universal fact into the infinite variety of forms it assumes in time and place, and to determine the PHILOSOPHY AND THE RELIGIONS 187 worth of these modifications. Its scope is therefore immense, and its problem intricate, but one thing it...
