NATURALISM AND SUPERNATURALISM.
§ 1. Meaning of Natural and Supernatural.
Orthodox Christianity claims that Christianity is a supernatural
revelation, consisting of truths revealed by God, not according to the
method of nature, but outside of it. But not merely the orthodox, the
heterodox too, Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers, Swedenborgians, all
hold to Christianity as a supernatural faith. What do they mean by this,
and why do they insist on it so strongly? This is our first question, and
the next will be, “What do those who hold to naturalism mean by _it_, and
why do they insist on their view?”
The distinction between the two seems to be this: The naturalists in
theology assert that God comes to man through nature, and nature _only_;
the supernaturalist declares that God comes to man, not only through
nature, but also by other methods outside of nature, or above nature.
There is no question between them as to natural religion. Both admit that;
supernaturalists believe all that naturalists believe, only they believe
something more.
But how is _nature_ to be defined? What is meant by nature? Various
definitions are given; but we wish for one now which shall really express
the issue taken in this controversy. So we may define nature as law. All
the nexus or web of existing substances and forces which are under law
belong to nature. All that happens outside of these laws is either
preternatural, unnatural, subternatural, or supernatural. If it is
something _outside of law_, but _not violating_ it, _nor coming_ from a
higher source, we call it _preter_natural; like magic, ghosts, sorcery,
fairies, genii, and the like. What _violates_ law is _un_natural. What is
so low down that it lies below law, as chaos before creation; or nebulous
matter not yet beginning to obey the law of gravitation; or intelligences,
like Mephistopheles or Satan, who have sunk so low in sin as to have lost
the perception of right and wrong, is _subternatural_, _below_ nature.
What belongs to a religion above the laws of time and space, above the
finite, is supernatural.
Thus brutes, and men like brutes, who are below the moral law, are
_subter_natural as regards that law. We do not call it a sin in a tiger to
kill a man, for he is _below_ law as regards sin. He is _below_ the moral
law. Again, we can conceive of angels so high up as to be above the moral
law, in part of its domain, not capable either of common virtue or of
common sin, according to _our_ standards of morality, though perhaps under
some higher code of ethics. They are supernatural beings as regards _that_
law—the moral law of this world. As regards some parts of the moral law,
there are, no doubt, multitudes of human beings above it even in this
world. There are many persons quite incapable of swearing, lying,
stealing, getting drunk, flying into a passion, and to whom, therefore, it
is no virtue to avoid these vices. They are simply _above_ that part of
the moral law. They are _super_natural beings as respects that part of
human character.
After these illustrations, we can see what is meant by _supernaturalism_.
If there is anything in this world which comes from above the world, and
not from the existing laws of being, _that_ is supernatural.
§ 2. The Creation Supernatural.
In this sense, all but atheists must admit the supernatural. If, for
example, you admit the _creation of the world_ by God, that was a
supernatural act; _that_ did not come from the existing laws of the world,
because it created those laws. All the order and beauty of the world, its
variety and harmony, its infinite adaptation of part to part, and each to
all,—these existed in God’s mind before they existed in nature. They were
supernatural, as ideas, before they appeared in nature as facts. And if,
as most geologists suppose, the crust of the earth denotes a long series
of creations, successive epochs, at the close of each of which new forms
of vegetable and animal life appeared, then each of these was a new
creation; that is, a new supernatural act of the Almighty.
The physical world, therefore, shows a power above itself. The natural
testifies to the supernatural, the all to the over-all. The existing web
of laws gives evidence of MIND, outside of itself, above itself, arranging
and governing it.
§ 3. The Question stated.
This being granted, the question between naturalism and supernaturalism
is, whether this superintending mind, which came from above the world into
it by acts of creation, when the world was made, has or has not come into
it subsequently. We have a series of creations down to the time that man
arrived on the earth. When _he_ came, he was a supernatural being, and his
coming a supernatural event. Unless we assume that he was developed, by
existing laws, out of some ape, gorilla, or chimpanzee, his coming was
supernatural. Now, did supernatural events cease then, and since that time
has the world gone on of itself? or have there been subsequent incursions
from a higher sphere—a new influx from above, from time to time, adding
something new to nature? Naturalism says no; supernaturalism says yes.
