Produced by Al Haines
PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE
STUDIES CRITICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE
BY
J. WARSCHAUER, M.A., D.Phil.
AUTHOR OF "THE NEW EVANGEL," "JESUS: SEVEN QUESTIONS," ETC.
"SEE THAT THERE IS NO ONE WHO MAKES YOU HIS
PREY BY MEANS OF HIS THEOSOPHY, WHICH IS A VAIN
DECEIT AFTER THE TRADITIONS OF MEN, AFTER THE
ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD AND NOT AFTER CHRIST."
_Col. ii. 8._ (_Dr. Moffatt's Translation._)
LONDON
JAMES CLARKE & CO. 13 & 14 FLEET STREET
1909
[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers
enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project
Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99.]
{5}
PREFACE
About a year ago certain tendencies in the popular discussion of the
doctrine of Divine Immanence suggested to the present writer the idea
of a brief sketch or article, to be published under the title, "The
Truth of Transcendence." On further reflection, however, a somewhat
more extended treatment of so important a subject seemed desirable, and
this has been attempted in the following chapters. When the doctrine
of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a
somewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge
felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through
misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been
abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will
dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to
these dangers and to bring out the distinction between the truth of
immanence and what to the author seem perversions of that truth.
In the meantime, while these pages were passing through the press,
there has appeared a new work from the brilliant pen of Professor
William James,[1] some sentences from which might to a large extent be
taken as indicating {6} the standpoint of the volume now submitted to
the reader:--
"God," in the religious life of ordinary men is the name not of the
whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in
things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate
in His purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in
an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When John Mill
said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, if God is
to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet,
so prevalent is the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's
name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally treated as a
paradox; God, it was said, _could_ not be finite. I believe that the
only God worthy of the name _must_ be finite.
It is precisely the theory which identifies God with "the whole of
things" which will be combated in the following discussions; it is
precisely "the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's name"
to which they offer a plain and direct challenge. At the same time
such a phrase as that in which Professor James speaks of God as working
"in an external environment" would seem unduly to under-emphasise the
fact of immanence; and it may be said at once that the theory of Divine
finitude put forward by the present writer will be seen to differ from
that of John Stuart Mill, as the idea of _self_-limitation differs from
that of a limitation _ab extra_--in other words, as Theism differs from
Deism.
It is perhaps a little remarkable that the fundamental antinomies which
arise from the assumption of the actual infinity of God should not have
been more frequently dealt with; or rather, that thinkers postulating
that infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind
to its logical implications. For if God is infinite, then He is all;
and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human
initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett,
in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in
passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if
somewhat tentative, are well worth consideration to-day:--
"God is infinite." But in what sense? . . . Press the idea of the
infinite to its utmost extent, till it is alone in the universe, or
rather is the universe itself, in this heaven of abstraction,
nevertheless, a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow
over the formless void. Infinite is finite because it is infinite.
That is to say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable
of creating what is external to itself. Deny infinity in this sense,
and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power. _God is
greater by being finite than by being infinite_ . . . Logic must admit
that the infinite over-reaches itself by denying the existence of the
finite, and that there are some "limitations," such as the
impossibility of evil or falsehood, which are of the essence of the
Divine nature.[2]
Where, of course, Divine immanence is held to mean the "allness"--which
is the strict equivalent of the infinity--of God, evil in every shape
and form will either have to be ascribed to the direct will and agency
of God Himself, or for apologetic purposes to be reduced to a mere
semblance, or "not-being." Thus we are told to-day in plain terms that
"if God does not avert evil, it is because He requires it"; {8} that
"what to us seems evil is ordained of God"; that--
"If prayers and earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
How then a Borgia or a Catiline?"
But if evil be only apparent and not real, we shall surely, having
gained this insight, be too wise to waste indignation upon the
non-existent; if what we call misdeeds in reality fulfil God's own
"requirements," a thoroughly enlightened public opinion will not seek
to interfere with the sacred activities of the pick-pocket, the forger,
the sweater, the _roué_, every one of whom may plead that he is but
carrying out the Divine ordinances; if Alexander Borgia's perjuries,
poisonings and debaucheries "break not Heaven's design," but are
"ordained of God for some purpose," morality itself becomes an exploded
anachronism.
It is because these and such as these are the results in the fields of
religion and conduct which flow from certain errors in the field of
speculation, that these chapters have been written, and are now sent
forth. Belief in a personal God, personal freedom, personal
immortality--these essentials of religion are one and all endangered
where the doctrine of Divine immanence is presented in terms of a
monistic philosophy; it has been the writer's object to safeguard and
vindicate these truths anew in a volume which, though of necessity
largely critical in method, he offers as wholly constructive in aim.
