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Updated: June 9, 2025
With the rise of the cities and the national states came the revival of learning and a fresh interest in all phases of human life. The complete control of human life by a supernaturalistic religion was then no longer even a theoretical possibility. Life became a thing of interest for its own sake, something frankly to be enjoyed. Humanism had once more appeared in the world.
This is only one of the many indications which point to the essential artificiality of all the mediæval attempts to harmonize a given system of philosophy with a supernaturalistic standpoint, such as is that of the Bible. It is not in this way that the Bible is to be saved if it needs saving.
It is not alone true that so long as the lower kind of revivalism is encouraged, we are unconsciously perpetuating certain very ugly manifestations of social life; it is also true that while we give a supernaturalistic interpretation of phenomena that are wholly physiological and sociological in character, we can never make the most of the human material we possess.
Considering Greek philosophy in its entirety, we see that it was naturalistic rather than supernaturalistic, and rationalistic rather than mystical. These gifted men saw no clear indication for the existence of a supreme being; very few of them speak of the deity in the role of Providence and fewer still believed in personal immortality.
The amount of supernaturalism current is still very large; and one still finds people explaining some of the plainest facts of social life in terms of supernaturalistic beliefs. It is all part of the truth that man is always under the domination of the psychological forces.
"The choice of the Chinese philosophy and the rejection of Buddhism was not because of any inherent quality in the Japanese mind. It was not the rejection of supernaturalism or the miraculous. The Chinese philosophy is as supernaturalistic as some forms of Buddhism. The distinction is not between the natural and the supernatural in either system, but between the seen and the unseen."
In every age in which a supernaturalistic system is preached we must accordingly expect to find the world standing up stubbornly against it, essentially unconverted and hostile, whatever name it may have been christened with; and we may expect the spirit of the world to find expression, not only in overt opposition to the supernaturalistic system, but also in the surviving or supervening worldliness of the faithful.
It is in part directed against the age-old, supernaturalistic perspective which has done so much to render religion a hindrance to the growth of spirituality. The growth of my own thinking has led me to see, ever more clearly, the harm done in this day and age by that emphasis on sanctions for conduct which are not justified by the vital and concrete needs of human life.
Its daily bread, from the beginning, was hope for a miraculous change of scene, for prison-walls falling to the ground about it, for a heart inwardly comforted, and a shower of good things from the sky. It is clear that a supernaturalistic faith of this sort, which might wholly inspire some revolutionary sect, can never wholly inspire human society.
As to the interests of morality, I am disposed to think that if mankind could be got to act up to this last principle in every relation of life, a reformation would be effected such as the world has not yet seen; an approximation to the millennium, such as no supernaturalistic religion has ever yet succeeded, or seems likely ever to succeed, in effecting.
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