Ontology, and of Theology, just as it does that of Physiology; it
admits that these different sciences owe their birth and
development necessarily to the spectacle of the universe, of men
and of things, and have for their object the solution of the
questions which this spectacle suggests. But this great fact once
admitted, Rationalism places in Psychology, and in Psychology
alone, the starting-point and the fulcrum of Ontology and of
Theology; it only admits in these two sciences results to which
the human mind attains by its own unaided efforts, that is to
say, by way of observation and of reasoning; it recognises for
human knowledge, with respect to Ontology and Theology, no source
other than human reason.
{133}
Christianity opens to Ontology and Theology a larger sphere and
other sources of knowledge: besides the psychological facts
supplied to these two sciences by observation and reasoning, it
recognises historical facts as truths, not only which they are
bound themselves to admit, but which they have a right to demand
that others shall admit; Christianity does not make the human
mind the sole object of its belief; it believes also in the
history of Humanity, and finds in that History facts to the truth
of which centuries, and the traditions of centuries, have
testified, which it therefore holds, and is bound to hold, as
well proved and as certain as any physical or psychological fact
proved by the observations of contemporary science. The Creation,
the primitive Revelation, the Mosaic Revelation, the Evangelical
Revelation, are in Christian Doctrine historical facts which
Ontology and Theology take, with reason, as the elementary data
and the legitimate bases of science.
{134}
I am here met by a fundamental objection made to these facts and
to their scientific authority; they are, it is said, opposed to
the permanent laws of nature and of reason, as well as of human
experience; science cannot admit supernatural facts. I have no
intention in merely passing to re-enter here upon this great
question; I have already expressed unreservedly my opinion with
respect to it, [Footnote 37] and upon some other occasion I shall
return to it; for, if I do not deceive myself, the question has
not hitherto been properly sounded and to the depth which it
demands. Here I confine myself to referring to two ideas--facts,
rather--absolutely forgotten or ignored by the systematic
opponents of the supernatural.
[Footnote 37: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity.
Third Meditation: "The Supernatural," pp. 84-108. London,
1864.]
Liberty, free agency, in presence of the external or internal
causes which operate upon the will, is the peculiar and
distinctive characteristic of man.
{135}
It is by this that man separates himself from and raises himself
above nature, understanding by the term the ensemble of things
determined by laws general, anterior, permanent. Man alone has it
in his power to commence a new series of facts foreign to any
general law, and originating in his will alone. To deny such
facts, is to deny that man is a free agent, and to make him a
machine regulated by external and fatal laws; that is to say, to
drive man back to the condition of that nature which is
substantially governed by laws of this kind, and thus to abolish
at one blow human morality and human liberty.
The blow strikes still higher--it would abolish God. God, who
created man, is, and was previous to the existence of his
creations, a being essentially free; for liberty cannot be the
daughter of Fatality. It is in the free divine volition that
human Liberty has its source, and man's Liberty itself testifies
to the source from which it emanates.
{136}
By denying human liberty, we throw not only man but God into the
condition of physical nature, that is to say, into the ensemble
of causes obedient to fate, and deprived of all moral essence;
that is to say, we plunge into Pantheism, which, in spite of
Spinoza and Goethe, in spite of all the efforts of logical
reasoning or poetic imagination, is, in ultimate analysis,
nothing more than Atheism.
The systematic opponents of the supernatural must submit to this
consequence. Most of them, I am certain, are far from being
disposed to accept it, and would indeed repudiate it with the
most honourable perseverance. Vain efforts! Driven from
entrenchment to entrenchment, from fall to fall, they will be
finally reduced to this extremity; and if divine wisdom had not
assigned limits to the force of man's Logic, the practical
consequences of such a system would soon make themselves evident
in the moral and social condition of humanity.