August 1st, 1909.
[1] _A Pluralistic Universe._
[2] _Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans_, vol. ii. pp. 388-9.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION: DIVINE IMMANENCE . . . . . . . . . . 11
I. SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
II. PANTHEISM: THE SUICIDE OF RELIGION . . . . . . . . 41
III. THE ETHICS OF MONISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
IV. MONISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
V. THE DIVINE PERSONALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
VI. EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS . . . . . . . . . . . 87
VII. EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS (_cont._) . . . . . . 101
VIII. THE DENIAL OF EVIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
IX. DETERMINISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
X. MORALITY AS A RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
XI. PROBLEMS OF PRAYER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
XII. IMMORTALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
{11}
INTRODUCTION
DIVINE IMMANENCE
The doctrine of Divine immanence is in a very special and unmistakeable
manner the re-discovery of the nineteenth century. Nothing could be
more remote from fact than to call that doctrine a new--or even an
old--heresy. Old it certainly is, but heretical in itself it as
certainly is not; it can point to unquestionable warranty in Holy
Scripture, where such is demanded, and it has never been repudiated by
the Christian Church. But just as a law, without being repealed, may
fall into desuetude, so a doctrine, without being repudiated, may for a
time fade out of the Church's consciousness; and in the one case as in
the other any attempt at revival will arouse a certain amount of
distrust and opposition. There would no doubt be a measure of truth in
the statement that the suspicion and antagonism with which the recent
re-enunciation of this particular doctrine or idea was attended in some
quarters, exemplified this general attitude of the human mind towards
the unaccustomed; and yet such a statement, made without qualification,
{12} would be only a half-truth. The fact is, and it cannot be stated
too soon or too clearly, that if the antagonism and suspicion exhibited
have been exceptionally strong, there have been exceptional causes to
justify both. Alarm, and that of a very legitimate nature, has been
called forth by one-sided and extravagant statements of the idea of
Divine immanence on the part of ill-balanced advocates; and in this
book we shall be almost continually occupied with the task of
disengaging the truth of immanence from what appear to us mischievous
travesties of that truth. That such a task is a necessary one, we are
firmly convinced; for if, as Principal Adeney says, "among all the
changes in theology that have been witnessed during the last hundred
years this"--_i.e._, the re-discovery of the principle of Divine
immanence--"is the greatest, the most revolutionary," it must certainly
be of paramount importance that we should understand and apply that
principle aright. Confessedly, it denotes a great and far-reaching
change; can we, then, in the first instance, briefly and plainly state
what this change is from, what it involves, and in what respect it is
supposed to help us in dealing with the problem of religion?
It has to be borne in mind, to begin with, that the very term
"immanence" had for a long time ceased to be in current use, and had
thus become strange to the average believer; it has equally to be
remembered that in theology as {13} in other matters we have not yet
altogether passed the stage where _hostis_ means both "stranger" and
"foe"--that, in fact, to many minds, the unfamiliar is, as we said, _eo
ipso_ the suspect. But immanence means nothing more abstruse than
"indwelling"; and the renewed emphasis which, from the time of
Wordsworth onward, began to be laid upon the Divine indwelling, the
presence of God in the Universe, represented in the first place the
reaction of the human spirit against the cold and formal Deism of the
eighteenth century, which thought of God as remote, external to the
world, exclusively "transcendent." According to the deistic notion,
God was known to man only by reason of a revelation He had given once
and for all in the far-off past--a revelation which in its very nature
excluded the idea of progress; as against this conception that of the
immanence of God declares that He is not far from each one of us, that
in Him we live and move and have our being, that He is over all and
through all and in all--the Life of all life, the Energy behind all
phenomena, the Presence from which there is no escaping, unceasingly
and progressively--though by divers portions and in divers
manners--revealed in the universe, in nature and in man.
Thus expressed, the doctrine of God's nearness and indwelling will
probably commend itself to most thoughtful religious people; but in
{14} re-emphasising an aspect of truth there is always the danger of
over-emphasising it, of claiming it as the whole and sole truth--of
falling, in a word, from one extreme into the other. To that rule the
present case offers no exception; it is, on the contrary, very
distinctly one of the pendulum swinging as far in one direction as it
previously swung to the other. Let us then at once state the thesis
which many of the following pages will serve to elaborate: when the
_indwelling_ of God in the universe is interpreted as meaning His
_identity_ with the universe; when the _indwelling_ of God in man is
taken to mean His _identity_ with man, the whole structure of religion
is gravely imperilled. For in the identity of God with the world and
with man--which is the root-tenet of Pantheism--there is inevitably
involved the surrender of both the Divine and the human personality.
