By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
In rereading Maurice's Subscription No Bondage, I've been struck, as I haven't been before, by the close convergence not only between his understanding of education and my own, but also between it and – by implication, at least – what seems to be H. R. Niebuhr's understanding.
This convergence is no doubt most striking when Maurice says that "all knowledge" begins in "implicit faith" and argues that "in order to educate a people," one must lead them on from "that implicit faith, in which all knowledge begins, to that actual faith, which alone is knowledge" (6). A few pages later, it becomes clear that, on his use, very much as on Niebuhr's, "implicit faith" may be distinguished not only from "actual faith," but also from "explicit rational faith" – the latter two terms being synonymous (20). Aside from the clarity with which "all knowledge" is here said to begin in "implicit faith." and "knowledge" itself or as such is understood to be "actual faith," or "explicit rational faith," which is to say, "belief," Maurice would evidently agree with Niebuhr in distinguishing different kinds of faith/belief/knowledge, even i fhe is not as systematic as Niebuhr was, or could be, in explicitly differentiating the principal kinds. This is evident, I say, from the statement of his belief that "there are three objects of ordinary human interest, GOD, MAN, NATURE; and that our education is not universal, if there is not a distinct branch of study corresponding to each of these objects" (24). It is also evident from what he says about theology – that it is "a science" which, because it "manifestly concerns Humanity as such, and in which it [sc. Humanity] discovers its own foundation and laws," is "the groundwork of Humanity and o fall studies concerning Humanity" (56, 58)-- and about "the knowledge of God" – that it is "the highest and deepest knowledge which men can enjoy, the sum of all knowledge, that in which alone knowledge finds its full and satisfactory meaning" (88).