§ 4. Argument of the Supernaturalist from successive Geologic Creations.
The supernaturalist says, God comes to us in both ways—through nature;
that is, through the order of things already established; and also by new
creative impulses, coming in, from time to time, from above. He contends
that such a new creative impulse came into the world through Jesus Christ,
adding a new substance and new forms to those already existing—a new life
not before in the world, proceeding according to new laws. This new
creation, as the Scriptures themselves term it, is Christianity. This is
also said to be in analogy with the course of events. For, if there has
been a series of creations before, bringing animals into the world, and
higher forms of physical life,—if these have been created by new
supernatural impulses coming in at intervals of hundreds of thousands of
years,—why deny that another impulse may have come in four thousand years,
or forty thousand years, after man was created, to add a new form of
spiritual life to society?
In the world, as it was at first, there was not a living plant or animal;
after thousands of years, or millions of years, there came into the broad
seas of the lower Silurian epoch, some of the lowest kinds of animals and
seaweeds, a few trilobites and mollusks, but no plants save fucoids. Next
came, after a long time, a few cartilaginous fishes and corals. A long
time passed—thousands of years rolled by: then came real fishes and land
plants in what is called the Devonian period, or the old red sandstone.
After a great while came the period to which belongs all the coal
formation; and in that carboniferous epoch first appears a whole vegetable
world of trees and plants, to the number of nine hundred and thirty-four
species. Some insects arrived at this time, as beetles, crickets, and
cockroaches, which are, therefore, much more venerable than man. More
thousands of years go by: then the earth receives a new creation in the
form of gigantic frogs, enormous reptiles, and strange fishes. But as yet
no mammal has come—not a bird nor a quadruped has been seen on the earth.
Then, after another long period, these appear, in what is called the
_tertiary_ period; until, at last, some remains of man are found, in the
diluvium, or gravel. Geology thus, once thought to be atheistic, gives its
testimony to a long series of supernatural facts; that is, to the
successive creation, after long intervals, of entirely new genera and
species of vegetables and animals. As you turn these great stone leaves of
that majestic manuscript roll written by God’s hand, which we call the
earth, you and he has been writing new things on each page, new facts and
laws, not on any former leaf. New types of life, not prepared for by any
previous one,—by no slow evolution, but by a sudden step,—break in. On the
previous rocky page is to be found not one of their species, genus, order,
or even class, to point back to any possible progenitor. So that the globe
itself says, from these eternal monuments of rock, “Behold the history of
supernatural events written on me.” Each creation is higher than the last:
finally man is created. But still from above, from outside the world, the
creative life is ready to be poured in. Only the next creation is to be
moral and spiritual, not physical. No new physical forms are now added,
but a new moral life is poured into man, making _him_ a new creation of
God. “For if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” The analogy was
so striking, that the apostles noticed it, and constantly speak of Christ
as the medium of a new creation.
§ 5. Supernatural Argument from Human Freedom.
But there is another example of the supernatural element in the world. Dr.
Bushnell, in his book called “Nature and the Supernatural,” contends that
man is capable of supernatural acts; that, in fact, every really _free_
act is, and must be, a supernatural act. To those who hold the doctrine of
necessity, this is, of course, no argument. But they who believe, in the
testimony of their own consciousness, that they are free beings; who feel
that they are not dragged helplessly by the strongest motive, but can
resist it or yield to it; who, therefore, feel themselves responsible for
what they do, or omit to do, they can see that in a real sense they create
new influences. Their actions are not results of previous causes, but are
new causes, not before in the world. Some supernatural power dwells in
man’s will just as far as it is made free by reason and choice. Man stands
between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and error, with the power of
choosing either one or the other. If he chooses one, he sends a power into
society, life, humanity, to help it forward; if the other, he sends in a
power to hold it back. This power is not from man’s nature, but from
something in him outside his nature. When he acts from habit, impulse,
passion, and not from choice, he is simply a natural being; when he acts
from choice, he is not a natural being, but either a _super_natural or a
_subter_natural being, according as he chooses good or evil. When he
chooses good, he rises above the natural man into the sphere of angels;
when he chooses evil, he sinks below the natural man into the sphere of
brutes or demons.
