Systematic Theology
A Compendium and Commonplace-Book
Designed For The Use Of Theological Students
By
Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.
President and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological
Seminary
Revised and Enlarged
In Three Volumes
Volume 1
The Doctrine of God
The Judson Press
Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Kansas City,
Seattle, Toronto
1907
CONTENTS
Preface
Part I. Prolegomena.
Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.
I. Definition of Theology.
II. Aim of Theology.
III. Possibility of Theology.
1. The existence of a God.
2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God
3. God’s revelation of himself to man.
IV. Necessity of Theology.
V. Relation of Theology to Religion.
1. Derivation.
2. False Conceptions.
3. Essential Idea.
4. Inferences.
Chapter II. Material of Theology.
I. Sources of Theology.
1. Scripture and Nature.
2. Scripture and Rationalism.
3. Scripture and Mysticism.
4. Scripture and Romanism.
II. Limitations of Theology.
III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
Chapter III. Method Of Theology.
I. Requisites to the study of Theology.
II. Divisions of Theology.
III. History of Systematic Theology.
IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.
V. Text-Books in Theology.
Part II. The Existence Of God.
Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God’s Existence.
I. First Truths in General.
II. The Existence of God a first truth.
1. Its universality.
2. Its necessity.
3. Its logical independence and priority.
III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God’s Existence.
IV. Contents of this Intuition.
Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God’s Existence.
I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.
II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful
Collocation in Nature.
III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and
Moral Nature.
IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and
Necessary Ideas.
Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.
I. Materialism.
II. Materialistic Idealism.
III. Idealistic Pantheism.
IV. Ethical Monism.
Part III. The Scriptures A Revelation From God.
Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.
I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.
II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.
III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.
1. Definition of Miracle.
2. Possibility of Miracle.
3. Probability of Miracles.
4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.
5. Evidential force of Miracles.
6. Counterfeit Miracles.
IV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.
V. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a
Divine Revelation.
1. As to documentary evidence.
2. As to testimony in general.
Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine
Revelation.
I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.
1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.
1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).
2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).
3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).
4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).
2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.
II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.
III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.
1. Scripture teaching in general.
2. Moral System of the New Testament.
3. The person and character of Christ.
4. The testimony of Christ to himself—as being a messenger from
God and as being one with God.
IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.
Chapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.
I. Definition of Inspiration.
II. Proof of Inspiration.
III. Theories of Inspiration.
1. The Intuition-theory.
2. The Illumination Theory.
3. The Dictation-theory.
4. The Dynamical Theory.
IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.
V. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.
1. Errors in matters of Science.
2. Errors in matters of History.
3. Errors in Morality.
4. Errors of Reasoning.
5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.
6. Errors in Prophecy.
7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.
8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the
persons to whom they are ascribed.
9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.
10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture
teachers and their writings.
Part IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works Of God.
Chapter I. The Attributes Of God.
I. Definition of the term Attributes.
II. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.
III. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.
IV. Classification of the Attributes.
V. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.
First division.—Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.
1. Life.
2. Personality.
Second Division.—Infinity, and attributes therein involved.
1. Self-existence.
2. Immutability.
3. Unity.
Third Division.—Perfection, and attributes therein involved.
1. Truth.
2. Love.
3. Holiness.
VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.
First Division.—Attributes having relation to Time and Space.
1. Eternity.
2. Immensity.
Second Division.—Attributes having relation to Creation.
1. Omnipresence.
2. Omniscience.
3. Omnipotence.
Third Division.—Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.
1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.
2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.
3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.
VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.
1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.
2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.
Chapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.
I. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.
1. Proofs from the New Testament.
A. The Father is recognized as God.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.
C. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.
2. Intimations of the Old Testament.
A. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the
Godhead.
B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.
C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.
D. Descriptions of the Messiah.
II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled
to conceive of them as distinct Persons.
1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.
2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.
3. The Holy Spirit is a person.
III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic
and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.
1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are
eternal.
2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.
A. The Sabellian.
B. The Arian.
IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three
Persons, there is but one Essence.
V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.
1. These titles belong to the Persons.
2. Qualified sense of these titles.
3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.
VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes
the Key to all other Doctrines.
1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.
2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.
3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other
doctrines.
Chapter III. The Decrees Of God.
I. Definition of Decrees.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.
1. From Scripture.
2. From Reason.
A. From the Divine Foreknowledge.
B. From the Divine Wisdom.
C. From the Divine Immutability.
D. From the Divine Benevolence.
III. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.
1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.
2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.
3. That they make God the author of sin.
IV. Concluding Remarks.
1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.
2. True method of preaching the doctrine.
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
Christo Deo Salvatori.
“THE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF
SEEING.”—_Cicero._
“OPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY
LAW.”—_Psalm 119:18._
“FOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE
LIGHT.”—_Psalm 36:9._
“FOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS
PERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.”—_1 Cor. 13:9,
10._
PREFACE
The present work is a revision and enlargement of my “Systematic
Theology,” first published in 1886. Of the original work there have been
printed seven editions, each edition embodying successive corrections and
supposed improvements. During the twenty years which have intervened since
its first publication I have accumulated much new material, which I now
offer to the reader. My philosophical and critical point of view meantime
has also somewhat changed. While I still hold to the old doctrines, I
interpret them differently and expound them more clearly, because I seem
to myself to have reached a fundamental truth which throws new light upon
them all. This truth I have tried to set forth in my book entitled “Christ
in Creation,” and to that book I refer the reader for further information.
That Christ is the one and only Revealer of God, in nature, in humanity,
in history, in science, in Scripture, is in my judgment the key to
theology. This view implies a monistic and idealistic conception of the
world, together with an evolutionary idea as to its origin and progress.
But it is the very antidote to pantheism, in that it recognizes evolution
as only the method of the transcendent and personal Christ, who fills all
in all, and who makes the universe teleological and moral from its centre
to its circumference and from its beginning until now.
Neither evolution nor the higher criticism has any terrors to one who
regards them as parts of Christ’s creating and educating process. The
Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge himself
furnishes all the needed safeguards and limitations. It is only because
Christ has been forgotten that nature and law have been personified, that
history has been regarded as unpurposed development, that Judaism has been
referred to a merely human origin, that Paul has been thought to have
switched the church off from its proper track even before it had gotten
fairly started on its course, that superstition and illusion have come to
seem the only foundation for the sacrifices of the martyrs and the
triumphs of modern missions. I believe in no such irrational and atheistic
evolution as this. I believe rather in him in whom all things consist, who
is with his people even to the end of the world, and who has promised to
lead them into all the truth.
Philosophy and science are good servants of Christ, but they are poor
guides when they rule out the Son of God. As I reach my seventieth year
and write these words on my birthday, I am thankful for that personal
experience of union with Christ which has enabled me to see in science and
philosophy the teaching of my Lord. But this same personal experience has
made me even more alive to Christ’s teaching in Scripture, has made me
recognize in Paul and John a truth profounder than that disclosed by any
secular writers, truth with regard to sin and atonement for sin, that
satisfies the deepest wants of my nature and that is self-evidencing and
divine.
I am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because
I believe them to be false to both science and religion. How men who have
ever felt themselves to be lost sinners and who have once received pardon
from their crucified Lord and Savior can thereafter seek to pare down his
attributes, deny his deity and atonement, tear from his brow the crown of
miracle and sovereignty, relegate him to the place of a merely moral
teacher who influences us only as does Socrates by words spoken across a
stretch of ages, passes my comprehension. Here is my test of orthodoxy: Do
we pray to Jesus? Do we call upon the name of Christ, as did Stephen and
all the early church? Is he our living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent? Is he divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is
he the only-begotten Son, God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily? What think ye of the Christ? is still the
critical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in
the face of the evidence he has furnished us, cannot answer the question
aright.
Under the influence of Ritschl and his Kantian relativism, many of our
teachers and preachers have swung off into a practical denial of Christ’s
deity and of his atonement. We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian
defection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse
manner than did that of Channing and Ware a century ago. American
Christianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the
authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We need a new
vision of the Savior like that which Paul saw on the way to Damascus and
John saw on the isle of Patmos, to convince us that Jesus is lifted above
space and time, that his existence antedated creation, that he conducted
the march of Hebrew history, that he was born of a virgin, suffered on the
cross, rose from the dead, and now lives forevermore, the Lord of the
universe, the only God with whom we have to do, our Savior here and our
Judge hereafter. Without a revival of this faith our churches will become
secularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be
removed out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as
it has been with the apostate churches of New England.
I print this revised and enlarged edition of my “Systematic Theology,” in
the hope that its publication may do something to stem this fast advancing
tide, and to confirm the faith of God’s elect. I make no doubt that the
vast majority of Christians still hold the faith that was once for all
delivered to the saints, and that they will sooner or later separate
themselves from those who deny the Lord who bought them. When the enemy
comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard
against him. I would do my part in raising up such a standard. I would
lead others to avow anew, as I do now, in spite of the supercilious
assumptions of modern infidelity, my firm belief, only confirmed by the
experience and reflection of a half-century, in the old doctrines of
holiness as the fundamental attribute of God, of an original transgression
and sin of the whole human race, in a divine preparation in Hebrew history
for man’s redemption, in the deity, preëxistence, virgin birth, vicarious
atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his
future coming to judge the quick and the dead. I believe that these are
truths of science as well as truths of revelation; that the supernatural
will yet be seen to be most truly natural; and that not the open-minded
theologian but the narrow-minded scientist will be obliged to hide his
head at Christ’s coming.
The present volume, in its treatment of Ethical Monism, Inspiration, the
Attributes of God, and the Trinity, contains an antidote to most of the
false doctrine which now threatens the safety of the church. I desire
especially to call attention to the section on Perfection, and the
Attributes therein involved, because I believe that the recent merging of
Holiness in Love, and the practical denial that Righteousness is
fundamental in God’s nature, are responsible for the utilitarian views of
law and the superficial views of sin which now prevail in some systems of
theology. There can be no proper doctrine of the atonement and no proper
doctrine of retribution, so long as Holiness is refused its preëminence.
Love must have a norm or standard, and this norm or standard can be found
only in Holiness. The old conviction of sin and the sense of guilt that
drove the convicted sinner to the cross are inseparable from a firm belief
in the self-affirming attribute of God as logically prior to and as
conditioning the self-communicating attribute. The theology of our day
needs a new view of the Righteous One. Such a view will make it plain that
God must be reconciled before man can be saved, and that the human
conscience can be pacified only upon condition that propitiation is made
to the divine Righteousness. In this volume I propound what I regard as
the true Doctrine of God, because upon it will be based all that follows
in the volumes on the Doctrine of Man, and the Doctrine of Salvation.
The universal presence of Christ, the Light that lighteth every man, in
heathen as well as in Christian lands, to direct or overrule all movements
of the human mind, gives me confidence that the recent attacks upon the
Christian faith will fail of their purpose. It becomes evident at last
that not only the outworks are assaulted, but the very citadel itself. We
are asked to give up all belief in special revelation. Jesus Christ, it is
said, has come in the flesh precisely as each one of us has come, and he
was before Abraham only in the same sense that we were. Christian
experience knows how to characterize such doctrine so soon as it is
clearly stated. And the new theology will be of use in enabling even
ordinary believers to recognize soul-destroying heresy even under the mask
of professed orthodoxy.
I make no apology for the homiletical element in my book. To be either
true or useful, theology must be a passion. _Pectus est quod theologum
facit_, and no disdainful cries of “Pectoral Theology!” shall prevent me
from maintaining that the eyes of the heart must be enlightened in order
to perceive the truth of God, and that to know the truth it is needful to
do the truth. Theology is a science which can be successfully cultivated
only in connection with its practical application. I would therefore, in
every discussion of its principles, point out its relations to Christian
experience, and its power to awaken Christian emotions and lead to
Christian decisions. Abstract theology is not really scientific. Only that
theology is scientific which brings the student to the feet of Christ.
I would hasten the day when in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. I
believe that, if any man serve Christ, him the Father will honor, and that
to serve Christ means to honor him as I honor the Father. I would not
pride myself that I believe so little, but rather that I believe so much.
Faith is God’s measure of a man. Why should I doubt that God spoke to the
fathers through the prophets? Why should I think it incredible that God
should raise the dead? The things that are impossible with men are
possible with God. When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the
earth? Let him at least find faith in us who profess to be his followers.
In the conviction that the present darkness is but temporary and that it
will be banished by a glorious sunrising, I give this new edition of my
“Theology” to the public with the prayer that whatever of good seed is in
it may bring forth fruit, and that whatever plant the heavenly Father has
not planted may be rooted up.
ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
ROCHESTER, N. Y., AUGUST 3, 1906.
PART I. PROLEGOMENA.
Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.
I. Definition of Theology.
Theology is the science of God and of the relations between God and the
universe.
Though the word “theology” is sometimes employed in dogmatic
writings to designate that single department of the science which
treats of the divine nature and attributes, prevailing usage,
since Abelard (A. D. 1079-1142) entitled his general treatise
“Theologia Christiana,” has included under that term the whole
range of Christian doctrine. Theology, therefore, gives account,
not only of God, but of those relations between God and the
universe in view of which we speak of Creation, Providence and
Redemption.
John the Evangelist is called by the Fathers “the theologian,”
because he most fully treats of the internal relations of the
persons of the Trinity. Gregory Nazianzen (328) received this
designation because he defended the deity of Christ against the
Arians. For a modern instance of this use of the term “theology”
in the narrow sense, see the title of Dr. Hodge’s first volume:
“Systematic Theology, Vol. I: _Theology_.” But theology is not
simply “the science of God,” nor even “the science of God and
man.” It also gives account of the relations between God and the
universe.
If the universe were God, theology would be the only science.
Since the universe is but a manifestation of God and is distinct
from God, there are sciences of nature and of mind. Theology is
“the science of the sciences,” not in the sense of including all
these sciences, but in the sense of using their results and of
showing their underlying ground; (see Wardlaw, Theology, 1:1, 2).
Physical science is not a part of theology. As a mere physicist,
Humboldt did not need to mention the name of God in his “Cosmos”
(but see Cosmos, 2:418, where Humboldt says: “Psalm 104 presents
an image of the whole Cosmos”). Bishop of Carlisle: “Science is
atheous, and therefore cannot be atheistic.”
Only when we consider the relations of finite things to God, does
the study of them furnish material for theology. Anthropology is a
part of theology, because man’s nature is the work of God and
because God’s dealings with man throw light upon the character of
God. God is known through his works and his activities. Theology
therefore gives account of these works and activities so far as
they come within our knowledge. All other sciences require
theology for their complete explanation. Proudhon: “If you go very
deeply into politics, you are sure to get into theology.” On the
definition of theology, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik,
1:2; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Theology; H. B.
Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 44; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., 10,
7, 4; 11, 6, 4; and Lactantius, De Ira Dei, 11.
II. Aim of Theology.
The aim of theology is the ascertainment of the facts respecting God and
the relations between God and the universe, and the exhibition of these
facts in their rational unity, as connected parts of a formulated and
organic system of truth.
In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science
does not create; it discovers. Theology answers to this
description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it
does not create them. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation,
141—“Schiller, referring to the ardor of Columbus’s faith, says
that if the great discoverer had not found a continent, he would
have created one. But faith is not creative. Had Columbus not
found the land—had there been no real object answering to his
belief—his faith would have been a mere fancy.” Because theology
deals with objective facts, we refuse to define it as “the science
of religion”; _versus_ Am. Theol. Rev., 1850:101-126, and
Thornwell, Theology, 1:139. Both the facts and the relations with
which theology has to deal have an existence independent of the
subjective mental processes of the theologian.
Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and
formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and
explication of the relations between these facts, and the
synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which
unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic
system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed
arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living
men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts +
relations; Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I, Introd.,
43—“There may be facts without science, as in the knowledge of the
common quarryman; there may be thought without science, as in the
early Greek philosophy.” A. MacDonald: “The _a priori_ method is
related to the _a posteriori_ as the sails to the ballast of the
boat: the more philosophy the better, provided there are a
sufficient number of facts; otherwise, there is danger of
upsetting the craft.”
President Woodrow Wilson: “ ‘Give us the facts’ is the sharp
injunction of our age to its historians ... But facts of
themselves do not constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not
concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation, of what
things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings
of facts as suggest meanings.” Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith,
14—“The pursuit of science is the pursuit of relations.” Everett,
Science of Thought, 3—“Logy” (_e. g._, in “theology”), from λόγος,
= word + reason, expression + thought, fact + idea; _cf._ _John
1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word.”
As theology deals with objective facts and their relations, so its
arrangement of these facts is not optional, but is determined by
the nature of the material with which it deals. A true theology
thinks over again God’s thoughts and brings them into God’s order,
as the builders of Solomon’s temple took the stones already hewn,
and put them into the places for which the architect had designed
them; Reginald Heber: “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.” Scientific men
have no fear that the data of physics will narrow or cramp their
intellects; no more should they fear the objective facts which are
the data of theology. We cannot make theology, any more than we
can make a law of physical nature. As the natural philosopher is
“Naturæ minister et interpres,” so the theologian is the servant
and interpreter of the objective truth of God. On the Idea of
Theology as a System, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy,
126-166.
III. Possibility of Theology.
The possibility of theology has a threefold ground: 1. In the existence of
a God who has relations to the universe; 2. In the capacity of the human
mind for knowing God and certain of these relations; and 3. In the
provision of means by which God is brought into actual contact with the
mind, or in other words, in the provision of a revelation.
Any particular science is possible only when three conditions
combine, namely, the actual existence of the object with which the
science deals, the subjective capacity of the human mind to know
that object, and the provision of definite means by which the
object is brought into contact with the mind. We may illustrate
the conditions of theology from selenology—the science, not of
“lunar politics,” which John Stuart Mill thought so vain a
pursuit, but of lunar physics. Selenology has three conditions: 1.
the objective existence of the moon; 2. the subjective capacity of
the human mind to know the moon; and 3. the provision of some
means (_e. g._, the eye and the telescope) by which the gulf
between man and the moon is bridged over, and by which the mind
can come into actual cognizance of the facts with regard to the
moon.
1. The existence of a God.
_In the existence of a God who has relations to the universe._—It has been
objected, indeed, that since God and these relations are objects
apprehended only by faith, they are not proper objects of knowledge or
subjects for science. We reply:
A. Faith is knowledge, and a higher sort of knowledge.—Physical science
also rests upon faith—faith in our own existence, in the existence of a
world objective and external to us, and in the existence of other persons
than ourselves; faith in our primitive convictions, such as space, time,
cause, substance, design, right; faith in the trustworthiness of our
faculties and in the testimony of our fellow men. But physical science is
not thereby invalidated, because this faith, though unlike
sense-perception or logical demonstration, is yet a cognitive act of the
reason, and may be defined as certitude with respect to matters in which
verification is unattainable.
The objection to theology thus mentioned and answered is expressed
in the words of Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 44,
531—“Faith—belief—is the organ by which we apprehend what is
beyond our knowledge.” But science is knowledge, and what is
beyond our knowledge cannot be matter for science. Pres. E. G.
Robinson says well, that knowledge and faith cannot be severed
from one another, like bulkheads in a ship, the first of which may
be crushed in, while the second still keeps the vessel afloat. The
mind is one,—“it cannot be cut in two with a hatchet.” Faith is
not antithetical to knowledge,—it is rather a larger and more
fundamental sort of knowledge. It is never opposed to reason, but
only to sight. Tennyson was wrong when he wrote: “We have but
faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see” (In
Memoriam, Introduction). This would make sensuous phenomena the
only objects of knowledge. Faith in supersensible realities, on
the contrary, is the highest exercise of reason.
Sir William Hamilton consistently declares that the highest
achievement of science is the erection of an altar “To the Unknown
God.” This, however, is not the representation of Scripture. _Cf._
_John 17:3—_“this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the
only true God”; and _Jer. 9:24—_“let him that glorieth glory in
that he hath understanding and knoweth me.” For criticism of
Hamilton, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336. Fichte:
“We are born in faith.” Even Goethe called himself a believer in
the five senses. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 277-295,
shows that intuitive beliefs in space, time, cause, substance,
right, are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge.
Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 14—“If theology is to be
overthrown because it starts from some primary terms and
propositions, then all other sciences are overthrown with it.”
Mozley, Miracles, defines faith as “unverified reason.” See A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 19-30.
B. Faith is a knowledge conditioned by holy affection.—The faith which
apprehends God’s being and working is not opinion or imagination. It is
certitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of our
rational nature and upon the testimony of God. Its only peculiarity as a
cognitive act of the reason is that it is conditioned by holy affection.
As the science of æsthetics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and as
the science of ethics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the
morally right, so the science of theology is a product of reason, but of
reason as including a power of recognizing God which is practically
inseparable from a love for God.
We here use the term “reason” to signify the mind’s whole power of
knowing. Reason in this sense includes states of the sensibility,
so far as they are indispensable to knowledge. We cannot know an
orange by the eye alone; to the understanding of it, taste is as
necessary as sight. The mathematics of sound cannot give us an
understanding of music; we need also a musical ear. Logic alone
cannot demonstrate the beauty of a sunset, or of a noble
character; love for the beautiful and the right precedes knowledge
of the beautiful and the right. Ullman draws attention to the
derivation of _sapientia_, wisdom, from _sapĕre_, to taste. So we
cannot know God by intellect alone; the heart must go with the
intellect to make knowledge of divine things possible. “Human
things,” said Pascal, “need only to be known, in order to be
loved; but divine things must first be loved, in order to be
known.” “This [religious] faith of the intellect,” said Kant, “is
founded on the assumption of moral tempers.” If one were utterly
indifferent to moral laws, the philosopher continues, even then
religious truths “would be supported by strong arguments from
analogy, but not by such as an obstinate, sceptical heart might
not overcome.”
Faith, then, is the highest knowledge, because it is the act of
the integral soul, the insight, not of one eye alone, but of the
two eyes of the mind, intellect and love to God. With one eye we
can see an object as flat, but, if we wish to see around it and
get the stereoptic effect, we must use both eyes. It is not the
theologian, but the undevout astronomer, whose science is one-eyed
and therefore incomplete. The errors of the rationalist are errors
of defective vision. Intellect has been divorced from heart, that
is, from a right disposition, right affections, right purpose in
life. Intellect says: “I cannot know God”; and intellect is right.
What intellect says, the Scripture also says: _1 Cor. 2:14—_“the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because
they are spiritually judged”_; 1:21—_“in the wisdom of God the
world through its wisdom knew not God.”
The Scripture on the other hand declares that “by faith we know”_
(Heb. 11:3)_. By “heart” the Scripture means simply the governing
disposition, or the sensibility + the will; and it intimates that
the heart is an organ of knowledge: _Ex. 35:25—_“the women that
were wise-hearted”; _Ps. 34:8—_“O taste and see that Jehovah is
good” = a right taste precedes correct sight; _Jer. 24:7—_“I will
give them a heart to know me”; _Mat. 5:8—_“Blessed are the pure in
heart; for they shall see God”; _Luke 24:25—_“slow of heart to
believe”; _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall
know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak
from myself”; _Eph. 1:18—_“having the eyes of your heart
enlightened, that ye may know”; _1 John 4:7, 8—_“Every one that
loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God.” See Frank, Christian Certainty, 303-324; Clarke,
Christ. Theol., 362; Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality,
114-137; R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 6;
Fisher, Nat. and Method of Rev., 6; William James, The Will to
Believe, 1-31; Geo. T. Ladd, on Lotze’s view that love is
essential to the knowledge of God, in New World, Sept.
1895:401-406; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 14, 15.
C. Faith, therefore, can furnish, and only faith can furnish, fit and
sufficient material for a scientific theology.—As an operation of man’s
higher rational nature, though distinct from ocular vision or from
reasoning, faith is not only a kind, but the highest kind, of knowing. It
gives us understanding of realities which to sense alone are inaccessible,
namely, God’s existence, and some at least of the relations between God
and his creation.
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:50, follows Gerhard in making faith the
joint act of intellect and will. Hopkins, Outline Study of Man,
77, 78, speaks not only of “the æsthetic reason” but of “the moral
reason.” Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 91, 109, 145,
191—“Faith is the certitude concerning matter in which
verification is unattainable.” Emerson, Essays, 2:96—“Belief
consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul—unbelief in
rejecting them.” Morell, Philos. of Religion, 38, 52, 53, quotes
Coleridge: “Faith consists in the synthesis of the reason and of
the individual will, ... and by virtue of the former (that is,
reason), faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of
truth.” Faith, then, is not to be pictured as a blind girl
clinging to a cross—faith is not blind—“Else the cross may just as
well be a crucifix or an image of Gaudama.” “Blind unbelief,” not
blind faith, “is sure to err, And scan his works in vain.” As in
conscience we recognize an invisible authority, and know the truth
just in proportion to our willingness to “do the truth,” so in
religion only holiness can understand holiness, and only love can
understand love (_cf._ _John 3:21—_“he that doeth the truth cometh
to the light”).
If a right state of heart be indispensable to faith and so to the
knowledge of God, can there be any “theologia irregenitorum,” or
theology of the unregenerate? Yes, we answer; just as the blind
man can have a science of optics. The testimony of others gives it
claims upon him; the dim light penetrating the obscuring membrane
corroborates this testimony. The unregenerate man can know God as
power and justice, and can fear him. But this is not a knowledge
of God’s inmost character; it furnishes some material for a
defective and ill-proportioned theology; but it does not furnish
fit or sufficient material for a correct theology. As, in order to
make his science of optics satisfactory and complete, the blind
man must have the cataract removed from his eyes by some competent
oculist, so, in order to any complete or satisfactory theology,
the veil must be taken away from the heart by God himself (_cf._
_2 Cor. 3:15, 16_—“_a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever
it_ [marg. ‘a man’] _shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken
away_”).