We shall have occasion to see how much such a surrender signifies; for
the moment it suffices to say plainly that Pantheism, the doctrine
which denies the transcendence of God, is by no means the same as that
which affirms His immanence, nor does it logically follow from that
affirmation. The mistake so frequently made lies in regarding the
Divine immanence and the Divine transcendence as mutually exclusive
alternatives, whereas they are complementary to one another. A
one-sided insistence on the immanence of God, to the exclusion of His
transcendence, leads to {15} Pantheism, just as a one-sided insistence
upon His transcendence, to the exclusion of His immanence, leads to
Deism; it is the two taken together that result in, and are necessary
to, Theism. Thus it cannot be too well understood, and it should be
understood at the very outset, that we have not to make anything like a
choice between immanence and transcendence--that these two can never be
separated, but are related to each other as the less to the greater, as
the part to the whole. One naturally shrinks from employing a diagram
in dealing with such a topic as this; but perhaps recourse might
without offence be had to this method--necessarily imperfect as it
is--on account of its essential simplicity, and because it is
calculated to remove misapprehensions. If we can think of a very large
sphere, _A_, and, situated anywhere _within_ this, of a very small
sphere, _a_--then the relation of the smaller to the greater will be
that of the sphere of immanence to the sphere of transcendence. The
two are not mutually separable, but the one has its being wholly within
the other.
Nevertheless it is quite true that there has been within recent years a
distinct shifting of the centre of gravity from the one doctrine to the
other, a growing disposition to regard the immanence of God as the
fundamental datum, the basis of the modern restatement of religious
belief. How will this conception help us to {16} such an end? The
answer to that question may be given in the words of Dr. Horton, who
says, "The intellectual background of our time is Agnosticism, and _the
reply which faith makes to Agnosticism is couched in terms of the
immanence of God_." [1] Dr. Horton's meaning will grow clearer to us
if we once more glance at our imaginary diagram, letting the smaller
figure _a_, the sphere of immanence, stand for our universe. If the
sphere of God's being lay altogether outside the universe, _i.e._,
outside the radius of our knowledge--if He, in other words, were merely
and altogether transcendent--He would also be merely and altogether
unknowable, exactly as Agnosticism avers. His transcendent attributes,
all that partakes of infinity, cannot--and that of necessity--become
objects of immediate knowledge to finite minds; if He is to be known at
all to us, He can only be so known by being manifested through His
presence within, or action upon, the finite and comprehensible sphere.
In other words, _it is primarily as He is revealed in and through the
finite world, that is to say as immanent, that God becomes knowable to
us_; all that is included under His transcendence is of the very
highest importance for us--religion would be utterly incomplete without
it--but it is an inference we make from His immanence. It is, to give
an obvious illustration, only to a transcendent God that we can offer
prayer--God {17} over all whom the soul needs, to enter into relations
withal; but it is also true that we gain the assurance of His
transcendence through His immanence, and that
The God without he findeth not,
Who finds Him not within.
In a word, the Divine immanence is not the goal of our quest of God,
but it is the indispensable starting-point.
A simple reflection will serve to place this beyond doubt. Against the
old-fashioned Deism which continued to bear sway till far into the last
century, the agnostic had an almost fatally easy case; he had but to
reject the revelation alleged to have been given once for all in the
dim past--to reject it on scientific or critical grounds--and who was
to prove to him that the universe had been created a few thousand years
ago by a remote and external Deity? As for him, he professed, and
professed candidly enough, that he could see nothing in nature but the
operation of impersonal forces; there was natural law, and there was
the process of evolution, but beyond these----? Now the only really
telling reply that can be made to those who argue in this fashion is
that which reasons from the Divine immanence as its _terminus a
quo_--the doctrine which beholds God first of all present and active
_in_ the world, and sees in natural law not a possible substitute for
Him, but the working of His sovereign Will. From this point of view,
the orderliness of the cosmos, {18} the uniformity and regularity of
nature, attest not the unconscious throbbing of a soulless engine, or a
blind Power behind phenomena, but a directing Mind, a prevailing Will.
The world, according to this conception, was not "made" once upon a
time, like a piece of clockwork, and wound up to run without further
assistance; it is not a mechanism, but an organism, thrilled and
pervaded by an eternal Energy that "worketh even until now." In Sir
Oliver Lodge's phrase, we must look for the action of Deity, if at all,
then always; and this thought of the indwelling God, revealing Himself
in the majestic course and order of nature, not only rebuts the
assaults of Agnosticism, but compels our worship. And as natural law
speaks to us of the steadfastness and prevailing power of the Divine
Will, so evolution speaks of the Divine Purpose, and proclaims that
purpose "somehow good," since evolution means a steady reaching forward
and upward, an unfolding and ascent from less to more.
