We have seen that Pantheism fails to satisfy, inasmuch as it requires us
to mean something different by the word "God" from what we have been
in the habit of meaning. I have already said-I fear, too often-that no
conception of God can have any value or meaning for us which does not
involve his existence as an independent Living Person of ineffable
wisdom and power, vastness, and duration both in the past and for the
future. If such a Being as this can be found existing and made evident,
directly or indirectly, to human senses, there is a God. If otherwise,
there is no God, or none, at any rate, so far as we can know, none with
whom we need concern ourselves. No conscious personality, no God. An
impersonal God is as much a contradiction in terms as an impersonal
person.
Unfortunately, when we question orthodox theology closely, we find that
it supposes God to be a person who has no material body such as could
come within the range of any human sense, and make an impression upon
it. He is supposed to be of a spiritual nature only, except in so far
as one part of his triune personality is, according to the Athanasian
Creed, "perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
Here, then, we find ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we are
involved in the same difficulty as in the case of Pantheism, inasmuch
as a person without flesh and blood, or something analogous, is not a
person; we are required, therefore, to believe in a personal God, who
has no true person; to believe, that is to say, in an impersonal person.
This, as we have seen already, is Atheism under another name, being, as
it is, destructive of all idea of God whatever; for these words do not
convey an idea of something which human intelligence can understand
up to a certain point, and which it can watch going out of sight into
regions beyond our view, but in the same direction-as we may infer other
stars in space beyond the farthest that we know of; they convey utterly
self-destructive ideas, which can have no real meaning, and can only be
thought to have a meaning by ignorant and uncultivated people. Otherwise
such foundation as human reason rests upon-that is to say, the current
opinion of those whom the world appraises as reasonable and agreeable,
or capable of being agreed with for any time-is sapped; the whole thing
tumbles down, and we may have square circles and round triangles, which
may be declared to be no longer absurdities and contradictions in terms,
but mysteries that go beyond our reason, without being contrary to it.
Few will maintain this, and those few may be neglected; an impersonal
person must therefore be admitted to be nonsense, and an immaterial God
to be Atheism in another shape.
On the other hand, if God is "of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting," and if he thus has the body without which he is-as far as
we are concerned-non-existent, this body must yet be reasonably
like other bodies, and must exist in some place and at some time.
Furthermore, it must do sufficiently nearly what all other "human flesh"
belonging to "perfect man" must do, or cease to be human flesh. Our
ideas are like our organisms; they have some little elasticity and
circumstance-suiting power, some little margin on which, as I have
elsewhere said, side-notes may be written, and glosses on the original
text; but this power is very limited. As offspring will only, as a
general rule, vary very little from its immediate parents, and as it
will fail either immediately or in the second generation if the parents
differ too widely from one another, so we cannot get our idea of-we
will say a horse-to conjure up to our minds the idea of any animal more
unlike a horse than a pony is; nor can we get a well-defined idea of a
combination between a horse and any animal more remote from it than an
ass, zebra, or giraffe. We may, indeed, make a statue of a flying horse,
but the idea is one which cannot be made plausible to any but ignorant
people. So "human flesh" may vary a little from "human flesh" without
undue violence being done to our reason and to the right use of
language, but it cannot differ from it so much as not to eat, drink, nor
waste and repair itself. "Human flesh," which is without these necessary
adjuncts, is human flesh only to those who can believe in flying horses
with feathered wings and bills like birds-that is to say, to vulgar and
superstitious persons.
Lastly, not only must the "perfect man," who is the second person of
the Godhead according to the orthodox faith, and who subsists of "human
flesh" as well as of a "reasonable soul," not only must this person
exist, but he must exist in some place either on this earth or outside
it. If he exists on earth, he must be in Europe, Asia, Africa, America,
or on some island, and if he were met with he must be capable of being
seen and handled in the same way as all other things that can be called
perfect man are seen; otherwise he is a perfect man who is not only not
a perfect man, but who does not in any considerable degree resemble one.
It is not, however, pretended by anyone that God, the "perfect man," is
to be looked for in any place upon the surface of the globe.
If, on the other hand, the person of God exists in some sphere outside
the earth, his human flesh again proves to be of an entirely different
kind from all other human flesh, for we know that such flesh cannot
exist except on earth; if in space unsupported, it must fall to the
ground, or into some other planet, or into a sun, or go on revolving
round the earth or some other heavenly body-or not be personal. None of
those whose opinions will carry weight will assign a position either in
some country on this earth, or yet again in space, to Jesus Christ, but
this involves the rendering meaningless of all expressions which involve
his personality.