Our doctrine that faith is knowledge and the highest knowledge is
to be distinguished from that of Ritschl, whose theology is an
appeal to the heart to the _exclusion_ of the head—to _fiducia_
without _notitia_. But _fiducia_ includes _notitia_, else it is
blind, irrational, and unscientific. Robert Browning, in like
manner, fell into a deep speculative error, when, in order to
substantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge
as merely apparent. The appeal of both Ritschl and Browning from
the head to the heart should rather be an appeal from the narrower
knowledge of the mere intellect to the larger knowledge
conditioned upon right affection. See A. H. Strong, The Great
Poets and their Theology, 441. On Ritschl’s postulates, see
Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 274-280, and
Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie. On the relation of love
and will to knowledge, see Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology,
1900:717; Hovey, Manual Christ. Theol., 9; Foundations of our
Faith, 12, 13; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:154-164; Presb. Quar., Oct.
1871, Oct. 1872, Oct. 1873; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 99, 117;
Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 2-8; New Englander, July, 1873:481;
Princeton Rev., 1864:122; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 124, 125; Grau,
Glaube als höchste Vernunft, in Beweis des Glaubens, 1865:110;
Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 228; Newman, Univ. Sermons, 206;
Hinton, Art of Thinking, Introd. by Hodgson, 5.
2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God
_In the capacity of the human mind for knowing God and certain of these
relations._—But it has urged that such knowledge is impossible for the
following reasons:
A. Because we can know only phenomena. We reply: (_a_) We know mental as
well as physical phenomena. (_b_) In knowing phenomena, whether mental or
physical, we know substance as underlying the phenomena, as manifested
through them, and as constituting their ground of unity. (_c_) Our minds
bring to the observation of phenomena not only this knowledge of
substance, but also knowledge of time, space, cause, and right, realities
which are in no sense phenomenal. Since these objects of knowledge are not
phenomenal, the fact that God is not phenomenal cannot prevent us from
knowing him.
What substance is, we need not here determine. Whether we are
realists or idealists, we are compelled to grant that there cannot
be phenomena without noumena, cannot be appearances without
something that appears, cannot be qualities without something that
is qualified. This something which underlies or stands under
appearance or quality we call substance. We are Lotzeans rather
than Kantians, in our philosophy. To say that we know, not the
self, but only its manifestations in thought, is to confound self
with its thinking and to teach psychology without a soul. To say
that we know no external world, but only its manifestations in
sensations, is to ignore the principle that binds these sensations
together; for without a somewhat in which qualities inhere they
can have no ground of unity. In like manner, to say that we know
nothing of God but his manifestations, is to confound God with the
world and practically to deny that there is a God.
Stählin, in his work on Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, 186-191, 218,
219, says well that “limitation of knowledge to phenomena involves
the elimination from theology of all claim to know the objects of
the Christian faith as they are in themselves.” This criticism
justly classes Ritschl with Kant, rather than with Lotze who
maintains that knowing phenomena we know also the noumena
manifested in them. While Ritschl professes to follow Lotze, the
whole drift of his theology is in the direction of the Kantian
identification of the world with our sensations, mind with our
thoughts, and God with such activities of his as we can perceive.
A divine nature apart from its activities, a preexistent Christ,
an immanent Trinity, are practically denied. Assertions that God
is self-conscious love and fatherhood become judgments of merely
subjective value. On Ritschl, see the works of Orr, of Garvie, and
of Swing; also Minton, in Pres. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1902:162-169,
and C. W. Hodge, _ibid._, Apl. 1902:321-326; Flint, Agnosticism,
590-597; Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 92-99.
We grant that we can know God only so far as his activities reveal
him, and so far as our minds and hearts are receptive of his
revelation. The appropriate faculties must be exercised—not the
mathematical, the logical, or the prudential, but the ethical and
the religious. It is the merit of Ritschl that he recognizes the
practical in distinction from the speculative reason; his error is
in not recognizing that, when we do thus use the proper powers of
knowing, we gain not merely subjective but also objective truth,
and come in contact not simply with God’s activities but also with
God himself. Normal religious judgments, though dependent upon
subjective conditions, are not simply “judgments of worth” or
“value-judgments,”—they give us the knowledge of “things in
themselves.” Edward Caird says of his brother John Caird (Fund.
Ideas of Christianity, Introd. cxxi)—“The conviction that God can
be known and is known, and that, in the deepest sense, all our
knowledge is knowledge of him, was the corner-stone of his
theology.”
Ritschl’s phenomenalism is allied to the positivism of Comte, who
regarded all so-called knowledge of other than phenomenal objects
as purely negative. The phrase “Positive Philosophy” implies
indeed that all knowledge of mind is negative; see Comte, Pos.
Philosophy, Martineau’s translation, 26, 28, 33—“In order to
observe, your intellect must pause from activity—yet it is this
very activity you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause,
you cannot observe; if you do effect it, there is nothing to
observe.” This view is refuted by the two facts; (1)
consciousness, and (2) memory; for consciousness is the knowing of
the self side by side with the knowing of its thoughts, and memory
is the knowing of the self side by side with the knowing of its
past; see Martineau, Essays Philos. and Theol., 1:24-40, 207-212.
By phenomena we mean “facts, in distinction from their ground,
principle, or law”; “neither phenomena nor qualities, as such, are
perceived, but objects, percepts, or beings; and it is by an
after-thought or reflex process that these are connected as
qualities and are referred to as substances”; see Porter, Human
Intellect, 51, 238, 520, 619-637, 640-645.
Phenomena may be internal, _e. g._, thoughts; in this case the
noumenon is the mind, of which these thoughts are the
manifestations. Or, phenomena may be external, _e. g._, color,
hardness, shape, size; in this case the noumenon is matter, of
which these qualities are the manifestations. But qualities,
whether mental or material, imply the existence of a substance to
which they belong: they can no more be conceived of as existing
apart from substance, than the upper side of a plank can be
conceived of as existing without an under side; see Bowne, Review
of Herbert Spencer, 47, 207-217; Martineau, Types of Ethical
Theory, 1; 455, 456—“Comte’s assumption that mind cannot know
itself or its states is exactly balanced by Kant’s assumption that
mind cannot know anything outside of itself.... It is precisely
because all knowledge is of relations that it is not and cannot be
of phenomena alone. The absolute cannot _per se_ be known, because
in being known it would _ipso facto_ enter into relations and be
absolute no more. But neither can the phenomenal _per se_ be
known, _i. e._, be known as phenomenal, without simultaneous
cognition of what is non-phenomenal.” McCosh, Intuitions, 138-154,
states the characteristics of substance as (1) being, (2) power,
(3) permanence. Diman, Theistic Argument, 337, 363—“The theory
that disproves God, disproves an external world and the existence
of the soul.” We know something beyond phenomena, viz.: law,
cause, force,—or we can have no science; see Tulloch, on Comte, in
Modern Theories, 53-73; see also Bib. Sac., 1874:211; Alden,
Philosophy, 44; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 87; Fleming, Vocab.
of Philosophy, art.: Phenomena; New Englander, July, 1875:537-539.
B. Because we can know only that which bears analogy to our own nature or
experience. We reply: (_a_) It is not essential to knowledge that there be
similarity of nature between the knower and the known. We know by
difference as well as by likeness. (_b_) Our past experience, though
greatly facilitating new acquisitions, is not the measure of our possible
knowledge. Else the first act of knowledge would be inexplicable, and all
revelation of higher characters to lower would be precluded, as well as
all progress to knowledge which surpasses our present attainments. (_c_)
Even if knowledge depended upon similarity of nature and experience, we
might still know God, since we are made in God’s image, and there are
important analogies between the divine nature and our own.
(_a_) The dictum of Empedocles, “Similia similibus percipiuntur,”
must be supplemented by a second dictum, “Similia dissimilibus
percipiuntur.” All things are alike, in being objects. But knowing
is distinguishing, and there must be contrast between objects to
awaken our attention. God knows sin, though it is the antithesis
to his holy being. The ego knows the non-ego. We cannot know even
self, without objectifying it, distinguishing it from its
thoughts, and regarding it as another.
(_b_) _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 79-82—“Knowledge
is recognition and classification.” But we reply that a thing must
first be perceived in order to be recognized or compared with
something else; and this is as true of the first sensation as of
the later and more definite forms of knowledge,—indeed there is no
sensation which does not involve, as its complement, an at least
incipient perception; see Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 351,
352; Porter, Human Intellect, 206.
(_c_) Porter, Human Intellect, 486—“Induction is possible only
upon the assumption that the intellect of man is a reflex of the
divine intellect, or that man is made in the image of God.” Note,
however, that man is made in God’s image, not God in man’s. The
painting is the image of the landscape, not, _vice versa_, the
landscape the image of the painting; for there is much in the
landscape that has nothing corresponding to it in the painting.
Idolatry perversely makes God in the image of man, and so deifies
man’s weakness and impurity. Trinity in God may have no exact
counterpart in man’s present constitution, though it may disclose
to us the goal of man’s future development and the meaning of the
increasing differentiation of man’s powers. Gore, Incarnation,
116—“If anthropomorphism as applied to God is false, yet
theomorphism as applied to man is true; man is made in God’s
image, and his qualities are, not the measure of the divine, but
their counterpart and real expression.” See Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 122; McCosh, in Internat. Rev., 1875:105; Bib. Sac.,
1867:624; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:4-8, and Study of
Religion, 1:94.
C. Because we know only that of which we can conceive, in the sense of
forming an adequate mental image. We reply: (_a_) It is true that we know
only that of which we can conceive, if by the term “conceive” we mean our
distinguishing in thought the object known from all other objects. But,
(_b_) The objection confounds conception with that which is merely its
occasional accompaniment and help, namely, the picturing of the object by
the imagination. In this sense, conceivability is not a final test of
truth. (_c_) That the formation of a mental image is not essential to
conception or knowledge, is plain when we remember that, as a matter of
fact, we both conceive and know many things of which we cannot form a
mental image of any sort that in the least corresponds to the reality; for
example, force, cause, law, space, our own minds. So we may know God,
though we cannot form an adequate mental image of him.
The objection here refuted is expressed most clearly in the words
of Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 25-36, 98—“The reality
underlying appearances is totally and forever inconceivable by
us.” Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, 77, 78 (_cf._ 26) suggests the
source of this error in a wrong view of the nature of the concept:
“The first distinguishing feature of a concept, viz.: that it
cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination.” Porter,
Human Intellect, 392 (see also 429, 656)—“The _concept_ is not a
mental image”—only the _percept_ is. Lotze: “Color in general is
not representable by any image; it looks neither green nor red,
but has no look whatever.” The generic horse has no particular
color, though the individual horse may be black, white, or bay. So
Sir William Hamilton speaks of “the unpicturable notions of the
intelligence.”
Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 39, 40—“This doctrine of
Nescience stands in exactly the same relation to causal power,
whether you construe it as Material Force or as Divine Agency.
Neither can be _observed_; one or the other must be _assumed_. If
you admit to the category of knowledge only what we learn from
observation, particular or generalized, then is Force unknown; if
you extend the word to what is imported by the intellect itself
into our cognitive acts, to make them such, then is God known.”
Matter, ether, energy, protoplasm, organism, life,—no one of these
can be portrayed to the imagination; yet Mr. Spencer deals with
them as objects of Science. If these are not inscrutable, why
should he regard the Power that gives unity to all things as
inscrutable?
Herbert Spencer is not in fact consistent with himself, for in
divers parts of his writings he calls the inscrutable Reality back
of phenomena the one, eternal, ubiquitous, infinite, ultimate,
absolute Existence, Power and Cause. “It seems,” says Father
Dalgairns, “that a great deal is known about the Unknowable.”
Chadwick, Unitarianism, 75—“The beggar phrase ‘Unknowable’
becomes, after Spencer’s repeated designations of it, as rich as
Croesus with all saving knowledge.” Matheson: “To know that we
know nothing is already to have reached a fact of knowledge.” If
Mr. Spencer intended to exclude God from the realm of Knowledge,
he should first have excluded him from the realm of Existence; for
to grant that he is, is already to grant that we not only may know
him, but that we actually to some extent do know him; see D. J.
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 22; McCosh, Intuitions, 186-189 (Eng.
ed., 214); Murphy, Scientific Bases, 133; Bowne, Review of
Spencer, 30-34; New Englander, July, 1875:543, 544; Oscar Craig,
in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:594-602.
D. Because we can know truly only that which we know in whole and not in
part. We reply: (_a_) The objection confounds partial knowledge with the
knowledge of a part. We know the mind in part, but we do not know a part
of the mind. (_b_) If the objection were valid, no real knowledge of
anything would be possible, since we know no single thing in all its
relations. We conclude that, although God is a being not composed of
parts, we may yet have a partial knowledge of him, and this knowledge,
though not exhaustive, may yet be real, and adequate to the purposes of
science.
(_a_) The objection mentioned in the text is urged by Mansel,
Limits of Religious Thought, 97, 98, and is answered by Martineau,
Essays, 1:291. The mind does not exist in space, and it has no
parts: we cannot speak of its south-west corner, nor can we divide
it into halves. Yet we find the material for mental science in
partial knowledge of the mind. So, while we are not “geographers
of the divine nature” (Bowne, Review of Spencer, 72), we may say
with Paul, not “now know we a part of God,” but “now I know [God],
in part”_ (1 Cor. 13:12)_. We may know truly what we do not know
exhaustively; see _Eph. 3:19—_“to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge.” I do not perfectly understand myself, yet I
know myself in part; so I may know God, though I do not perfectly
understand him.
(_b_) The same argument that proves God unknowable proves the
universe unknowable also. Since every particle of matter in the
universe attracts every other, no one particle can be exhaustively
explained without taking account of all the rest. Thomas Carlyle:
“It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my
hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.” Tennyson,
Higher Pantheism: “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of
the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little
flower; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and
all in all, I should know what God and man is.” Schurman,
Agnosticism, 119—“Partial as it is, this vision of the divine
transfigures the life of man on earth.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
Religion, 1:167—“A faint-hearted agnosticism is worse than the
arrogant and titanic gnosticism against which it protests.”
E. Because all predicates of God are negative, and therefore furnish no
real knowledge. We answer: (_a_) Predicates derived from our
consciousness, such as spirit, love, and holiness, are positive. (_b_) The
terms “infinite” and “absolute,” moreover, express not merely a negative
but a positive idea—the idea, in the former case, of the absence of all
limit, the idea that the object thus described goes on and on forever; the
idea, in the latter case, of entire self-sufficiency. Since predicates of
God, therefore, are not merely negative, the argument mentioned above
furnishes no valid reason why we may not know him.
_Versus_ Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 530—“The absolute and
the infinite can each only be conceived as a negation of the
thinkable; in other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no
conception at all.” Hamilton here confounds the infinite, or the
absence of _all_ limits, with the indefinite, or the absence of
all _known_ limits. _Per contra_, see Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 248, and Philosophy of the Infinite, 272—“Negation of
one thing is possible only by affirmation of another.” Porter,
Human Intellect, 652—“If the Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name,
had called the ox a _not-hog_, the use of a negative appellation
would not necessarily authorize the inference of a want of
definite conceptions or positive knowledge.” So with the infinite
or not-finite, the unconditioned or not-conditioned, the
independent or not-dependent,—these names do not imply that we
cannot conceive and know it as something positive. Spencer, First
Principles, 92—“Our consciousness of the Absolute, indefinite
though it is, is positive, and not negative.”
Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of “the farce of nescience
playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science.” “The
agnostic,” he says, “sets up the invisible picture of a _Grand
Être_, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from
man and from the world—blank within and void without—its very
existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing
down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in
lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and
awful non-entity.... The truth is that the agnostic’s abstraction
of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal.” See McCosh,
Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is
not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in
every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of
length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our
doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately
follows.
F. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited,
and the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (_a_) God is
absolute, not as existing in _no_ relation, but as existing in no
_necessary_ relation; and (_b_) God is infinite, not as excluding all
coexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the
finite, and so unfettered by it. (_c_) God is actually limited by the
unchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well
as by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to
humanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in
such a sense as to render knowledge of him possible.
_Versus_ Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95;
_cf._ Spinoza: “Omnis determinatio est negatio;” hence to define
God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable
from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least
internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable
attributes and personal distinctions, is God’s perfection.
Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so
are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able
thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all
self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the
greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God’s 1.
_Perfection_ involves his limitation to (_a_) personality, (_b_)
trinity, (_c_) righteousness; 2. _Revelation_ involves his
self-limitation in (_a_) decree, (_b_) creation, (_c_)
preservation, (_d_) government, (_e_) education of the world; 3.
_Redemption_ involves his infinite self-limitation in the (_a_)
person and (_b_) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in
Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1891:521-532.
Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135—“The infinite is not the
quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated.... Both
absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things.”
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10—“Religion has to do, not
with _an_ Object that must let itself be known because its very
existence is contingent upon its being known, but with _the_
Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon
him, and waiting until he manifest himself.” James Martineau,
Study of Religion, 1:346—“We must not confound the _infinite_ with
the _total_.... The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of
self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal
itself.... However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however
sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in
time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other
terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite
articulately speak in the finite.”
Perfect personality excludes, not _self_-determination, but
determination _from without_, determination _by another_. God’s
self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore
the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness
but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution,
gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The
government of sinners by a holy God involves constant
self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of
divine forbearance; Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are
limitations of the teacher also.” In inspiration, God limits
himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in
the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation:
Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and
holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God’s promises are also
self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed
restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by
which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:189,
195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130;
Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh, Intuitions, 186;
Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion,
2:85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189-191.
G. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what
we know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to
our own senses and faculties. In reply: (_a_) We grant that we can know
only that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say
that we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we
know only what we know. But, (_b_) We deny that what we come into mental
contact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at
all, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not
merely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things.
We conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that
the laws of our thought are laws of God’s thought, and that the results of
normally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective
reality.
_Versus_ Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96-116, and Herbert Spencer,
First Principles, 68-97. This doctrine of relativity is derived
from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that _a priori_
judgments are simply “regulative.” But we reply that when our
primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will
cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature.
The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself
furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence
external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not _into_ nature,
but _in_ nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make
all the world _seem_ green: they are the lenses of a microscope,
which enable us to see what is objectively _real_ (Royce, Spirit
of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding “the
legislator of nature.” But it is so, only as discoverer of
nature’s laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose
its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it
interprets the real meaning of the universe.
Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: “All judgment implies an objective
truth according to which we judge, which constitutes the standard,
and with which we have something in common, _i. e._, our minds are
part of an infinite and eternal Mind.” French aphorism: “When you
are right, you are more right than you think you are.” God will
not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote
“No thoroughfare” over the reason in its highest exercise.
Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:135, 136—“Over against Kant’s
assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself,
we may set Comte’s equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind
cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy
without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms
correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that
they do not.... 79—That our cognitive faculties correspond to
things _as they are_, is much less surprising than that they
should correspond to things _as they are not_.” W. T. Harris, in
Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer’s
self-contradiction: “All knowledge is, not absolute, but relative;
our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but
absolute.”
Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:16-21, sets out with
a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his
adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of
Kant. Ritschl’s statement may be summarized as follows: “We deal,
not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God
self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either
things or God _apart from_ their phenomena or manifestations, as
Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations
_alone_, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed;
but we do know both things and God _in_ their phenomena or
manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with
God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is
always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human
spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an
intelligible order.”
But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine,
has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His
“value-judgments” are simply an application to theology of the
“regulative” principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things
not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We
reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are
in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ’s
preexistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics
into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which
we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union
with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning
Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives
eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and
his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely
subjective value-judgment,—it is a coming in contact with
objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton
and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:13; H.
B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336; J. S. Mill, Examination,
1:113-134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.:
“Hamilton,” in Johnson’s Encyclopædia; McCosh, Intuitions,
139-146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97-123;
Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy,
48-79, esp. 71-79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868:341; Princeton Rev., 1864:122;
Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev.,
March, 1878:445-448; Mind, April, 1878:257; Carpenter, Mental
Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109-113;
Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of
Religion, 1:79, 120, 121, 135, 136.
3. God’s revelation of himself to man.
_In God’s actual revelation of himself and certain of these relations._—As
we do not in this place attempt a positive proof of God’s existence or of
man’s capacity for the knowledge of God, so we do not now attempt to prove
that God has brought himself into contact with man’s mind by revelation.
We shall consider the grounds of this belief hereafter. Our aim at present
is simply to show that, granting the fact of revelation, a scientific
theology is possible. This has been denied upon the following grounds:
A. That revelation, as a making known, is necessarily internal and
subjective—either a mode of intelligence, or a quickening of man’s
cognitive powers—and hence can furnish no objective facts such as
constitute the proper material for science.
Morell, Philos. Religion, 128-131, 143—“The Bible cannot in strict
accuracy of language be called a revelation, since a revelation
always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living
mind.” F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, 152—“Of our moral and
spiritual God we know nothing without—everything within.” Theodore
Parker: “Verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea
like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion”; see review of Parker
in Bib. Sac., 18:24-27. James Martineau, Seat of Authority in
Religion: “As many minds as there are that know God at first hand,
so many revealing acts there have been, and as many as know him at
second hand are strangers to revelation”; so, assuming external
revelation to be impossible, Martineau subjects all the proofs of
such revelation to unfair destructive criticism. Pfleiderer,
Philos. Religion, 1:185—“As all revelation is originally an
_inner_ living experience, the springing up of religious truth in
the heart, no external event can belong in itself to revelation,
no matter whether it be naturally or supernaturally brought
about.” Professor George M. Forbes: “Nothing can be revealed to us
which we do not grasp with our reason. It follows that, so far as
reason acts normally, it is a part of revelation.” Ritchie, Darwin
and Hegel, 30—“The revelation of God is the growth of the idea of
God.”
In reply to this objection, urged mainly by idealists in philosophy, (_a_)
We grant that revelation, to be effective, must be the means of inducing a
new mode of intelligence, or in other words, must be understood. We grant
that this understanding of divine things is impossible without a
quickening of man’s cognitive powers. We grant, moreover, that revelation,
when originally imparted, was often internal and subjective.
Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 51-53, on _Gal. 1:16—_“to reveal
his Son in me”: “The revelation on the way to Damascus would not
have enlightened Paul, had it been merely a vision to his eye.
Nothing can be revealed _to_ us which has not been revealed _in_
us. The eye does not see the beauty of the landscape, nor the ear
hear the beauty of music. So flesh and blood do not reveal Christ
to us. Without the teaching of the Spirit, the external facts will
be only like the letters of a book to a child that cannot read.”
We may say with Channing: “I am more sure that my rational nature
is from God, than that any book is the expression of his will.”
(_b_) But we deny that external revelation is therefore useless or
impossible. Even if religious ideas sprang wholly from within, an external
revelation might stir up the dormant powers of the mind. Religious ideas,
however, do not spring wholly from within. External revelation can impart
them. Man can reveal himself to man by external communications, and, if
God has equal power with man, God can reveal himself to man in like
manner.
Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, asks pointedly: “If Messrs.
Morell and Newman can teach by a book, cannot God do the same?”
Lotze, Microcosmos, 2:660 (book 9, chap. 4), speaks of revelation
as “either contained in some divine act of historic occurrence, or
continually repeated in men’s hearts.” But in fact there is no
alternative here; the strength of the Christian creed is that
God’s revelation is both external and internal; see Gore, in Lux
Mundi, 338. Rainy, in Critical Review, 1:1-21, well says that
Martineau unwarrantably _isolates_ the witness of God to the
individual soul. The inward needs to be combined with the outward,
in order to make sure that it is not a vagary of the imagination.
We need to distinguish God’s revelations from our own fancies.
Hence, before giving the internal, God commonly gives us the
external, as a standard by which to try our impressions. We are
finite and sinful, and we need authority. The external revelation
commends itself as authoritative to the heart which recognizes its
own spiritual needs. External authority evokes the inward witness
and gives added clearness to it, but only historical revelation
furnishes indubitable proof that God is love, and gives us
assurance that our longings after God are not in vain.
(_c_) Hence God’s revelation may be, and, as we shall hereafter see, it
is, in great part, an external revelation in works and words. The universe
is a revelation of God; God’s works in nature precede God’s words in
history. We claim, moreover, that, in many cases where truth was
originally communicated internally, the same Spirit who communicated it
has brought about an external record of it, so that the internal
revelation might be handed down to others than those who first received
it.
We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures. The eternal Word
antedated the written word, and through the eternal Word God is
made known in nature and in history. Internal revelation is
preceded by, and conditioned upon, external revelation. In point
of time earth comes before man, and sensation before perception.
Action best expresses character, and historic revelation is more
by deeds than by words. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 1:231-264—“The
Word is not in the Scriptures alone. The whole creation reveals
the Word. In nature God shows his power; in incarnation his grace
and truth. Scripture testifies of these, but Scripture is not the
essential Word. The Scripture is truly apprehended and
appropriated when in it and through it we see the living and
present Christ. It does not bind men to itself alone, but it
points them to the Christ of whom it testifies. Christ is the
authority. In the Scriptures he points us to himself and demands
our faith in him. This faith, once begotten, leads us to new
appropriation of Scripture, but also to new criticism of
Scripture. We find Christ more and more in Scripture, and yet we
judge Scripture more and more by the standard which we find in
Christ.”
Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 71-82: “There is but one
authority—Christ. His Spirit works in many ways, but chiefly in
two: first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, secondly, the
leading of the church into the truth. The latter is not to be
isolated or separated from the former. Scripture is law to the
Christian consciousness, and Christian consciousness in time
becomes law to the Scripture—interpreting, criticizing, verifying
it. The word and the spirit answer to each other. Scripture and
faith are coördinate. Protestantism has exaggerated the first;
Romanism the second. Martineau fails to grasp the coördination of
Scripture and faith.”
(_d_) With this external record we shall also see that there is given
under proper conditions a special influence of God’s Spirit, so to quicken
our cognitive powers that the external record reproduces in our minds the
ideas with which the minds of the writers were at first divinely filled.
