^{page 40 note 1} In Theologie und Metaphysik, zur Verständigung und Abwehr (Bonn, Adolph Marcus, 1881), Ritschl declares that he seeks not the elimination of metaphysics from theology but only a clarification of the right kind of metaphysics to be employed. Yet what Ritschl has in mind might be most aptly termed ‘descriptive metaphysics’ rather than metaphysics as a speculative ontology. By the former we have in mind principally the effort to elucidate the conceptual scheme by which we identify and talk about particular things and persons. Ritschl accepts as basic a distinction in our ordinary experience between things and persons, and he insists that no metaphysics is adequate which neglects this distinction or which seeks to transcend it by disregarding the function of historical, ethical, and psychological judgments in our knowlege of persons. (The above monograph hereafter cited as T.M.)

^{page 40 note 2} Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 76.Google Scholar

^{page 41 note 1} Quoted from D. M. Baillie in Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1957), p. 77.Google Scholar

^{page 41 note 2} Ritschl, Albrecht, Justification and Reconciliation, III, transl. Mackintosh, H. R. and Macaulay, A. B. (Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1902), p. 260, p. 270. Hereafter cited as J.R. III.Google Scholar

^{page 41 note 3} J.R. III, pp. 272–4.

^{page 41 note 4} J.R. III, p. 206.

^{page 42 note 1} J.R. III, pp. 10–11.

^{page 42 note 2} J.R. III, p. 24, p. 226. See also Oman, John, The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the Last Two Centuries (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1906), p. 365Google Scholarf. Refer also to Mitchell, Basil, ‘The Grace of God’ in Faith and Logic (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 160. Mitchell indicates the relation between theological judgments and the Christian praxis in worship and the moral life.Google Scholar

^{page 42 note 3} Braithwaite, R. B., An Empiricist's View of the Mature of Religious Belief (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1955), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

^{page 43 note 1} J.R. III, p. 206f. See also J.R. I, p. 45f, where Ritschl says: ‘… The claim to objective truth on behalf of the products of theological knowledge will be secured, and the coincidence of historical criticism upon theological systems with Feuerbach's misapprehension of religion will be prevented if we establish it as a fixed position, that we are never in any case conscious of a subjectively religious disposition as active towards the production of particular theological knowledge, except under the influence of the previously established idea of God, which has been handed down in the Church, and gives form, and measure, and aim to all our discussions.’

^{page 43 note 2} J.R. III, p. 16. See also Reischle, Max, Ein Wort zur Contromrse über die Mystik in der Thcologie (Freiburg, J. C. B. Mohr, 1886), p. 58Google Scholar. Reischle has shown how general conceptions of causality influenced not only medieval theology but Protestant scholasticism as well. It was assumed that we can talk of the ‘essence’ of the soul independently of those active functions in which we identify personal existence. ‘Die Theorie von ummittelbaren Einwirkungen Gottes hinter den bewussten Funktionen des geistigen Lebens, durch welche erst die Empfanglichkeit fur die Offenbarung geschaffen werden müsste, scheint uns also entbehrlich, da die religiösen Interessen auch ohne dieselbe gewahrt werden können; aber sie ist auch bedenklich’ (italics mine).

^{page 44 note 1} T.M., p. 8.

^{page 44 note 2} Hume, David, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in Hume Selections (New York, Scribner's, 1927), p. 322.Google Scholar

^{page 45 note 1} Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics 11.1, transl. Parker, T. H. L. (Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1957), p. 334f Church Dogmatics hereafter cited as C.DGoogle Scholar. See also J.R. I, p. 47, where Ritschl comments on the influence of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘When that abstraction from the world, which passes with the Areopagite as the right notion of God, dominates the structure of our doctrines concerning God, the absolute transcendence of God over the world is thereby secured, yet only in an essentially negative way. Even the Reformers reflect the influence of this tradition in theology concerning the doctrine of God.’

