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‘Our Knowledge of God’ in the Theology of John Baillie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Donald S. Klinefelter
Donald S. Klinefelter
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee at ChattanoogaChattanooga Tennessee 37401U.S.A.
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Extract

I have chosen this title for two reasons: first, to indicate that this essay will focus primarily on issues of religious epistemology; and, second, to acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to the work of that brilliant but frequently neglected Scottish theologian and churchman of the first half of this century, the late Principal John Baillie of New College, Edinburgh.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 30 , Issue 5 , October 1977 , pp. 401 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1977

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References

page 402 note 1 Clive, Geoffrey, ‘Romanticism and Anti-Romanticism in the Nihilism of Bazarov’, Christian Scholar, XLV (Fall, 1962), p. 220.Google Scholar

page 402 note 2 For a very comprehensive survey of these contemporary theological developments, see Gilkey, Langdon B., Naming the Whirlwind (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).Google Scholar

page 403 note 1 I have previously traced Baillie's personal pilgrimage from Scottish Calvinism to post-Barthian liberalism in ‘The Theology of John Baillie: A Biographical Introduction’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 22 (December, 1969), pp. 419–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 403 note 2 Scott, Geoffrey, The Portrait of Zelide (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), p. 164.Google Scholar Quoted by Clive, in The Romantic Enlightenment (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), p. 57.Google Scholar

page 404 note 1 Baillie, John, The Interpretation of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928), p. 3.Google Scholar

page 404 note 2 ibid., p. 14. For a very interesting and provocative post-Einsteinian account of the nature and function of theology as a science, see Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), and God and Rationality (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). I have tried to respond to Torrance in ‘God and Rationality: A Critique of the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance’, Journal of Religion, 53 (January, 1973), pp. 117–35.

page 404 note 3 ibid., pp. 37ff. Baillie's early identification of ‘philosophy’ with philosophical idealism shows the tremendous influence the Hegelian synthesis had in Britain at this time. In his later writings Baillie seems content to treat the role of philosophy more modestly as the conceptual analysis of different disciplines.

page 405 note 1 ibid., p. 48. Cf. George Mavrodes, Belief in God (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 41–8.

page 405 note 2 Baillie, John, ‘The Present Situation in Theology’, Auburn Seminary Record, XVI (November 10, 1920), p. 227.Google Scholar

page 406 note 1 Baillie, John, The Interpretation of Religion, op. cit., pp. 203–214.Google Scholar

page 406 note 2 ibid., p. 245.

page 406 note 3 ibid., p. 246. In his later writings Baillie goes on to identify ‘faith’ with this ‘direct intuition’ of moral (and religious) value.

page 407 note 1 ibid., 289ff. Cf. John E. Smith, Experience and God (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 102–3.

page 407 note 2 ibid., p. 409. We shall return to the difficult question of the conflicting claims of the different world religions in section II of this paper.

page 409 note 1 Baillie, John, Our Knowledge of God (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), pp. 187–189.Google ScholarProfessorMcIntyre, John, Baillie's student and successor at New College, has offered a very sophisticated analysis of this knotty Christological problem in his excellent study, The Shape of Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966).Google Scholar

page 409 note 2 ibid., p. 185.

page 409 note 3 ibid., p. 178. Cf. Robert A. Oakes, ‘Mediation, Encounter, and God’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 2 (Fall, 1971), pp. 152–5; and, especially, J. Brenton Stearns ‘Mediated Immediacy: A Search for Some Models’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 3 (Winter, 1972), pp. 195–211.

page 411 note 1 ibid., pp. 51–2.

page 411 note 2 cf. Our Knowledge of God, loc. cit., pp. 166–77, 233–9. Despite his occasional vacillation on this point, Baillie would definitely be classified as an ‘ontological’ rather than ‘cosmological’ philosopher of religion. Cf. Tillich, Paul, ‘The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion’, Theology of Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

page 412 note 1 Apart from some early liberal ‘experiments’, Baillie simply assumes that the classical Christian conception of God is fundamentally coherent, that there is no inherent conflict between God's metaphysical and moral attributes, and that God's relation to the world can be adequately described in the paradoxical and symbolic language of much dialectical theology. Surely any serious attempt to develop the implications of Baillie's thought along these lines would require a careful look at the relations of necessity and contingency and transcendence and immanence in contemporary neo-classical conceptions of God. For two excellent examples of such prospective analyses, see Martin, Richard M., ‘On God and Primordiality’, Review of Metaphysics, XXIX (March, 1976), pp. 497–522Google Scholar; and, Power, William L., ‘The Notion of Transcendence and the Problem of Discourse about God’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLIII (September, 1975), pp. 531–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 412 note 2 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 413 note 1 ibid., pp. 52–3.

