_ManichŠism and Calvinism_
It is but a step from this to the complicated personifications of
Gnosticism, with its Demiurgus, or inferior spirit that created the
world. By some of the Gnostics the Creator was held to be merely an
inferior emanation from God, a notion which had a powerful indirect
effect upon the shaping of Christian doctrine in the second and third
centuries of our era. A similar thought appears in the mournful question
asked by Tennyson's Arthur:--
"O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world
And had not force to shape it as he would?"
But some Gnostics went so far as to hold that the world was originally
created by the Devil, and is to be gradually purified and redeemed by
the beneficent power of God as manifested through Jesus Christ. This
notion is just the opposite to that of the Vendidad, which represents
the world as coming into existence pure and perfect, only to be
forthwith defiled by the trail of the serpent Ahriman. In both these
opposing theories the divine power is distinctly and avowedly curtailed
by the introduction of a rival power that is diabolical; upon this point
Parsee and Gnostic are agreed. Distinct sources are postulated for the
evil and the good. The one may be regarded as infinite in goodness, the
other as infinite in badness, and the world in which we live is a
product of the everlasting conflict between the two. This has been the
fundamental idea in all ManichŠan systems, and it is needless to say
that it has always exerted a mighty influence upon Christian theology.
The Christian conception of the Devil, as regards its deeper ethical
aspect, has owed much to the Parsee conception of Ahriman. It can hardly
be said, however, that there has been any coherent, closely reasoned,
and generally accepted Christian theory of the subject. The notions just
mentioned are in themselves too shadowy and vague, they bear too plainly
the marks of their mythologic pedigree, to admit of being worked into
such a coherent and closely reasoned theory. Christian thought has
simply played fast and loose with these conceptions, speaking in one
breath of divine omnipotence, and in the next alluding to the conflict
between good and evil in language fraught with ManichŠism.
In recent times Mr. John Stuart Mill has shown a marked preference for
the ManichŠan view, and has stated it with clearness and consistency,
because he is not hampered by the feeling that he ought to reach one
conclusion rather than another. Mr. Mill does not urge his view upon the
reader, nor even defend it as his own view, but simply suggests it as
perhaps the view which is for the theist most free from difficulties and
contradictions. Mr. Mill does not, like the ManichŠans, imagine a
personified principle of evil; nor does he, like Plato, entertain a
horror of what is sometimes, with amusing vehemence, stigmatized as
"brute matter." He does not undertake to suggest how or why the divine
power is limited; but he distinctly prefers the alternative which
sacrifices the attribute of omnipotence in order to preserve in our
conception of Deity the attribute of goodness. According to Mr. Mill, we
may regard the all-wise and holy Deity as a creative energy that is
perpetually at work in eliminating evil from the universe. His wisdom is
perfect, his goodness is infinite, but his power is limited by some
inexplicable viciousness in the original constitution of things which it
must require a long succession of ages to overcome. In such a view Mr.
Mill sees much that is ennobling. The humblest human being who resists
an impulse to sin, or helps in the slightest degree to leave the world
better than he found it, may actually be regarded as a participator in
the creative work of God; and thus each act of human life acquires a
solemn significance that is almost overwhelming to contemplate.
These suggestions of Mr. Mill are extremely interesting, because he was
the last great modern thinker whose early training was not influenced by
that prodigious expansion of scientific knowledge which, since the
middle of the nineteenth century, has taken shape in the doctrine of
evolution. This movement began early enough to determine the
intellectual careers of eminent thinkers born between 1820 and 1830,
such as Spencer and Huxley. Mr. Mill was a dozen years too old for this.
He was born at nearly the same time as Mr. Darwin, but his mental habits
were formed too soon for him to profit fully by the new movement of
thought; and although his attitude toward the new ideas was hospitable,
they never fructified in his mind. While his thinking has been of great
value to the world, much of it belongs to an era which we have now left
far behind. This is illustrated in the degree to which he was influenced
by the speculations of Auguste Comte. Probably no two leaders of
thought, whose dates of birth were scarcely a quarter of a century
apart, were ever separated by such a stupendous gulf as that which
intervenes between Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, and this fact may
serve as an index to the rapidity of movement which has characterized
the nineteenth century. Another illustration of the old-fashioned
character of Mill's philosophy is to be seen in his use of Paley's
argument from design in support of the belief in a beneficent Creator.
Mill adopted this argument, and, as a professed free-thinker, carried it
to the logical conclusion from which Paley, as a churchman, could not
but shrink. This was the conclusion which I have already mentioned, that
God's creative power has been limited by some inexplicable viciousness
in the original constitution of things.
I feel as if one could not be too grateful to Mr. Mill for having so
neatly and sharply stated, in modern language and with modern
illustrations, this old conclusion, which after all is substantially
that of Plato and the Gnostics. For the shock which such a clear, bold
statement gives to our religious feelings is no greater than the shock
with which it strikes counter to our modern scientific philosophy.
Suppose we could bring back to earth a Calvinist of the seventeenth
century and question him. He might well say that the God which Mr. Mill
offers us, shorn of the attribute of omnipotence, is no God at all. He
would say with the Hebrew prophet, that God has created the evil along
with the good, and that he has done so for a purpose which human reason,
could it once comprehend all the conditions of the case, would most
surely approve as infinitely wise and holy. Our Calvinist would ask who
is responsible for the original constitution of things if not the
Creator himself, and in supposing anything essentially vicious in that
constitution, have not Plato and the Gnostics and the ManichŠans and
Mr. Mill simply taken counsel of their ignorance? Nay, more, the
Calvinist would declare that if we really understood the universe of
which humanity is a part, we should find scientific justification for
that supreme and victorious faith which cries, "Though he slay me, yet
will I trust in him!" The man who has acquired such faith as this is the
true freeman of the universe, clad in stoutest coat of mail against
disaster and sophistry,--the man whom nothing can enslave, and whose
guerdon is the serene happiness that can never be taken away.
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