§ 6. Supernatural Events not necessarily Violations of Law.
Now, says the supernaturalist, if we have all this evidence to show that
God not only acts through nature, by carrying on existing forces and laws,
but also has repeatedly come into nature with new creations, not there
before,—and if even man himself has a certain limited but strictly
supernatural power, so as to be able to stand outside of the nexus of law,
and act upon it,—why deny, as incredible, that God should have made a new
moral creation in Christianity? should have created a new class, order,
genus, and species of spiritual beings, not represented before by any
existing congeners? And why question that what we call miracles—that is,
physical interferences with natural laws—should have attended this sudden
influx of spiritual life? We do not claim, says the judicious
supernaturalist (like Dr. Bushnell, for example), that miracles are
suspensions or violations of natural laws; but that they are the natural
modification of the agency of such laws by a new and powerful influence.
Of this, too, there is ample analogy in nature. The mineral kingdom, for
example, is passively subject to mechanical and chemical laws, which are
resisted and modified by plants and animals. A stone obeys passively the
law of gravitation; a plant resists it, rises into the air in opposition
to it. Such a proceeding on the part of a plant must seem to a stone a
pure miracle. If a piece of granite should write a book of theology, it
would probably say that the plant, in growing up, had violated or
suspended a law of nature. But it has not. The force of gravitation has
worked on according to its own law; it has been dragging the plant
downward all the time, only the vital power in the plant has overcome its
force, and modified the result. And, again, a tree, seeing a dog run to
and fro, might call that a miracle. The tree, unable to move from its
place, could not conceive of the possibility of voluntary motion. But no
law of nature is violated; only a higher power comes in—the power of
animal life.
To a dog, again, the proceedings of a _man_ are strictly miraculous. To
plant corn, reap it, thresh it, grind it, and bake bread out of it, is
exactly as much a miracle to the dog, as the multiplication of loaves, or
turning water into wine, by Christ, is a miracle to us. But no law of
nature was violated in either case. Reason in the one case, some
profounder spiritual power in the other, may have modified the usual
operation of law, and produced these results.
The Orthodox supernaturalist therefore contends that the supernatural is a
constant element of life. Higher natures are all supernatural to lower
natures, but natural in themselves, because obedient to the laws of their
own nature. Nature, without this supernatural element, is only a machine,
of which God, standing outside, turns the handle. This is a low conception
both of nature and of God. As Goethe says, in one of his immortal lyrics,—
“Not so, outside, doth the Creator linger,
Nor let the all of things run round his finger,
But moves its centre, not its outer rim;
Comes down to nature, draws it up to him;
Moving within, inspiring from above,
With currents ever new of light and love.”
§ 7. Life and History contain Supernatural Events.
And besides all this, says the supernaturalist, we have continued and
constant evidences, in all history and in all human experience, of the
existence of this supernatural element. Only a small minority of mankind
have ever doubted it; and those are men so immersed in physical science,
or so hampered by some logical manacles, or so steeped in purely worldly
affairs, as to be incapable of seeing the supernatural facts which are
recurrent evermore. Christianity itself has been an uninterrupted series
of supernatural events. The physical miracles of Christ are nothing to the
spiritual miracles which Christianity is always working. Bad men are made
good, weak men strong, cowardly men brave, ignorant and foolish men wise,
by a supernatural influence given in answer to prayer, poured down into
hearts and minds which open themselves to receive it. The conversion of a
bad man by the power of Christianity is a miracle. The power of faith,
hope, love, which every Christian has experienced, coming into him, not
through any operation of his nature, but simply poured into his soul from
some higher sphere,—this makes all argument unnecessary to one who has had
ever so little Christian experience.