We may illustrate the need of internal revelation from Egyptology,
which is impossible so long as the external revelation in the
hieroglyphics is uninterpreted; from the ticking of the clock in a
dark room, where only the lit candle enables us to tell the time;
from the landscape spread out around the Rigi in Switzerland,
invisible until the first rays of the sun touch the snowy mountain
peaks. External revelation (φανέρωσις, _Rom. 1:19, 20_) must be
supplemented by internal revelation (ἀποκάλυψις, _1 Cor. 2:10,
12_). Christ is the organ of external, the Holy Spirit the organ
of internal, revelation. In Christ (_2 Cor. 1:20_) are “the yea”
and “the Amen”—the objective certainty and the subjective
certitude, the reality and the realization.
Objective certainty must become subjective certitude in order to
be a scientific theology. Before conversion we have the first, the
external truth of Christ; only at conversion and after conversion
do we have the second, “Christ formed in us”_ (Gal. 4:19)_. We
have objective revelation at Sinai (_Ex. 20:22_); subjective
revelation in Elisha’s knowledge of Gehazi (_2 K. 5:26_). James
Russell Lowell, Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire: “Therefore with
thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time’s shadows! and
how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As
when upon the anvil of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically
wrought By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet’s thought!”
(_e_) Internal revelations thus recorded, and external revelations thus
interpreted, both furnish objective facts which may serve as proper
material for science. Although revelation in its widest sense may include,
and as constituting the ground of the possibility of theology does
include, both insight and illumination, it may also be used to denote
simply a provision of the external means of knowledge, and theology has to
do with inward revelations only as they are expressed in, or as they agree
with, this objective standard.
We have here suggested the vast scope and yet the insuperable
limitations of theology. So far as God is revealed, whether in
nature, history, conscience, or Scripture, theology may find
material for its structure. Since Christ is not simply the
incarnate Son of God but also the eternal Word, the only Revealer
of God, there is no theology apart from Christ, and all theology
is Christian theology. Nature and history are but the dimmer and
more general disclosures of the divine Being, of which the Cross
is the culmination and the key. God does not intentionally conceal
himself. He wishes to be known. He reveals himself at all times
just as fully as the capacity of his creatures will permit. The
infantile intellect cannot understand God’s boundlessness, nor can
the perverse disposition understand God’s disinterested affection.
Yet all truth is in Christ and is open to discovery by the
prepared mind and heart.
The Infinite One, so far as he is unrevealed, is certainly
unknowable to the finite. But the Infinite One, so far as he
manifests himself, is knowable. This suggests the meaning of the
declarations: _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God at any time; the
only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him”; _14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;
_1 Tim. 6:16—_“whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” We therefore
approve of the definition of Kaftan, Dogmatik, 1—“Dogmatics is the
science of the Christian truth which is believed and acknowledged
in the church upon the ground of the divine revelation”—in so far
as it limits the scope of theology to truth revealed by God and
apprehended by faith. But theology presupposes both God’s external
and God’s internal revelations, and these, as we shall see,
include nature, history, conscience and Scripture. On the whole
subject, see Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:37-43; Nitzsch, System Christ.
Doct., 72; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 193; Auberlen, Div. Rev.,
Introd., 29; Martineau, Essays, 1:171, 280; Bib. Sac., 1867:593,
and 1872:428; Porter, Human Intellect, 373-375; C. M. Mead, in
Boston Lectures, 1871:58.
B. That many of the truths thus revealed are too indefinite to constitute
the material for science, because they belong to the region of the
feelings, because they are beyond our full understanding, or because they
are destitute of orderly arrangement.
We reply:
(_a_) Theology has to do with subjective feelings only as they can be
defined, and shown to be effects of objective truth upon the mind. They
are not more obscure than are the facts of morals or of psychology, and
the same objection which would exclude such feelings from theology would
make these latter sciences impossible.
See Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who regard theology as a mere
account of devout Christian feelings, the grounding of which in
objective historical facts is a matter of comparative indifference
(Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:401-403). Schleiermacher therefore
called his system of theology “Der Christliche Glaube,” and many
since his time have called their systems by the name of
“Glaubenslehre.” Ritschl’s “value-judgments,” in like manner,
render theology a merely subjective science, if any subjective
science is possible. Kaftan improves upon Ritschl, by granting
that we know, not only Christian feelings, but also Christian
facts. Theology is the science of God, and not simply the science
of faith. Allied to the view already mentioned is that of
Feuerbach, to whom religion is a matter of subjective fancy; and
that of Tyndall, who would remit theology to the region of vague
feeling and aspiration, but would exclude it from the realm of
science; see Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by
Marian Evans (George Eliot); also Tyndall, Belfast Address.
(_b_) Those facts of revelation which are beyond our full understanding
may, like the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the atomic theory in
chemistry, or the doctrine of evolution in biology, furnish a principle of
union between great classes of other facts otherwise irreconcilable. We
may define our concepts of God, and even of the Trinity, at least
sufficiently to distinguish them from all other concepts; and whatever
difficulty may encumber the putting of them into language only shows the
importance of attempting it and the value of even an approximate success.
Horace Bushnell: “Theology can never be a science, on account of
the infirmities of language.” But this principle would render void
both ethical and political science. Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of
Revelation, 145—“Hume and Gibbon refer to faith as something too
sacred to rest on proof. Thus religious beliefs are made to hang
in mid-air, without any support. But the foundation of these
beliefs is no less solid for the reason that empirical tests are
not applicable to them. The data on which they rest are real, and
the inferences from the data are fairly drawn.” Hodgson indeed
pours contempt on the whole intuitional method by saying:
“Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the
explanation of everything else!” Yet he would probably grant that
he begins his investigations by assuming his own existence. The
doctrine of the Trinity is not wholly comprehensible by us, and we
accept it at the first upon the testimony of Scripture; the full
proof of it is found in the fact that each successive doctrine of
theology is bound up with it, and with it stands or falls. The
Trinity is rational because it explains Christian experience as
well as Christian doctrine.
(_c_) Even though there were no orderly arrangement of these facts, either
in nature or in Scripture, an accurate systematizing of them by the human
mind would not therefore be proved impossible, unless a principle were
assumed which would show all physical science to be equally impossible.
Astronomy and geology are constructed by putting together multitudinous
facts which at first sight seem to have no order. So with theology. And
yet, although revelation does not present to us a dogmatic system
ready-made, a dogmatic system is not only implicitly contained therein,
but parts of the system are wrought out in the epistles of the New
Testament, as for example in Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; 8:6; 1 Tim.
3:16; Heb. 6:1, 2.
We may illustrate the construction of theology from the dissected
map, two pieces of which a father puts together, leaving his child
to put together the rest. Or we may illustrate from the physical
universe, which to the unthinking reveals little of its order.
“Nature makes no fences.” One thing seems to glide into another.
It is man’s business to distinguish and classify and combine.
Origen: “God gives us truth in single threads, which we must weave
into a finished texture.” Andrew Fuller said of the doctrines of
theology that “they are united together like chain-shot, so that,
whichever one enters the heart, the others must certainly follow.”
George Herbert: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And
the configuration of their glory; Seeing not only how each verse
doth shine, But all the constellations of the story!”
Scripture hints at the possibilities of combination, in _Rom.
5:12-19_, with its grouping of the facts of sin and salvation
about the two persons, Adam and Christ; in _Rom. 4:24, 25_, with
its linking of the resurrection of Christ and our justification;
in _1 Cor. 3:6_, with its indication of the relations between the
Father and Christ; in _1 Tim. 3:16_, with its poetical summary of
the facts of redemption (see Commentaries of DeWette, Meyer,
Fairbairn); in _Heb. 6:1, 2_, with its statement of the first
principles of the Christian faith. God’s furnishing of concrete
facts in theology, which we ourselves are left to systematize, is
in complete accordance with his method of procedure with regard to
the development of other sciences. See Martineau, Essays, 1:29,
40; Am. Theol. Rev., 1859:101-126—art. on the Idea, Sources and
Uses of Christian Theology.
IV. Necessity of Theology.
The necessity of theology has its grounds:
(_a_) _In the organizing instinct of the human mind._ This organizing
principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion
or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and
unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective; just
in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to
systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of
human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since
the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets
the deepest want of man’s rational nature. Theology is a rational
necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new
systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law,
that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a
theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering.
Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for
the corruption of God’s truth or in a naturally illogical structure of
mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the
restraints of a complete Scriptural system.
President E. G. Robinson: “Every man has as much theology as he
can hold.” Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as
naturally as we speak prose. “Se moquer de la philosophie c’est
vraiment philosopher.” Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became
metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means
that he must attempt ‘to give account of things,’ as Plato said,
‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’ ” Men
often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences
of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself
in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All
other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the
knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one
science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In
speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173,
satirically exhorts us: “Trust your genius; follow your noble
heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and
change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the
romanticists.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons
who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected
with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they
have it.” See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy,
Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.
(_b_) _In the relation of systematic truth to the development of
character._ Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of
Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of
God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of
spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been
objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from
their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths
which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other
hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon
the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are
those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can
be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical,
or mistaken.
Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of
sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these
two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth
of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.
_Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =
_“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative
represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures
the growth of the plant; _cf._ _3 Pet. 3:18—_“grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” For texts
which represent truth as nourishment, see _Jer. 3:15—_“feed you
with knowledge and understanding”; _Mat. 4:4—_“Man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God”; _1 Cor. 3:1, 2—_“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk,
not with meat”; _Heb. 5:14—_“but solid food is for full-grown
men.” Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its
foundation; see _1 Cor. 3:10-15—_“I laid a foundation, and another
buildeth thereon.” See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon,
on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.
Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot
W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty
without doctrine is a tree without roots.” Christian morality is a
fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We
cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the
tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes,
the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”
Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time
when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we
say that it is independent of the tree?” The twelve manner of
fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew
there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple
swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again
to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those
who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal
with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle: “It is the mistake
and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought
instead of causes.” George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day,
28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that
Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a
dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”
(_c_) _In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of
Christian doctrine._ His chief intellectual qualification must be the
power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and
powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit
in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield “the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only
as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers.
Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and
inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace
obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are
correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard
to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system.
With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is
not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men’s
souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is
the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their
relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology,
the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires
reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and
eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong
than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from
“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and
logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice,
1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His
reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”
So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal
are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to
indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching.
Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to “the knowledge
of the truth”_ (2 Tim. 2:25)_. The preacher must furnish the basis
for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct
before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know
God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is
absolutely necessary to his success.
Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology,
or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence?
Professor Blackie: “One may as well expect to make a great patriot
out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere
rhetorician.” The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a
mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John
Henry Newman: “The false preacher is one who has to say something;
the true preacher is one who has something to say.” Spurgeon,
Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a
tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not
need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When
people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring
forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we
have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a
currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of
superficial students.” Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and
erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician’s prescription;
by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending
Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only
after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on
our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us.
Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has. _2 Tim.
2:2—_“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able
to teach others also.”
(_d_) _In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety
and aggressive power of the church._ The safety and progress of the church
is dependent upon her “holding the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13),
and serving as “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Defective
understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of
organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of
Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not
only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an
indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world’s
conversion.
The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative
curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of
doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to
express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who
deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual
acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them.
The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of
controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with
regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up
bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy: “What
converted the world was not the example of Christ’s life,—it was
the dogma of his death.” Coleridge: “He who does not withstand,
has no standing ground of his own.” Mrs. Browning: “Entire
intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a
precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a
doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God’s garden;
its trees are trees of his planting; and ‘all the trees of the
Lord are full of sap’_ (Ps. 104:16)._”
Bose, Ecumenical Councils: “A creed is not catholic because a
council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it
expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and
women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into
those forms of words.” Dorner: “The creeds are the precipitate of
the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.” Foster,
Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of
some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and
crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was
given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the
conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly
as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when
the containing vessel receives a blow.” Balfour, Foundations of
Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials
that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and
declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the
Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its
inexplicable fulness.” Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan
philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and
to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled
to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to
assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret
in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”
Professor Howard Osgood: “A creed is like a backbone. A man does
not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a
backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a
humpbacked Christian.” Yet we must remember that creeds are
_credita_, and not _credenda_; historical statements of what the
church _has_ believed, not infallible prescriptions of what the
church _must_ believe. George Dana Boardman, The Church,
98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of
religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their
artillery against the citadel itself.” T. H. Green: “We are told
that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who
knows what the Fathers believe now?” George A. Gordon, Christ of
To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned
in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the
intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of
our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely
essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his
endeavor for man is a delusion.” See Schaff, Creeds of
Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity,
121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick
Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.
(_e_) _In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture._ The Scripture
urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John
5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of
its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with
spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of
revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the
preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim.
4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called “a scribe who
hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 13:52); the
“pastors” of the churches are at the same time to be “teachers” (Eph.
4:11); the bishop must be “apt to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), “handling aright
the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), “holding to the faithful word which is
according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound
doctrine and to convict the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9).
As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in
his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the
pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to
expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The
treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to
be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid
and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least
one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical
applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards’s
sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in
Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not
models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too
scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too
little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal
preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed
itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the
other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count
himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without
regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of
Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part,
4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith
we fly to heaven.”
V. Relation of Theology to Religion.
Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different
spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the
sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe,
so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of
individual and collective life. With regard to the term “religion”,
notice:
1. Derivation.
(_a_) The derivation from _religāre_, “to bind back” (man to God), is
negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists;
by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms as
_religio_, _religens_; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing
a fuller knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient
world.
(_b_) The more correct derivation is from _relegĕre_, “to go over again,”
“carefully to ponder.” Its original meaning is therefore “reverent
observance” (of duties due to the gods).
For advocacy of the derivation of _religio_, as meaning “binding
duty,” from _religāre_, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This
derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a
Christian writer. To meet the objection that the form _religio_
seems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange cites
_rebellio_, from _rebellāre_, and _optio_, from _optāre_. But we
reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others,
are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation.
For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische
Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger.
Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews,
Latin Lexicon, _in voce_; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7;
Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6;
Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max
Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.
2. False Conceptions.
(_a_) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would
then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of
knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.
In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is
the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God’s
knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not
utterly ignore other elements in religion. “Feeling, intuition,
and faith belong to it,” he said, “and mere cognition is
one-sided.” Yet he was always looking for the movement of
_thought_ in all forms of life; God and the universe were but
developments of the primordial _idea_. “What knowledge is worth
knowing,” he asked, “if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal
life, and thinking is also true worship.” Hegel’s error was in
regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding
thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the
bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly
considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly
religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love
in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than
he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge
of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the
intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional
and voluntary nature.
Goethe: “How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking,
but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what
you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you
must use your fingers.” So we can never come to know God by
thinking alone. _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he
will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.” The Gnostics,
Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological
knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth’s maxim, “The Bible
only, the religion of Protestants,” is inadequate and inaccurate;
for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a
fetich and a snare: _John 5:39,40—_“Ye search the Scriptures, ...
and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” See Sterrett,
Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human
Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos.,
476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.
(_b_) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of
dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless
exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.
In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from
the old rationalism to the evangelical faith. “Like Lazarus, with
the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his
steps,” yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the
soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian
feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks, “Emotion is impotent
unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there
will be emotion which is potent to persuade.” If Christianity is
religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference
between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the
religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other
religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes
life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the
cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith
begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the
worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of
theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.
Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher’s passive
element of _dependence_, the active element of _prayer_. Kaftan,
Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as the _Source_ of our
being, but forgets that he is also our _End_.” Fellowship and
progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence;
and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as
presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in
neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his
Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357.
Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for
those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in.
Dorner: “The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his
nurse.” On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie, _in
voce_; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of
Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine
of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570;
Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.
(_c_) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for
morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is
essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing
and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss: “I know of but
two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the
sense of duty within my heart.” But the mere sense of duty often
distresses. We object to the word “obey” as the imperative of
religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only;
(2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will;
(4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian
a servant only, not a friend; _cf._ _John 15:15—_“No longer do I
call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation
not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_). The
voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of
law. We object also to Matthew Arnold’s definition: “Religion is
ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched
with emotion.” This leaves out of view the receptive element in
religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer
statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as
morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have
recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142.
Goethe: “Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to
bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69;
Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of
Religion, 19.
3. Essential Idea.
Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in
recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the
indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as
consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect,
affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of
all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the
united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must
assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in
regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving
him.
See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in
God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79,
and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is “Sache des ganzen
Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the
personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and
Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation
or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”;
Dr. J. W. A. Stewart: “Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:
“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and
Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as
Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us,
redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik,
8—“The Christian religion is (1) the _kingdom of God_ as a goal
above the world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)
_reconciliation with God_ permitting attainment of this goal in
spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in
man’s natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion, _i.
e._, that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”
Herbert Spencer: “Religion is an _a priori_ theory of the
universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds: “which assumes
intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe,
science dealing with the _How_, the phenomenal process, religion
dealing with the _Who_, the intelligent Personality who works
through the process.” Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is
the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the
recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet,
as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of
a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”
Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal
expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or
realization of self in a completely realized personality which
unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of
all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and
rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which
accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the
complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its
true life in God.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply
the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society,
the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all
men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend
the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual
relationship arising out of that unity of substance which
constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.” See Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227;
Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths,
147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.
4. Inferences.
From this definition of religion it follows:
(_a_) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious
being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually
religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God.
False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the
imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul
in God.
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity
be true, it is not _a_ religion, but _the_ religion. If Judaism be
also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with
Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the
relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in
other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions,
but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became
incorporated with fables and falsities.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas
of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or
essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is
common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that
explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains
all the lower religions.” George P. Fisher: “The recognition of
certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean
that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by
borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in
fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion
does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides
illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and
aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most
spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”
Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon on _Proverbs 20:27—_“The spirit of man
is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a
lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has
naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no
means naturally and universally religious. All false religions
have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained
or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these
elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a
counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin
washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad
money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul’s methods of
dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and
in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and
justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the
light of God’s self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen
religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”; _cf._
_Acts 14:16—_“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn
from these vain things unto a living God”_;_ _17:22—_“I perceive
that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities....
What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto
you.”
Matthew Arnold: “Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion
scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills
how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like
rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be
born again?” Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is
absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other
religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other
religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored
rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism,
and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates.
But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity
is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson,
Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is
reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it
sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes
the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure
beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like
Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the
present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like
Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity
is the manifold wisdom of God.” See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics,
88-93. Shakespeare: “There is some soul of goodness in things
evil, Would men observingly distill it out”
(_b_) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The
facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they
can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought
into rational relation to each other.
This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious
fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is
important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be
identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the
perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our
fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with
devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all
these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion
involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the
God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between
human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul
upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of
self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one’s works and
one’s record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle
in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks
of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or
Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we
also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of
the omnipresent Christ, “the light which lighteth every man”_
(John 1:9),_ and we see in them incipient repentance and faith,
even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.
_Christian_ fellowship must have a larger basis in accepted
Christian truth, and _Church_ fellowship a still larger basis in
common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.
_Religious_ fellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact
that “God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that
feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”_ (Acts
10:34, 35)_.
(_c_) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is
simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is
“formal communion between God and his people.” In it God speaks to man,
and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture
and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the
people.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship
is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.” But there is more in
true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in
true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in
worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But
communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called
“a whirlwind in petticoats,” ended one of her brilliant
soliloquies by saying: “What a delightful conversation we have
had!” We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship
in Thomas à Kempis’s dialogues between the saint and his Savior,
in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe: “Against the great superiority
of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to
put one’s self on his level.” If this be the effect of loving and
praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God!
Inscription in Grasmere Church: “Whoever thou art that enterest
this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself,
for those who minister, and for those who worship here.” In _James
1:27—_“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is
this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“_religion_,” θρησκεία,
is _cultus exterior_; and the meaning is that “the external
service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a
life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its
inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to
be inferred.” On the relation between religion and worship, see
Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison,
Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to
Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
Chapter II. Material of Theology.
I. Sources of Theology.
God himself, in the last analysis, must be the only source of knowledge
with regard to his own being and relations. Theology is therefore a
summary and explanation of the content of God’s self-revelations. These
are, first, the revelation of God in nature; secondly and supremely, the
revelation of God in the Scriptures.
Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than
to God himself?” Von Baader: “To know God without God is
impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime
source of knowledge.” C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8—“God reveals truth
in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of
mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but
above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality? 399—“The teacher intervenes when needed.
Revelation _helps_ reason and conscience, but is not a
_substitute_ for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution
for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like
nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing
ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The
Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars
which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine
to see the stars with our own eyes.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
178—“The Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But
it is useless when you put your eyes out.”
We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The
immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any
more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from
us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118—“The word ‘authority’ is
derived from _auctor_, _augeo_, ‘to add.’ Authority adds something
to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element
of _witness_. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which
cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which
results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own
knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church,
Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only
original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is
only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.” Gore,
Incarnation, 181—“All legitimate authority represents the reason
of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to
it.... Man is made in God’s image: he is, in his fundamental
capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully,
through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as
Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better
reason,—to use Plato’s beautiful expression, he can salute it by
force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give
intellectual account of it.”
Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 332-337, holds that there is no
such thing as unassisted reason, and that, even if there were,
natural religion is not one of its products. Behind all evolution
of our own reason, he says, stands the Supreme Reason.
“Conscience, ethical ideals, capacity for admiration, sympathy,
repentance, righteous indignation, as well as our delight in
beauty and truth, are all derived from God.” Kaftan, in Am. Jour.
Theology, 1900; 718, 719, maintains that there is no other
principle for dogmatics than Holy Scripture. Yet he holds that
knowledge never comes directly from Scripture, but from faith. The
order is not: Scripture, doctrine, faith; but rather, Scripture,
faith, doctrine. Scripture is no more a direct authority than is
the church. Revelation is addressed to the whole man, that is, to
the _will_ of the man, and it claims _obedience_ from him. Since
all Christian knowledge is mediated through faith, it rests on
obedience to the authority of revelation, and revelation is
self-manifestation on the part of God. Kaftan should have
recognized more fully that not simply Scripture, but all knowable
truth, is a revelation from God, and that Christ is “the light
which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. Revelation is an organic
whole, which begins in nature, but finds its climax and key in the
historical Christ whom Scripture presents to us. See H. C.
Minton’s review of Martineau’s Seat of Authority, in Presb. and
Ref. Rev., Apr. 1900:203 _sq._
1. Scripture and Nature.
By nature we here mean not only physical facts, or facts with regard to
the substances, properties, forces, and laws of the material world, but
also spiritual facts, or facts with regard to the intellectual and moral
constitution of man, and the orderly arrangement of human society and
history.
We here use the word “nature” in the ordinary sense, as including
man. There is another and more proper use of the word “nature,”
which makes it simply a complex of forces and beings under the law
of cause and effect. To nature in this sense man belongs only as
respects his body, while as immaterial and personal he is a
supernatural being. Free will is not under the law of physical and
mechanical causation. As Bushnell has said: “Nature and the
supernatural together constitute the one system of God.” Drummond,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 232—“Things are natural or
supernatural according to where we stand. Man is supernatural to
the mineral; God is supernatural to the man.” We shall in
subsequent chapters use the term “nature” in the narrow sense. The
universal use of the phrase “Natural Theology,” however, compels
us in this chapter to employ the word “nature” in its broader
sense as including man, although we do this under protest, and
with this explanation of the more proper meaning of the term. See
Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:183 _sq._
E. G. Robinson: “Bushnell separates nature from the supernatural.
Nature is a blind train of causes. God has nothing to do with it,
except as he steps into it from without. Man is supernatural,
because he is outside of nature, having the power of originating
an independent train of causes.” If this were the proper
conception of nature, then we might be compelled to conclude with
P. T. Forsyth, in Faith and Criticism, 100—“There is no revelation
in nature. There can be none, because there is no forgiveness. We
cannot be sure about her. She is only aesthetic. Her ideal is
harmony, not reconciliation.... For the conscience, stricken or
strong, she has no word.... Nature does not contain her own
teleology, and for the moral soul that refuses to be fancy-fed,
Christ is the one luminous smile on the dark face of the world.”
But this is virtually to confine Christ’s revelation to Scripture
or to the incarnation. As there was an astronomy without the
telescope, so there was a theology before the Bible. George
Harris, Moral Evolution, 411—“Nature is both evolution and
revelation. As soon as the question _How_ is answered, the
questions _Whence_ and _Why_ arise. Nature is to God what speech
is to thought.” The title of Henry Drummond’s book should have
been: “Spiritual Law in the Natural World,” for nature is but the
free though regular activity of God; what we call the supernatural
is simply his extraordinary working.
(_a_) Natural theology.—The universe is a source of theology. The
Scriptures assert that God has revealed himself in nature. There is not
only an outward witness to his existence and character in the constitution
and government of the universe (Ps. 19; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:20), but an
inward witness to his existence and character in the heart of every man
(Rom. 1:17, 18, 19, 20, 32; 2:15). The systematic exhibition of these
facts, whether derived from observation, history or science, constitutes
natural theology.
Outward witness: _Ps.19:1-6—_“The heavens declare the glory of
God”; _Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness, in that
he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons”;
_Rom. 1:20—_“for the invisible things of him since the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things
that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.” Inward
witness: _Rom. 1:19—τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ = _“that which is known of
God is manifest in them.” Compare the ἀποκαλύπτεται of the gospel
in verse 17, with the ἀποκαλύπτεται of wrath in verse 18—two
revelations, one of ὀργή, the other of χάρις; see Shedd,
Homiletics, 11. _Rom. 1:32—_“knowing the ordinance of God”;
_2:15—_“they show the work of the law written in their hearts.”
