40 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
bitrarily limited metaphysics by insisting that all religious
ideas must be submitted for final Judgment to scientific rea-
son. It is argued that any doctrine which cannot be verified
by controlled experiment or analytical reason is untenable.
Yet, a more balanced evaluation must allow that religious
experience in part supplies unique data. The religious under-
standing of personal and historical life has an authentic
rationale at its own level of meaning. Moreover, insight and
knowledge often surpass their alleged limits in many differ-
ent fields of study. There is no justification for supposing that
religious truth cannot transcend arbitrarily imposed bound-
aries or be fructified by the critical use of reason.
Religious education, although concerned with individual
growth and development, is not simply subjective or limited
to personal opinion; in short, it cannot be reduced to merely
moral training. Rather, its essential interests are directed to
the whole world of reality beyond the self which brings in-
clusive meanings to existence. Mature religion as fellowship,
worship and prayer as well as critical reflection seeks to re-
late the individual to the totality of the universe itself. Self-
criticism, repentance and faith are all directed to a reality
which is believed to transcend the individual even as present
to him. Self-centered piety or reflection is likely to confuse
the human and the divine, espousing the former rather than
worshipping the latter.
Professor Tillich, in particular, has made clear that both
philosophy and theology seek to discover the deepest mean-
ings of reality.20 Although the latter attempts to understand
the meaning of existence from religious experience, it is not
necessarily irrational. Truth for both transcends in principle
all sectarian distinctions whether metaphysical or ecclesias-
tical. Tillich, to be sure, disavows positivism and pragmatism