This is the substance of Orthodox supernaturalism; and this seems to me to
be its truth, separated from its errors.
The naturalism of the present time we conceive to be partly directed
against a false supernaturalism, and partly to be a mistake arising from a
too exclusive attention to the _order_ of the universe, as expressed in
_law_.
§ 8. The Error of Orthodox Supernaturalism.
Supernaturalism has generally disregarded God in nature, and only sees him
in revelation. It has allowed a sort of natural religion, but only in the
way of an argument to prove the existence of God by what he did a long
time ago. But it has not gone habitually to nature to _see_ God there,
incarnate in sun, moon, and stars; incorporate in spring, summer, autumn,
and winter; in day and night; in the human soul, reason, love, will. God
has been all around us, never far from us; but theology has only been
willing to see him in Jewish history, in sacred books, or on Sundays in
church. Let us see him there all we can, but see him also in every
rippling brook, in every tender flower, in all beauty, all sublimity, all
arrangement and adaptation of this world. No wonder that naturalism should
come to do what the Church has left undone—to find its God and Father in
this great and wonderful world which he has made for us. The creed says,
“God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost;” that is, God the
_Creator_, seen in Nature and Providence; God the _Redeemer_, seen in
Christianity; and God the _Sanctifier_, seen in every righteous and holy
soul. But the Church has neglected its own creed, and omitted _God the
Creator_, often also God the Sanctifier, and has only seen God in
_Christianity_, in its history, its Church, its doctrines, its
ceremonies.(8) Against this, naturalism comes as a great and needed
protest, and calls us to see God also in nature and life.
Then the Church has been too apt to teach a miraculous revelation, in
which the miracles are violations of law. But as God is confessedly the
author of law, it has made the Deity violate his own laws; that is, has
made him inconsistent, arbitrary, irregular, and wilful. Deep in the human
mind God has himself rooted a firm faith in the immutability of law; so
that when miracles are thus defined, naturalism justly objects to them.
§ 9. No Conflict between Naturalism and Supernaturalism.
But between true naturalism and true supernaturalism we do not think there
need be any war. We know that there are many men so rooted in their faith
in nature, that they cannot see anything outside of it, or beyond it. To
them God is law, and law only. Even creation is repugnant to them, because
they see that creation is really a supernatural thing. Hence come the
theories of development; the “Vestiges of Creation;” the nebular
hypothesis; the Darwinian theory of formation of species by natural
selection; the notion of man coming out of an ape; pantheistic notions of
a God so immersed in nature as to be not its intelligent guide, but only
its unconscious soul; the whole universe proceeding according to an order
which is just as much above God’s knowledge as above ours. Now, the best
geologists assure us that there is no evidence in support of the
transmutation of species. Mr. Darwin’s theory of the formation of species
by natural selection is this: In the struggle for life, the strongest and
best adapted animal lives, the rest die. This animal transmits to its
offspring its own superior qualities; so a higher animal is gradually
developed. For example, the giraffe was not made by God with a long neck
in order that it might browse on the leaves of high trees. But when leaves
were scarce, the animal who happened to have a neck a little longer than
the rest was able to get leaves. So he lived, and the rest died. His
children had longer necks by the law of hereditary transmission. So, in
the course of ages, animals were gradually found with very long necks.
Thus the walrus has a curved horn growing downwards from his lower jaw, by
which he climbs on to the floating ice. We must not suppose, however, that
God gave him the tusk for that purpose; but the walrus, or seal, who
happened to have a little horny bone under his chin, could climb on the
ice and get his food more easily, and so he lived, while the rest died;
and his descendants in the course of a few hundreds of thousands of years
came, by repeating this process, to have horns, and so this species of
phoca arrived.