Therefore even the heathen are “without excuse”_ (Rom. 1:20)_.
There are two books: Nature and Scripture—one written, the other
unwritten: and there is need of studying both. On the passages in
Romans, see the Commentary of Hodge.
Spurgeon told of a godly person who, when sailing down the Rhine,
closed his eyes, lest the beauty of the scene should divert his
mind from spiritual themes. The Puritan turned away from the
moss-rose, saying that he would count nothing on earth lovely. But
this is to despise God’s works. J. H. Barrows: “The Himalayas are
the raised letters upon which we blind children put our fingers to
spell out the name of God.” To despise the works of God is to
despise God himself. God is present in nature, and is now
speaking. _Ps. 19:1—_“The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the firmament showeth his handiwork”—present tenses. Nature is not
so much a _book_, as a _voice_. Hutton, Essays, 2:236—“The direct
knowledge of spiritual communion must be supplemented by knowledge
of God’s ways gained from the study of nature. To neglect the
study of the natural mysteries of the universe leads to an
arrogant and illicit intrusion of moral and spiritual assumptions
into a different world. This is the lesson of the book of Job.”
Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 85—“Man, the servant and interpreter of
nature, is also, and is thereby, the servant and interpreter of
the living God.” Books of science are the record of man’s past
interpretations of God’s works.
(_b_) Natural theology supplemented.—The Christian revelation is the chief
source of theology. The Scriptures plainly declare that the revelation of
God in nature does not supply all the knowledge which a sinner needs (Acts
17:23; Eph. 3:9). This revelation is therefore supplemented by another, in
which divine attributes and merciful provisions only dimly shadowed forth
in nature are made known to men. This latter revelation consists of a
series of supernatural events and communications, the record of which is
presented in the Scriptures.
_Acts 17:23_—Paul shows that, though the Athenians, in the
erection of an altar to an unknown God, “acknowledged a divine
existence beyond any which the ordinary rites of their worship
recognized, that Being was still unknown to them; they had no just
conception of his nature and perfections” (Hackett, _in loco_).
_Eph. 3:9—_“the mystery which hath been hid in God”—this mystery
is in the gospel made known for man’s salvation. Hegel, in his
Philosophy of Religion, says that Christianity is the only
revealed religion, because the Christian God is the only one from
whom a revelation can come. We may add that as science is the
record of man’s progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in
the realm of nature, so Scripture is the record of man’s
progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in the realm of
spirit. The phrase “word of God” does not primarily denote a
_record_,—it is the _spoken_ word, the _doctrine_, the vitalizing
_truth_, disclosed by Christ; see _Mat. 13:19—_“heareth the word
of the kingdom”; _Luke 5:1—_“heard the word of God”; _Acts
8:25—_“spoken the word of the Lord”; _13:48, 49—_“glorified the
word of God: ... the word of the Lord was spread abroad”; _19:10,
20—_“heard the word of the Lord, ... mightily grew the word of the
Lord”; _1 Cor. 1:18—_“the word of the cross”—all designating not a
document, but an unwritten word; _cf.__ Jer. 1:4—_“the word of
Jehovah came unto me”; _Ez. 1:3—_“the word of Jehovah came
expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest.”
(_c_) The Scriptures the final standard of appeal.—Science and Scripture
throw light upon each other. The same divine Spirit who gave both
revelations is still present, enabling the believer to interpret the one
by the other and thus progressively to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Because of our finiteness and sin, the total record in Scripture of God’s
past communications is a more trustworthy source of theology than are our
conclusions from nature or our private impressions of the teaching of the
Spirit. Theology therefore looks to the Scripture itself as its chief
source of material and its final standard of appeal.
There is an internal work of the divine Spirit by which the outer
word is made an inner word, and its truth and power are manifested
to the heart. Scripture represents this work of the Spirit, not as
a giving of new truth, but as an illumination of the mind to
perceive the fulness of meaning which lay wrapped up in the truth
already revealed. Christ is “the truth”_ (John 14:6)_; “in whom
are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”_ (Col.
2:3)_; the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “shall take of mine, and shall
declare it unto you”_ (John 16:14)_. The incarnation and the Cross
express the heart of God and the secret of the universe; all
discoveries in theology are but the unfolding of truth involved in
these facts. The Spirit of Christ enables us to compare nature
with Scripture, and Scripture with nature, and to correct mistakes
in interpreting the one by light gained from the other. Because
the church as a whole, by which we mean the company of true
believers in all lands and ages, has the promise that it shall be
guided “into all the truth”_ (John 16:13)_, we may confidently
expect the progress of Christian doctrine.
Christian experience is sometimes regarded as an original source
of religious truth. Experience, however, is but a testing and
proving of the truth objectively contained in God’s revelation.
The word “experience” is derived from _experior_, to test, to try.
Christian consciousness is not “norma normans,” but “norma
normata.” Light, like life, comes to us through the mediation of
others. Yet the first comes from God as really as the last, of
which without hesitation we say: “God made me,” though we have
human parents. As I get through the service-pipe in my house the
same water which is stored in the reservoir upon the hillside, so
in the Scriptures I get the same truth which the Holy Spirit
originally communicated to prophets and apostles. Calvin,
Institutes, book I, chap. 7—“As nature has an immediate
manifestation of God in conscience, a mediate in his works, so
revelation has an immediate manifestation of God in the Spirit, a
mediate in the Scriptures.” “Man’s nature,” said Spurgeon, “is not
an organized lie, yet his inner consciousness has been warped by
sin, and though once it was an infallible guide to truth and duty,
sin has made it very deceptive. The standard of infallibility is
not in man’s consciousness, but in the Scriptures. When
consciousness in any matter is contrary to the word of God, we
must know that it is not God’s voice within us, but the devil’s.”
Dr. George A. Gordon says that “Christian history is a revelation
of Christ additional to that contained in the New Testament.”
Should we not say “illustrative,” instead of “additional”? On the
relation between Christian experience and Scripture, see Stearns,
Evidence of Christian Experience, 286-309: Twesten, Dogmatik,
1:344-348; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:15.
H. H. Bawden: “God is the ultimate authority, but there are
delegated authorities, such as family, state, church; instincts,
feelings, conscience; the general experience of the race,
traditions, utilities; revelation in nature and in Scripture. But
the highest authority available for men in morals and religion is
the truth concerning Christ contained in the Christian Scriptures.
What the truth concerning Christ _is_, is determined by: (1) the
human reason, conditioned by a right attitude of the feelings and
the will; (2) in the light of all the truth derived from nature,
including man; (3) in the light of the history of Christianity;
(4) in the light of the origin and development of the Scriptures
themselves. The authority of the generic reason and the authority
of the Bible are co-relative, since they both have been developed
in the providence of God, and since the latter is in large measure
but the reflection of the former. This view enables us to hold a
rational conception of the function of the Scripture in religion.
This view, further, enables us to rationalize what is called the
inspiration of the Bible, the nature and extent of inspiration,
the Bible as history—a record of the historic unfolding of
revelation; the Bible as literature—a compend of life-principles,
rather than a book of rules; the Bible Christocentric—an
incarnation of the divine thought and will in human thought and
language.”
(_d_) The theology of Scripture not unnatural.—Though we speak of the
systematized truths of nature as constituting natural theology, we are not
to infer that Scriptural theology is unnatural. Since the Scriptures have
the same author as nature, the same principles are illustrated in the one
as in the other. All the doctrines of the Bible have their reason in that
same nature of God which constitutes the basis of all material things.
Christianity is a supplementary dispensation, not as contradicting, or
correcting errors in, natural theology, but as more perfectly revealing
the truth. Christianity is indeed the ground-plan upon which the whole
creation is built—the original and eternal truth of which natural theology
is but a partial expression. Hence the theology of nature and the theology
of Scripture are mutually dependent. Natural theology not only prepares
the way for, but it receives stimulus and aid from, Scriptural theology.
Natural theology may now be a source of truth, which, before the
Scriptures came, it could not furnish.
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity. 23—“There is no such
thing as a natural religion or religion of reason distinct from
revealed religion. Christianity is more profoundly, more
comprehensively, rational, more accordant with the deepest
principles of human nature and human thought than is natural
religion; or, as we may put it, Christianity is natural religion
elevated and transmuted into revealed.” Peabody, Christianity the
Religion of Nature, lecture 2—“Revelation is the unveiling,
uncovering of what previously existed, and it excludes the idea of
newness, invention, creation.... The revealed religion of earth is
the natural religion of heaven.” Compare _Rev. 13:8—_“the Lamb
that hath been slain from the foundation of the world” = the
coming of Christ was no make-shift; in a true sense the Cross
existed in eternity; the atonement is a revelation of an eternal
fact in the being of God.
Note Plato’s illustration of the cave which can be easily threaded
by one who has previously entered it with a torch. Nature is the
dim light from the cave’s mouth; the torch is Scripture. Kant to
Jacobi, in Jacobi’s Werke, 3:523—“If the gospel had not previously
taught the universal moral laws, reason would not yet have
obtained so perfect an insight into them.” Alexander McLaren:
“Non-Christian thinkers now talk eloquently about God’s love, and
even reject the gospel in the name of that love, thus kicking down
the ladder by which they have climbed. But it was the Cross that
taught the world the love of God, and apart from the death of
Christ men may hope that there is a heart at the centre of the
universe, but they can never be sure of it.” The parrot fancies
that he taught men to talk. So Mr. Spencer fancies that he
invented ethics. He is only using the twilight, after his sun has
gone down. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 252, 253—“Faith, at the
Reformation, first gave scientific certainty; it had God sure:
hence it proceeded to banish scepticism in philosophy and
science.” See also Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 333; Bowen,
Metaph. and Ethics, 442-463; Bib. Sac., 1874:436; A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 226, 227.
2. Scripture and Rationalism.
Although the Scriptures make known much that is beyond the power of man’s
unaided reason to discover or fully to comprehend, their teachings, when
taken together, in no way contradict a reason conditioned in its activity
by a holy affection and enlightened by the Spirit of God. To reason in the
large sense, as including the mind’s power of cognizing God and moral
relations—not in the narrow sense of mere reasoning, or the exercise of
the purely logical faculty—the Scriptures continually appeal.
A. The proper office of reason, in this large sense, is: (_a_) To furnish
us with those primary ideas of space, time, cause, substance, design,
right, and God, which are the conditions of all subsequent knowledge.
(_b_) To judge with regard to man’s need of a special and supernatural
revelation. (_c_) To examine the credentials of communications professing
to be, or of documents professing to record, such a revelation. (_d_) To
estimate and reduce to system the facts of revelation, when these have
been found properly attested. (_e_) To deduce from these facts their
natural and logical conclusions. Thus reason itself prepares the way for a
revelation above reason, and warrants an implicit trust in such revelation
when once given.
Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 318—“Reason terminates in the
proposition: Look for revelation.” Leibnitz: “Revelation is the
viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial
assembly (reason), and then himself presides.” Reason can
recognize truth after it is made known, as for example in the
demonstrations of geometry, although it could never discover that
truth for itself. See Calderwood’s illustration of the party lost
in the woods, who wisely take the course indicated by one at the
tree-top with a larger view than their own (Philosophy of the
Infinite, 126). The novice does well to trust his guide in the
forest, at least till he learns to recognise for himself the marks
blazed upon the trees. Luthardt, Fund. Truths, lect. viii—“Reason
could never have invented a self-humiliating God, cradled in a
manger and dying on a cross.” Lessing, Zur Geschichte und
Litteratur, 6:134—“What is the meaning of a revelation that
reveals nothing?”
Ritschl denies the presuppositions of any theology based on the
Bible as the infallible word of God on the one hand, and on the
validity of the knowledge of God as obtained by scientific and
philosophic processes on the other. Because philosophers,
scientists, and even exegetes, are not agreed among themselves, he
concludes that no trustworthy results are attainable by human
reason. We grant that reason without love will fall into many
errors with regard to God, and that faith is therefore the organ
by which religious truth is to be apprehended. But we claim that
this faith includes reason, and is itself reason in its highest
form. Faith criticizes and judges the processes of natural science
as well as the contents of Scripture. But it also recognizes in
science and Scripture prior workings of that same Spirit of Christ
which is the source and authority of the Christian life. Ritschl
ignores Christ’s world-relations and therefore secularizes and
disparages science and philosophy. The faith to which he trusts as
the source of theology is unwarrantably sundered from reason. It
becomes a subjective and arbitrary standard, to which even the
teaching of Scripture must yield precedence. We hold on the
contrary, that there are ascertained results in science and in
philosophy, as well as in the interpretation of Scripture as a
whole, and that these results constitute an authoritative
revelation. See Orr, The Theology of Ritschl; Dorner, Hist. Prot.
Theol., 1:233—“The unreasonable in the empirical reason is taken
captive by faith, which is the nascent true reason that despairs
of itself and trustfully lays hold of objective Christianity.”
B. Rationalism, on the other hand, holds reason to be the ultimate source
of all religious truth, while Scripture is authoritative only so far as
its revelations agree with previous conclusions of reason, or can be
rationally demonstrated. Every form of rationalism, therefore, commits at
least one of the following errors: (_a_) That of confounding reason with
mere reasoning, or the exercise of the logical intelligence. (_b_) That of
ignoring the necessity of a holy affection as the condition of all right
reason in religious things. (_c_) That of denying our dependence in our
present state of sin upon God’s past revelations of himself. (_d_) That of
regarding the unaided reason, even its normal and unbiased state, as
capable of discovering, comprehending, and demonstrating all religious
truth.
Reason must not be confounded with ratiocination, or mere
reasoning. Shall we follow reason? Yes, but not individual
reasoning, against the testimony of those who are better informed
than we; nor by insisting on demonstration, where probable
evidence alone is possible; nor by trusting solely to the evidence
of the senses, when spiritual things are in question. Coleridge,
in replying to those who argued that all knowledge comes to us
from the senses, says: “At any rate we must bring to all facts the
light in which we see them.” This the Christian does. The light of
love reveals much that would otherwise be invisible. Wordsworth,
Excursion, book 5 (598)—“The mind’s repose On evidence is not to
be ensured By act of naked reason. Moral truth Is no mechanic
structure, built by rule.”
Rationalism is the mathematical theory of knowledge. Spinoza’s
Ethics is an illustration of it. It would deduce the universe from
an axiom. Dr. Hodge very wrongly described rationalism as “an
overuse of reason.” It is rather the use of an abnormal,
perverted, improperly conditioned reason; see Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
1:34, 39, 55, and criticism by Miller, in his Fetich in Theology.
The phrase “sanctified intellect” means simply intellect
accompanied by right affections toward God, and trained to work
under their influence. Bishop Butler: “Let reason be kept to, but
let not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting to an
infinite scheme that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of
all its parts, and call that reasoning.” Newman Smyth, Death’s
Place in Evolution, 86—“Unbelief is a shaft sunk down into the
darkness of the earth. Drive the shaft deep enough, and it would
come out into the sunlight on the earth’s other side.” The most
unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon
reason, in the narrow sense. “The better to exalt reason, they
make the world irrational.” “The hen that has hatched ducklings
walks with them to the water’s edge, but there she stops, and she
is amazed when they go on. So reason stops and faith goes on,
finding its proper element in the invisible. Reason is the feet
that stand on solid earth; faith is the wings that enable us to
fly; and normal man is a creature with wings.” Compare γνῶσις (_1
Tim. 6:20—_“the knowledge which is falsely so called”) with
ἐπίγνωσις (_2 Pet. 1:2—_“the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord” = full knowledge, or true knowledge). See Twesten, Dogmatik,
1:467-500; Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 4, 5; Mansel, Limits of
Religious Thought, 96; Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution.
3. Scripture and Mysticism.
As rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism
recognizes too much.
A. True mysticism.—We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds
of all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new
revelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already
revealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work
of the Spirit is therefore an opening of men’s minds to understand
Christ’s previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of
Christianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism
is that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives
through the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal
means.
“Mystic” = one initiated, from μύω, “to close the eyes”—probably
in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine
truth is a “mystery,” not only as something into which one must be
initiated, but as ὑπερβάλλουσα τῆς γνώσεως (_Eph.
3:19_)—surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer
on _Rom. 11:25—_“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this
mystery.” The Germans have _Mystik_ with a favorable sense,
_Mysticismus_ with an unfavorable sense,—corresponding
respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is
intimated in _John 16:13—_“the spirit of truth ... shall guide you
into all the truth”; _Eph. 3:9—_“dispensation of the mystery”; _1
Cor. 2:10—_“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.”
Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35—“Whenever true religion
revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, _i. e._, higher
knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the
heart.” Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in _Acts
26:24, 25_, with his self-vindication in _2 Cor. 5:13—_“whether we
are beside ourselves, it is unto God.”
Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as
rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said
reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental
doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his
individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the
larger unity of God’s being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates
the race, the universe, Christ himself.” _Ibid._, 5—Mysticism is
“the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of
the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.
It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth;
(2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the
divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord;
(4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The
‘scala perfectionis’ is (_a_) the purgative life; (_b_) the
illuminative life; (_c_) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine
Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John ... is not a subjective
mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery,
but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of
realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its
experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its
own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an
acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is:
Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the
type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ’s
external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson,
Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into
which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; _cf.__
Rom. 6:17—_“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of
teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”
B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs
in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct
communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities
into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (_a_) the
outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (_b_) the
activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge;
(_c_) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.
In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy
Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and
in Scripture (_Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness”;
_Rom. 1:20—_“the invisible things of him since the creation of the
world are clearly seen”; _Acts 7:51—_“ye do always resist the Holy
Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye”; _Eph. 6:17—_“the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God”). By this truth already
given we are to test all new communications which would contradict
or supersede it (_1 John 4:1—_“believe not every spirit, but prove
the spirits, whether they are of God”; _Eph. 5:10—_“proving what
is well pleasing unto the Lord”). By these tests we may try
Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical
tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon,
Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an
unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a “swallowing
up of man in God.” But Christ does not deprive us of reason and
will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the
selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their
normal clearness and strength. Compare _Ps. 16:7—_“Jehovah, who
hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night
seasons”—God teaches his people through the exercise of their own
faculties.
False mysticism is sometimes present though unrecognized. All
expectation of results without the use of means partakes of it.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 288—“The lazy will would like to
have the vision while the eye that apprehends it sleeps.”
Preaching without preparation is like throwing ourselves down from
a pinnacle of the temple and depending on God to send an angel to
hold us up. Christian Science would trust to supernatural
agencies, while casting aside the natural agencies God has already
provided; as if a drowning man should trust to prayer while
refusing to seize the rope. Using Scripture “ad aperturam libri”
is like guiding one’s actions by a throw of the dice. Allen,
Jonathan Edwards, 171, note—“Both Charles and John Wesley were
agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts as to
some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and regarding
the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revelation of
God’s will in the matter”; _cf._ Wedgwood, Life of Wesley, 193;
Southey, Life of Wesley, 1:216. J. G. Paton, Life, 2:74—“After
many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I went alone before the
Lord, and on my knees cast lots, with a solemn appeal to God, and
the answer came: ‘Go home!’ ” He did this only once in his life,
in overwhelming perplexity, and finding no light from human
counsel. “To whomsoever this faith is given,” he says, “let him
obey it.”
F. B. Meyer, Christian Living, 18—“It is a mistake to seek a sign
from heaven; to run from counsellor to counsellor; to cast a lot;
or to trust in some chance coincidence. Not that God may not
reveal his will thus; but because it is hardly the behavior of a
child with its Father. There is a more excellent way,”—namely,
appropriate Christ who is wisdom, and then go forward, sure that
we shall be guided, as each new step must be taken, or word
spoken, or decision made. Our service is to be “rational service”_
(Rom. 12:1)_; blind and arbitrary action is inconsistent with the
spirit of Christianity. Such action makes us victims of temporary
feeling and a prey to Satanic deception. In cases of perplexity,
waiting for light and waiting upon God will commonly enable us to
make an intelligent decision, while “whatsoever is not of faith is
sin”_ (Rom. 14:23)_.
“False mysticism reached its logical result in the Buddhistic
theosophy. In that system man becomes most divine in the
extinction of his own personality. Nirvana is reached by the
eightfold path of right view, aspiration, speech, conduct,
livelihood, effort, mindfulness, rapture; and Nirvana is the loss
of ability to say: ‘This is I,’ and ‘This is mine.’ Such was
Hypatia’s attempt, by subjection of self, to be wafted away into
the arms of Jove. George Eliot was wrong when she said: ‘The
happiest woman has no history.’ Self-denial is not
self-effacement. The cracked bell has no individuality. In Christ
we become our complete selves.” _Col 2:9, 10—_“For in him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made
full.”
Royce, World and Individual, 2:248, 249—“Assert the spiritual man;
abnegate the natural man. The fleshly self is the root of all
evil; the spiritual self belongs to a higher realm. But this
spiritual self lies at first outside the soul; it becomes ours
only by grace. Plato rightly made the eternal Ideas the source of
all human truth and goodness. Wisdom comes into a man, like
Aristotle’s νοῦς.” A. H. Bradford, The Inner Light, in making the
direct teaching of the Holy Spirit the sufficient if not the sole
source of religious knowledge, seems to us to ignore the principle
of evolution in religion. God builds upon the past. His revelation
to prophets and apostles constitutes the norm and corrective of
our individual experience, even while our experience throws new
light upon that revelation. On Mysticism, true and false, see
Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4, 5, 11; Stearns, Evidence of
Christian Experience, 289-294; Dorner, Geschichte d. prot. Theol.,
48-59, 243; Herzog, Encycl., art.: Mystik, by Lange; Vaughan,
Hours with the Mystics, 1:199; Morell, Hist. Philos., 58, 191-215,
556-625, 726; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69, 97, 104; Fleming,
Vocab. Philos., _in voce_; Tholuck, Introd. to Blüthensammlung aus
der morgenländischen Mystik; William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, 379-429.
4. Scripture and Romanism.
While the history of doctrine, as showing the progressive apprehension and
unfolding by the church of the truth contained in nature and Scripture, is
a subordinate source of theology, Protestantism recognizes the Bible as
under Christ the primary and final authority.
Romanism, on the other hand, commits the two-fold error (_a_) Of making
the church, and not the Scriptures, the immediate and sufficient source of
religious knowledge; and (_b_) Of making the relation of the individual to
Christ depend upon his relation to the church, instead of making his
relation to the church depend upon, follow, and express his relation to
Christ.
In Roman Catholicism there is a mystical element. The Scriptures
are not the complete or final standard of belief and practice. God
gives to the world from time to time, through popes and councils,
new communications of truth. Cyprian: “He who has not the church
for his mother, has not God for his Father.” Augustine: “I would
not believe the Scripture, unless the authority of the church also
influenced me.” Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola both
represented the truly obedient person as one dead, moving only as
moved by his superior; the true Christian has no life of his own,
but is the blind instrument of the church. John Henry Newman,
Tracts, Theol. and Eccl., 287—“The Christian dogmas were in the
church from the time of the apostles,—they were ever in their
substance what they are now.” But this is demonstrably untrue of
the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary; of the treasury of
merits to be distributed in indulgences; of the infallibility of
the pope (see Gore, Incarnation, 186). In place of the true
doctrine, “Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia,” Romanism substitutes her
maxim, “Ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus.” Luther saw in this the
principle of mysticism, when he said: “Papatus est merus
enthusiasmus.” See Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69.
In reply to the Romanist argument that the church was before the
Bible, and that the same body that gave the truth at the first can
make additions to that truth, we say that the unwritten word was
before the church and made the church possible. The word of God
existed before it was written down, and by that word the first
disciples as well as the latest were begotten (_1 Pet.
1:23—_“begotten again ... through the word of God”). The grain of
truth in Roman Catholic doctrine is expressed in _1 Tim.
3:15—_“the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
truth” = the church is God’s appointed proclaimer of truth; _cf.__
Phil. 2:16—_“holding forth the word of life.” But the church can
proclaim the truth, only as it is built upon the truth. So we may
say that the American Republic is the pillar and ground of liberty
in the world; but this is true only so far as the Republic is
built upon the principle of liberty as its foundation. When the
Romanist asks: “Where was your church before Luther?” the
Protestant may reply: “Where yours is not now—in the word of God.
Where was your face before it was washed? Where was the fine flour
before the wheat went to the mill?” Lady Jane Grey, three days
before her execution, February 12, 1554, said: “I ground my faith
on God’s word, and not upon the church; for, if the church be a
good church, the faith of the church must be tried by God’s word,
and not God’s word by the church, nor yet my faith.”
The Roman church would keep men in perpetual childhood—coming to
her for truth instead of going directly to the Bible; “like the
foolish mother who keeps her boy pining in the house lest he stub
his toe, and would love best to have him remain a babe forever,
that she might mother him still.” Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,
30—“Romanism is so busy in building up a system of guarantees,
that she forgets the truth of Christ which she would guarantee.”
George Herbert: “What wretchedness can give him any room, Whose
house is foul while he adores his broom!” It is a semi-parasitic
doctrine of safety without intelligence or spirituality. Romanism
says: “Man for the machine!” Protestantism: “The machine for man!”
Catholicism strangles, Protestantism restores, individuality. Yet
the Romanist principle sometimes appears in so-called Protestant
churches. The Catechism published by the League of the Holy Cross,
in the Anglican Church, contains the following: “It is to the
priest only that the child must acknowledge his sins, if he
desires that God should forgive him. Do you know why? It is
because God, when on earth, gave to his priests and to them alone
the power of forgiving sins. Go to the priest, who is the doctor
of your soul, and who cures you in the name of God.” But this
contradicts _John 10:7_—where Christ says “I am the door”; and _1
Cor. 3:11—_“other foundation can no man lay than that which is
laid, which is Jesus Christ” = Salvation is attained by immediate
access to Christ, and there is no door between the soul and him.
See Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 227; Schleiermacher,
Glaubenslehre, 1:24; Robinson, in Mad. Av. Lectures, 387; Fisher,
Nat. and Method of Revelation, 10; Watkins, Bampton Lect. for
1890:149; Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World, 327.
II. Limitations of Theology.
Although theology derives its material from God’s two-fold revelation, it
does not profess to give an exhaustive knowledge of God and of the
relations between God and the universe. After showing what material we
have, we must show what material we have not. We have indicated the
sources of theology; we now examine its limitations. Theology has its
limitations:
(_a_) _In the finiteness of the human understanding._ This gives rise to a
class of necessary mysteries, or mysteries connected with the infinity and
incomprehensibleness of the divine nature (Job 11:7; Rom. 11:33).
_Job 11:7—_“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find
out the Almighty to perfection?” _Rom. 11:33—_“how unsearchable
are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Every doctrine,
therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning
of Tertullian’s sayings: “Certum est, quia impossible est: quo
absurdius, eo verius”; that of Anselm: “Credo, ut intelligam”; and
that of Abelard: “Qui credit cito, levis corde est.” Drummond,
Nat. Law in Spir. World: “A science without mystery is unknown; a
religion without mystery is absurd.” E. G. Robinson: “A finite
being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.” Hovey,
Manual of Christ. Theol., 7—“To infer from the perfection of God
that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely
and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God
that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from
the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;—all
these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to
the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.” See Calderwood,
Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.
(_b_) _In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical._
This gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which
consist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken
separately, are perfectly comprehensible.
We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a
_single_ point of truth as _two_. We see God and man, divine
sovereignty and human freedom, Christ’s divine nature and Christ’s
human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as
two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but
one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet
they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at
once in its little hand. Negro preacher: “You can’t carry two
watermelons under one arm.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra,
1:2—“In nature’s infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.”
Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34—“Man’s progress in knowledge has
been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been
gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all
human history before.” And yet we may say with D’Arcy, Idealism
and Theology, 248—“Man’s position in the universe is eccentric.
God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth
completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us
the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.” William
Watson, Collected Poems, 271—“Think not thy wisdom can illume away
The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge
both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things
clear.”
(_c_) _In the inadequacy of language._ Since language is the medium
through which truth is expressed and formulated, the invention of a proper
terminology in theology, as in every other science, is a condition and
criterion of its progress. The Scriptures recognize a peculiar difficulty
in putting spiritual truths into earthly language (1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor.
3:6; 12:4).
_1 Cor. 2:13—_“not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth”; _2 Cor.
3:6—_“the letter killeth”; _12:4—_“unspeakable words.” God submits
to conditions of revelation; _cf.__ John 16:12—_“I have yet many
things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Language has
to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put
to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they “stagger under
their weight of meaning”—_e. g._, the word “day,” in _Genesis 1_,
and the word ἀγάπη in _1 Cor. 13_. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on _1
Cor. 13:12—_“now we see in a mirror, darkly”—in a metallic mirror
whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold
Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect
speech—“but then face to face” = immediately, without the
intervention of an imperfect medium. “As fast as we tunnel into
the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into
walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless
mine.”
(_d_) _In the incompleteness of our knowledge of the Scriptures._ Since it
is not the mere letter of the Scriptures that constitutes the truth, the
progress of theology is dependent upon hermeneutics, or the interpretation
of the word of God.
Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to
grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott,
Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: “I am verily persuaded that the
Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.”
Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion
of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has
been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an
evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in
the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and
typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet
we still need to offer the prayer of _Ps. 119:18—_“Open thou mine
eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” On New
Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
Religion, 334-336.
(_e_) _In the silence of written revelation._ For our discipline and
probation, much is probably hidden from us, which we might even with our
present powers comprehend.
Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and
death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his
occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the
atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and
political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic
virtues, governmental corruption. “Jesus was in heaven at the
revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about
heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of
man, or death as the result of Adam’s sin; and he says little of
departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.” It was better
to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them.
His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would
not divert men’s minds from pursuing the one thing needful; _cf.__
Luke 13:23, 24—_“Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said
unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say
unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul’s
silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered
with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John
Foster spent his life, “gathering questions for eternity”; _cf.__
John 13:7—_“What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt
understand hereafter.” The most beautiful thing in a countenance
is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well
must omit well. Story: “Of every noble work the silent part is
best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.” _Cf.__ 1
Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which
entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared
for them that love him”; _Deut 29:29—_“The secret things belong
unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto
us and to our children.” For Luther’s view, see Hagenbach, Hist.
Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine
Silence.
(_f_) _In the lack of spiritual discernment caused by sin._ Since holy
affection is a condition of religious knowledge, all moral imperfection in
the individual Christian and in the church serves as a hindrance to the
working out of a complete theology.
_John 3:3—_“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
God.” The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,—witness
the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century
succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of
Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay’s transl.),
514—“Science is much under the influence of the will; and the
truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The
will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific
evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the
will.” Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of
science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without
becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having
become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts, with the result of producing “atrophy of
that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.” But a
similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and
religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in
his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: “We are
very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the
professors’ chairs are all filled.”
III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
(_a_) _A perfect system of theology is impossible._ We do not expect to
construct such a system. All science but reflects the present attainment
of the human mind. No science is complete or finished. However it may be
with the sciences of nature and of man, the science of God will never
amount to an exhaustive knowledge. We must not expect to demonstrate all
Scripture doctrines upon rational grounds, or even in every case to see
the principle of connection between them. Where we cannot do this, we
must, as in every other science, set the revealed facts in their places
and wait for further light, instead of ignoring or rejecting any of them
because we cannot understand them or their relation to other parts of our
system.
Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed
down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the
trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr.
Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than
none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood
spoke of Dr. Johnson’s “Contradictionary,” which had both
“interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at
the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word
characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the
advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through
fifty-five years: that word is _failure_; I know no more of
electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether,
electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I
knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty
years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious
Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the
new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy
nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as
Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can
be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered
by enforcing some ’via media.’ Truth lies rather in the union of
opposite propositions, as in Christ’s divinity and humanity, and
in grace and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity;
Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John
Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George
Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would
secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But
if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress
is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a
larger appropriation of it.”
(_b_) _Theology is nevertheless progressive._ It is progressive in the
sense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God,
and our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more
perfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective
facts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we
may say: “Religion has been reproached with not being progressive; it
makes amends by being imperishable.” Though our knowledge may be
imperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a
theology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of
Scripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all
cohere about Christ, the central person and theme.
The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not
progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not
man’s creation of new planets, but man’s discovery of planets that
were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations
between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles:
“Originality is a habit of recurring to origins—the habit of
securing personal experience by personal application to original
facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature,
Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of
resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal
experiences which arise from contact with these facts.” Fisher,
Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48—“The starry heavens are now what
they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe,
except that which comes through the increased power and use of the
telescope.” We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to
steer, said he had “sailed _by_ that star.”
Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493—“Metaphysics, so far as they are true
to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in
charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always _is_....
It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while
disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the
motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.”
Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79—“True conservatism
is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its
good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to
the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So
Jesus came not ‘to destroy the law or the prophets’; he ‘came not
to destroy, but to fulfil’_ (Mat. 5:17)_.... The last book on
Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.”
John Milton, Areopagitica: “Truth is compared in the Scripture to
a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual
progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and
tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.” Paul in _Rom.
2:16_, and in _2 Tim. 2:8_—speaks of “my gospel.” It is the duty
of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while
he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “I
that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that
earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon at Ajalon.” We do
not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new
Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of
both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.
Chapter III. Method Of Theology.
I. Requisites to the study of Theology.
The requisites to the successful study of theology have already in part
been indicated in speaking of its limitations. In spite of some
repetition, however, we mention the following:
(_a_) _A disciplined mind._ Only such a mind can patiently collect the
facts, hold in its grasp many facts at once, educe by continuous
reflection their connecting principles, suspend final judgment until its
conclusions are verified by Scripture and experience.
Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
Evolveable from the whole: evolved at last Painfully, held
tenaciously by me.” Teachers and students may be divided into two
classes: (1) those who know enough already; (2) those wish to
learn more than they now know. Motto of Winchester School in
England: “Disce, aut discede.” Butcher, Greek Genius, 213,
230—“The Sophists fancied that they were imparting education, when
they were only imparting results. Aristotle illustrates their
method by the example of a shoemaker who, professing to teach the
art of making painless shoes, puts into the apprentice’s hand a
large assortment of shoes ready-made. A witty Frenchman classes
together those who would make science popular, metaphysics
intelligible, and vice respectable. The word σχόλη, which first
meant ‘leisure,’ then ‘philosophical discussion,’ and finally
‘school,’ shows the pure love of learning among the Greeks.”
Robert G. Ingersoll said that the average provincial clergyman is
like the land of the upper Potomac spoken of by Tom Randolph, as
almost worthless in its original state, and rendered wholly so by
cultivation. Lotze, Metaphysics, 1:16—“the constant whetting of
the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with
it.” “To do their duty is their only holiday,” is the description
of Athenian character given by Thucydides. Chitty asked a father
inquiring as to his son’s qualifications for the law: “Can your
son eat sawdust without any butter?” On opportunities for culture
in the Christian ministry, see New Englander, Oct. 1875:644; A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 273-275; Christ in Creation,
318-320.
(_b_) _An intuitional as distinguished from a merely logical habit of
mind_,—or, trust in the mind’s primitive convictions, as well as in its
processes of reasoning. The theologian must have insight as well as
understanding. He must accustom himself to ponder spiritual facts as well
as those which are sensible and material; to see things in their inner
relations as well as in their outward forms; to cherish confidence in the
reality and the unity of truth.
Vinet, Outlines of Philosophy, 39, 40—“If I do not feel that good
is good, who will ever prove it to me?” Pascal: “Logic, which is
an abstraction, may shake everything. A being purely intellectual
will be incurably sceptical.” Calvin: “Satan is an acute
theologian.” Some men can see a fly on a barn door a mile away,
and yet can never see the door. Zeller, Outlines of Greek
Philosophy, 93—“Gorgias the Sophist was able to show
metaphysically that nothing can exist; that what does exist cannot
be known by us; and that what is known by us cannot be imparted to
others” (quoted by Wenley, Socrates and Christ, 28). Aristotle
differed from those moderate men who thought it impossible to go
over the same river twice,—he held that it could not be done even
once (_cf._ Wordsworth, Prelude, 536). Dove, Logic of the
Christian Faith, 1-29, and especially 25, gives a demonstration of
the impossibility of motion: A thing cannot move in the place
where it is; it cannot move in the places where it is not; but the
place where it is and the places where it is not are all the
places that there are; therefore a thing cannot move at all.
Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 109, shows that the bottom of
a wheel does not move, since it goes backward as fast as the top
goes forward. An instantaneous photograph makes the upper part a
confused blur, while the spokes of the lower part are distinctly
visible. Abp. Whately: “Weak arguments are often thrust before my
path; but, although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to
destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut
through a cushion with a sword.” _Cf.__ 1 Tim. 6:20—_“oppositions
of the knowledge which is falsely so called”; _3:2—_“the bishop
therefore must be ... sober-minded”—σώφρων = “well balanced.” The
Scripture speaks of “sound [ὑγιής = healthful] doctrine”_ (1 Tim.
1:10)_. Contrast _1 Tim. 6:4—[νοσῶν = ailing] _“diseased about
questionings and disputes of words.”
(_c_) _An acquaintance with physical, mental, and moral science._ The
method of conceiving and expressing Scripture truth is so affected by our
elementary notions of these sciences, and the weapons with which theology
is attacked and defended are so commonly drawn from them as arsenals, that
the student cannot afford to be ignorant of them.
Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics:
“Mein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie über’s Denken
gedacht”—“I have been wise in never thinking about thinking”; he
would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental
principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets
and their Theology, 296-299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1-18;
also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 _sq._ Many a theological system
has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations
were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: “No difficulty arises in
theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.” N. W. Taylor:
“Give me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in
theology.” President Samson Talbot: “I love metaphysics, because
they have to do with realities.” The maxim “Ubi tres medici, ibi
duo athei,” witnesses to the truth of Galen’s words: ἄριστος
ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος—“the best physician is also a philosopher.”
Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can
dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: “Science has not
invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has
modified the statement of many.... Physical Science will
undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the
sooner the better.” There is great advantage to the preacher in
taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after
another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said,
“like iron into the blood.”
(_d_) _A knowledge of the original languages of the Bible._ This is
necessary to enable us not only to determine the meaning of the
fundamental terms of Scripture, such as holiness, sin, propitiation,
justification, but also to interpret statements of doctrine by their
connections with the context.
Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue,
when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends
replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E.
G. Robinson: “Language is a great organism, and no study so
disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.”
Chrysostom: “This is the cause of all our evils—our not knowing
the Scriptures.” Yet a modern scholar has said: “The Bible is the
most dangerous of all God’s gifts to men.” It is possible to adore
the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow
interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon
connecting phrases, as for example, the διὰ τοῦτο and ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in
_Rom. 5:12_. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813-1853,
said to his pupils: “One of the best preparations for death is a
thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.” The youthful Erasmus:
“When I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after
that, some clothes.” The dead languages are the only really living
ones—free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage.
Divine Providence has put revelation into fixed forms in the
Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330—“To
be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.” On the true
idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos.
and Religion, 302-313.
(_e_) _A holy affection toward God._ Only the renewed heart can properly
feel its need of divine revelation, or understand that revelation when
given.
_Ps. 25:14—_“The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him”;
_Rom. 12:2—_“prove what is the ... will of God”; _cf._ _Ps.
36:1—_“the transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an
oracle.” “It is the heart and not the brain That to the highest
doth attain.” To “learn by heart” is something more than to learn
by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Faithful does not go through the
Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the
fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into
Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair. “Great thoughts
come from the heart,” said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like
Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle: “The power of
attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”
Pascal: “We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the
heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows
nothing of.” Hobbes: “Even the axioms of geometry would be
disputed, if men’s passions were concerned in them.” Macaulay:
“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it
interfered with vested interests.” Nordau, Degeneracy:
“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for
the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of
time.”
Lord Bacon: “A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the
wrong path.” Goethe: “As are the inclinations, so also are the
opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only
with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us
liberty.” Fichte: “Our system of thought is very often only the
history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience....
Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason
according to their will.” Neander’s motto was: “Pectus est quod
theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.” John
Stirling: “That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a
living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating
vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.” But such an eye, we add,
is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson: “Never study theology in
cold blood.” W. C. Wilkinson: “The head is a magnetic needle with
truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic
iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the
truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.” See an
affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle’s enlightenment, after the
death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, in
Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of
feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.
(_f_) _The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit._ As only the Spirit
fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to
apprehend them.
_1 Cor. 2:11, 12—_“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit
of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we
might know.” Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine
aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.” Professor Beck of Tübingen:
“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the
truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the
unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination
by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not
only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.” As all the truths of
the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the
simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the
declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the
protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot
of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful
hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are
needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is
needed to show us that the “new commandment” illustrated by the
death of Christ is only an “old commandment which ye had from the
beginning”_ (1 John 2:7)_. The Principia of Newton is a revelation
of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us
to enter into the meaning of Christ’s revelations in both
Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to
work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;
_Mat. 13:52—_“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple
of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder,
who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” See
Adolph Monod’s sermons on Christ’s Temptation, addressed to the
theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the
French and German, 117-179.
II. Divisions of Theology.
Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and
Practical.
1. _Biblical Theology_ aims to arrange and classify the facts of
revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and
treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the
apostolic age.
Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis;
Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more
of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical
Theology. The third volume of Ritschl’s Justification and
Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the
first and second volumes being little more than an historical
introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and
phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl’s estimates and
interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and
rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical
Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed
from the rest, as Steudel’s Biblical Theology of the Old
Testament; Schmidt’s Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and
in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul.
These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of
Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there
is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is
conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the
differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the
theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous
addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian
Theology in the Apostolic Age.
2. _Historical Theology_ traces the development of the Biblical doctrines
from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the
results of this development in the life of the church.
By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and
apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly
contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the
Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is
called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and
accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and
inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance
Cunningham’s Historical Theology; Hagenbach’s and Shedd’s
Histories of Doctrine; Neander’s Church History. There is always a
danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly
reflected in the history of the church. Shedd’s History of
Christian Doctrine has been called “The History of Dr. Shedd’s
Christian Doctrine.” But if Dr. Shedd’s Augustinianism colors his
History, Dr. Sheldon’s Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher’s
History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial.
See Neander’s Introduction and Shedd’s Philosophy of History.
3. _Systematic Theology_ takes the material furnished by Biblical and by
Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an
organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations
between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived
from nature or from the Scriptures.
Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which
Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and
preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly
distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in
strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in
the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in
the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their
rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand,
not with the symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not
what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God’s
revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which
nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical
Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters.
Notice here the technical use of the word “symbol,” from συμβάλλω,
= a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the
essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed,
consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.
Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not,
however, derived from “dog,” as Douglas Jerrold facetiously
suggested, when he said that “dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”
but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two
principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of
the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic,
for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding.
In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church,
and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The
Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides,
and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher,
Al. Schweizer thinks that the term “Dogmatik” should be discarded
as essentially unprotestant, and that “Glaubenslehre” should take
its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that “dogma has
ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”
While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology
has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common
faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the
saints”_ (Jude 3)_—and the study of Systematic Theology has been
one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.
_Mat. 15:13, 14—_“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted
not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides” =
there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life.
Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of
themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.
4. _Practical Theology_ is the system of truth considered as a means of
renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its
publication and enforcement.
To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral
Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the
right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to
bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee,
Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon,
and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R.
W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John
Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.
It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of
theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these,
if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot
properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so
called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological
ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be
confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting,
as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either
extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy
of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed,
and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.
“Speculative theology starts from certain _a priori_ principles,
and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It
deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from
axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.” Bib. Sac.,
1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree
with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries
to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”
Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies “instruction in a
circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of
Theology, together with an account of the relations between them.
Hegel’s Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles
and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst,
Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der
theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.
The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been
variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith
and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not
the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of
things rationally.” Science asks: “What _do_ I know?” Philosophy
asks: “What _can_ I know?” William James, Psychology,
1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort
to think clearly.” Aristotle: “The particular sciences are toiling
workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are
slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the
sciences.” With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon
remarks: “Those who have handled knowledge have been too much
either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former
are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to
immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make
cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle
course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and
the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a
power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”
Novalis: “Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God,
freedom and immortality.” Prof. DeWitt of Princeton: “Science,
philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing
the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below
second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes
philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal
it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this
unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is
the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving
to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore
starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.” W. N. Clarke,
Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts;
philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks
to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”
Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its
subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic
exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our
knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal, _e. g._,
God and the soul.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of
the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws
within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which
they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand,
is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending
them. Its sphere is substance and essence.” Bowne, Theory of
Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy = _doctrine of knowledge_
(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) + _doctrine
of being_ (is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or
purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke,
Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems
of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being.
Historically theories of being come first, because the object is
the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of
philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or
the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of
knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”
Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology: “Locke and Kant
represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical,
physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational,
metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for
the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant
for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two
are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and
Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme
empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh
represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusively
_analytical_; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it
represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary
philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in
America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a
reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of
Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian
doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making
all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark
Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the
influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated
to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and
processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and
succession. There is nothing _a priori_. Wundt identifies
apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle.
Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat
these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is
psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusively
_static_, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view.
Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer,
Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory,
while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and
Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological
Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude.
The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater
scope and more practical significance.” On the relation of
theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der
Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.
III. History of Systematic Theology.
1. _In the Eastern Church_, Systematic Theology may be said to have had
its beginning and end in John of Damascus (700-760).
Ignatius († 115—Ad Trall., c. 9) gives us “the first distinct
statement of the faith drawn up in a series of propositions. This
systematizing formed the basis of all later efforts” (Prof. A. H.
Newman). Origen of Alexandria (186-254) wrote his Περὶ Ἀρχῶν;
Athanasius of Alexandria (300-373) his Treatises on the Trinity
and the Deity of Christ; and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia
(332-398) his Λόγος κατηχητικὸς ὁ μέγας. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures,
323, regards the “De Principiis” of Origen as the “first complete
system of dogma,” and speaks of Origen as “the disciple of Clement
of Alexandria, the first great teacher of philosophical
Christianity.” But while the Fathers just mentioned seem to have
conceived the plan of expounding the doctrines in order and of
showing their relation to one another, it was John of Damascus
(700-760) who first actually carried out such a plan. His Ἔκδοσις
ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου Πίστεως, or Summary of the Orthodox Faith,
may be considered the earliest work of Systematic Theology.
Neander calls it “the most important doctrinal text-book of the
Greek Church.” John, like the Greek Church in general, was
speculative, theological, semi-pelagian, sacramentarian. The
Apostles’ Creed, so called, is, in its present form, not earlier
than the fifth century; see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:19.
Mr. Gladstone suggested that the Apostles’ Creed was a development
of the baptismal formula. McGiffert, Apostles’ Creed, assigns to
the meagre original form a date of the third quarter of the second
century, and regards the Roman origin of the symbol as proved. It
was framed as a baptismal formula, but specifically in opposition
to the teachings of Marcion, which were at that time causing much
trouble at Rome. Harnack however dates the original Apostles’
Creed at 150, and Zahn places it at 120. See also J. C. Long, in
Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892: 89-101.
2. _In the Western Church_, we may (with Hagenbach) distinguish three
periods:
(_a_) The period of Scholasticism,—introduced by Peter Lombard
(1100-1160), and reaching its culmination in Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274)
and Duns Scotus (1265-1308).
Though Systematic Theology had its beginning in the Eastern
Church, its development has been confined almost wholly to the
Western. Augustine (353-430) wrote his “Encheiridion ad
Laurentium” and his “De Civitate Dei,” and John Scotus Erigena (†
850), Roscelin (1092-1122), and Abelard (1079-1142), in their
attempts at the rational explanation of the Christian doctrine
foreshadowed the works of the great scholastic teachers. Anselm of
Canterbury (1034-1109), with his “Proslogion de Dei Existentia”
and his “Cur Deus Homo,” has sometimes, but wrongly, been called
the founder of Scholasticism. Allen, in his Continuity of
Christian Thought, represents the transcendence of God as the
controlling principle of the Augustinian and of the Western
theology. The Eastern Church, he maintains, had founded its
theology on God’s immanence. Paine, in his Evolution of
Trinitarianism, shows that this is erroneous. Augustine was a
theistic monist. He declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,”
and regards God’s upholding as a continuous creation. Western
theology recognized the immanence of God as well as his
transcendence.
Peter Lombard, however, (1100-1160), the “magister sententiarum,”
was the first great systematizer of the Western Church, and his
“Libri Sententiarum Quatuor” was the theological text-book of the
Middle Ages. Teachers lectured on the “Sentences” (_Sententia_ =
sentence, _Satz_, _locus_, point, article of faith), as they did
on the books of Aristotle, who furnished to Scholasticism its
impulse and guide. Every doctrine was treated in the order of
Aristotle’s four causes: the material, the formal, the efficient,
the final. (“Cause” here = requisite: (1) matter of which a thing
consists, _e. g._, bricks and mortar; (2) form it assumes, _e.
g._, plan or design; (3) producing agent, _e. g._, builder; (4)
end for which made, _e. g._, house.) The organization of physical
as well as of theological science was due to Aristotle. Dante
called him “the master of those who know.” James Ten Broeke, Bap.
Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-26—“The Revival of Learning showed the
world that the real Aristotle was much broader than the Scholastic
Aristotle—information very unwelcome to the Roman Church.” For the
influence of Scholasticism, compare the literary methods of
Augustine and of Calvin,—the former giving us his materials in
disorder, like soldiers bivouacked for the night; the latter
arranging them like those same soldiers drawn up in battle array;
see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 4, and Christ in
Creation, 188, 189.
Candlish, art.: Dogmatic, in Encycl. Brit., 7:340—“By and by a
mighty intellectual force took hold of the whole collected
dogmatic material, and reared out of it the great scholastic
systems, which have been compared to the grand Gothic cathedrals
that were the work of the same ages.” Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274),
the Dominican, “doctor angelicus,” Augustinian and Realist,—and
Duns Scotus (1265-1308), the Franciscan, “doctor
subtilis,”—wrought out the scholastic theology more fully, and
left behind them, in their _Summæ_, gigantic monuments of
intellectual industry and acumen. Scholasticism aimed at the proof
and systematizing of the doctrines of the Church by means of
Aristotle’s philosophy. It became at last an illimitable morass of
useless subtilities and abstractions, and it finally ended in the
nominalistic scepticism of William of Occam (1270-1347). See
Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
(_b_) The period of Symbolism,—represented by the Lutheran theology of
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), and the Reformed theology of John Calvin
(1509-1564); the former connecting itself with the Analytic theology of
Calixtus (1585-1656), and the latter with the Federal theology of Cocceius
(1603-1669).
