i8 7 7] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 363 



true value of prophecy in two ways which are by no means 

 obviously coincident. At one time he tells us that our 

 judgment upon each prophet must rest upon &quot; the 

 earnestness and warmth of his religious and moral con 

 viction, the depth and purity of his religious belief &quot; 

 (PP- 363, 364). On the other hand, he concludes by 

 affirming that the permanent value of their work rests 

 on the fact that they created ethical monotheism, and have 

 made that belief the inalienable property of our race. On 

 the first statement the value of the prophetic convictions 

 appears to be in their subjective intensity ; on the second, 

 it depends on their objective validity as convictions 

 &quot; which have become the inalienable property of our 

 race.&quot; How do these two views hang together ? The 

 mere intensity of prophetic conviction cannot be what 

 makes it a conviction of universal validity. No con 

 victions are intenser than those of a madman, but they 

 are not therefore of value or fit to become the inalienable 

 property of our race. The prophetic teaching can have 

 value only if it is true. Its truth is not proved by the 

 earnestness of the teacher. How then does Kuenen know 

 that ethical monotheism is a true belief ? To this 

 question we receive no answer except the negative one 

 that the prophets were wrong in supposing that the truth 

 came to them by personal communication from God 

 Himself. 



The truth is, that the school to which Kuenen belongs 

 never seriously faces the question of the objective value 

 of religious truth. The so-called modern school sets 

 before it an entirely different question from that of the 

 old theology. The old theology treated of God, His 

 attributes, His manifestation, His dealings with men. The 

 new school treats of religion. Its theology is a discussion 

 of man s beliefs about God, of man s religious actions and 

 feelings. When these have been analysed, and when 

 their development has been traced, the modern theologian 

 is perfectly happy. Religion has been genetically ex- 