The Christian conception, therefore, of the Deity proves when examined
with any desire to understand our own meaning (and what lawlessness so
great as the attempt to impose words upon our understandings which have
no lawful settlement within them?) to be no less a contradiction in
terms than the Pantheistic conception. It is Atheistic, as offering us
a God which is not a God, inasmuch as we can conceive of no such
being, nor of anything in the least like it. It is, like Pantheism, an
illusion, which can be believed only by those who repeat a formula which
they have learnt by heart in a foreign language of which they understand
nothing, and yet aver that they believe it. There are doubtless many who
will say that this is possible, but the majority of my readers will hold
that no proposition can be believed or disbelieved until its nature is
understood.
It may perhaps be said that there is another conception of God possible,
and that we may see him as personal, without at the same time believing
that he has any actual tangible existence. Thus we personify hope,
truth, and justice, without intending to convey to anyone the impression
that these qualities are women, with flesh and blood. Again, we do not
think of Nature as an actual woman, though we call her one; why may we
not conceive of God, then, as an expression whereby we personify, by a
figure of speech only; the thing that is intended being no person, but
our own highest ideal of power, wisdom, and duration.
There would be no reason to complain of this if this manner of using the
word "God" were well understood. Many words have two meanings, or even
three, without any mischievous confusion of thought following. There
can not only be no objection to the use of the word God as a manner of
expressing the highest ideal of which our minds can conceive, but on the
contrary no better expression can be found, and it is a pity the word is
not thus more generally used.
Few, however, would be content with any such limitation of God as that
he should be an idea only, an expression for certain qualities of human
thought and action. Whence, it may be fairly asked, did our deeply
rooted belief in God as a Living Person originate? The idea of him as
of an inconceivably vast, ancient, powerful, loving, and yet formidable
Person is one which survives all changes of detail in men's opinion. I
believe there are a few very savage tribes who are as absolutely without
religious sense as the beasts of the field, but the vast majority for a
long time past have been possessed with an idea that there is somewhere
a Living God who is the Spirit and the Life of all that is, and who is a
true Person with an individuality and self-consciousness of his own. It
is only natural that we should be asked how such an idea has remained in
the minds of so many--who differ upon almost every other part of their
philosophy-for so long a time if it was without foundation, and a piece
of dreamy mysticism only.
True, it has generally been declared that this God is an infinite God,
and an infinite God is a God without any bounds or limitations; and
a God without bounds or limitations is an impersonal God; and an
impersonal God is Atheism. But may not this be the incoherency of
prophecy which precedes the successful mastering of an idea? May we not
think of this illusory expression as having arisen from inability to
see the whereabouts of a certain vast but tangible Person as to whose
existence men were nevertheless clear? If they felt that it existed, and
yet could not say where, nor wherein it was to be laid hands on, they
would be very likely to get out of the difficulty by saying that it
existed as an infinite Spirit, partly from a desire to magnify what they
felt must be so vast and powerful, and partly because they had as
yet only a vague conception of what they were aiming at, and must,
therefore, best express it vaguely.
We must not be surprised that when an idea is still inchoate its
expression should be inconsistent and imperfect-ideas will almost always
during the earlier history of a thought be put together experimentally
so as to see whether or no they will cohere. Partly out of indolence,
partly out of the desire of those who brought the ideas together to be
declared right, and partly out of joy that the truth should be supposed
found, incoherent ideas will be kept together longer than they should
be; nevertheless they will in the end detach themselves and go, if
others present themselves which fit into their place better. There is no
consistency which has not once been inconsistent, nor coherency that has
not been incoherent. The incoherency of our ideas concerning God is due
to the fact that we have not yet truly found him, but it does not argue
that he does not exist and cannot be found anywhere after more diligent
search; on the contrary, the persistence of the main idea, in spite
of the incoherency of its details, points strongly in the direction of
believing that it rests upon a foundation in fact.
But it must be remembered there can be no God who is not personal and
material: and if personal, then, though inconceivably vast in comparison
with man, still limited in space and time, and capable of making
mistakes concerning his own interests, though as a general rule right in
his estimates concerning them. Where, then, is this Being? He must be
on earth, or what folly can be greater than speaking of him as a person?
What are persons on any other earth to us, or we to them? He must have
existed and be going to exist through all time, and he must have a
tangible body. Where, then, is the body of this God? And what is the
mystery of his Incarnation?
It will be my business to show this in the following chapter.