Spotlight
A Pilgrim’s Regress: George John Romanes and the Search for Rational Faith
In the summer and fall of 1873, George John Romanes lost his belief in God. Of itself, this was nothing unusual. For a young Englishman of the time—particularly one embarking on a career in the sciences—to abandon the faith of his fathers was, if not a universal rite of passage, at least a common trajectory, a well-beaten path traveled by distinguished Victorian intellectuals like Matthew Arnold, W. K. Clifford, Thomas Huxley, John Tyndall, and above all Charles Darwin. And yet Romanes’s case is distinctive both for the care he took to explain the reasons for his loss of faith and for his candid admission of what it cost him to follow, to the best of his ability, wherever the argument seemed to lead.
In the end, it led him where he never expected to arrive.
Quotation of the Week
But the fullest illustration of the scandal of the cross may be found in the Life of Apollonius, written by Philostratus at the command of Julia Domna. It is practically the Gospel rewritten to satisfy such objections as those of Celsus: and that it was more or less intended for something of the sort seems hardly doubtful. Apollonius is not a Jewish carpenter, but a well-born Greek who learns his wisdom (so far as he needs to learn it) in the approved way, from the sages of India and Ethiopia. He knows the thoughts of men, and (unlike Christ) is continually predicting the fortunes of those he meets. Many of his miracles read almost like those of Jesus of Nazareth; but they are not told in the bald way of the Evangelists: they are decked out with an immense amount of elegant rhetoric. But the most striking contrast is in the closing scenes. Apollonius is not betrayed by a false disciple (as if he could not have seen through a Judas) but accused like Socrates by enemies before Domitian, and allows himself to be shaved and put in fetters. In prison he takes his feet out of the fetters for [...]
Keep in Touch
Sign up for our monthly newsletter.