_The Lutheran Theology._—Preachers precede theologians, and Luther
(1485-1546) was preacher rather than theologian. But Melanchthon
(1497-1560), “the preceptor of Germany,” as he was called,
embodied the theology of the Lutheran church in his “Loci
Communes” = points of doctrine common to believers (first edition
Augustinian, afterwards substantially Arminian; grew out of
lectures on the Epistle to the Romans). He was followed by
Chemnitz (1522-1586), “clear and accurate,” the most learned of
the disciples of Melanchthon. Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), called
“Lutherus redivivus,” and John Gerhard (1582-1637) followed Luther
rather than Melanchthon. “Fifty years after the death of
Melanchthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of
theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of
Melanchthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait
of the great Reformer, and trampled it under foot in the presence
of the assemblage” (E. D. Morris, paper at the 60th Anniversary of
Lane Seminary). George Calixtus (1586-1656) followed Melanchthon
rather than Luther. He taught a theology which recognized the good
element in both the Reformed and the Romanist doctrine and which
was called “Syncretism.” He separated Ethics from Systematic
Theology, and applied the analytical method of investigation to
the latter, beginning with the end, or final cause, of all things,
viz.: blessedness. He was followed in his analytic method by
Dannhauer (1603-1666), who treated theology allegorically,
Calovius (1612-1686), “the most uncompromising defender of
Lutheran orthodoxy and the most drastic polemicist against
Calixtus,” Quenstedt (1617-1688), whom Hovey calls “learned,
comprehensive and logical,” and Hollaz († 1730). The Lutheran
theology aimed to purify the _existing_ church, maintaining that
what is not against the gospel is for it. It emphasized the
material principle of the Reformation, justification by faith; but
it retained many Romanist customs not expressly forbidden in
Scripture. Kaftan, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:716—“Because the
mediæval school-philosophy mainly held sway, the Protestant
theology representing the new faith was meanwhile necessarily
accommodated to forms of knowledge thereby conditioned, that is,
to forms essentially Catholic.”
_The Reformed Theology._—The word “Reformed” is here used in its
technical sense, as designating that phase of the new theology
which originated in Switzerland. Zwingle, the Swiss reformer
(1484-1531), differing from Luther as to the Lord’s Supper and as
to Scripture, was more than Luther entitled to the name of
systematic theologian. Certain writings of his may be considered
the beginning of Reformed theology. But it was left to John Calvin
(1509-1564), after the death of Zwingle, to arrange the principles
of that theology in systematic form. Calvin dug channels for
Zwingle’s flood to flow in, as Melanchthon did for Luther’s. His
Institutes (“Institutio Religionis Christianæ”), is one of the
great works in theology (superior as a systematic work to
Melanchthon’s “Loci”). Calvin was followed by Peter Martyr
(1500-1562), Chamier (1565-1621), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605).
Beza carried Calvin’s doctrine of predestination to an extreme
supralapsarianism, which is hyper-Calvinistic rather than
Calvinistic. Cocceius (1603-1669), and after him Witsius
(1626-1708), made theology centre about the idea of the covenants,
and founded the Federal theology. Leydecker (1642-1721) treated
theology in the order of the persons of the Trinity. Amyraldus
(1596-1664) and Placeus of Saumur (1596-1632) modified the
Calvinistic doctrine, the latter by his theory of mediate
imputation, and the former by advocating the hypothetic
universalism of divine grace. Turretin (1671-1737), a clear and
strong theologian whose work is still a text-book at Princeton,
and Pictet (1655-1725), both of them Federalists, showed the
influence of the Cartesian philosophy. The Reformed theology aimed
to build a _new_ church, affirming that what is not derived from
the Bible is against it. It emphasized the formal principle of the
Reformation, the sole authority of Scripture.
In general, while the line between Catholic and Protestant in
Europe runs from west to east, the line between Lutheran and
Reformed runs from south to north, the Reformed theology flowing
with the current of the Rhine northward from Switzerland to
Holland and to England, in which latter country the Thirty-nine
Articles represent the Reformed faith, while the Prayer-book of
the English Church is substantially Arminian; see Dorner, Gesch.
prot. Theologie, Einleit., 9. On the difference between Lutheran
and Reformed doctrine, see Schaff, Germany, its Universities,
Theology and Religion, 167-177. On the Reformed Churches of Europe
and America, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 87-124.
(_c_) The period of Criticism and Speculation,—in its three divisions: the
Rationalistic, represented by Semler (1725-1791); the Transitional, by
Schleiermacher (1768-1834); the Evangelical, by Nitzsch, Müller, Tholuck
and Dorner.
_First Division._ Rationalistic theologies: Though the Reformation
had freed theology in great part from the bonds of scholasticism,
other philosophies after a time took its place. The Leibnitz-
(1646-1754) Wolffian (1679-1754) exaggeration of the powers of
natural religion prepared the way for rationalistic systems of
theology. Buddeus (1667-1729) combated the new principles, but
Semler’s (1725-1791) theology was built upon them, and represented
the Scriptures as having a merely local and temporary character.
Michaelis (1716-1784) and Doederlein (1714-1789) followed Semler,
and the tendency toward rationalism was greatly assisted by the
critical philosophy of Kant (1724-1804), to whom “revelation was
problematical, and positive religion merely the medium through
which the practical truths of reason are communicated” (Hagenbach,
Hist. Doct., 2:397). Ammon (1766-1850) and Wegscheider (1771-1848)
were representatives of this philosophy. Daub, Marheinecke and
Strauss (1808-1874) were the Hegelian dogmatists. The system of
Strauss resembled “Christian theology as a cemetery resembles a
town.” Storr (1746-1805), Reinhard (1753-1812), and Knapp
(1753-1825), in the main evangelical, endeavored to reconcile
revelation with reason, but were more or less influenced by this
rationalizing spirit. Bretschneider (1776-1828) and De Wette
(1780-1849) may be said to have held middle ground.
_Second Division._ Transition to a more Scriptural theology.
Herder (1744-1803) and Jacobi (1743-1819), by their more spiritual
philosophy, prepared the way for Schleiermacher’s (1768-1834)
grounding of doctrine in the facts of Christian experience. The
writings of Schleiermacher constituted an epoch, and had great
influence in delivering Germany from the rationalistic toils into
which it had fallen. We may now speak of a
_Third Division_—and in this division we may put the names of
Neander and Tholuck, Twesten and Nitzsch, Müller and Luthardt,
Dorner and Philippi, Ebrard and Thomasius, Lange and Kahnis, all
of them exponents of a far more pure and evangelical theology than
was common in Germany a century ago. Two new forms of rationalism,
however, have appeared in Germany, the one based upon the
philosophy of Hegel, and numbering among its adherents Strauss and
Baur, Biedermann, Lipsius and Pfleiderer; the other based upon the
philosophy of Kant, and advocated by Ritschl and his followers,
Harnack, Hermann and Kaftan; the former emphasizing the ideal
Christ, the latter emphasizing the historical Christ; but neither
of the two fully recognizing the living Christ present in every
believer (see Johnson’s Cyclopædia, art.: Theology, by A. H.
Strong).
3. _Among theologians of views diverse from the prevailing Protestant
faith_, may be mentioned:
(_a_) Bellarmine (1542-1621), the Roman Catholic.
Besides Bellarmine, “the best controversial writer of his age”
(Bayle), the Roman Catholic Church numbers among its noted modern
theologians:—Petavius (1583-1652), whose dogmatic theology Gibbon
calls “a work of incredible labor and compass”; Melchior Canus
(1523-1560), an opponent of the Jesuits and their scholastic
method; Bossuet (1627-1704), who idealized Catholicism in his
Exposition of Doctrine, and attacked Protestantism in his History
of Variations of Protestant Churches; Jansen (1585-1638), who
attempted, in opposition to the Jesuits, to reproduce the theology
of Augustine, and who had in this the powerful assistance of
Pascal (1623-1662). Jansenism, so far as the doctrines of grace
are concerned, but not as respects the sacraments, is virtual
Protestantism within the Roman Catholic Church. Moehler’s
Symbolism, Perrone’s “Prelectiones Theologicæ,” and Hurter’s
“Compendium Theologiæ Dogmaticæ” are the latest and most approved
expositions of Roman Catholic doctrine.
(_b_) Arminius (1560-1609), the opponent of predestination.
Among the followers of Arminius (1560-1609) must be reckoned
Episcopius (1583-1643), who carried Arminianism to almost Pelagian
extremes; Hugo Grotius (1553-1645), the jurist and statesman,
author of the governmental theory of the atonement; and Limborch
(1633-1712), the most thorough expositor of the Arminian doctrine.
(_c_) Laelius Socinus (1525-1562), and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), the
leaders of the modern Unitarian movement.
The works of Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew, Faustus
Socinus (1539-1604) constituted the beginnings of modern
Unitarianism. Laelius Socinus was the preacher and reformer, as
Faustus Socinus was the theologian; or, as Baumgarten Crusius
expresses it: “the former was the spiritual founder of
Socinianism, and the latter the founder of the sect.” Their
writings are collected in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. The
Racovian Catechism, taking its name from the Polish town Racow,
contains the most succinct exposition of their views. In 1660, the
Unitarian church of the Socini in Poland was destroyed by
persecution, but its Hungarian offshoot has still more than a
hundred congregations.
4. _British Theology_, represented by:
(_a_) The Baptists, John Bunyan (1628-1688), John Gill (1697-1771), and
Andrew Fuller (1754-1815).
Some of the best British theology is Baptist. Among John Bunyan’s
works we may mention his “Gospel Truths Opened,” though his
“Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Holy War” are theological treatises in
allegorical form. Macaulay calls Milton and Bunyan the two great
creative minds of England during the latter part of the 17th
century. John Gill’s “Body of Practical Divinity” shows much
ability, although the Rabbinical learning of the author
occasionally displays itself in a curious exegesis, as when on the
word “Abba” he remarks: “You see that this word which means
’Father’ reads the same whether we read forward or backward; which
suggests that God is the same whichever way we look at him.”
Andrew Fuller’s “Letters on Systematic Divinity” is a brief
compend of theology. His treatises upon special doctrines are
marked by sound judgment and clear insight. They were the most
influential factor in rescuing the evangelical churches of England
from antinomianism. They justify the epithets which Robert Hall,
one of the greatest of Baptist preachers, gives him: “sagacious,”
“luminous,” “powerful.”
(_b_) The Puritans, John Owen (1616-1683), Richard Baxter (1615-1691),
John Howe (1630-1705), and Thomas Ridgeley (1666-1734).
Owen was the most rigid, as Baxter was the most liberal, of the
Puritans. The Encyclopædia Britannica remarks: “As a theological
thinker and writer, John Owen holds his own distinctly defined
place among those titanic intellects with which the age abounded.
Surpassed by Baxter in point and pathos, by Howe in imagination
and the higher philosophy, he is unrivaled in his power of
unfolding the rich meanings of Scripture. In his writings he was
preëminently the great theologian.” Baxter wrote a “Methodus
Theologiæ,” and a “Catholic Theology”; John Howe is chiefly known
by his “Living Temple”; Thomas Ridgeley by his “Body of Divinity.”
Charles H. Spurgeon never ceased to urge his students to become
familiar with the Puritan Adams, Ambrose, Bowden, Manton and
Sibbes.
(_c_) The Scotch Presbyterians, Thomas Boston (1676-1732), John Dick
(1764-1833), and Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).
Of the Scotch Presbyterians, Boston is the most voluminous, Dick
the most calm and fair, Chalmers the most fervid and popular.
(_d_) The Methodists, John Wesley (1703-1791), and Richard Watson
(1781-1833).
Of the Methodists, John Wesley’s doctrine is presented in
“Christian Theology,” collected from his writings by the Rev.
Thornley Smith. The great Methodist text-book, however, is the
“Institutes” of Watson, who systematized and expounded the
Wesleyan theology. Pope, a recent English theologian, follows
Watson’s modified and improved Arminianism, while Whedon and
Raymond, recent American writers, hold rather to a radical and
extreme Arminianism.
(_e_) The Quakers, George Fox (1624-1691), and Robert Barclay (1648-1690).
As Jesus, the preacher and reformer, preceded Paul the theologian;
as Luther preceded Melanchthon; as Zwingle preceded Calvin; as
Laelius Socinus preceded Faustus Socinus; as Wesley preceded
Watson; so Fox preceded Barclay. Barclay wrote an “Apology for the
true Christian Divinity,” which Dr. E. G. Robinson described as
“not a formal treatise of Systematic Theology, but the ablest
exposition of the views of the Quakers.” George Fox was the
reformer, William Penn the social founder, Robert Barclay the
theologian, of Quakerism.
(_f_) The English Churchmen, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), Gilbert Burnet
(1643-1715), and John Pearson (1613-1686).
The English church has produced no great systematic theologian
(see reasons assigned in Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 470). The
“judicious” Hooker is still its greatest theological writer,
although his work is only on “Ecclesiastical Polity.” Bishop
Burnet is the author of the “Exposition of the XXXIX Articles,”
and Bishop Pearson of the “Exposition of the Creed.” Both these
are common English text-books. A recent “Compendium of Dogmatic
Theology,” by Litton, shows a tendency to return from the usual
Arminianism of the Anglican church to the old Augustinianism; so
also Bishop Moule’s “Outlines of Christian Doctrine,” and Mason’s
“Faith of the Gospel.”
5. _American theology_, running in two lines:
(_a_) The Reformed system of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), modified
successively by Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803),
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840), Leonard Woods
(1774-1854), Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), Nathaniel W. Taylor
(1786-1858), and Horace Bushnell (1802-1876). Calvinism, as thus modified,
is often called the New England, or New School, theology.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest of metaphysicians and
theologians, was an idealist who held that God is the only real
cause, either in the realm of matter or in the realm of mind. He
regarded the chief good as happiness—a form of sensibility. Virtue
was voluntary choice of this good. Hence union with Adam in acts
and exercises was sufficient. Thus God’s will made identity of
being with Adam. This led to the exercise-system of Hopkins and
Emmons, on the one hand, and to Bellamy’s and Dwight’s denial of
any imputation of Adam’s sin or of inborn depravity, on the
other—in which last denial agree many other New England
theologians who reject the exercise-scheme, as for example,
Strong, Tyler, Smalley, Burton, Woods, and Park. Dr. N. W. Taylor
added a more distinctly Arminian element, the power of contrary
choice—and with this tenet of the New Haven theology, Charles G.
Finney, of Oberlin, substantially agreed. Horace Bushnell held to
a practically Sabellian view of the Trinity, and to a
moral-influence theory of the atonement. Thus from certain
principles admitted by Edwards, who held in the main to an Old
School theology, the New School theology has been gradually
developed.
Robert Hall called Edwards “the greatest of the sons of men.” Dr.
Chalmers regarded him as the “greatest of theologians.” Dr.
Fairbairn says: “He is not only the greatest of all the thinkers
that America has produced, but also the highest speculative genius
of the eighteenth century. In a far higher degree than Spinoza, he
was a ’God-intoxicated man.’” His fundamental notion that there is
no causality except the divine was made the basis of a theory of
necessity which played into the hands of the deists whom he
opposed and was alien not only to Christianity but even to theism.
Edwards could not have gotten his idealism from Berkeley; it may
have been suggested to him by the writings of Locke or Newton,
Cudworth or Descartes, John Norris or Arthur Collier. See Prof. H.
N. Gardiner, in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1900:573-596; Prof. E. C.
Smyth, in Am. Jour. Theol., Oct. 1897:956; Allen, Jonathan
Edwards, 16, 308-310, and in Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1891:767;
Sanborn, in Jour. Spec. Philos., Oct. 1883:401-420; G. P. Fisher,
Edwards on the Trinity, 18, 19.
(_b_) The older Calvinism, represented by Charles Hodge the father
(1797-1878) and A. A. Hodge the son (1823-1886), together with Henry B.
Smith (1815-1877), Robert J. Breckinridge (1800-1871), Samuel J. Baird,
and William G. T. Shedd (1820-1894). All these, although with minor
differences, hold to views of human depravity and divine grace more nearly
conformed to the doctrine of Augustine and Calvin, and are for this reason
distinguished from the New England theologians and their followers by the
popular title of Old School.
Old School theology, in its view of predestination, exalts God;
New School theology, by emphasizing the freedom of the will,
exalts man. It is yet more important to notice that Old School
theology has for its characteristic tenet the guilt of inborn
depravity. But among those who hold this view, some are
federalists and creationists, and justify God’s condemnation of
all men upon the ground that Adam represented his posterity. Such
are the Princeton theologians generally, including Charles Hodge,
A. A. Hodge, and the brothers Alexander. Among those who hold to
the Old School doctrine of the guilt of inborn depravity, however,
there are others who are traducians, and who explain the
imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity upon the ground of the
natural union between him and them. Baird’s “Elohim Revealed” and
Shedd’s essay on “Original Sin” (Sin a Nature and that Nature
Guilt) represent this realistic conception of the relation of the
race to its first father. R. J. Breckinridge, R. L. Dabney, and J.
H. Thornwell assert the fact of inherent corruption and guilt, but
refuse to assign any _rationale_ for it, though they tend to
realism. H. B. Smith holds guardedly to the theory of mediate
imputation.
On the history of Systematic Theology in general, see Hagenbach,
History of Doctrine (from which many of the facts above given are
taken), and Shedd, History of Doctrine; also, Ebrard, Dogmatik,
1:44-100; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:15-128; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus,
24-52. Gretillat, Théologie Systématique, 3:24-120, has given an
excellent history of theology, brought down to the present time.
On the history of New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions
and Essays, 285-354.
IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.
1. _Various methods of arranging the topics of a theological system._
(_a_) The Analytical method of Calixtus begins with the assumed end of all
things, blessedness, and thence passes to the means by which it is
secured. (_b_) The Trinitarian method of Leydecker and Martensen regards
Christian doctrine as a manifestation successively of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. (_c_) The Federal method of Cocceius, Witsius, and Boston
treats theology under the two covenants. (_d_) The Anthropological method
of Chalmers and Rothe; the former beginning with the Disease of Man and
passing to the Remedy; the latter dividing his Dogmatik into the
Consciousness of Sin and the Consciousness of Redemption. (_e_) The
Christological method of Hase, Thomasius and Andrew Fuller treats of God,
man, and sin, as presuppositions of the person and work of Christ. Mention
may also be made of (_f_) The Historical method, followed by Ursinus, and
adopted in Jonathan Edwards’s History of Redemption; and (_g_) The
Allegorical method of Dannhauer, in which man is described as a wanderer,
life as a road, the Holy Spirit as a light, the church as a candlestick,
God as the end, and heaven as the home; so Bunyan’s Holy War, and Howe’s
Living Temple.
See Calixtus, Epitome Theologiæ; Leydecker, De Œconomia trium
Personarum in Negotio Salutis humanæ; Martensen (1808-1884),
Christian Dogmatics; Cocceius, Summa Theologiæ, and Summa Doctrinæ
de Fœdere et Testamento Dei, in Works, vol. vi; Witsius, The
Economy of the Covenants; Boston, A Complete Body of Divinity (in
Works, vol. 1 and 2), Questions in Divinity (vol. 6), Human Nature
in its Fourfold State (vol. 8); Chalmers, Institutes of Theology;
Rothe (1799-1867), Dogmatik, and Theologische Ethik; Hase
(1800-1890), Evangelische Dogmatik; Thomasius (1802-1875), Christi
Person und Werk; Fuller, Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation (in
Works, 2:328-416), and Letters on Systematic Divinity (1:684-711);
Ursinus (1534-1583), Loci Theologici (in Works, 1:426-909);
Dannhauer (1603-1666) Hodosophia Christiana, seu Theologia
Positiva in Methodum redacta. Jonathan Edwards’s so-called History
of Redemption was in reality a system of theology in historical
form. It “was to begin and end with eternity, all great events and
epochs in time being viewed ‘sub specie eternitatis.’ The three
worlds—heaven, earth and hell—were to be the scenes of this grand
drama. It was to include the topics of theology as living factors,
each in its own place,” and all forming a complete and harmonious
whole; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 379, 380.
2. _The Synthetic Method_, which we adopt in this compendium, is both the
most common and the most logical method of arranging the topics of
theology. This method proceeds from causes to effects, or, in the language
of Hagenbach (Hist. Doctrine, 2:152), “starts from the highest principle,
God, and proceeds to man, Christ, redemption, and finally to the end of
all things.” In such a treatment of theology we may best arrange our
topics in the following order:
1st. The existence of God.
2d. The Scriptures a revelation from God.
3d. The nature, decrees and works of God.
4th. Man, in his original likeness to God and subsequent apostasy.
5th. Redemption, through the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.
6th. The nature and laws of the Christian church.
7th. The end of the present system of things.
V. Text-Books in Theology.
1. _Confessions_: Schaff, Creeds of Christendom.
2. _Compendiums_: H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology; A. A. Hodge,
Outlines of Theology; E. H. Johnson, Outline of Systematic Theology;
Hovey, Manual of Theology and Ethics; W. N. Clarke, Outline of Christian
Theology; Hase, Hutterus Redivivus; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik;
Kurtz, Religionslehre.
3. _Extended Treatises_: Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine; Shedd,
Dogmatic Theology; Calvin, Institutes; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology;
Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics; Baird, Elohim Revealed; Luthardt,
Fundamental, Saving, and Moral Truths; Phillippi, Glaubenslehre;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk.
4. _Collected Works_: Jonathan Edwards; Andrew Fuller.
5. _Histories of Doctrine_: Harnack; Hagenbach; Shedd; Fisher; Sheldon;
Orr, Progress of Dogma.
6. _Monographs_: Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin; Shedd, Discourses and
Essays; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity; Dorner, History of the Doctrine of
the Person of Christ; Dale, Atonement; Strong, Christ in Creation; Upton,
Hibbert Lectures.
7. _Theism_: Martineau, Study of Religion; Harris, Philosophical Basis of
Theism; Strong, Philosophy and Religion; Bruce, Apologetics; Drummond,
Ascent of Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.
8. _Christian Evidences_: Butler, Analogy of Natural and Revealed
Religion; Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief; Row, Bampton
Lectures for 1877; Peabody, Evidences of Christianity; Mair, Christian
Evidences; Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion; Matheson,
Spiritual Development of St. Paul.
9. _Intellectual Philosophy_: Stout, Handbook of Psychology; Bowne,
Metaphysics; Porter, Human Intellect; Hill, Elements of Psychology; Dewey,
Psychology.
10. _Moral Philosophy_: Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality;
Smyth, Christian Ethics; Porter, Elements of Moral Science; Calderwood,
Moral Philosophy; Alexander, Moral Science; Robins, Ethics of the
Christian Life.
11. _General Science_: Todd, Astronomy; Wentworth and Hill, Physics;
Remsen, Chemistry; Brigham, Geology; Parker, Biology; Martin, Physiology;
Ward, Fairbanks, or West, Sociology; Walker, Political Economy.
12. _Theological Encyclopædias_: Schaff-Herzog (English); McClintock and
Strong; Herzog (Second German Edition).
13. _Bible Dictionaries_: Hastings; Davis; Cheyne; Smith (edited by
Hackett).
14. _Commentaries_: Meyer, on the New Testament; Philippi, Lange, Shedd,
Sanday, on the Epistle to the Romans; Godet, on John’s Gospel; Lightfoot,
on Philippians and Colossians; Expositor’s Bible, on the Old Testament
books.
15. _Bibles_: American Revision (standard edition); Revised Greek-English
New Testament (published by Harper & Brothers); Annotated Paragraph Bible
(published by the London Religious Tract Society) Stier and Theile,
Polyglotten-Bibel.
An attempt has been made, in the list of text-books given above,
to put first in each class the book best worth purchasing by the
average theological student, and to arrange the books that follow
this first one in the order of their value. German books, however,
when they are not yet accessible in an English translation, are
put last, simply because they are less likely to be used as books
of reference by the average student.
PART II. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God’s Existence.
God is the infinite and perfect Spirit in whom all things have their
source, support, and end.
On the definition of the term God, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:366.
Other definitions are those of Calovius: “Essentia spiritualis
infinite”; Ebrard: “The eternal source of all that is temporal”;
Kahnis: “The infinite Spirit”; John Howe: “An eternal, uncaused,
independent, necessary Being, that hath active power, life,
wisdom, goodness, and whatsoever other supposable excellency, in
the highest perfection, in and of itself”; Westminster Catechism:
“A Spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom,
power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth”; Andrew Fuller: “The
first cause and last end of all things.”
The existence of God is a first truth; in other words, the knowledge of
God’s existence is a rational intuition. Logically, it precedes and
conditions all observation and reasoning. Chronologically, only reflection
upon the phenomena of nature and of mind occasions its rise in
consciousness.
The term intuition means simply direct knowledge. Lowndes (Philos.
of Primary Beliefs, 78) and Mansel (Metaphysics, 52) would use the
term only of our direct knowledge of substances, as self and body;
Porter applies it by preference to our cognition of first truths,
such as have been already mentioned. Harris (Philos. Basis of
Theism, 44-151, but esp. 45, 46) makes it include both. He divides
intuitions into two classes: 1. _Presentative_ intuitions, as
self-consciousness (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of
spirit and already come in contact with the supernatural), and
sense-perception (in virtue of which I perceive the existence of
matter, at least in my own organism, and come in contact with
nature); 2. _Rational_ intuitions, as space, time, substance,
cause, final cause, right, absolute being. We may accept this
nomenclature, using the terms “first truths” and “rational
intuitions” as equivalent to each other, and classifying rational
intuitions under the heads of (1) intuitions of relations, as
space and time; (2) intuitions of principles, as substance, cause,
final cause, right; and (3) intuition of absolute Being, Power,
Reason, Perfection, Personality, as God. We hold that, as upon
occasion of the senses cognizing (_a_) extended matter, (_b_)
succession, (_c_) qualities, (_d_) change, (_e_) order, (_f_)
action, respectively, the mind cognizes (_a_) space, (_b_) time,
(_c_) substance, (_d_) cause, (_e_) design, (_f_) obligation, so
upon occasion of our cognizing our finiteness, dependence and
responsibility, the mind directly cognizes the existence of an
Infinite and Absolute Authority, Perfection, Personality, upon
whom we are dependent and to whom we are responsible.
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 60—“As we walk in entire
ignorance of our muscles, so we often think in entire ignorance of
the principles which underlie and determine thinking. But as
anatomy reveals that the apparently simple act of walking involves
a highly complex muscular activity, so analysis reveals that the
apparently simple act of thinking involves a system of mental
principles.” Dewey, Psychology, 238, 244—“Perception, memory,
imagination, conception—each of these is an act of intuition....
Every concrete act of knowledge involves an intuition of God.”
