Excerpt from "The Great Religious Leaders" by Charles Francis Potter

Christian theology, having thus determined, established, decreed, and ordained the nature of God, proceeded to examine the nature of much-more-visible man and found him, by contrast with the perfect Almighty God, quite a worm of the dust, evil by nature and unable to help himself. Gradually, however, and after “great argument about it and about” by “doctor and saint,” there was developed for the salvation of poor lost man an elaborate theological scheme centering in the person and works of Jesus the Christ. But from a scientific viewpoint this whole structure of theology is insecure because based on unproved assumptions.

— “Introduction,” The Great Religious Leaders.

Charles Francis Potter (1885–1962) was an American writer, theologian, and Unitarian minister most famous for his debates with John Roach Straton, a fundamentalist Christian theologian. As in these debates, most of Potter’s work sought to refute the supernatural elements of religion — including the divinity of Christ. The Great Religious Leaders is a typical example of the Potter method of reducing all religions to common (and non-divine) denominators.