The Christian consciousness: its relation to evolution in morals and in doctrine
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII OBJECTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Evolution or development in morals is denied by some who are recognized champions of orthodoxy, as that word is used from the Protestant point of vi...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII OBJECTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Evolution or development in morals is denied by some who are recognized champions of orthodoxy, as that word is used from the Protestant point of view. This has been made easy by its natural opposition to the ethical and moral systems which profess to improve upon and to supplant the Christian system. Since these non-Christian systems all hold to the evolution of morals, is not the contrary true of Christian morality? To many minds, evolution in morals appears to be a playing fast and loose with the everlasting right and wrong. It is rhetorically convincing to assert that right can never become wrong. That is true so far as it is said regarding God's estimate of things; but, as a matter of fact, history tells us that so far as men are concerned, the thing that was right two hundred years ago is wrong to-day. To this it may be replied that slavery, drinking customs, and certain harsher dogmas, were wrong then, as they are now, but that men did not know any better. It is man's thought that changes, not God's thought. God's supreme wisdom is not in question. Moral philosophy is the science of human conduct, not of the divine administration. So far as man is concerned, evolution is as true in moral as it is in social and in physical life; and evolution in morals implies evolution in doctrine, for life of the consistent selfrespecting kind must always be the outcome of that which a man believes. The following quotation may be taken as fairly representing the school of thought to which we refer. It is a form of apologetic that one shrinks from attacking, because one feels either that he does not understand, or that he himself is not understood:--"But moral laws--whatever has been our progress in the knowledge of mind, of...
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