William Hale White as a Religious Agnostic

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 17; p. 98
• Main Author: Yvard, Jean-Michel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2013
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Classical literature; English literature; Euripides (c 485-406 BC); Greek literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

[...]Brealey is quite right in insisting that White preserved a Tasting interest in faith and commitment to belief.2 And there is absolutely no doubt that White never Tost his faith' and never became an atheist, or even an agnostic, in the modem, 'strong' sense of the term, which necessarily puts the existence of God in the balance, right from the start. Because they both came from modest backgrounds, they opposed the religious establishment and its influence in the intellectual life of the time. [...]the famous agnostics of the last third of the nineteenth century rejected orthodox Christianity and traditional Christian dogmas, which they perceived as retrograde. [...]the most traditional, anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine are the only ones that White really put into question on a long term basis, the epistemological uncertainties which are expressed in his writings having remained fundamentally theistic. [...]most of those who felt that much in Christianity, as popularly conceived, had been rendered obsolete - and there were quite a lot at the time - continued to describe themselves as Christians rather than as agnostics.