SOURCE: Bennett, Charles A. “Symbolical Theories: Feuerbach.” In The Dilemma of Religious Knowledge, edited by William Ernest Hocking, pp. 27-48. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931.

In the following excerpt, Bennett explicates Feuerbach's interpretation of religion, particularly his contention that the infinite should be associated with humanity as opposed to God, and comments on the modernity of this view as well as its limitations.

Let me resume in a few words the statement of our problem as we have now reached it. Religion deals with the supernatural, which is claimed to be an objective reality; the supernatural, however, is mysterious,—it constitutes a sort of surd, a nonrational factor in experience. The human intellect seems beaten back in its effort to construe the meaning of divine things. Religion does not lack certainty: it is sure of God, sure of salvation, sure of immortality; yet when it tries to give...