‘We know the world only as a sinful world, and we know the relation of Christ to it, experimentally, only as that of its Saviour from sin’. We must ‘stick to the actual’ and try to ‘understand and interpret what is, not to wander off into what might have been, as though it might find there truths sublime or more profound. The world we live in is the only world’. – James Denney, The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation (London: James Clarke & Co., 1959 [1917]), 181-2.
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I like that word ‘experimentally’. It is more existentially committed than say ‘experientially’, which I half expected. I must check out who this Denney guy is
Oh yes Bruce, do! I can promise he is as good as P T Forsyth, though Jason may gently demur! And yes, Denney was quite clear that experimental religion was something significantly more substantial than experiential religion. And Jason, thanks for the quote and the portrait, a fine scanned version of which is framed in my study, four feet from where I’m typing this! Shalom, my friend.