Excerpt from Plato and Paul, Philosophy and Christianity: An Examination of the Two Fundamental Forces of Cosmic and Human History, With Their Contents, Methods, Functions, Relations, and Results Compared
Philosophy is Speculation; Christianity is Truth. So far forth as the subject-matter of the one is related to, or is identical with, the subject-matter of the other, the range of the one is equal to the range of the other. The realm of speculation is in the philosophic sense illimitable because the realm of truth is without bounds. Speculation concerns itself with truth, not as knowing it, but as seeking it, and as being ready to investigate it when found, or when it is assumed that it has been found. Both are engaged with the same problems, employing different and sometimes opposite methods in the attempt to solve them, but anticipating in their final rehearsal a vindication of the same truths, or the same forms of truth.
Philosophy, self-guided and self-reliant, speculates with enthusiastic purpose on the accepted or assumed verities of Christianity. Without knowledge, or waiving the use of Revelation as a source of knowledge, it can do nothing but speculate. It can assume nothing, it must prove every thing; it knows nothing, it must inquire as it goes along. It not infrequently happens that, dazed by the magnitude of its tasks, or discouraged by reason of the incompleteness of its discoveries, philosophy merely drifts along the routes of inquiry, marking the distances traveled by the mile-posts of its successive leaders, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the ages have waited for a settlement of the highest problems, and that it should promote a settlement or abandon its position as guide to truth. It often lags in its self-burdened efforts, and sometimes despairs of reaching the goal. From this uncertain and paralyzing condition, however, it usually recovers, apparently inspired with a conviction of duty it can not shake off, and proceeds with patient steps to the development of issues closely akin to those that have their life and power in the bosom of Christianity.
In the nature of the case philosophy is under restraint in the prosecution of its endeavors, but there is no help for it so long as its fundamental idea is in opposition to the idea of Revelation.
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