^{page 45 note 2} C.D. 11. I, p. 259. See also John Oman, op. cit., p. 396, where Oman points out how Ritschl ‘criticises the whole theology of Protestantism, maintaining that, from Melanchthon onwards, it failed to carry out its own conception of faith’. Refer especially to J.R. I, p. 238: ‘It is far from being unimportant for the praxis of the Church that Melanchthon, while denying her political nature, should have found no other analogy for her real character than that of a school.’

^{page 45 note 3} C.D. I.a, p. 288.

^{page 46 note 1} See especially J.R. I, p. 345, where Ritschl says concerning the charge that the thelogy of the Enlightenment sets aside the church-fellowship: ‘If … a charge is to be brought against the men of the illumination in this matter, the same charge must also be laid against the representatives of the earlier period, in whose tradition the views of their successors found their root no less than in the Wolfian philosophy. The Lutheran orthodoxy of the seventeenth century is jointly responsible for the theological illumination that followed it. For it was orthodoxy that first suffered the force of the idea of the Church to be weakened; it was orthodoxy that connected the individual's gracious development only slightly with the notion of the Church; finally, as matter of fact, it was orthodoxy that lowered the Church to the level of a theological school.’ On p. 343 Ritschl criticises the view that ‘Christianity has only rational contents, that God brings men to blessedness even without special revelation, and that the nurture of the individual in virtue, and the exhibition thereof in righteous action is the chief thing even within Christianity.’

^{page 46 note 2} J.R. III, p. 194.

^{page 46 note 3} Note briefly Ritschl's criticisms of the proofs for God's existence. Now usually the cosmological proof is so stated, that when one is seeking a conclusion for the succession of operations and causes, in which things are arranged, one thinks of the first cause as causa sui, which is not res causata, which accordingly is God. But even if the proof could accomplish what it professes, the certainty of God's existence would not be established, for the proof only expresses the thought that if one wishes to recognise the ‘world as a whole’, one adds to it the thought of God as the first cause. Ritschl points to the difficulty in the propriety of talking about the cosmos as requiring a cause, as if this were an extension of the sorts of remarks made about given things which do have causes where perceptible differences count for or against the ascription of causality. Scientific knowledge of causes and effects advances by experience and observation, but we cannot by such means comprehend the world as a whole or even properly subsume it under the category of causality. See J.R. III, p. 214, p. 215.

The ontological proof that the idea of the perfect being necessarily involves the predicate of existence, is rejected as not carrying us beyond thought to reality. In other words, even if the assumption that existence is included in the concept of perfection is permitted, this does not serve to establish that the perfect thing exists. All that is shown is that if one is to have a correct concept of that perfect being, he must think of it as existing. See J.R. III, p. 216.

As regards the teleological argument, Ritschl declares: ‘If we, in the observation of purposeful relations of things, consider ourselves justified in forming the idea of a world-whole on the assumption of a final purpose, then Aristotle has already included in this concept that of the highest intelligence…. But if one is accurate in terms of the evidence with the teleological induction, then others have already shown that in an immeasurable compass we find relations of things contrary to purpose in addition to those according to purpose, so that we do not reach to any goal in this metaphysical view of the world, to say nothing of an assured inference to a transcendent God.’ Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 14.

^{page 47 note 1} J.R. III, p. 399.

^{page 47 note 2} T.M., p. 59.

^{page 47 note 3} T.M., p. 36.

^{page 48 note 1} T.M., p. 18.

^{page 48 note 2} T.M., p. 37.

^{page 49 note 1} J.R. III, p. 236.

^{page 49 note 2} Ritschl, Albrecht, Instruction in the Christian Religion, transl. from 4th edn. by Swing, A. T. in The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl (New York, Longmans, Green, 1901), p. 183.Google Scholar

^{page 49 note 3} Barth commends the Ritschlian emphasis upon the primacy of love in the consideration of God's revelation, but he criticises Ritschl for his failure to understand properly the freedom of this love. See C.D. 11.I, p. 340f.