page 413 note 2 ibid., p. 53, n. 1.

page 414 note 1 ibid., p. 54. Cf. The Interpretation of Religion, op. cit., pp. 226–30.

page 415 note 1 ibid., p. 75.

page 415 note 2 For a variety of statements and criticisms of this basic understanding of religious faith, see Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), pp. 44–48, 106Google Scholar; Mitchell, Basil, ‘The Parable of the Stranger’, in Flew, and MacIntyre, , New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 103–105Google Scholar; and Nielsen, Kai, ‘Empiricism, Theoretical Constructs, and God’, Journal of Religion, 54 (July, 1974), pp. 199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 415 note 3 Baillie, John, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), pp. 134, 136–7.Google Scholar

page 416 note 1 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God, op. cit., pp. 132, 137.Google Scholar

page 416 note 2 ibid., p. 159. Cf. Baillie's Invitation to Pilgrimage (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942).

page 417 note 1 ibid., pp. 161–2.

page 417 note 2 ibid., pp. 256–8.

page 418 note 1 Baillie, John, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, op. cit., p. 138.Google Scholar

page 418 note 2 ibid., p. 139.

page 418 note 3 ibid., pp. 141–6.

page 418 note 4 ibid., p. 141. This is not to deny, however, that Baillie seems to be unaware of certain implications and potential difficulties of his various formulations of this issue, e.g. to what extent can any empirical proof or revelation entail the necessity of the divine existence or attributes?

page 419 note 1 ibid., p. 142.

page 419 note 2 For two tantalising Roman Catholic variations on this theme, see Dunne, John, A Search for God in Time and Memory (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar, and The Way of All the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1972)Google Scholar; and Novak, Michael, Belief and Unbelief (New York: New American Library, 1965)Google Scholar, and Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).Google Scholar

page 420 note 1 cf. Lonergan, Bernard, Insight (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958)Google Scholar; and Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).Google Scholar

page 420 note 2 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God, op. cit., pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

page 421 note 1 ibid., pp. 67–71.

page 422 note 1 ibid., pp. 69–70.

page 423 note 1 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), p. 132.Google Scholar In a similar context, C. A. Campbell writes: ‘That the appeal must be to introspection is no doubt unfortunate. But he would be a very doctrinaire critic of introspection who declined to make use of it when in the nature of the case no other means of apprehension is available.’ ‘Is “Free Will” a Pseudo-Problem?’ Mind, LX (October, 1951), pp. 462–3.

page 423 note 2 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God, op. cit., p. 73.Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 ibid., pp. 187–8.

page 424 note 2 ibid., p. 188.

page 424 note 3 ibid., p. 200.

page 424 note 4 ibid., pp. 202–3. cf. Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 118–129Google Scholar.

page 425 note 1 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God., op. cit., pp. 208–209.Google Scholar cf. Baillie's, Invitation to Pilgrimage, op. cit., p. 122.Google Scholar

page 426 note 1 For a most impressive and sophisticated, yet sympathetic, treatment of several of these questions, see Schuon, Frithjof, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (New York: Harper and Row, 1975, original 1948)Google Scholar, and Logic and Transcendence (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).Google Scholar But compare the intriguing suggestion regarding the logic of differences of degree and differences of kind, never fully developed, that Baillie borrows from Collingwood, R. G. in Our Knowledge of God, op. cit., pp. 102–104.Google Scholar

page 427 note 1 I have tried to develop this aspect of Baillie's argument in considerable detail in ‘Truth, Testability, and “Unrepentant Verificationism” ’, forthcoming in the Journal of Religion.

page 427 note 2 Baillie, John, The Sense of the Presence of God, op. cit., p. 261.Google Scholar