It shall be our task to lead into this unknown land those students also who have not been familiar with it from their youth, who have not lived in its sunlight and eaten of its bread. It is unnecessary to say that all controversy and any sort of disparagement of the religious feelings of others shall be scrupulously avoided. On the other hand you should not forget that it is the highest and noblest privilege of a German scholar to be a “professor” and to proclaim the faith that is in him. A scholar cannot but profess that truth which he has discovered in the depths of his own soul by using all the scientific means at his disposal and by practicing an absolute honesty. He must profess the truth which he recognizes as the decisive truth and reality. And so he may not put us off with vague hypotheses, or with undecided alternatives; he must define and he must decide. Such is the spirit in which these lectures were written, and it is in that spirit that I would have you accept them. There is light and guidance for us all in the words of St. John; the truth will make us free.

Endnotes

1.      In “Der Katholizismus, seine Idee und seine Erscheinung” (1923, p. 12), a new and much enlarged edition of his “Das Wesen des Katholizismus” (1920), six lectures delivered in Sweden in the autumn of 1919. Friedrich Heiler is Professor of the Comparative History of Religion in the University of Marburg and a distinguished non-Catholic religious writer in present day Germany. His theological position is a highly individual one, but he may be said to have affinities with the late Archbishop Soderblom on the one hand, and on the other with that “High Church” party (possessing an organ with the title “Una Sancta”) which is one of the most interesting phenomena of post-war German Protestantism. Heiler’s book above cited, though containing much severe criticism of alleged defects in Catholic teaching and practice, is yet characterized by a profound sympathy with Catholicism.

2.      Harnack, “Reden und Aufsatze” (1904), Vol. II, p. 170.

3.      Goethe, “Faust,” Pt. II.

4.      Op. cit., p. 8.

5.      Essay on L. von Ranke’s “History of the Popes.”

6.      The “As If Philosophy,” or “Fictionalism,” regards our intellectual conceptions as nothing better than fictions. It admits that they are useful; but, unlike Pragmatism, regards this usefulness as no criterion of truth. The founder of this thorough-going skepticism is Hans Vaihinger. His book, “Die philosophie des Als Ob” (Berlin, 1911), has been translated into English as “The Philosophy of ‘As If’ ” (London, 1924).

7.      cf. Tertullian’s judgment on the heretics of his time: “Nihil enim interest illis, licet diversa tractantibus, dum ad unius veritatis expugnationem conspirent…. Schisma est enim unitas ipsa” (“De Praescriptione,” c. 41, 42). Similarly St. Augustine: “Dissentiunt inter se, contra unitatem omnes consentiunt” (Sermo XLVII, 15, 27).