A Few Words From William Temple

Excerpted from the Gifford Series Lectures: 

Lecture I: The Distinction Between Natural and Revealed Religion

William Temple (1932)

Now it is universally recognised that religious belief, like all other, rests at first on authority. There is here no relevant difference between a child brought up by religious parents and a full-grown unbeliever converted by the appeal of a preacher. In the latter case the act of surrender is more conscious, and it is also more conspicuous because surrender is a less frequent occurrence in the life of an adult than in that of a child. But it is still, in both cases, surrender. The number of instances in which a man becomes in a living sense religious because he has been convinced by argumentation must be extremely small.

The child accepts what he is told concerning God as he accepts all else that he is told by those in trust upon whom he lives, according to his capacity to receive it. In the same way he accepts the dogmatic assertion that 7 × 7 = 49 without working it out for himself. But in most departments of life the basis of belief is gradually shifted from the authority of parents and teachers to his own experience and his own reflection upon this. And so far as this happens, his belief becomes more autonomous. It is his own; he has verified and vindicated it. He is still grateful to parents and teachers—more grateful now than ever. But his belief no longer rests on their authority. He has put it to the proof himself; very likely in so doing he has modified it; but in any case it is now his own, not something which he has borrowed from others.

The process is familiar also in religious growth. But here there is a difference.

The believer who finds that experience and reflection confirm his belief is also in the position of having changed a faith rooted in the authority of teachers to one based on and vindicated by his own experience and criticism.

In that sense he too is translated from dependence on authority to a real autonomy. Yet that is not the feature in the situation which is most conspicuous to himself. No doubt, if challenged, he is ready to assert the immediacy of assurance with which he now holds his faith. But it requires a challenge to bring that aspect of the matter into prominence.

What he realises day by day is that his growth in personal certitude, in detachment from any human authority, has brought him into ever closer relations with a Being who claims the allegiance of his entire nature—desire and thought, conscience and will.

He is delivered, not from, but to, authority, though to authority of a new kind; for the point on which he has reached personal conviction is the existence of a God entitled to exercise authority over him, and of his own consequent obligation to serve and obey that God.

He does not find here any conflict with reason; nothing can be so reasonable as total submission to the God with whom he has to do. It is not unreasonable for the ignorant man to trust and implicitly to follow the expert; on the contrary, it is unreasonable for him to set up an ill-formed judgement in opposition to real knowledge; he may begin to study the subject so that he may understand the expert, but till his understanding is equal he will defer in judgement.

So to the devout man it would seem the height of unreason that he should set up his judgement against that of his God. He, too, will try to understand the mind of God, but he will not expect to reach the end of that enterprise, and as he looks back upon his philosophisings in the light of his vision of God he will exclaim with Job:

“Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not, things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I loathe my words and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42: 3,5,6