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Varieties of Religious Experience: A Quote

 


This quote has been bugging me of late. I remembered it vividly but wanted to be able to quote the exact words. Yet I couldn't find it -- my memory located it in the wrong chapter.

Now I'll keep it safe here. About the Bible, James says, the big question is not one that history or archeology by themselves can untangle for us, because it is pragmatic:

"[O]f what use should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined [by the historians and archeologists] be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in a thing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation; and this theory itself would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment we might indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific or historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passion and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their faith, then the verdict would be much more favorable."  

It takes a Swedenborgian's kid to write like that!


 

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