{137}
There is a second necessity to which the systematic opponents of
the supernatural must make up their minds. They must affirm that
the laws proclaimed by them as general laws, laws immanent and
permanent in what they call nature, are in effect the essential
laws of all nature, of the entire universe, and of all the beings
whose seeds are there sown. They would have no right to reject
absolutely facts as supernatural if they were not supernatural of
necessity and everywhere; if, in short, they were anywhere in
harmony with laws of nature other than the laws of this hardly
perceptible corner of nature which is the residence of man. If
the laws of our world are not universal and absolute, who will
venture to affirm that they cannot be changed or suspended, even
there where they reign? Is human science ready to maintain that
the laws which she discovers from her infinitely small
Observatory are in effect universal and absolute laws in every
place where matter exists, and where life manifests itself, in
the midst of space and of time?
{138}
Here it is that Christian Ignorance begins to take its place; it
admits the unknown and the diverse in the universe--an unknown
incommensurable, a diverse infinitely possible. I respect and
admire science profoundly; I am as moved, I feel as proud as M.
de Laplace could ever have been at the aspect of this sublime
flight of the human intelligence, which marches with sure footing
in space and across worlds, measures their distances, and knows
how many years are required for the light of the nearest of the
fixed stars to reach us, whereas the light of our own sun reaches
us in a few minutes. I am not less touched by the labours and the
discoveries of the great modern Physiologists, who, walking in
the footsteps of Bichat, observe and note, even in their minutest
and most obscure details, the different phenomena which life in
the midst of matter presents. But when I have rendered homage to
these triumphs of human science, I compare them with the reality
of things, with this universe infinitely great and infinitely
minute, which man makes his study, and I cannot prevent the
reflection, that the universe contains infinitely more objects
than man's mind attains to, and infinitely more secrets than it
discovers.
{139}
What astronomer will dare to affirm that he has counted all the
worlds, and that his eye has reached the point beyond which no
more exist? What physiologist, what naturalist, will affirm that
all those worlds have living inhabitants? and that, if so, those
inhabitants must have the same form, and be subject to the same
conditions and laws, as govern the inhabitants of this globe. Our
science becomes very modest when set side by side with our
ignorance, even in the matters appropriate to science; and,
however extensive and various the conquests of the human mind may
be, the universe is infinitely vaster and more varied than is
either the genius or the strength of its vain conqueror. Knowing
this, and without ceasing to admire the works of human science,
Christian Ignorance bows humbly before that work of God, which
outstrips and surpasses immeasurably every attainment of man.
{140}
Thus on two sides, and by two different processes, Christianity
has a higher point of view, and penetrates further into the
reality of things than Rationalistic Spiritualism. On the one
side, by allowing its place to historic facts which are the life
of mankind, as well as to psychological facts which are the life
of man's soul, Christianity gives to Christian science a deeper,
a broader foundation than rationalistic science supplies. On the
other side, Christianity admits, both with greater grandeur and
with more modesty than Rationalism, the unfathomable immensity of
the universe, as well as the infinite diversity of its possible
laws; and by the avowal of a "Christian Ignorance," it places
itself, at least, at the most elevated point to view the
spectacle of which human science cannot traverse or measure the
extent.
{141}
It is in the presence of another rival, I do not say of another
adversary, that I have now to set Christian Ignorance. I begin by
asking learned Theologians to forgive the freedom of my thoughts
and of my speech; I feel for them a sincere sentiment of respect,
let me say brotherly respect; for in the question to which I
address myself I am now to deal with Christians. But actuated by
the same feeling as that which influenced me when I was before
speaking of the relation of the sacred writings to human science,
I must declare my profound conviction that the subject which is
here being treated is of pressing interest to Christian Religion
in the great struggle in which it is engaged.
The Christian Religion is founded upon facts, upon an
uninterrupted series of facts recorded in documents which exist.
Whether the authenticity or the authority of any part of these
documents, the reality or even the possibility of any of the
facts which they contain is admitted or contested, it is not the
less true that Christianity is not, as Greek Paganism was, a
poetical mythology attributed to fabulous times; as the religion
of Zoroaster was, a personification of the great forces and of
the great phenomena of nature; or as the writings of Confucius
were, a collection of philosophical meditations, and of moral
precepts and counsels, for the use of wise and simple, of princes
and subjects.