^{page 50 note 1} T.M., p. 59f.

^{page 51 note 1} T.M., pp. 19–20. See also p. 38. The latter passage makes it clear that Ritschl intends to ascribe unity and causality to a thing by analogy from the experience of one's own self.

^{page 51 note 2} Ritschl, Otto, Albrecht Rilschls Lebcn II (Freiburg, J. C. B. Mohr, 1896), p. 194.Google Scholar

^{page 52 note 1} Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind has criticised the conception of mind as an immaterial substratum which may be treated as if it were the topic of a set of untestable categorical propositions. Ryle defends the view of mind as the topic of testable hypothetical and semi-hypothetical propositions. When we refer to someone's mind we are referring largely to certain of his capacities, abilities, skills, habits, in a word, certain ‘dispositions’.

^{page 52 note 2} J.R. III, p. 406. Considering the ground of justification as directly dependent on the life and suffering of Jesus Christ, Ritschl declares: ‘Wherever mysticism is found, the thought of justification no longer retains its true significance as the key to the whole domain of Christian life, but is so depreciated as to become a mere formal precondition of the immediate union with God.’ Justification and Reconciliation I, transl. J. S. Black (Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, 1872), p. 113. On the significance of the above passage from J.R. III, p. 406, see Max Reischle, op. cit., p. 50f. Ritschl does not deny belief in the present reality of the exalted Christ, but he does mean to say that the cognitive significance we can ascribe to this belief differs, in terms of the evidence available, from our knowledge of Jesus in His earthly-life.

^{page 53 note 1} See Brightman, E. S., ‘Ritschl's Criterion of Religious Truth’, American Journal of Theology, XXI, pp. 212ff.Google Scholar

^{page 53 note 2} J.R. III, p. 7, p. 199.

^{page 53 note 3} See, for example, Mackintosh, H. R., Types of Modern Theology (London, Nisbet, 1937), p. 151f.Google Scholar

^{page 53 note 4} Malcolm, Norman, ‘Knowledge of Other Minds’, reprinted in The Philosophy of Mind, ed. Chappell, V. C. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 156f.Google Scholar

^{page 54 note 1} Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York, Macmillan, 1953), Section 208.

^{page 54 note 2} ibid., Section 202.

^{page 54 note 3} Malcolm, op. cit., p. 157.

^{page 54 note 4} Malcolm, Norman, ‘Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations’, reprinted in The Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 79f.Google Scholar

^{page 54 note 5} Barth, Karl, ‘The Principles of Dogmatics according to Wilhelm Herrmann’ in Theology and Church (New York, Harper and Row, 1962), p. 248. Note what Barth says concerning the relation between fiducia and asscnsus in C.D. 1.I, p. 268.Google Scholar

^{page 55 note 1} Herrmann, Wilhelm, The Communion of the Christian with God, 2nd English edn. Transl. Stanyton, J. S. (London, Williams and Norgate, 1906), p. 119.Google Scholar

^{page 55 note 2} Herrmann, Wilhelm, ‘Faith as Ritschl Defined It’ in Faith and Morals (London, Williams and Norgate, 1904), p. 52.Google Scholar

^{page 56 note 1} See Herrmann's essay ‘The Moral Law as Understood in Romanism and in Protestantism’, in Faith and Morals, p. 177f This essay shows clearly the emphasis Herrmann places on independent moral conviction within the individual.

^{page 56 note 2} Troeltsch, Ernst, Die Bedeuting des Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben (Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr), p. 23.Google Scholar

^{page 56 note 3} ibid., p. 31f.

^{page 56 note 4} This consideration is particularly relevant for the assessment of Rudolf Bultmann's theology. We find in Bultmann a continuation of that line which stems from Herrmann and which is concerned with the individual's grasp of revelation as a present reality in the inner life. See Rudolf Bultmann, ‘On the Problem of Demythologising’, The Journal of Religion, vol. XLII, no. 2, p. 101.