> The first paragraph tells us that Peirce's approach to Scripture was that of > "modern Biblical criticism," and he expected "the liberal parties" to triumph > accordingly. This is not surprising; I also discovered that he wrote in R > 851 (1911) that "the reader will find me a scientific man to the core; and > the early Christians did not exhibit a more thorough abhorrence for the > impurities of the paganism of their childhood, than I entertain for > utterances I used to hear from the pulpit about the 'plenary inspiration' of > the Bible, etc." He apparently had a particular beef with "the Calvinistic > theology," which as a Lutheran I tend to share. > > The key insight from the second paragraph is that Peirce considered "the > doctrine of love and of the Sermon on the Mount" to be "the fundamental > proposition of christian philosophy." In other words, consistent with some > of his other relevant writings, he focused entirely on the teachings of > Jesus, rather than matters pertaining to his divinity, death, and > resurrection. From my Lutheran perspective, that is an obvious confusion of > Law (what we do and fail to do) and Gospel (what God has done for us); our > love for God and other people is the result of our salvation, rather than its > cause or its content. There is considerable historical truth in Peirce's > comments about the origin of creeds, but unfortunately he seems to want to > throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Given Peirce’s emphasis on a type of empiricism rather than trusting accounts one couldn’t confirm this is hardly surprising. While tied to Christianity his seems a religion more determined by what he can test. (Hardly surprising given the work his pragmatic maxim does) Clearly he still has a lot of tradition in his thought so this process isn’t complete. To Calvinism given the place of tychism in his thought it’s not surprising he rejects it and sees it as so inherently problematic. Those were quite interesting quotes though that I’d not seen before.
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