We take a step higher up when we come to the further revelation of God
as seen dwelling in man; a step higher up because on any sane view
immanence is a fact admitting of very various degrees, so that God is
more fully revealed in the organic than in the inorganic world, more in
the conscious than in the unconscious, far more in man than in lower
creatures. We speak of God's indwelling in man in the {19} same sense
in which there is something of an earthly parent's very being in his
children; indeed, rightly considered, the Divine Parenthood is the only
rational guarantee of that human brotherhood which is being so
strongly--or, at least, so loudly--insisted on to-day. Man, that is to
say, is not identical with God, any more than a son is identical with
his father; but man is consubstantial, homogeneous, with God, lit by a
Divine spark within him, a partaker of the Divine substance. As in
nature we discern God revealed as Power, Mind, Will, Purpose, so in
man's moral nature, and his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction
according as he does or does not approach a certain moral standard, we
discern Him as Righteousness; and, more than all, since men, beings in
whom "the Spirit of God dwelleth," are persons, it follows that God
also is at least personal, since there can be nothing in an effect that
is not in the cause producing it. Thus the doctrine of Divine
immanence throws at least a ray of light upon one of the problems which
press with peculiar weight upon many modern minds--and which we shall
consider at greater length hereafter--_viz._, the Divine Personality.
There remains, however, a still further step to be taken along the line
which we have been pursuing. We are not fully satisfied when we know
God even as personal, even as righteous; the assurance which alone will
satisfy the awakened human spirit is that which tells us {20} that God
is Love, and that His truest name is that of Father. How could such a
culminating assurance come to us? We conceive that this end could only
be achieved through a complete manifestation of the Divine character on
a finite scale, _i.e._, through His indwelling in an unparalleled
measure in a unique and ethically perfect being; and such an event, we
hold, has actually taken place in what is known as the Incarnation. In
the words of Dr. Horton, "the doctrine of the immanence of God, the
idea that God is in us all, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion
that 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.'" "This
argument," he says--_viz._, from Divine immanence--"becomes more and
more favourable to the doctrine of Christ's Divinity." [2] The
highest and truest knowledge of God, that which it most concerns us to
possess, could have become ours only through One in whom the fulness of
Godhead dwelt bodily, in whom we saw Divinity in its essence and
without alloy. To bring us this perfect revelation was, indeed, the
very reason of Christ's advent. We come to the Father through the Son,
because there is no other Way. We have seen the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the very Image of His
Substance. Divine Love, mighty to save, full of redemptive power,
longing for the soul with infinite affection--in fine, Fatherhood--this
is what constitutes {21} religion's ultimate; and this revelation we
have in the Incarnate Son, in whom the Spirit dwelt without
measure--who, _i.e._, stands forth as the supreme and unparalleled
illustration of the Divine immanence.
Here, then, we have a first, preliminary survey of the meaning of this
much-discussed, much-misunderstood term--a mere outline sketch which,
needless to say, requires a great deal of filling in, such as will be
attempted in subsequent pages of this book. So much should be clear
from what has been said, that the nineteenth century, in practically
restoring this fruitful and far-reaching conception to a Church which
had largely forgotten it, made a contribution of the utmost importance
to theology and religion; indeed, the value of that contribution could
hardly be more strongly stated than in the utterances of Dr. Horton
which we have quoted above. Such a factor, however, cannot be
introduced, or re-introduced, into our theological thinking without
necessitating a good deal of revision, nor without causing a certain
measure of temporary confusion and dislocation; it will accordingly be
the principal object of the following chapters to clear up
misapprehensions which have arisen in connection with the idea of
immanence, to assign to it its approximately proper place in Christian
thought, and to safeguard an important truth against the injury done to
it--and {22} so to all truth--by a zeal that is not according to
knowledge. _Corruptio optimi pessima_: in unskilled hands this
doctrine is certainly apt to become a danger to religion itself;
nevertheless, rightly applied, there is probably no more potent
instrument than this to help us in that reconstruction of belief which
is admittedly the urgent business of our age. It is true, as Raymond
Brucker said, that "the answer to the riddle of the universe is
God--the answer to the riddle of God is Christ"; but it is also true,
we hold, that the most effective key for the unlocking of the riddle is
the idea of Divine immanence.
[1] _My Belief_, p. 107.
[2] _Op. cit._; pp. 108, 109.
{23}
CHAPTER I
SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE
It used to be said of a famous volume of apologetics--with what
justification this is not the place to discuss--that it raised more
difficulties than it professed to settle; and a somewhat similar charge
has more than once been brought against the doctrine of Divine
immanence, _viz._, that if it succeeded in throwing light upon some
problems, it created new ones of a particularly insoluble character.