Martineau, Types, 1:459—The attempt to divest experience of either
percepts or intuitions is “like the attempt to peel a bubble in
search for its colors and contents: in tenuem ex oculis evanuit
auram”; Study, 1:199—“Try with all your might to do something
difficult, _e. g._, to shut a door against a furious wind, and you
recognize Self and Nature—causal will, over against external
causality”; 201—“Hence our fellow-feeling with Nature”; 65—“As
Perception gives us Will in the shape of Causality over against us
in the non-ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of
Authority over against us in the non-ego”; Types, 2:5—“In
perception it is self and nature, in morals it is self and God,
that stand face to face in the subjective and objective
antithesis”; Study, 2:2, 3—“In volitional experience we meet with
objective _causality_; in moral experience we meet with objective
_authority_,—both being objects of immediate knowledge, on the
same footing of certainty with the apprehension of the external
material world. I know of no logical advantage which the belief in
finite objects around us can boast over the belief in the infinite
and righteous Cause of all”; 51—“In recognition of God as Cause,
we raise the University; in recognition of God as Authority, we
raise the Church.”
Kant declares that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea
of personality,—personality consists in the freedom of the whole
soul from the mechanism of nature. Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“So
far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as the identical
subject of inward experience, it is, and is named simply for that
reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine,
32—“Our conception of substance is derived, not from the physical,
but from the mental world. Substance is first of all that which
underlies our _mental_ affections and manifestations.” James, Will
to Believe, 80—“Substance, as Kant says, means ‘das Beharrliche,’
the abiding, that which will be as it has been, because its being
is essential and eternal.” In this sense we have an intuitive
belief in an abiding substance which underlies our own thoughts
and volitions, and this we call the soul. But we also have an
intuitive belief in an abiding substance which underlies all
natural phenomena and all the events of history, and this we call
God. Among those who hold to this general view of an intuitive
knowledge of God may be mentioned the following:—Calvin,
Institutes, book I, chap. 3; Nitzsch, System of Christian
Doctrine, 15-26, 133-140; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:78-84;
Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725; Porter, Human Intellect, 497;
Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 58-89; Farrar, Science in Theology,
27-29; Bib. Sac., July, 1872:533, and January, 1873:204; Miller,
Fetich in Theology, 110-122; Fisher, Essays, 565-572; Tulloch,
Theism, 314-336; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:191-203;
Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, 75, 76; Raymond,
Syst. Theology, 1:247-262; Bascom, Science of Mind, 246, 247;
Knight, Studies in Philos. and Lit., 155-224; A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 76-89.
I. First Truths in General.
1. _Their nature._
A. Negatively.—A first truth is not (_a_) Truth written prior to
consciousness upon the substance of the soul—for such passive knowledge
implies a materialistic view of the soul; (_b_) Actual knowledge of which
the soul finds itself in possession at birth—for it cannot be proved that
the soul has such knowledge; (_c_) An idea, undeveloped at birth, but
which has the power of self-development apart from observation and
experience—for this is contrary to all we know of the laws of mental
growth.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1:17—“Intelligi necesse est esse deos,
quoniam insitas eorum vel potius innatas cogitationes habemus.”
Origen, Adv. Celsum, 1:4—“Men would not be guilty, if they did not
carry in their minds common notions of morality, innate and
written in divine letters.” Calvin, Institutes, 1:3:3—“Those who
rightly judge will always agree that there is an indelible sense
of divinity engraven upon men’s minds.” Fleming, Vocab. of
Philosophy, art.: “Innate Ideas”—“Descartes is supposed to have
taught (and Locke devoted the first book of his Essays to refuting
the doctrine) that these ideas are innate or connate with the
soul; _i. e._, the intellect finds itself at birth, or as soon as
it wakes to conscious activity, to be possessed of ideas to which
it has only to attach the appropriate names, or of judgments which
it only needs to express in fit propositions—_i. e._, prior to any
experience of individual objects.”
Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 77—“In certain families,
Descartes teaches, good breeding and the gout are innate. Yet, of
course, the children of such families have to be instructed in
deportment, and the infants just learning to walk seem happily
quite free from gout. Even so geometry is innate in us, but it
does not come to our consciousness without much trouble”; 79—Locke
found no innate ideas. He maintained, in reply, that “infants,
with their rattles, showed no sign of being aware that things
which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.”
Schopenhauer said that “Jacobi had the trifling weakness of taking
all he had learned and approved before his fifteenth year for
inborn ideas of the human mind.” Bowne, Principles of Ethics,
5—“That the rational ideas are conditioned by the sense experience
and are sequent to it, is unquestioned by any one; and that
experience shows a successive order of manifestation is equally
undoubted. But the sensationalist has always shown a curious
blindness to the ambiguity of such a fact. He will have it that
what comes after must be a modification of what went before;
whereas it might be _that_, _and_ it might be a new, though
conditioned, manifestation of an immanent nature or law. Chemical
affinity is not gravity, although affinity cannot manifest itself
until gravity has brought the elements into certain relations.”
Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:103—“This principle was not
from the beginning in the consciousness of men; for, in order to
think ideas, reason must be clearly developed, which in the first
of mankind it could just as little be as in children. This however
does not exclude the fact that there was from the beginning the
unconscious rational impulse which lay at the basis of the
formation of the belief in God, however manifold may have been the
direct motives which co-operated with it.” Self is implied in the
simplest act of knowledge. Sensation gives us two things, _e. g._,
black and white; but I cannot compare them without asserting
difference _for me_. Different sensations make no _knowledge_,
without a _self_ to bring them together. Upton, Hibbert Lectures,
lecture 2—“You could as easily prove the existence of an external
world to a man who had no senses to perceive it, as you could
prove the existence of God to one who had no consciousness of
God.”
B. Positively.—A first truth is a knowledge which, though developed upon
occasion of observation and reflection, is not derived from observation
and reflection,—a knowledge on the contrary which has such logical
priority that it must be assumed or supposed, in order to make any
observation or reflection possible. Such truths are not, therefore,
recognized first in order of time; some of them are assented to somewhat
late in the mind’s growth; by the great majority of men they are never
consciously formulated at all. Yet they constitute the necessary
assumptions upon which all other knowledge rests, and the mind has not
only the inborn capacity to evolve them so soon as the proper occasions
are presented, but the recognition of them is inevitable so soon as the
mind begins to give account to itself of its own knowledge.
Mansel, Metaphysics, 52, 279—“To describe experience as the cause
of the idea of space would be as inaccurate as to speak of the
soil in which it was planted as the cause of the oak—though the
planting in the soil is the condition which brings into
manifestation the latent power of the acorn.” Coleridge: “We see
before we know that we have eyes; but when once this is known, we
perceive that eyes must have preëxisted in order to enable us to
see.” Coleridge speaks of first truths as “those necessities of
mind or forms of thinking, which, though revealed to us by
experience, must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience
possible.” McCosh, Intuitions, 48, 49—Intuitions are “like flower
and fruit, which are in the plant from its embryo, but may not be
actually formed till there have been a stalk and branches and
leaves.” Porter, Human Intellect, 501, 519—“Such truths cannot be
acquired or assented to first of all.” Some are reached last of
all. The moral intuition is often developed late, and sometimes,
even then, only upon occasion of corporal punishment. “Every man
is as lazy as circumstances will admit.” Our physical laziness is
occasional; our mental laziness frequent; our moral laziness
incessant. We are too lazy to think, and especially to think of
religion. On account of this depravity of human nature we should
expect the intuition of God to be developed last of all. Men
shrink from contact with God and from the thought of God. In fact,
their dislike for the intuition of God leads them not seldom to
deny all their other intuitions, even those of freedom and of
right. Hence the modern “psychology without a soul.”
Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 105-115—“The idea of God ...
is latest to develop into clear consciousness ... and must be
latest, for it is the unity of the difference of the self and the
not-self, which are therefore presupposed.” But “it has not less
validity in itself, it gives no less trustworthy assurance of
actuality, than the consciousness of the self, or the
consciousness of the not-self.... The consciousness of God is the
logical _prius_ of the consciousness of self and of the world. But
not, as already observed, the chronological; for, according to the
profound observation of Aristotle, what in the nature of things is
first, is in the order of development last. Just because God is
the first principle of being and knowing, he is the last to be
manifested and known.... The finite and the infinite are both
known together, and it is as impossible to know one without the
other as it is to apprehend an angle without the sides which
contain it.” For account of the relation of the intuitions to
experience, see especially Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good,
39-64, and History of Philosophy, 2:199-245. Compare Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason, Introd., 1. See also Bascom, in Bib.
Sac., 23:1-47; 27:68-90.
2. _Their criteria._ The criteria by which first truths are to be tested
are three:
A. Their universality. By this we mean, not that all men assent to them or
understand them when propounded in scientific form, but that all men
manifest a practical belief in them by their language, actions, and
expectations.
B. Their necessity. By this we mean, not that it is impossible to deny
these truths, but that the mind is compelled by its very constitution to
recognize them upon the occurrence of the proper conditions, and to employ
them in its arguments to prove their non-existence.
C. Their logical independence and priority. By this we mean that these
truths can be resolved into no others, and proved by no others; that they
are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge, and can
therefore be derived from no other source than an original cognitive power
of the mind.
Instances of the professed and formal denial of first truths:—the
positivist denies causality; the idealist denies substance; the
pantheist denies personality; the necessitarian denies freedom;
the nihilist denies his own existence. A man may in like manner
argue that there is no necessity for an atmosphere; but even while
he argues, he breathes it. Instance the knock-down argument to
demonstrate the freedom of the will. I grant my own existence in
the very doubting of it; for “cogito, ergo sum,” as Descartes
himself insisted, really means “cogito, scilicet sum”; H. B.
Smith: “The statement is analysis, not proof.” Ladd, Philosophy of
Knowledge, 59—“The _cogito_, in barbarous Latin = _cogitans sum_:
thinking is self-conscious _being_.” Bentham: “The word _ought_ is
an authoritative imposture, and ought to be banished from the
realm of morals.” Spinoza and Hegel really deny self-consciousness
when they make man a phenomenon of the infinite. Royce likens the
denier of personality to the man who goes outside of his own house
and declares that no one lives there because, when he looks in at
the window, he sees no one inside.
Professor James, in his Psychology, assumes the reality of a
brain, but refuses to assume the reality of a soul. This is
essentially the position of materialism. But this assumption of a
brain is metaphysics, although the author claims to be writing a
psychology without metaphysics. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 3—“The
materialist believes in causation proper so long as he is
explaining the origin of mind from matter, but when he is asked to
see in mind the cause of physical change he at once becomes a mere
phenomenalist.” Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 400—“I know
that all beings, if only they can count, must find that three and
two make five. Perhaps the angels cannot count; but, if they can,
this axiom is true for them. If I met an angel who declared that
his experience had occasionally shown him a three and two that did
_not_ make five, I should know at once what sort of an angel he
was.” On the criteria of first truths, see Porter, Human
Intellect, 510, 511. On denial of them, see Shedd, Dogmatic
Theology, 1:213.
II. The Existence of God a first truth.
1. Its universality.
That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the first criterion of
universality_, is evident from the following considerations:
A. It is an acknowledged fact that the vast majority of men have actually
recognized the existence of a spiritual being or beings, upon whom they
conceived themselves to be dependent.
The Vedas declare: “There is but one Being—no second.” Max Müller,
Origin and Growth of Religion, 34—“Not the visible sun, moon and
stars are invoked, but something else that cannot be seen.” The
lowest tribes have conscience, fear death, believe in witches,
propitiate or frighten away evil fates. Even the fetich-worshiper,
who calls the stone or the tree a god, shows that he has already
the idea of a God. We must not measure the ideas of the heathen by
their capacity for expression, any more than we should judge the
child’s belief in the existence of his father by his success in
drawing the father’s picture. On heathenism, its origin and
nature, see Tholuck, in Bib. Repos., 1832:86; Scholz, Götzendienst
und Zauberwesen.
B. Those races and nations which have at first seemed destitute of such
knowledge have uniformly, upon further investigation, been found to
possess it, so that no tribe of men with which we have thorough
acquaintance can be said to be without an object of worship. We may
presume that further knowledge will show this to be true of all.
Moffat, who reported that certain African tribes were destitute of
religion, was corrected by the testimony of his son-in-law,
Livingstone: “The existence of God and of a future life is
everywhere recognized in Africa.” Where men are most nearly
destitute of any formulated knowledge of God, the conditions for
the awakening of the idea are most nearly absent. An apple-tree
may be so conditioned that it never bears apples. “We do not judge
of the oak by the stunted, flowerless specimens on the edge of the
Arctic Circle.” The presence of an occasional blind, deaf or dumb
man does not disprove the definition that man is a seeing, hearing
and speaking creature. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 154—“We need
not tremble for mathematics, even if some tribes should be found
without the multiplication-table.... Sub-moral and sub-rational
existence is always with us in the case of young children; and, if
we should find it elsewhere, it would have no greater
significance.”
Victor Hugo: “Some men deny the Infinite; some, too, deny the sun;
they are the blind.” Gladden, What is Left? 148—“A man may escape
from his shadow by going into the dark; if he comes under the
light of the sun, the shadow is there. A man may be so mentally
undisciplined that he does not recognize these ideas; but let him
learn the use of his reason, let him reflect on his own mental
processes, and he will know that they are necessary ideas.” On an
original monotheism, see Diestel, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5:669; Max Müller, Chips, 1:337;
Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, No. 11; Legge, Religions of
China, 8-11; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:201-208. _Per contra_,
see Asmus, Indogerm. Relig., 2:1-8; and synopsis in Bib. Sac.,
Jan. 1877:167-172.
C. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that those individuals, in
heathen or in Christian lands, who profess themselves to be without any
knowledge of a spiritual power or powers above them, do yet indirectly
manifest the existence of such an idea in their minds and its positive
influence over them.
Comte said that science would conduct God to the frontier and then
bow him out, with thanks for his provisional services. But Herbert
Spencer affirms the existence of a “Power to which no limit in
time or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena as presented
in consciousness are manifestations.” The intuition of God, though
formally excluded, is implicitly contained in Spencer’s system, in
the shape of the “irresistible belief” in Absolute Being, which
distinguishes his position from that of Comte; see H. Spencer, who
says: “One truth must ever grow clearer—the truth that there is an
inscrutable existence everywhere manifested, to which we can
neither find nor conceive beginning or end—the one absolute
certainty that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and
eternal energy from which all things proceed.” Mr. Spencer assumes
unity in the underlying Reality. Frederick Harrison sneeringly
asks him: “Why not say ‘forces,’ instead of ‘force’?” While
Harrison gives us a supreme moral ideal without a metaphysical
ground, Spencer gives us an ultimate metaphysical principle
without a final moral purpose. The idea of God is the synthesis of
the two,—“They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Lord,
art more than they” (Tennyson, In Memoriam).
Solon spoke of ὁ θεός and of τὸ θεῖον, and Sophocles of ὁ μέγας
θεός. The term for “God” is identical in all the Indo-European
languages, and therefore belonged to the time before those
languages separated; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:201-208. In
Virgil’s Æneid, Mezentius is an atheist, a despiser of the gods,
trusting only in his spear and in his right arm; but, when the
corpse of his son is brought to him, his first act is to raise his
hands to heaven. Hume was a sceptic, but he said to Ferguson, as
they walked on a starry night: “Adam, there is a God!” Voltaire
prayed in an Alpine thunderstorm. Shelley wrote his name in the
visitors’ book of the inn at Montanvert, and added: “Democrat,
philanthropist, atheist”; yet he loved to think of a “fine
intellectual spirit pervading the universe”; and he also wrote:
“The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever
shines, Earth’s shadows fly.” Strauss worships the Cosmos, because
“order and law, reason and goodness” are the soul of it. Renan
trusts in goodness, design, ends. Charles Darwin, Life, 1:274—“In
my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist, in the
sense of denying the existence of a God.”
D. This agreement among individuals and nations so widely separated in
time and place can be most satisfactorily explained by supposing that it
has its ground, not in accidental circumstances, but in the nature of man
as man. The diverse and imperfectly developed ideas of the supreme Being
which prevail among men are best accounted for as misinterpretations and
perversions of an intuitive conviction common to all.
Huxley, Lay Sermons, 163—“There are savages without God, in any
proper sense of the word; but there are none without ghosts.”
Martineau, Study, 2:353, well replies: “Instead of turning other
people into ghosts, and then appropriating one to ourselves [and
attributing another to God, we may add] by way of imitation, we
start from the sense of personal continuity, and then predicate
the same of others, under the figures which keep most clear of the
physical and perishable.” Grant Allen describes the higher
religions as “a grotesque fungoid growth,” that has gathered about
a primitive thread of ancestor-worship. But this is to derive the
greater from the less. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 358—“I can find no
trace of ancestor-worship in the earliest literature of Babylonia
which has survived to us”—this seems fatal to Huxley’s and Allen’s
view that the idea of God is derived from man’s prior belief in
spirits of the dead. C. M. Tyler, in Am. Jour. Theo., Jan.
1899:144—“It seems impossible to deify a dead man, unless there is
embryonic in primitive consciousness a prior concept of Deity.”
Renouf, Religion of Ancient Egypt, 93—“The whole mythology of
Egypt ... turns on the histories of Ra and Osiris.... Texts are
discovered which identify Osiris and Ra.... Other texts are known
wherein Ra, Osiris, Amon, and all other gods disappear, except as
simple _names_, and the unity of God is asserted in the noblest
language of monotheistic religion.” These facts are earlier than
any known ancestor-worship. “They point to an original idea of
divinity above humanity” (see Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 317). We
must add the idea of the superhuman, before we can turn any
animism or ancestor-worship into a religion. This superhuman
element was suggested to early man by all he saw of nature about
him, especially by the sight of the heavens above, and by what he
knew of causality within. For the evidence of a universal
recognition of a superior power, see Flint, Anti-theistic
Theories, 250-289, 522-533; Renouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879:100;
Bib. Sac., Jan. 1884:132-157; Peschel, Races of Men, 261; Ulrici,
Leib und Seele, 688, and Gott und die Natur, 658-670, 758; Tylor,
Primitive Culture, 1:377, 381, 418; Alexander, Evidences of
Christianity, 22; Calderwood, Philosophy of the Infinite, 512;
Liddon, Elements of Religion, 50; Methodist Quar. Rev., Jan.
1875:1; J. F. Clark, Ten Great Religions, 2:17-21.
2. Its necessity.
That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the second criterion of
necessity_, will be seen by considering:
A. That men, under circumstances fitted to call forth this knowledge,
cannot avoid recognizing the existence of God. In contemplating finite
existence, there is inevitably suggested the idea of an infinite Being as
its correlative. Upon occasion of the mind’s perceiving its own
finiteness, dependence, responsibility, it immediately and necessarily
perceives the existence of an infinite and unconditioned Being upon whom
it is dependent and to whom it is responsible.
We could not recognize the finite as finite, except by comparing
it with an already existing standard—the Infinite. Mansel, Limits
of Religious Thought, lect. 3—“We are compelled by the
constitution of our minds to believe in the existence of an
Absolute and Infinite Being—a belief which appears forced upon us
as the complement of our consciousness of the relative and
finite.” Fisher, Journ. Chr. Philos., Jan. 1883:113—“Ego and
non-ego, each being conditioned by the other, presuppose
unconditioned being on which both are dependent. Unconditioned
being is the silent presupposition of all our knowing.” Perceived
dependent being implies an independent; independent being is
perfectly self-determining; self-determination is personality;
perfect self-determination is infinite Personality. John Watson,
in Philos. Rev., Sept. 1893:526—“There is no consciousness of self
apart from the consciousness of other selves and things; and no
consciousness of the world apart from the consciousness of the
single Reality presupposed in both.” E. Caird, Evolution of
Religion, 64-68—In every act of consciousness the primary elements
are implied: “the idea of the object, or not-self; the idea of the
subject, or self; and the idea of the unity which is presupposed
in the difference of the self and not-self, and within which they
act and react on each other.” See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite,
46, and Moral Philos., 77; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 283-285;
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:211.
B. That men, in virtue of their humanity, have a capacity for religion.
This recognized capacity for religion is proof that the idea of God is a
necessary one. If the mind upon proper occasion did not evolve this idea,
there would be nothing in man to which religion could appeal.
“It is the suggestion of the Infinite that makes the line of the
far horizon, seen over land or sea, so much more impressive than
the beauties of any limited landscape.” In times of sudden shock
and danger, this rational intuition becomes a presentative
intuition,—men become more conscious of God’s existence than of
the existence of their fellow-men and they instinctively cry to
God for help. In the commands and reproaches of the moral nature
the soul recognizes a Lawgiver and Judge whose voice conscience
merely echoes. Aristotle called man “a political animal”; it is
still more true, as Sabatier declares, that “man is incurably
religious.” St. Bernard: “Noverim me, noverim te.” O. P. Gifford:
“As milk, from which under proper conditions cream does not rise,
is not milk, so the man, who upon proper occasion shows no
knowledge of God, is not man, but brute.” We must not however
expect cream from frozen milk. Proper environment and conditions
are needed.
It is the recognition of a divine Personality in nature which
constitutes the greatest merit and charm of Wordsworth’s poetry.
In his Tintern Abbey, he speaks of “A presence that disturbs me
with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something
far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting
suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky and
in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking
things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.”
Robert Browning sees God in humanity, as Wordsworth sees God in
nature. In his Hohenstiel-Schwangau he writes: “This is the glory,
that in all conceived Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind—Not
mine, but like mine—for the double joy Making all things for me,
and me for Him.” John Ruskin held that the foundation of beauty in
the world is the presence of God in it. In his youth he tells us
that he had “a continual perception of sanctity in the whole of
nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest—an instinctive awe
mixed with delight, an indefinable thrill such as we sometimes
imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied spirit.” But it
was not a disembodied, but an embodied, Spirit that he saw.
Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, § 7—“Unless education and culture
were preceded by an innate consciousness of God as an operative
predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture
to work upon.” On Wordsworth’s recognition of a divine personality
in nature, see Knight, Studies, 282-317, 405-426; Hutton, Essays,
2:113.
C. That he who denies God’s existence must tacitly assume that existence
in his very argument, by employing logical processes whose validity rests
upon the fact of God’s existence. The full proof of this belongs under the
next head.
“I am an atheist, God knows”—was the absurd beginning of an
argument to disprove the divine existence. Cutler, Beginnings of
Ethics, 22—“Even the Nihilists, whose first principle is that God
and duty are great bugbears to be abolished, assume that God and
duty exist, and they are impelled by a sense of duty to abolish
them.” Mrs. Browning, The Cry of the Human: “ ‘There is no God,’
the foolish saith; But none, ‘There is no sorrow’; And nature oft
the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the
preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised; And lips
say, ‘God be pitiful,’ Who ne’er said, ‘God be praised.’ ” Dr. W.
W. Keen, when called to treat an Irishman’s aphasia, said: “Well,
Dennis, how are you?” “Oh, doctor, I cannot spake!” “But, Dennis,
you _are_ speaking.” “Oh, doctor, it’s many a word I cannot
spake!” “Well, Dennis, now I will try you. See if you cannot say,
‘Horse.’ ” “Oh, doctor dear, ‘horse’ is the very word I cannot
spake!” On this whole section, see A. M. Fairbairn, Origin and
Development of the Idea of God, in Studies in Philos. of Relig.
and History; Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 45; Bishop
Temple, Bampton Lectures, 1884:37-65.
3. Its logical independence and priority.
That _the knowledge of God’s existence answers the third criterion of
logical independence and priority_, may be shown as follows:
A. It is presupposed in all other knowledge as its logical condition and
foundation. The validity of the simplest mental acts, such as
sense-perception, self-consciousness, and memory, depends upon the
assumption that a God exists who has so constituted our minds that they
give us knowledge of things as they are.
Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88—“The ground of science and
of cognition generally is to be found neither in the subject nor
in the object _per se_, but only in the divine thinking that
combines the two, which, as the common ground of the forms of
thinking in all finite minds, and of the forms of being in all
things, makes possible the correspondence or agreement between the
former and the latter, or in a word makes knowledge of truth
possible.” 91—“Religious belief is presupposed in all scientific
knowledge as the basis of its possibility.” This is the thought of
_Psalm 36:10—_“In thy light shall we see light.” A. J. Balfour,
Foundations of Belief, 303—“The uniformity of nature cannot be
proved from experience, for it is what makes proof from experience
possible.... Assume it, and we shall find that facts conform to
it.... 309—The uniformity of nature can be established only by the
aid of that principle itself, and is necessarily involved in all
attempts to prove it.... There must be a God, to justify our
confidence in innate ideas.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 276—“Reflection shows that
the community of individual intelligences is possible only through
an all-embracing Intelligence, the source and creator of finite
minds.” Science rests upon the postulate of a world-order. Huxley:
“The object of science is the discovery of the rational order
which pervades the universe.” This rational order presupposes a
rational Author. Dubois, in New Englander, Nov. 1890:468—“We
assume uniformity and continuity, or we can have no science. An
intelligent Creative Will is a genuine scientific hypothesis
[postulate?], suggested by analogy and confirmed by experience,
not contradicting the fundamental law of uniformity but accounting
for it.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 18—“That nature is a system,
is the assumption underlying the earliest mythologies: to fill up
this conception is the aim of the latest science.” Royce, Relig.
Aspect of Philosophy, 435—“There is such a thing as error; but
error is inconceivable unless there be such a thing as truth; and
truth is inconceivable unless there be a seat of truth, an
infinite all-including Thought or Mind; therefore such a Mind
exists.”
B. The more complex processes of the mind, such as induction and
deduction, can be relied on only by presupposing a thinking Deity who has
made the various parts of the universe and the various aspects of truth to
correspond to each other and to the investigating faculties of man.