{142}
I am far from contesting that poetry and philosophy, human
imagination and human meditation, have their share in the books
which form the documents of Christianity; it is at the same time
incontestable, however, that the peculiar and essential
characteristic of Christianity, from its very origin down to its
latest development, is that it is historical: we behold the
Christian Religion starting to life, living, traversing
centuries, growing great and independent, just as we behold civil
society doing, in a series of facts which succeed to one another
and are different from one another. Christianity is not merely a
religious doctrine; it is the history of the events wherein have
been manifested the relations of God to man, and the action of
God upon the destinies of Mankind.
{143}
In proportion to the vigour with which these events have
developed and spread themselves, the human mind has been exposed
to two temptations, which constitute at once its honour and its
peril, the temptation of explanation and that of controversy.
What an undertaking! to explain God! his relation to man! the
means and the process of his action upon man! Even when he essays
to study, and to describe, the Nature of the God in whom he
believes, Man's vision is troubled by the dazzling light; his
thought exhausts itself, loses itself in the vain effort to
attain, by means of comparisons and figures of all kinds, to the
Divine Person: he conceives that person, he affirms that person,
he contemplates that person, and yet that person he cannot know,
cannot explain. The nearer he feels himself to God, the more does
Man cast his eyes down, the more lowly does he incline himself,
to adore, where he cannot pretend to observe. Even the very
presence of God does not aid man in attaining to the science of
God. What, then, the result where he would seek closely to follow
the agency of God in the facts in which he only sees Him
imperfectly,--where he attempts to carry the torch of human
science into the depths of the secrets of Divine action?
{144}
I here enter into the domain which Christianity ignores. Two
examples will fully suffice, I hope, to make my meaning clear.
The Divinity of Jesus, God's incarnation in Jesus, Jesus God and
Man, these are the truths admitted, proclaimed, incessantly
repeated in different forms, by the Gospels and the primitive
documents of Christianity. I have already said [Footnote 38] that
"it is the fact itself of the Incarnation which constitutes the
Christian faith, and which rises above all definitions and all
theological controversies. To disregard this fact--to deny the
divinity of Jesus Christ--is to deny, to overthrow the Christian
religion, which would never have been what it is, and would never
have accomplished what it has, but that the Divine Incarnation
was its principle, and Jesus Christ--God and Man--its author."
[Footnote 38: Meditations on the Essence of
Christianity. Second Meditation, pp. 75, 76.]
{145}
But Christians have not confined themselves to the belief of this
sublime truth; they have striven to explain it; they have sought
to know and to define how, and when, the divine nature and the
human nature became united in Jesus Christ, to what extent such
union took place, and what effect it produced upon Christ's
personality. Hence all the questions, all the controversies,
which were raised as to the mode and the consequences of the
divine incarnation, by Nestorius and Eutyches, and which in the
councils of Constantinople, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, divided and
agitated the Christian Church, especially in the East.
Man had here essayed to construct a science of Religion and of
divine History.
The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, as
unanimously and persistently as they have proclaimed the
Incarnation, contain and proclaim another great truth of
Christianity, the co-existence of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, and their combined action upon the human soul.
{146}
The Trinity is written in the New Testament, where it takes its
place in the history and in the Faith of Christ from their very
beginning. Here, again, men have refused to restrict themselves
to History, or to a belief in History; they have essayed to
determine the elements, and to explain the "quomodo" of the
religions truth; in other words, to transform history into
science. Hence all the controversies, all the contests, all the
authoritative decisions which have pretended to fix the nature,
rank, and relations of the three Divine persons, or the manner of
the one God's existence and action in the Trinity of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost.
I enter into none of these controversies; I examine none of the
doctrines and decisions which those controversies have either
originated, or disputed; I now only seek to determine their
essential character; it is the transition from divine truth to
human science: it is Theology, the offspring, more or less
legitimate, of Religion.