The old deistic notion which interposed a distance between the Creator
and His creation, and in particular represented God as _there_ and man
as _here_, might be untenable in philosophy, but it was at least
intelligible and practically helpful to ordinary minds; but does not
the idea of God's immanence in the world and in man tend to efface that
distinction, and thus to introduce confusion where confusion is least
to be desired?
In the present chapter we shall attempt to glance at some of the main
questions which arise in connection with this doctrine; and, to begin
with, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier
than to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a
manner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply
meaningless--in any case repulsive from the religious point of view.
This, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when
God's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is _de facto_
one with his Maker. What could the general reader think when he was
told with vehemence, "You are yourself the infinite"--"You are yourself
God; you never were anything else"? If that reader was lacking in
mental balance, he was likely to be swept off his feet by such a
declaration, and to accept, with all its implications, a view so
flattering to human vanity; if, on the other hand, he was a person of
soberly religious outlook and experience, he inquired what was the
doctrine in whose name such a proposition was offered to him for
acceptance--and on learning that the name of that doctrine was the
unfamiliar one of "immanence," straightway set it down as the worst of
brain-sick heresies. Thus, not for the first time, has a cause or
truth been wounded and discredited by injudicious advocacy.
For the purpose which we have in view we cannot do better than state
what we consider the fundamental misinterpretation of this doctrine in
the considered words of one of its most popular exponents, who
expresses it as follows: "God _in_ man is God _as_ man. _There is no
real Divine Immanence which does not imply the {25} allness of God._"
[1] It is not too much to say that this brief statement contains the
_fons et origo_ of all the misunderstandings with which the
re-enunciation of this idea has been attended; it is this assumption of
the allness of God which underlies and colours quite a number of modern
movements, and will be seen to lead those who accept it into endless
and inextricable tangles.
If God is all, _then what are we_? Granted the basal axiom of this
type of immanentism, it follows with irresistible cogency that our
separate existence, consciousness, volitions and so forth are merely
illusions. We can be "ourselves God" only in the sense that we are
individually nothing; the contrary impression is simply an error, which
we shall have to recognise as such, and to get rid of with what speed
and thoroughness we can. This, it is true, is more easily said than
done, for our whole life both of thought and action bears incessant
witness to the opposite; there are, however, those to whose temperament
such a complete contradiction, so far from being distressing, is
positively grateful because of its suggestion of mystery and mysticism.
Sometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty
defiantly--_certum est quia impossibile est_; but more often perhaps
the same position {26} is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's
well-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate
theme:--
We feel we are nothing--for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something--_that_ also has come from Thee;
We know we are nothing--but Thou wilt help us to be.
We submit, however, that while such a contemplation of, or oscillation
between, mutually destructive tenets may for a time minister to some
kind of aesthetic enjoyment, the healthy mind cannot permanently find
satisfaction while thus suspended in mid-air; nor are we appreciably
advanced by the temper which, after pointing out some alleged
fundamental antinomy, "quietly accepts"--_i.e._, in practice
ignores--it. Problems of this description are not solved by what
Matthew Arnold called a want of intellectual seriousness; is it true,
we ask, that the "mystical view of the Divine immanence" compels us to
believe in the allness of God, and so to deny our individual existence?
The answer is that this _soi-disant_ "mystical view" is simply a
distorted view of what immanence means. We are not really called upon
to do violence to the collective facts of our experience, which rise up
in unanimous and spontaneous testimony against the monstrous fiction
that we are either nothing or God. The fallacy upon which this fiction
rests is not a {27} very subtle one. When we speak of God's indwelling
in man, we predicate that community of nature which the writer of Gen.
ii expresses by saying that God created man in His own image; we
predicate, _i.e._, what we already called homogeneity--likeness of
substance--and not identity, which is a very different thing. We do
not commit ourselves to the proposition that "God _in_ man is God _as_
man." Parent and child are linked together by a precisely analogous
bond to that subsisting between God and man, but they are nevertheless
distinct individualities.
"But," it will be objected, "the analogy does not hold, for parent and
child are both finite; how can a similar separateness be so much as
thought to exist between God and man, seeing that God is infinite?" It
will be seen that the objection merely restates the allness of God
under a different form; and this brings us to the very heart of the
matter. We must at length face the one conclusion which does not land
us in self-contradiction--_viz._, that _in the act of creation God
limits His own infinity_, no matter to how infinitesimal an extent. On
the alternative supposition we have ultimately to think of God and man
either as All _plus_ something or All _plus_ zero--which is absurd.
Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in
creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet
is distinct from his poem--a truth which he has condensed into an
aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the
Deity such "separation" implies of necessity the self-limitation just
spoken of. Just as a billion, _minus_ the billionth fraction of a
unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited though it be
but by a hair's-breadth, is no longer, strictly speaking, infinite.