It is certainly possible to believe this theory. But in believing it we
have to suppose two things; first, a happy accident, and then a law of
transmission of hereditary qualities. Now, the theory substitutes this law
of transmission and these happy accidents for the creative design. Is
anything gained thereby? The domain of law is extended a little. But
extend it as much as you will, you must at last come to something above
law. Suppose these laws by which walrus and giraffe came, were all in the
original nebula, so that no Creator has been needed since, and nothing
supernatural—nature has done it all since. But who put the laws there to
begin with? You have to take the supernatural at last, or else suppose an
accident to begin with. Accidentally, all these wonderful laws happened to
be in a particular nebula. He who shrinks from this supposition accepts
the supernatural, all at once, at the beginning, instead of the
supernatural all the way along, “What does he gain by it?” He gains merely
this, that he puts the Creator out of sight; or rather, puts himself out
of sight of the Creator. He worships the great god _Development_ instead.
Equally satisfactory to the intellect, to say the least, and much more
satisfactory to the best human instincts, is the view of God which sees
him coming evermore into nature from above nature. This view says, “God is
not only order, but also freedom. He is not only law, but also love. He is
in the world as law and order, but he is above the world as thought and
love; as Providence, as the heavenly Father. He comes to us to meet our
exigencies, to inspire our doubting hearts, to lift us into life and
light. He does not set a grand machine going, and then look on and see it
work; but he is in the world, and with us always. The supernatural dwells
by the side of the natural. Just as a wise and good father has rules and
laws by which to govern his children—rewarding and punishing them as they
obey or disobey; but besides that, does a thousand things for them, taking
the initiative himself; so God governs us by law, but also often takes the
initiative, giving us what we never asked for, and knew nothing of.”
§ 10. Further Errors of Orthodox Supernaturalism—Gulf between Christianity
and all other Religions.
Orthodoxy has erred, as it would seem, in placing too great a gulf between
Christianity and all other religions. Christianity is sufficiently
distinguished from all other religions by being regarded as the perfect,
and therefore universal, religion of mankind. It is to all preceding
religions what man is to all previous races. These are separated from man
by various indelible characters; yet they are his fellow-creatures,
proceeding from the same creative mind, according to one creative plan. So
the previous religions of our race—Fetichism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, the
religion of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Egypt, of Scandinavia, of Judea,
of Greece and Rome—are distinguished from Christianity by indelible
characters; but they, too, proceeded from the same creative mind,
according to one creative plan. Christianity should regard these humanely,
as its fellow-creatures. The other animals prepared man’s way on the
earth, and since man’s arrival we have seen no subsequent creation. So the
ethnic religions prepared the way for Christianity, and since Christianity
came no new religion has appeared; for Mohammedanism is only a _mélange_
drawn from the Old and New Testaments, and may therefore be considered as
an outlying Christian sect. So, too, the gigantic abstractions of
Gnosticism were hybrid systems, formed of the union between Oriental
thought and Christian life. The analogy may be traced still farther. Man
is the only animal who possesses the whole earth. Every other race has its
habitat in some geographical centre, from which it may emigrate, indeed,
to some extent, but where only it thrives. To man, only, the whole earth
belongs. So the primitive religions are all _ethnic_; that is, religions
of races. The religion of Confucius belongs to China, that of Brahmanism
to India, that of Zoroaster to the Persians; the religion of Egypt is only
for the Egyptians. Exceptions to this law (like that of Buddhism, for
example) are only apparent. The rule is invariable. Christianity alone is
a cosmic or universal religion. It only has passed the boundaries of race,
so inflexible to all other religions. Born a Semitic religion, it soon
took possession of the Indo-European races, converting Romans, Greeks,
Teutons, Kelts, and Sclaves. It finds the African mind docile to its
influence. Its missionaries have made believers from among the races of
America, India, China, and the Pacific Islands. It is evidently destined
to be the religion of humanity.
But, if so, why should it be put into antagonism with the religions which
preceded it? These are also creations of God, not the work of man.