{147}
When I say its offspring more or less legitimate, and speak of
Theological science in these guarded terms, it is not that I do
not design to say openly all that I think upon the subject. The
scientific Theology of Christianity commands often my admiration,
always my respect. In their effort to explain the grand facts of
the Old and New Testament, its writers have addressed themselves
to a glorious task; they have in pursuing it fallen upon and
thrown light upon sublime truths; they have engaged for the cause
of Christianity in formidable contests; they have lent a moral
influence often pregnant of effect to the institutions and
authorised teachers of Christ's religion. But their efforts have
been even more ambitious than energetic, more compromising than
efficacious; they have, even with the words unceasingly in their
mouths, shown an ignorance of the limits of human science. The
Christian Religion is a miracle, the miraculous work of God; this
was the point from which they started, their fundamental datum;
forgetting what they have so affirmed, they have sought and they
have thought to ensure the triumph of the divine truth by
explaining it; they have obscured and changed it by an
intermixture of man's work.
{148}
Man can recognise as realities the facts which are at the same
time both Christian dogmas and Christian mysteries. Man can
recognise his own subjection to them, but it is not given to man
to make of them a science.
Bossuet also essayed to fathom the Trinity; in the midst of his
explanations and of his comparisons, he stops short and exclaims:
"I do not know who can vaunt that he understands that perfectly,
or who can satisfy himself as to what the modes of being can add
to being, or as to whence arises their distinction in the unity
and the identity which they have with the being itself. All this
is not very comprehensible; all this, nevertheless, is truth."
[Footnote 39]
[Footnote 39: Élévations sur les Mystères.
Works of Bossuet, vol. ix., p. 49.]
Thus after this final effort of his genius, it was in Christian
ignorance that the last great doctor of the Church was forced to
take refuge.
{149}
It is not only that these attempts of Scientific Theology are
unsuccessful, they entail, as experience painfully shows, a
serious danger. Pride is the ordinary companion of science, and
what pride equal to the pride of the science which dares to
believe that it has penetrated the secrets of God's action and of
man's destiny! Scientific Theology has had the greatest share in
religious persecutions; its doctors have had to defend not only
their faith but their system, not only God's work but their own
work and this simultaneously. Those whose systems were the most
logical have generally been the most tyrannical; history in this
respect fully confirms what independently of history might fairly
be presumed; namely, that supposing the faith equal, "Christian
ignorance" is far more naturally and readily inclined to
moderation and charity than Theological science.
But it is not only the scientific Theologians whose ambition and
efforts have led them to mount beyond the sphere of human
science; others there are who fall in a different manner into the
same error and the same peril.
{150}
The Mystic Theologians ask for light as to the relations of God
to man, not from dialectics and reasoning, but from sentiment and
inspiration. They admit between God and man a direct and
mysterious communication, which, in certain cases and upon
certain conditions, conveys to the human being divine revelations
of a character personal and individual. With this torch in the
hand they approach the questions which concern grace, prayer, and
the destiny awarded by Providence to each creature, and flatter
themselves that they are able to raise the veil by which the
solution of such questions is hidden.
I cannot contemplate without profound emotion these pious
impulses of the human soul, desirous of penetrating the secrets
of God. What more excusable than that ardent and trembling
curiosity in the midst of the darkness of our life and destiny?
Whoever believes really in God cannot fail to believe himself
under the eye and in the power of God; how, indeed, would it be
possible for him to admit that his Creator is indifferent and
powerless?
{151}
There are, it may be added, very few who, at certain moments and
under certain circumstances, have not felt, in the innermost
recesses of their being, a stirring, an impulsion, not proceeding
from themselves, nor from the world around them, inexplicable to
them, except as proceeding from a superior source and power. Who
of us has not, in the course of his life, been sometimes aware of
a design foreign to his own volition, his own forecast,
conducting him to an end which he did not forecast? And, finally,
in the infinite number of prayers rising to God from the midst of
human misery and suffering, are there not some to which the event
brings satisfaction, just as there are others with respect to
which the contrary is the case? Hence the problems of the divine
Grace, the divine Providence, the efficacy of prayer. No doubt
the desire is very natural which passionately aspires to solve
problems so grand, and which, in the hope to do so, strives to
rise to a direct and personal communication with their Divine
author.