Once we admit this Divine self-limitation as a working theory, we shall
no longer be troubled by the unreal difficulty of having to reconcile
the principle of Divine immanence with the fact of individual
existence. The Divine spark may burn in man, brightly or dimly as the
case may be, and yet be separate from the central and eternal Fire
whence it has been flung forth; in other words, man may be a partaker
of the Divine nature without being "himself God." If we are to be able
to believe in either a universe or a humanity which, though the scene
of Divine immanence, are not identical with God, it seems to us that
such a view of creation as we have just propounded is inevitable; and
unless this non-identity can be maintained--unless, that is to say, we
definitely repudiate the idea of the "allness" of God--religion itself
is reduced to a misty and ineffective theosophy.
The issues involved in the acceptance or rejection of this view appear
to us of such importance that, at the risk of seeming to labour our
point unnecessarily, we are anxious to make it perfectly plain. In the
phase through which {29} religious thought is passing to-day there are
few things more urgently needed than to dispel that interpretation of
immanence which obliterates the line of demarcation between God and
man. We may decline the mechanical dualism which placed the Creator
altogether outside the universe, and yet embrace a view which for want
of a better name might be called spiritual dualism, and which maintains
the distinction of which we are speaking. What happens when that
distinction is lost, is sufficiently apparent from a statement like the
following, actually addressed to a miscellaneous audience: "If there is
an eternal throne, you are on it now; there has never been a moment
when you were not on it." Such downright extravagance is most suitably
met with a bald contradiction: man is _not_ on the eternal throne, and
there has never been a moment when he was on it. It is this fact which
makes worship so much as possible; it is, in short, the transcendent
God with whom we are concerned in the exercise of religion, for as Mr.
Chesterton puts it in his own manner, "that Jones shall worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones."
Let us see what follows if we once seriously persuade ourselves that we
are "on the eternal throne," or, to extract its meaning from that
picturesque phrase, that the presence of God is already perfectly
realised in us. We cannot but think we shall carry the reader {30}
with us in saying that such a belief is in itself indicative of
spiritual danger; indeed, there can hardly be a greater danger than
that which is directly encouraged by the idea that we have already
attained, and that all is well with us, seeing that we are one with the
All-good. On such a supposition, why pray--for even were there One
other than ourselves to pray to, what is there to pray for? Or, to
quote the actual question of a believer in this kind of immanence, Why
ask outside for a strength which we already possess? What a naïve
question of this calibre reveals only too plainly is that
self-complacency which is the most deadly foe of the spiritual life.
One is reminded of the American story in which a bright and intelligent
wife asks her cultured but indifferent husband, "Is it true that God is
immanent in us all?" "I suppose so," he answers; "_but it does not
greatly matter._" The question is, Do we already possess the strength
for which we ask? Or rather, Does not the very fact that we ask for it
prove that we do not possess it, and that He from whom we ask it is not
ourselves? Is not the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Divine invasion of
the soul, a fact of experience, and is it not also a fact that that
gift is only to be had for the asking, only given in response to
earnest and persevering prayer, and that it effects in those who
receive it a change of thought and feeling?
All these are facts resting on irrefragable evidence; the apparent
problem is, to {31} harmonise them with the affirmation of the divinity
existing in man. If God be truly "in us all," then in what sense or to
what purpose can we pray for a consummation which, it will be urged, is
_ex hypothesi_ an accomplished fact at the time that we ask for it? We
reply that the Divine indwelling in man is of the nature of a capacity
for striving rather than of an attainment, a potentiality rather than
an actuality, a prophecy rather than a fulfilment. Man's longing for
communion with God, as for an unrealised good, is the longing of like
for Like, but it is only through struggle and effort that the goal can
be reached. The Eternal is indeed the Life of all life, and to that
extent it is true that all life expresses Him; nevertheless our
original divine endowment is no more than the material which has to be
shaped and wrought into "the type of perfect." Without this divinity
of substance as it might be called, we should never have the finished
product, divinity of character; but the latter can only be achieved
through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine
element--without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator--we could
not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that
same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we
lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of His
inexhaustible fulness.
