Frederick Temple

Excerpt from The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 on the Foundation of the Late Rev. John Bampton, M. A To propose to reconcile these Opposites would be a task which hardly any sane man would undertake. It would imply a claim to be able to rise at once above both, and see the truth which included all that both could teach. But it is a very useful undertaking, and not beyond the reach of thoughtful inquiry by an ordinary man, to examine the relations between the two, and thus to help not a few to find a way for themselves out of the perplexity. And this inquiry may well begin by asking what is the origin and nature of scientific belief on the one hand and of religious belief on the other. In this Lecture I propose to deal with the former. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Comprising seven essays by learned contributors and controversially advocating a rationalist Christianity, this work became a sensation upon publication in 1860. Frederick Temple (1821–1902), later Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote on the cultural contributions of non-Christians; Roland Williams (1817–70), Professor of Hebrew at Lampeter, questioned Old Testament prophesies; Baden Powell (1796–1850), Oxford Professor of Geometry, challenged belief in miracles and embraced Darwinism; Henry Bristow Wilson (1803–88) questioned literal biblical history; the only lay contributor, Egyptologist Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817–78), embraced geology; Mark Pattison (1813–84), tutor at Lincoln College, wrote on the history of rationalist theology; and Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), Oxford Professor of Greek, advocated a historical reading of the Bible. Wilson and Williams were later found guilty of heresy by a Church court, though this was overturned on appeal. For readers interested in the theological controversies of the Victorian era, these essays remain invaluable.

In 1884 the long-running annual series of Bampton Lectures at the University of Oxford was given by Frederick Temple, at that time Bishop of Exeter. He had earlier been a prominent educational reformer, headmaster at Rugby School and chaplain to Queen Victoria, and he later rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury. This book contains his Bampton Lectures on The Relations between Religion and Science - perhaps the most passionately debated topic of that time. He discusses the apparent conflict between scientific and religious beliefs on various topics including free will, knowledge, evolution, and supernatural power, but concludes that science and religion are not foes, but counterparts, and that neither is complete without the other. His contribution in this area is of lasting importance in the history and philosophy of science.