SECTION B 

 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



(Hall 1, September 21,3 p. w.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR THOMAS C. HALL, Union Theological Seminary, N. Y. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER, University of Berlin. 



PROFESSOR ERNST TROELTSCH, University of Heidelberg. 

 SECRETARY: DR. W. P. MONTAGUE, Columbia University. 



THE RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO 

 THE OTHER SCIENCES 



BY PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER 



[D. Otto Pfleiderer, Professor of Theology, University of Berlin since 1875. 

 b. September 1, 1839, Stetten. Wiirtemberg. Grad. Tubingen, 1857-61. 

 Post-grad, ibid. 1864-68. City Professor, Heilbronn, 1868-69; Superin- 

 tendent, Jena, 1869-70; Professor of Theology, Jena, 1870-75. Author of 

 Religion and its Essential Characteristics; Religious Philosophy upon His- 

 torical Foundation; and many other works and papers on Theology.] 



IN order to answer this question, we need to consider a prelimi- 

 nary question, namely, whether religion can be regarded as the 

 object of scientific knowledge in the same manner as other processes 

 of the intellectual life of the race, such as law, history, and art. It 

 is well known that this question has not always received an affirm- 

 ative answer, and indeed it can never be answered in the affirmative 

 so long as the position is maintained that the only religion is that of 

 the Christian Church, whose doctrines and teachings rest upon an 

 immediate divine revelation, and that these must be accepted by 

 men in blind belief. Under the position of an authoritative ecclesias- 

 tical faith there can indeed exist a theoretical consideration of the 

 doctrines of faith, as it was the case with the scholastic theology 

 of the Middle Ages, which with great earnestness sought to harmon- 

 ize faith and knowledge; nevertheless, no one of the present day 

 would give to the scholastic theology the name of science with the 

 modern meaning of the term science. The scholastic theology used 

 great formal acuteness and skill in the work of defining and defend- 

 ing ecclesiastical traditions, still there was lacking that which for 

 us is the essential condition of scientific knowledge, the free examin- 

 ation of tradition according to the laws of human thought and the 



