KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22319, 5 February 1938, Page 18

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The Validity of Rei'-gions Experience. Isv F. E. E-n.Vkcnd, Ph. D.. M.A.. B.D. Ivor Nicholson and Watson. 388 pp. (8/6 net.)

This volume appears in the series entitled “The International Library of Christian Knowledge.” Dr. England maintains that all experience is a web made up of inseparable elements of intuition and interpretation. He contends that the fact that human personality is a dynamic whole implies that there is a “wider environmental whole within which it lives and moves and has its being.” Religious experience is the result of the relationship of the individual to this “wider environmental whole.” By a psychological analysis of religious experience, the author endeavours to show the organic connexion of this experience with the rest of reality. Dr. England gives reasons, at some length, for rejecting the doctrine that religion is merely a private and subjective world view. Neither, however, is he enamoured of those who, like Tro eltsch and Otto, maintain that they have discovered an a priori element in religious apprehension. He is equally dissatisfied with those who base the objective validity of the idea of God on a certain kind of experience. His view is that we can argue from the awareness of unconditional obligation, from our sense of loyalty to an inviolate goodness, from our adoration of the supremely holy to a source of values outside and beyond ourselves. This book constitutes a valuable contribution to the modern literature of Theism.