{152}
But the more natural the desire, the more profound the error. No
doubt God acts upon us, upon our soul, and upon our destiny, by
his providence and by his grace; no doubt he hears and listens to
our prayers; but it is not given to us to foresee his action and
his answer, nor to appreciate them in their motives and their
effects. "The ways of God are not our ways." Whether general
problems are submitted to man's intelligence, or questions
touching him personally trouble his soul; whether the Doctors of
Theology construct systems, or the Mystic Theologians fall into
ecstasies, we see in all these cases that man has arrived at
limits which oppose an effectual barrier to his scientific
vision, and which no transports of piety will ever enable him to
overleap. Beyond those limits, the condition imposed by God upon
man is confidence in spite of ignorance; or in other words,
"Christian Ignorance" which is gage at once for his wisdom, his
charity, and his liberty.
{153}
Fifth Meditation.
Christian Faith.
Forty years ago, upon the appearance of a work of the Abbé
Bautain, entitled "The Morality of the Gospel compared with the
Morality of the Philosophers," I published, in the "Revue
Française," an essay upon that state of the human soul which is
called Faith, upon the different intellectual facts which it
expresses, and the different ways by which man attains to it.
Although my special subject, at present, is no longer Faith in
its abstract sense, but of Faith in Christ, it is not foreign to
my purpose to lay before readers in the year 1868 some passages
which appeared in my essay in 1828. For notwithstanding the
imperfection of the essay referred to, I have not ceased to
regard it as founded on just reasoning; it serves as a
starting-point for that Meditation upon Christian Faith which I
now give to the press.
{154}
By the word faith is commonly understood a certain belief in
facts or dogmas of a special nature--in facts or dogmas of
religion. This word, indeed, has only this meaning, when in
speaking of _the faith_ the term is used alone and
absolutely. This, however, is neither its sole meaning, nor its
fundamental meaning; it has a still more extended sense from
which its religious sense is derived. Expressions like the
following are met with:--"I have full _faith_ in your words;
this man has _faith_ in himself--in his strength--in his
fortune, &c." This employment of the word _faith_ in secular
matters, so to say, occurs more frequently in the present day; it
is, however, no recent invention, and religious ideas have never
been so exclusively its sphere that the word faith has not had
also other significations attached to it.
{155}
It appears, then, by the usages of common speech and popular
opinion, 1st, that the word _faith_ designates a certain
internal condition of the person who believes, and not merely a
certain species of belief: that it refers to the nature itself of
the conviction, not to its object; 2ndly, that this word was,
nevertheless, in its origin, and still is, more generally applied
to those kinds of belief termed religious. What then, in its
special and ordinary application to religious belief, are the
variations which have taken place in its meaning, and which are
taking place every day?
Men engaged in teaching and preaching a religion, a doctrine, a
religious reform, sometimes whilst appealing to the whole energy
of the human mind in its state of liberty, succeed in producing
in their disciples an entire, profound, and powerful conviction
of the truth of their teaching. This conviction is called
_Faith_; a name which neither masters and disciples will
repudiate, nor even their adversaries disallow.
{156}
Faith then is only a profound and imperious conviction of the
truth of a dogma of religion; it matters little whether the
conviction has been acquired by way of reasoning, or has been
generated by controversy, or by free and rigorous examination;
that which gives to it its character, and entitles it to the name
of _Faith_, is its energy, is the empire which that energy
gives to it over the whole man. Such at every time was the faith
of the great Reformers, and more especially in the sixteenth
century, such the faith of their most illustrious disciples, of
Calvin after Luther, and Knox after Calvin.
The same men have preached the same doctrine to persons whom it
was impossible for them to convince by the use of reasoning, by
an appeal to examination, or to science, to women and crowds of
persons incapable alike of laborious study and of lengthened
reflection. They spoke to the imagination, to the moral
affections, where the persons whom they addressed were prone to
feel emotion, and to believe in consequence of emotion. They gave
the name of _Faith_ to the result of their action, just as
they had done so to the result of the process essentially
intellectual of which I was before speaking.
{157}
Faith thus instilled was a religious conviction, not acquired by
reasoning, and deriving its origin in human sensibility. This is
the idea of faith as entertained by the Mystic Sects.