And if we have thus found an answer to the question, "How, from the
point of view of {32} Divine immanence, can there be anything but God?"
we have at the same time received a hint indicating where we shall have
to look for the answer to another query of even more directly practical
interest, _viz._, "How, from the same point of view, can there be
anything but _good_--how can there be any real evil, physical or
moral?" Put in that extreme form, this problem, like the one with
which we have just dealt, arises from the erroneous assertion of the
allness of God; but as the whole subject of the reality of evil will
come up for treatment at a later stage, we need not now enter into its
discussion. At one aspect, and one only, of this vast and complex
theme we may, however, be permitted to glance for a moment before we
pass on. If God dwells in us, it is frequently asked, whence comes
what Paul so pathetically calls "the law of sin which is in our
members"--whence come the wrongful desires and harmful passions of
whose power we are so painfully conscious? That is an entirely
legitimate and even inevitable query, but the solution of the enigma is
not past finding out, though we must content ourselves with a mere
suggestion. We have, in the first place to keep our hold of the fact,
disregarding all pleas to the contrary, that sin is a reality, and not
a phantasm of our imagination; we shall then diagnose its nature as the
misuse, the unfaithful administration, of the power which God has
conferred upon us for employment in His holy service; and then, {33}
lastly, we shall grow aware that the very pain, the sense of
unhappiness and moral discord by which the consciousness of guilt is
ever accompanied, is the protesting voice of that which is the deepest
reality within ourselves--the indwelling Divine.
But when we have shown that the doctrine of Divine immanence does not,
as some of its advocates would have us believe, swallow up human
individuality--a subject to which we shall return--we are faced with
yet another difficulty. The question is asked--again, quite naturally
and inevitably--In what sense can we speak of God as immanent in the
inorganic world? How, _e.g._, does a stone embody or express His
essence?--and yet, if it is not somehow a manifestation of Him, what is
this cold, lifeless, ponderable substance we call a stone? Nor do
matters grow simpler when we ascend in the scale: we may trace the
immanent Deity in all that is good and fair in nature, in all its
smiling and beneficent moods--but what of nature's uglinesses and
cruelties? Is God expressing Himself in the ferocity of the tiger, the
poisonous malice of the cobra, the greed of every unclean carrion-bird?
If He is such as religion represents Him, how can He be present in
these? We may quote with rapture the familiar lines in which the poet
tells us:--
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts. . .
{34} But the world which is the dwelling of that something "far more
deeply interfused" of which Wordsworth sings, does not consist
exclusively of
the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky. . .
--it contains also dismal, fever-breeding swamps, dreadful deserts,
dreary wastes of eternal ice, plunged into darkness half the year; are
we going simply to ignore these realities when we speak of the Divine
indwelling in the world? And, once more, shall we assert this doctrine
when we remember the cold cunning of the spider, or the delight in
torture displayed by the domestic cat?
It depends, we answer, what we mean by "this doctrine"; if we construe
immanence to signify "allness," we may as well admit first as last that
there is no way of escape from the difficulties which these queries
suggest. In that case it is not for us to pick and choose--to say that
God is the beauty of the beautiful, but not the ugliness of the ugly;
the compassion of the compassionate, but not the cruelty of the cruel:
if He is _all_, He is _both_, and for that very reason is _neither_.
That is the real inwardness of a conception of the Deity which
represents Him, with Omar Khayyam, as One--
Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins
Running, Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
Taking all forms from Màh to Màhi; and
They change and perish all--but He remains.
{35} Such a doctrine can only mean that the Divine Substance, under a
myriad-fold variety of appearances, is equally diffused through all
creation, like the universal ether of science; and such a conception of
the Eternal, whatever else it may be, ceases _ipso facto_ to be
religiously helpful. The counterpart of the theoretical allness would
be the practical nothingness of God.[2] But having quite definitely
declined to place such a construction upon immanence, we are preserved
from the absurdities which flow from it. We may and do hold that all
the works of the Lord manifest Him in some manner and in some measure;
but, as we already stated in our introductory chapter, not all do so in
the same manner or the same measure, and not any of them nor all of
them are He. To the specific inquiry, What, if not part of God, is
this stone?--we can, indeed, only answer in the words of Tennyson that
if we knew what the least object was in itself, we "should know what
God and man is." But, dealing with the question more generally, we may
say that what inorganic nature shows forth of the indwelling God is His
prevailing Power and abiding Law; looking upon the works of Him who
"stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon
{36} nothing," we can but feel that awed admiration of His wisdom and
might which is expressed over and over again in the Book of Job. And
this impression deepens when we pass upward from the inorganic to the
organic creation; for not only do we behold the entire vast spectacle
thrilled through and through by one Life, but we are also enabled to
discern something of the august Purpose which progressively realises
itself in all the phases of the cosmic process. That the God revealed
by the universe must transcend the universe in order to be in any real
sense its Creator, is self-evident; but that it is His own Energy which
pervades it, a present Power operating from within--in other words,
that He is immanent in the world, as well as transcendent--is a thought
from which we cannot legitimately escape.
When we speak of the immanence of God in nature, therefore, we mean
principally immanence of Power; and due weight should be given to this
qualification, since its effect is to remove the obstacles we have
enumerated above. For it ought to be plain, though in popular
discussion it is constantly overlooked, that God cannot be _ethically_
present in the unethical, nor _personally_ present in the impersonal.
