The Principle of Authority in Relation to Certainty, Sanctity and Society: An Essay in the Philosophy of Experimental Religion
Overview
There is only one thing greater than liberty, and that is authority. The conviction in these pages is that the principle of authority is ultimately the whole religious question, that an authority of any practical kind draws its meaning and its right only from the soul’s relation to its God, and this is so not only for religion strictly so called, nor for a church, but for a public life, social life, and the whole history and career of humanity. Forsyth unfolds this thesis with reference to the nature and ground of certainty, to the character and real basis of sanctity, and to society as expressed in education and custom, in theology, the church, and the Bible.
Top Highlights
“If they could not be answered practical faith would in due course decay” (Page 26)
“Religion, Faith, is taking home the fact, and not grasping the mere truth, that we are thus known. That fact is the matter of revelation. In the faith that answers revelation we are more sure that we are known than that we know. God gives Himself to our experience as such a God. He does not prove Himself to us. He comes home. When a man comes home he does not bring credentials but just himself. He does not treat his family as a jury or a committee of investigation. It is a matter of alogical recognition rather than of rational satisfaction. Truly, if revelation were the communication of truth, it would have to make its appeal to some previous truth to authenticate it, to some rational a priori, with which it must mortise. That is always the way new truth comes.” (Page 175)
“And duty whispers low ‘I must’ when grace has said ‘I can.’ The Stoic says in strength ‘I must, therefore I can’; the Christian says in grace, ‘I can, and therefore must. The new power I have is given me by a God who claims it again in my surrendered, adoring, and serviceable soul. By God’s grace I feel a new power—to do what? To develop all the best in me? No, that is making God my tributary. But to put myself and all He has made me at His absolute disposal, whether He make much of me or not; to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.’” (Pages 439–440)
“Every statement about God is challengeable till God states Himself, in His own way, by His own Son, His own Spirit, His own Word, His own Church, to our soul, which He remakes in the process.” (Page 22)
- Title: The Principle of Authority in Relation to Certainty, Sanctity and Society: An Essay in the Philosophy of Experimental Religion
- Author: Peter Taylor Forsyth
- Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
- Print Publication Date: 1912
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Era: era:modern
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Authority
- Resource ID: LLS:PRINCAUTHRFORSYTH
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-12T05:12:44Z