Rede uitgesproken op den 26en Maart 1920 ter herdenking van den 284en geboortedag der Utrechtsche Universiteit. Door den Rector Magnificus Dr. H. Visscher. Utrecht: Drukkerij Universitas. 1920.
Professor Visscher’s Rectorale Rede. Door Dr. H. W. van der Vaart Smit. Overdruk van het Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1920. Baarn: Drukkerij Oranje Nassau, R. K. v. d. Berg. 1920.1
It is a somewhat exigent position in which a theologian finds himself, when, as Rector Magnificus of a great University, he faces “the four faculties” for the purpose of delivering to them his Rectoral Address. There are many points of view represented among his hearers; and some of them are quite intolerant of anything which he, as a theologian, may have to bring before them. In his Rectoral Address Prof. Visscher has chosen the rôle of peace-maker. Looking out upon a hard-bestead world, he bespeaks the cooperation of all in the pressing task of saving Western civilization from the dissolution with which he appears to think it threatened.
Prof. Visscher seems fairly to groan within himself as he surveys the social unrest of the day. The times are out of joint. The whole world is suffering from a one-sidedness of development which has destroyed the spiritual equilibrium—and is not harmonious growth the condition of social health? True, progress has hitherto been made, not on a straight line of advance, but as a ship tacks back and forth in its course. But the leg of Diesseitigkeit on which the social ship in our Western world is now sailing seems to Prof. Visscher an inordinately long one; and he trembles lest it should prove that the ship has lost its bearings and may never get back on the balancing tack of Jenseitigkeit. Indeed, he does not wish it to do just this. The leg of Jenseitigkeit is itself only a tack. He wishes the ship to cease all tacking and sail straight onward, in the teeth of whatever wind, directly to its goal.
Why should not science and religion, for example, live in harmony, each contributing its part to the spiritual health of mankind? Each has its own sphere, and each has only to keep its own place and the harmony is complete. And surely their harmonious co-working is a clamant duty of the times. “For the salvation of Western humanity there rests on science and religion the most pressing call to work in harmony for the regeneration of civilization. Science has the task of subjecting nature to the scepter of reason, in order thus to make it ancillary to the full development of human life. But because of its very nature, it is unable of itself to bring about this ripe result. The happiness of the peoples is not the product of it alone. Quite the contrary. It is social health alone that secures the happiness of the people. And it is religion, which sheds the light of eternity on human life, that is the wellspring of moral strength. Science and religion are the two spiritual powers which in harmonious coöperation can save the peoples of civilization. Or is it possible to save them? If the social movement continues to refuse to take the factor of religion up into itself, the destruction of our civilization is certain, and science, too, will go down in the common ruin.”
It is under the impression of so great a need, and with so high a purpose in view, that Prof. Visscher undertakes the discussion of the relations of science and religion. He is at bottom pleading for the right of religion to a part in the social development of the day. This plea, however, takes the form of an attempt to show that science, properly conceived and properly presented, cannot possibly invade the field of religion, nor religion the field of science. Thus the discussion becomes formally a discussion of the relations of science and religion; and much is very richly and much is very wisely said of the relations of these two spiritual forces to one another as they have actually wrought in the life of mankind. The discussion suffers somewhat, however, from a vacillation in the use of the terms, which no doubt it would be difficult to avoid in any case with terms so loose and general—too loose and general to lend themselves to exact discriminations. It is so managed, moreover, that it seems at times on the point of becoming a discussion of the relations between knowledge and faith, if not between intellect and feeling. It is too obvious to require argument, however, that we cannot out of hand identify, on the one hand, intellect, knowledge and science, and, on the other, emotion, faith and religion. Both science and religion are products of the human spirit and the human spirit does not function thus in sections. It is, however, the attempt to bring into comparison precisely these two things, “science and religion,” that works the most mischief. We might bring, say, research and religion into relation, or “science” in some narrowed sense, and theology; but “science” in the narrowed sense in which Prof. Visscher understands that term and “religion” in the purely subjective sense which Prof. Visscher strangely puts upon “religion,” move in such different spheres that they are unrelatable—there is no tertium comparationis between things so disparate. You might as well talk of instituting relations between the planet Neptune and the League of Nations.