And here, it seems to us, we go to the root of our present problem,
_viz._, by re-emphasising what is indispensable to a right conception
of this whole doctrine--that immanence is of necessity a matter of
degrees. Nature is not moral, {37} and hence does not reveal God's
moral character to us; nature is not personal, and therefore, while its
operations point with irresistible cogency to personal directivity,
does not show forth the Divine Personality as indwelling.
As soon as we grasp this obvious truth, we shall be led to find the
answer to that question which, as we saw, presents a stumbling-block to
many minds, namely, in what sense it is permissible to affirm the
Divine immanence in the animal world. How can God be in the denizens
of the jungle, we ask, feeling that to make such an statement
concerning Him is to empty the idea of God of all its meaning.
Natural, however, as such reasoning is, reflection will show it to be
faulty. To use a simple, if necessarily imperfect, illustration,
something of man's own being is in all his organs, but not all that
makes him man is in every one of them; certainly, his higher faculties
are not displayed in the organs designed to fulfil the lower functions
of the organism. To proceed to the obvious application--animals are
not moral beings, but act, with the occasional exception of such of
their number as have been humanised by contact with men, from instinct
and not from conscious choice; and for that reason we are not called
upon to reconcile the loving-kindness and tender mercy of God with the
habits and general behaviour of the lower creation. In ascribing all
sorts of moral qualities to animals we simply exhibit the same {38}
tendency which leads children to endow lifeless objects both with life
and purposiveness. Moral attributes, however, whether good or bad,
presuppose conscious choice, a faculty of weighing and if necessary
repelling motives; and with such a faculty we have no reason for
crediting animals. No doubt, our incurable habit of reading the facts
of our own moral nature into the actions of beasts and birds accounts
for the vogue alike of Aesop's Fables and of such works as the _Jungle
Books_; but what strikes us as cruelty in the tiger is not a moral
quality at all, any more than it is a motive of heroism that impels the
mongoose to fight cobras. The tiger and the cobra are no more
deliberately "cruel" than they could be conceived as deliberately
"benevolent"; they are below the ethical level, expressing no character
at all, and least of all the character of God.
But if God is immanent in the cosmos as its pervading and sustaining
Power and Life; if He is immanent in man as that moral and spiritual
principle which reaches out after fuller communion with the Most High:
where shall we say that He Himself is _personally present_, since He is
not so present either in nature or in man? And assuming that such a
supreme and full revelation of God has been given in history, shall we
not do well to distinguish in some manner between it and every lesser
manifestation of immanence? Mr. W. L. Walker has admirably pointed out
that while {39} God is personally present _to_ everything, and entirely
absent from nothing, yet it is certainly false to imagine that He is
"personally inside of everything." "Nothing can happen wholly apart
from Him--He is in some measure in everything and being"; but where
shall He Himself be found, where shall we look for His very fulness?
"He cannot," says Mr. Walker--and we shall not attempt to better his
words--"be personally present in anything, or in any being, till there
is a being present in the world capable of containing and expressing
Him in His essential truth; and that we do not have till we come to
Jesus Christ."
And thus we may perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what
direction we must look for the solution of our problem of universal
immanence--a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false
construction of that doctrine. We conclude that every portion of the
cosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such
aspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest--His Power, His
Purpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity upon whosoever
would violate it; but His own Essence, His Character, could be revealed
only in One whose soul harboured no single element at variance with the
Divine Goodness, One who could be described as "God manifest in the
flesh"--even that unique Son whose oneness with the Father was {40}
undimmed and unbroken by any diversity of will. It required the
perfect Instrument to give forth the perfect Harmony.
And here a final but important point arises. If the Incarnation of God
in Christ is in one sense the highest example of Divine immanence--just
as man represents the highest form of animal life--yet in another sense
it transcends mere immanence just as truly as humanity transcends the
animal creation. We leave this as a suggestion which the reader may
develop for himself. So much is certain, that in Christ alone does the
edifice of faith reach its culminating point--in Him our questionings
receive their complete and final answer, because what we see in Him is
not a stray hint or broken gleam, but the pure and quenchless light of
God's own Presence. "_No man hath seen God at any time; the only
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared
Him._"
[1] The Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., in a paper on _Divine Immanence and
Pantheism_. For the phrase and the Idea of the "allness of God" see
also _Rudimental Divine_ (_i.e._ Christian) _Science_, by Mary Baker
Eddy, p. 10.
[2] We cannot forbear quoting two pungent lines of Mr. Hamish Hendry's,
in which the outcome of such theosophising seems to be not altogether
unjustly described as--
_A kind o' thowless Great First Cause,_
_Skinklin' thro' vapour._
{41}