William Herberg Essay

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William Herberg’s distinction between ‘Natural Religion’ and ‘Biblical Faith’ is a key one to make. With it, we can more easily begin to break down ideas and arguments made by the theorists and philosophers we read about in class. Herberg’s understandings of natural religion and ‘Biblical Faith’ help to better break down Frankl’s and Freud’s arguments. Using Herberg’s ideas, there is reason to go back and rethink what both Frankl’s and Freud’s line of thinking was. This distinction also helps us look into our own minds, to better analyze our thoughts and beliefs when it comes to religion. Learning the distinction between ‘Natural Religion’ and ‘Biblical Faith’ will help with analyzing both past arguments we have learned, and arguments that have yet to come. In Herberg’s esteemed writing, “Biblical Faith and Natural Religion” he begins the paper with an introduction to some of Jules Masserman’s ideas. In presenting Masserman’s ideas of “The Ur-Defenses of Man” [Herberg 175], Herberg is able to set up a basis for his argument. Masserman at heart agrees with Freud’s argument that religion is an illusion humans hold onto, but he makes a key distinction in saying that this illusion is necessary for the well doing of human beings, “they are substitutive or compensatory beliefs, quite necessary to make human life at all livable” [Herberg 177]. Having set up Masserman’s ideas, Herberg is now able to explain with key distinction what the ideas of Masserman, which he calls the idea of ‘Natural Religion’, really are and why they are different then his ideas of true faith, of ‘Biblical Faith’. Herberg calls Masserman’s ideas one of ‘Natural Religion’. Herberg best explains this as “Sinful man…needs God and searches for him….but the God he finds is the God he constructs-if not with his hands than with his heart and mind- to suite his purposes” [Herberg 180,181]. Herberg
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