Theologians have found multitudes of types of Christ in Jewish books and
Jewish history. But they might also find types of Christianity in the
so-called heathen religions. For as coming events cast their shadows
before, so coming revelations are seen beforehand in shadowy preludes and
homologons. The lofty spiritualism of the Brahmanical books, the moral
devotion of the Zendavesta, the law of the soul’s progress in
Buddhism,—these are all types of what was to appear in a greater fulness
and higher development in Christianity. First the natural, afterwards that
which is spiritual. But these foregleams of Christian truth, irradiating
the night-side of history, are all touching proofs that God never leaves
himself without a witness in the world or in human hearts.
Instead, therefore, of placing an impassable gulf between Christianity and
other human religions, we should consider these are preparations and
stepping-stones to something higher. Nor will they pass away until
Christianity has purified itself from the errors which still cling to it.
Judaism was not to pass till it was fulfilled in Christianity; and neither
will the other religions of the world pass away till they also are
fulfilled in Christianity.
Now, the common teaching in our churches and religious books and
newspapers tends to depreciate all natural religion in the interest of
revealed religion. It is commonly said that the light of nature helps us a
very little way in the knowledge of God. “Look at the heathen,” it is
said; “see their religious ignorance, their awful superstitions, their
degrading worship of idols, and their subjection to priestcraft. This is
your boasted light of nature, and these are its results—the Fetichism of
Africa, the devil-worship of the North American Indians, the cannibalism
of the Feejee Islands, the human sacrifices of Mexico and of the ancient
Phœnicia.” “Then,” it is continued, “look at the observations of the
wisest intellects apart from revelation! How little they knew with
certainty! Their views of the Deity varied from pantheism to idolatry;
their views of immortality were wholly vague and indistinct; their ideas
of duty confused and false.”
To which we might reply, “Is not the same thing true among Christians? Are
there no superstitions among them? Were not witches hanged and burned
during sixteen centuries in Christendom? If the heathen are ignorant, what
multitudes in Catholic countries also do not read the Bible! How many are
there even in Protestant churches who can give a reason for their belief?
If the heathen worship degrades mankind because it is a superstition, with
fear for its motive, how large a part of Christian preaching consists also
of an appeal to terror! Is not the fear of everlasting torment in hell the
motive power of much which is called Christianity? Consider Catholics
eating their God: is that the worship of the Father in spirit and truth?
Think of the religious wars, of the religious persecutions: did natural
religion ever do anything as bad as this? We cry out against Nero, who
covered Christians with pitch, and burned them as torches in the
amphitheatre. But how many were thus tortured? Perhaps ten, perhaps
twenty, or let us say a hundred. But, according to Llorente, the Holy
Office of the Inquisition, in Spain, burned alive, under Torquemada, 8800:
under Deza, 1669; under Ximenes, 2536; in all, from 1483 to 1498,—that is,
in fifteen years,—it burned alive 31,912 persons for heresy, and subjected
to rigorous pains and penalties 291,450 persons.”
It is not right to judge of any doctrine by the corrupt practices which
have taken place under it, unless it can be shown that these are its
legitimate fruits. We maintain that Christianity is not fairly responsible
for these persecutions; but let us make the same allowance for the
religions which prepared its way.
§ 11. Christianity considered unnatural, as well as supernatural by being
made hostile to the Nature of Man.
If the nature of man be regarded as wholly evil, then Christianity is not
merely a supernatural religion, but an unnatural one. This has been very
commonly taught. Man’s nature has been declared so totally corrupt and
alien from all good, as to be radically opposite to the love of God and
man. Christianity, therefore, comes, not to help him attain that which he
is seeking after, but to change his whole purpose and aim—to give him a
wholly new nature. This is the result of the doctrine of total depravity,
so long taught in the Church as Orthodoxy. It has taught that all natural
tendencies and desires in man were wholly evil, and to be rooted out. It
has thus made Christianity unattractive, and has driven men away from it.
But of this it is not necessary to speak here, as we shall discuss this
doctrine and its influence hereafter.