We argue from one apple to the others on the tree. Newton argued
from the fall of an apple to gravitation in the moon and
throughout the solar system. Rowland argued from the chemistry of
our world to that of Sirius. In all such argument there is assumed
a unifying thought and a thinking Deity. This is Tyndall’s
“scientific use of the imagination.” “Nourished,” he says, “by
knowledge partially won, and bounded by coöperant reason,
imagination is the mightiest instrument of the physical
discoverer.” What Tyndall calls “imagination”, is really insight
into the thoughts of God, the great Thinker. It prepares the way
for logical reasoning,—it is not the product of mere reasoning.
For this reason Goethe called imagination “die Vorschule des
Denkens,” or “thought’s preparatory school.”
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 23—“Induction is
syllogism, with the immutable attributes of God for a constant
term.” Porter, Hum. Intellect, 492—“Induction rests upon the
assumption, as it demands for its ground, that a personal or
thinking Deity exists”; 658—“It has no meaning or validity unless
we assume that the universe is constituted in such a way as to
presuppose an absolute and unconditioned originator of its forces
and laws”; 662—“We analyze the several processes of knowledge into
their underlying assumptions, and we find that the assumption
which underlies them all is that of a self-existent Intelligence
who not only can be known by man, but must be known by man in
order that man may know anything besides”; see also pages 486,
508, 509, 518, 519, 585, 616. Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism,
81—“The processes of reflective thought imply that the universe is
grounded in, and is the manifestation of, reason”; 560—“The
existence of a personal God is a necessary datum of scientific
knowledge.” So also, Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of
Christianity, 564, and in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:129,
130.
C. Our primitive belief in final cause, or, in other words, our conviction
that all things have their ends, that design pervades the universe,
involves a belief in God’s existence. In assuming that there is a
universe, that the universe is a rational whole, a system of
thought-relations, we assume the existence of an absolute Thinker, of
whose thought the universe is an expression.
Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:81—“The real can only be
thinkable if it is realized thought, a thought previously thought,
which our thinking has only to think again. Therefore the real, in
order to be thinkable for us, must be the realized thought of the
creative thinking of an eternal divine Reason which is presented
to our cognitive thinking.” Royce, World and Individual,
2:41—“Universal teleology constitutes the essence of all facts.”
A. H. Bradford, The Age of Faith, 142—“Suffering and sorrow are
universal. Either God could prevent them and would not, and
therefore he is neither beneficent nor loving; or else he cannot
prevent them and therefore something is greater than God, and
therefore there is no God? But here is the use of reason in the
individual reasoning. Reasoning in the individual necessitates the
absolute or universal reason. If there is the absolute reason,
then the universe and history are ordered and administered in
harmony with reason; then suffering and sorrow can be neither
meaningless nor final, since that would be the contradiction of
reason. That cannot be possible in the universal and absolute
which contradicts reason in man.”
D. Our primitive belief in moral obligation, or, in other words, our
conviction that right has universal authority, involves the belief in
God’s existence. In assuming that the universe is a moral whole, we assume
the existence of an absolute Will, of whose righteousness the universe is
an expression.
Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88—“The ground of moral
obligation is found neither in the subject nor in society, but
only in the universal or divine Will that combines both....
103—The idea of God is the unity of the true and the good, or of
the two highest ideas which our reason thinks as theoretical
reason, but demands as practical reason.... In the idea of God we
find the only synthesis of the world that _is_—the world of
science, and of the world that _ought to be_—the world of
religion.” Seth, Ethical Principles, 425—“This is not a
mathematical demonstration. Philosophy never is an exact science.
Rather is it offered as the only sufficient foundation of the
moral life.... The life of goodness ... is a life based on the
conviction that its source and its issues are in the Eternal and
the Infinite.” As finite truth and goodness are comprehensible
only in the light of some absolute principle which furnishes for
them an ideal standard, so finite beauty is inexplicable except as
there exists a perfect standard with which it may be compared. The
beautiful is more than the agreeable or the useful. Proportion,
order, harmony, unity in diversity—all these are characteristics
of beauty. But they all imply an intellectual and spiritual Being,
from whom they proceed and by whom they can be measured. Both
physical and moral beauty, in finite things and beings, are
symbols and manifestations of Him who is the author and lover of
beauty, and who is himself the infinite and absolute Beauty. The
beautiful in nature and in art shows that the idea of God’s
existence is logically independent and prior. See Cousin, The
True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 140-153; Kant, Metaphysic of
Ethics, who holds that belief in God is the necessary
presupposition of the belief in duty.
To repeat these four points in another form—the intuition of an Absolute
Reason is (_a_) the necessary presupposition of all other knowledge, so
that we cannot know anything else to exist except by assuming first of all
that God exists; (_b_) the necessary basis of all logical thought, so that
we cannot put confidence in any one of our reasoning processes except by
taking for granted that a thinking Deity has constructed our minds with
reference to the universe and to truth; (_c_) the necessary implication of
our primitive belief in design, so that we can assume all things to exist
for a purpose, only by making the prior assumption that a purposing God
exists—can regard the universe as a thought, only by postulating the
existence of an absolute Thinker; and (_d_) the necessary foundation of
our conviction of moral obligation, so that we can believe in the
universal authority of right, only by assuming that there exists a God of
righteousness who reveals his will both in the individual conscience and
in the moral universe at large. We cannot _prove_ that God is; but we can
show that, in order to show the existence of any knowledge, thought,
reason, conscience, in man, man must _assume_ that God is.
As Jacobi said of the beautiful: “Es kann gewiesen aber nicht
bewiesen werden”—it can be shown, but not proved. Bowne,
Metaphysics, 472—“Our objective knowledge of the finite must rest
upon ethical trust in the infinite”; 480—“Theism is the absolute
postulate of all knowledge, science and philosophy”; “God is the
most certain fact of objective knowledge.” Ladd, Bib. Sac., Oct.
1877:611-616—“Cogito, ergo Deus est. We are obliged to postulate a
not-ourselves which makes for rationality, as well as for
righteousness.” W. T. Harris: “Even natural science is impossible,
where philosophy has not yet taught that reason made the world,
and that nature is a revelation of the rational.” Whately, Logic,
270; New Englander, Oct. 1871, art. on Grounds of Confidence in
Inductive Reasoning; Bib. Sac., 7:415-425; Dorner, Glaubenslehre,
1:197; Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, ch. “Zweck”;
Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, 540-626; Lachelier, Du Fondement de
l’Induction, 78. _Per contra_, see Janet, Final Causes, 174, note,
and 457-464, who holds final cause to be, not an intuition, but
the result of applying the principle of causality to cases which
mechanical laws alone will not explain.
Pascal: “Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and Reason confounds the
Dogmatist. We have an incapacity of demonstration, which the
former cannot overcome; we have a conception of truth which the
latter cannot disturb.” “There is no Unbelief! Whoever says.
‘To-morrow,’ ‘The Unknown,’ ‘The Future,’ trusts that Power alone.
Nor dares disown.” Jones, Robert Browning, 314—“We cannot indeed
prove God as the conclusion of a syllogism, for he is the primary
hypothesis of all proof.” Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau:
“I know that he is there, as I am here, By the same proof, which
seems no proof at all, It so exceeds familiar forms of proof”;
Paracelsus, 27—“To know Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape Than in effecting
entrance for a light Supposed to be without.” Tennyson, Holy
Grail: “Let visions of the night or day Come as they will, and
many a time they come.... In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision,
nor that One Who rose again”; The Ancient Sage, 548—“Thou canst
not prove the Nameless, O my son! Nor canst thou prove the world
thou movest in. Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor
canst Thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove
that thou art both in one. Thou canst not prove that thou art
immortal, no, Nor yet that thou art mortal. Nay, my son, thou
canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in
converse with thyself. For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: Wherefore be thou wise, Cleave ever to the
sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of
Faith.”
III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God’s Existence.
Our proof that the idea of God’s existence is a rational intuition will
not be complete, until we show that attempts to account in other ways for
the origin of the idea are insufficient, and require as their
presupposition the very intuition which they would supplant or reduce to a
secondary place. We claim that it cannot be derived from any other source
than an original cognitive power of the mind.
1. Not from external revelation,—whether communicated (_a_) through the
Scriptures, or (_b_)through tradition; for, unless man had from another
source a previous knowledge of the existence of a God from whom such a
revelation might come, the revelation itself could have no authority for
him.
(_a_) See Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 10; Ebrard,
Dogmatik, 1:117; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“A
revelation takes for granted that he to whom it is made has some
knowledge of God, though it may enlarge and purify that
knowledge.” We cannot prove God from the authority of the
Scriptures, and then also prove the Scriptures from the authority
of God. The very idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes
belief in a God who can make it. Newman Smyth, in New Englander,
1878:355—We cannot derive from a sun-dial our knowledge of the
existence of a sun. The sun-dial presupposes the sun, and cannot
be understood without previous knowledge of the sun. Wuttke,
Christian Ethics, 2:103—“The voice of the divine ego does not
first come to the consciousness of the individual ego from
without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already
this inner one; there must echo out from within man something
kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized
and accepted as divine.”
Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 21, 22—“If man
is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he
must have what Schelling happily termed ‘an original atheism of
consciousness.’ Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the
nature of man,—it must be implanted from without.” Schurman,
Belief in God, 78—“A primitive revelation of God could only mean
that God had endowed man with the capacity of apprehending his
divine original. This capacity, like every other, is innate, and
like every other, it realizes itself only in the presence of
appropriate conditions.” Clarke, Christian Theology,
112—“Revelation cannot demonstrate God’s existence, for it must
assume it; but it will manifest his existence and character to
men, and will serve them as the chief source of certainty
concerning him, for it will teach them what they could not know by
other means.”
(b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for
“tradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated”
(Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a
primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies—that
very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and
presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of
a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge
thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the
reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally
from reasoning—an explanation which we consider further on. On the
traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker,
Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86-96; Fairbairn, Studies in
Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics,
453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos.,
312-322.
Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of
man’s belief in God: “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor”;
Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is
a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused
the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible?
What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships,
merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to
say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it.
There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external
things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never
impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature
a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his
representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of
reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact
that belief in God’s existence gets a wider hold upon the race
with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused
belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear;
indeed, “the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom”_ (Ps.
111:10)_.
2. Not from experience,—whether this mean (_a_) the sense-perception and
reflection of the individual (Locke), (_b_) the accumulated results of the
sensations and associations of past generations of the race (Herbert
Spencer), or (_c_) the actual contact of our sensitive nature with God,
the supersensible reality, through the religious feeling (Newman Smyth).
The first form of this theory is inconsistent with the fact that the idea
of God is not the idea of a sensible or material object, nor a combination
of such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are direct opposites of
the material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our
idea of the former.
With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the
passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke’s
“tabula rasa” theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas
for their cause. To his statement: “Nihil est in intellectu nisi
quod ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz replied: “Nisi intellectus
ipse.” Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our
knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying
knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source
of any other knowledge. The German _Gottesbewusstsein_ = not
“consciousness of God,” but “knowledge of God”; _Bewusstsein_ here
= not a “conknowing,” but a “beknowing”; see Porter, Human
Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.
Fraser, Locke, 143-147—Sensations are the bricks, and association
the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and
Knowledge, 47—“Develope language by allowing sounds to associate
and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel
of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of
sensation....52—One who does not know how to read would look in
vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to
help his failure by using strong spectacles.” Yet even if the idea
of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in
rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy,
132—“There is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge
to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason;
between those who attribute the development of the germ to
mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent
potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature
was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that
everything in nature is immediately intended rather than
predetermined.” All these may be methods of the immanent God.
The second form of the theory is open to the objection that the very first
experience of the first man, equally with man’s latest experience,
presupposes this intuition, as well as the other intuitions, and therefore
cannot be the cause of it. Moreover, even though this theory of its origin
were correct, it would still be impossible to think of the object of the
intuition as not existing, and the intuition would still represent to us
the highest measure of certitude at present attainable by man. If the
evolution of ideas is toward truth instead of falsehood, it is the part of
wisdom to act upon the hypothesis that our primitive belief is veracious.
Martineau, Study, 2:26—“Nature is as worthy of trust in her
processes, as in her gifts.” Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163,
164—“Are we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in
the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can
indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great
doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy
cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances
of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all
truth must be declared impossible.” See also Harris, Philos. Basis
Theism, 137-142.
Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death,
referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: “Can we
trust to the convictions of a monkey’s mind?” We may reply: “Can
we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?” Bowne,
Ethics, 3—“The genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its
validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot
be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical
value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in
astrology.... 11—Even if man came from the ape, we need not
tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the
Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got
it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any
psychological theory.... 159—We must not appeal to savages and
babies to find what is natural to the human mind.... In the case
of anything that is under the law of development we can find its
true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by
studying the finished outcome.” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution,
13—“If the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we
trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science
and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere
chance and unreason?” Even though man came from the ape, there is
no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: “A man ’s a man
for a’ that.”
We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It
matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how
imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us
correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the
intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us
knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that
evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes,
Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the
polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth,
Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more
truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals
from the artist’s sense of beauty to the child’s. Higher
mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only
by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was
_first_ felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once
descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things....
A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior
grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his
higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to
him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this
highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245—“Evolution simply gave man such
_height_ that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth
which had previously been below the horizon. This is very
different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted
products of the experiences of utility.... The germ of the idea of
God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon
as he became man,—the brute’s gaining it turned him into man.
Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of
experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns
the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.” Sir Charles
Lyell: “The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though
liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The
religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It
existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before
advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is
to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was
before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great
truth.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine:
“Securus judicat orbis terrarum,” and tells us that the intellect
is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may
have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is
the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103—“To
Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural
history, and force is supreme. To Christianity nature is only the
beginning, and man the consummation. Which gives the higher
revelation of the life of the tree—the seed, or the fruit?”
The third form of the theory seems to make God a sensuous object, to
reverse the proper order of knowing and feeling, to ignore the fact that
in all feeling there is at least some knowledge of an object, and to
forget that the validity of this very feeling can be maintained only by
previously assuming the existence of a rational Deity.
Newman Smyth tells us that feeling comes first; the idea is
secondary. Intuitive ideas are not denied, but they are declared
to be direct reflections, in thought, of the feelings. They are
the mind’s immediate perception of what it feels to exist. Direct
knowledge of God by intuition is considered to be idealistic,
reaching God by inference is regarded as rationalistic, in its
tendency. See Smyth, The Religious Feeling; reviewed by Harris, in
New Englander, Jan., 1878: reply by Smyth, in New Englander, May,
1878.
We grant that, even in the case of unregenerate men, great peril,
great joy, great sin often turn the rational intuition of God into
a presentative intuition. The presentative intuition, however,
cannot be affirmed to be common to all men. It does not furnish
the foundation or explanation of a universal capacity for
religion. Without the rational intuition, the presentative would
not be possible, since it is only the rational that enables man to
receive and to interpret the presentative. The very trust that we
put in feeling presupposes an intuitive belief in a true and good
God. Tennyson said in 1869: “Yes, it is true that there are
moments when the flesh is nothing to me; when I know and feel the
flesh to be the vision; God and the spiritual is the real; it
belongs to me more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me
that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my
existence,—I could believe you; but you never, never can convince
me that the _I_ is not an eternal Reality, and that the spiritual
is not the real and true part of me.”
3. Not from reasoning,—because
(_a_) The actual rise of this knowledge in the great majority of minds is
not the result of any conscious process of reasoning. On the other hand,
upon occurrence of the proper conditions, it flashes upon the soul with
the quickness and force of an immediate revelation.
(_b_) The strength of men’s faith in God’s existence is not proportioned
to the strength of the reasoning faculty. On the other hand, men of
greatest logical power are often inveterate sceptics, while men of
unwavering faith are found among those who cannot even understand the
arguments for God’s existence.
(_c_) There is more in this knowledge than reasoning could ever have
furnished. Men do not limit their belief in God to the just conclusions of
argument. The arguments for the divine existence, valuable as they are for
purposes to be shown hereafter, are not sufficient by themselves to
warrant our conviction that there exists an infinite and absolute Being.
It will appear upon examination that the _a priori_ argument is capable of
proving only an abstract and ideal proposition, but can never conduct us
to the existence of a real Being. It will appear that the _a posteriori_
arguments, from merely finite existence, can never demonstrate the
existence of the infinite. In the words of Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions,
23)—“A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically
absurd, as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is
not distributed in the premises”—in short, from finite premises we cannot
draw an infinite conclusion.
Whately, Logic, 290-292; Jevons, Lessons in Logic, 81; Thompson,
Outline Laws of Thought, sections 82-92; Calderwood, Philos. of
Infinite, 60-69, and Moral Philosophy, 238; Turnbull, in Bap.
Quarterly, July, 1872:271; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 239; Dove,
Logic of Christian Faith, 21. Sir Wm. Hamilton: “Departing from
the particular, we admit that we cannot, in our highest
generalizations, rise above the finite.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The
human mind turns out larger grists than are ever put in at the
hopper.” There is more in the idea of God than could have come out
so small a knot-hole as human reasoning. A single word, a chance
remark, or an attitude of prayer, suggests the idea to a child.
Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that
there was a God, but that she had not known his name. Ladd,
Philosophy of Mind, 119—“It is a foolish assumption that nothing
can be certainly known unless it be reached as the result of a
conscious syllogistic process, or that the more complicated and
subtle this process is, the more sure is the conclusion.
Inferential knowledge is always dependent upon the superior
certainty of immediate knowledge.” George M. Duncan, in Memorial
of Noah Porter, 246—“All deduction rests either on the previous
process of induction, or on the intuitions of time and space which
involve the Infinite and Absolute.”
(_d_) Neither do men arrive at the knowledge of God’s existence by
inference; for inference is condensed syllogism, and, as a form of
reasoning, is equally open to the objection just mentioned. We have seen,
moreover, that all logical processes are based upon the assumption of
God’s existence. Evidently that which is presupposed in all reasoning
cannot itself be proved by reasoning.
By inference, we of course mean mediate inference, for in
immediate inference (_e. g._, “All good rulers are just; therefore
no unjust rulers are good”) there is no reasoning, and no progress
in thought. Mediate inference is reasoning—is condensed syllogism;
and what is so condensed may be expanded into regular logical
form. Deductive inference: “A negro is a fellow-creature;
therefore he who strikes a negro strikes a fellow-creature.”
Inductive inference: “The first finger is before the second;
therefore it is before the third.” On inference, see Martineau,
Essays, 1:105-108; Porter, Human Intellect, 444-448; Jevons,
Principles of Science, 1:14, 136-139, 168, 262.
Flint, in his Theism, 77, and Herbert, in his Mod. Realism
Examined, would reach the knowledge of God’s existence by
inference. The latter says God is not demonstrable, but his
existence is inferred, like the existence of our fellow men. But
we reply that in this last case we infer only the finite from the
finite, while the difficulty in the case of God is in inferring
the infinite from the finite. This very process of reasoning,
moreover, presupposes the existence of God as the absolute Reason,
in the way already indicated.
Substantially the same error is committed by H. B. Smith, Introd.
to Chr. Theol., 84-133, and by Diman, Theistic Argument, 316, 364,
both of whom grant an intuitive element, but use it only to eke
out the insufficiency of reasoning. They consider that the
intuition gives us only an abstract idea, which contains in itself
no voucher for the existence of an actual being corresponding to
the idea, and that we reach real being only by inference from the
facts of our own spiritual natures and of the outward world. But
we reply, in the words of McCosh, that “the intuitions are
primarily directed to individual objects.” We know, not the
infinite in the abstract, but infinite space and time, and the
infinite God. See McCosh, Intuitions, 26, 199, who, however, holds
the view here combated.
Schurman, Belief in God, 43—“I am unable to assign to our belief
in God a higher certainty than that possessed by the working
hypotheses of science.... 57—The nearest approach made by science
to our hypothesis of the existence of God lies in the assertion of
the universality of law ... based on the conviction of the unity
and systematic connection of all reality.... 64—This unity can be
found only in self-conscious spirit.” The fault of this reasoning
is that it gives us nothing necessary or absolute. Instances of
working hypotheses are the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the
law of gravitation, the atomic theory in chemistry, the principle
of evolution. No one of these is logically independent or prior.
Each of them is provisional, and each may be superseded by new
discovery. Not so with the idea of God. This idea is presupposed
by all the others, as the condition of every mental process and
the guarantee of its validity.
IV. Contents of this Intuition.
1. In this fundamental knowledge _that_ God is, it is necessarily implied
that to some extent men know intuitively _what_ God is, namely, (_a_) a
Reason in which their mental processes are grounded; (_b_) a Power above
them upon which they are dependent; (_c_) a Perfection which imposes law
upon their moral natures; (_d_) a Personality which they may recognize in
prayer and worship.
In maintaining that we have a rational intuition of God, we by no means
imply that a presentative intuition of God is impossible. Such a
presentative intuition was perhaps characteristic of unfallen man; it does
belong at times to the Christian; it will be the blessing of heaven (Mat.
5:8—“the pure in heart ... shall see God”; Rev. 22:4—“they shall see his
face”). Men’s experiences of face-to-face apprehension of God, in danger
and guilt, give some reason to believe that a presentative knowledge of
God is the normal condition of humanity. But, as this presentative
intuition of God is not in our present state universal, we here claim only
that all men have a rational intuition of God.
It is to be remembered, however, that the loss of love to God has greatly
obscured even this rational intuition, so that the revelation of nature
and the Scriptures is needed to awaken, confirm and enlarge it, and the
special work of the Spirit of Christ to make it the knowledge of
friendship and communion. Thus from knowing about God, we come to know God
(John 17:3—“This is life eternal, that they should know thee”; 2 Tim.
1:12—“I know him whom I have believed”).
Plato said, for substance, that there can be no ὅτι οἶδεν without
something of the ἁ οἶδεν. Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism,
208—“By rational intuition man knows that absolute Being _exists_;
his knowledge of _what_ it is, is progressive with his progressive
knowledge of man and of nature.” Hutton, Essays: “A haunting
presence besets man behind and before. He cannot evade it. It
gives new meanings to his thoughts, new terror to his sins. It
becomes intolerable. He is moved to set up some idol, carved out
of his own nature, that will take its place—a non-moral God who
will not disturb his dream of rest. It is a righteous Life and
Will, and not the mere _idea_ of righteousness that stirs men so.”
Porter, Hum. Int., 661—“The Absolute is a thinking Agent.” The
intuition does not grow in certainty; what grows is the mind’s
quickness in applying it and power of expressing it. The intuition
is not complex; what is complex is the Being intuitively cognized.
See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 232; Lowndes, Philos. of Primary
Beliefs, 108-112; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 157—Latent faculty of
speech is called forth by speech of others; the choked-up well
flows again when debris is cleared away. Bowen, in Bib. Sac.,
33:740-754; Bowne, Theism, 79.
Knowledge of a person is turned into personal knowledge by actual
communication or revelation. First, comes the intuitive knowledge
of God possessed by all men—the assumption that there exists a
Reason, Power, Perfection, Personality, that makes correct
thinking and acting possible. Secondly, comes the knowledge of
God’s being and attributes which nature and Scripture furnish.
Thirdly, comes the personal and presentative knowledge derived
from actual reconciliation and intercourse with God, through
Christ and the Holy Spirit. Stearns, Evidence of Christian
Experience, 208—“Christian experience verifies the claims of
doctrine by experiment,—so transforming probable knowledge into
real knowledge.” Biedermann, quoted by Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
18—“God reveals himself to the human spirit, 1. as its infinite
_Ground_, in the reason; 2. as its infinite _Norm_, in the
conscience; 3. as its infinite _Strength_, in elevation to
religious truth, blessedness, and freedom.”
Shall I object to this Christian experience, because only
comparatively few have it, and I am not among the number? Because
I have not seen the moons of Jupiter, shall I doubt the testimony
of the astronomer to their existence? Christian experience, like
the sight of the moons of Jupiter, is attainable by all. Clarke,
Christian Theology, 113—“One who will have full proof of the good
God’s reality must put it to the experimental test. He must take
the good God for real, and receive the confirmation that will
follow. When faith reaches out after God, it finds him.... They
who have found him will be the sanest and truest of their kind,
and their convictions will be among the safest convictions of
man.... Those who live in fellowship with the good God will grow
in goodness, and will give practical evidence of his existence
aside from their oral testimony.”
2. The Scriptures, therefore, do not attempt to prove the existence of
God, but, on the other hand, both assume and declare that the knowledge
that God is, is universal (Rom. 1:19-21, 28, 32; 2:15). God has inlaid the
evidence of this fundamental truth in the very nature of man, so that
nowhere is he without a witness. The preacher may confidently follow the
example of Scripture by assuming it. But he must also explicitly declare
it, as the Scripture does. “For the invisible things of him since the
creation of the world are clearly seen” (καθορᾶται—spiritually viewed);
the organ given for this purpose is the νοῦς (νοούμενα); but then—and this
forms the transition to our next division of the subject—they are
“perceived through the things that are made” (τοῖς ποιήμασιν, Rom. 1:20).
On _Rom. 1:19-21_, see Weiss, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 251, note;
also commentaries of Meyer, Alford, Tholuck, and Wordsworth; τὸ
γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ = not “that which may be known” (Rev. Vers.) but
“that which is known” of God; νοούμενα καθορᾶται = are clearly
seen in that they are perceived by the reason—νοούμενα expresses
the manner of the καθορᾶται (Meyer); compare _John 1:9_; _Acts
17:27_; _Rom. 1:28_; _2:15_. On _1 Cor. 15:34_, see Calderwood,
Philos. of Inf., 466—ἀγνωσίαν Θεοῦ τινὲς ἔχουσι = do not possess
the specially exalted knowledge of God which belongs to believers
in Christ (_cf._ _1 Jo. 4:7—_“every one that loveth is begotten of
God, and knoweth God”). On _Eph. 2:12_, see Pope, Theology,
1:240—ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ is opposed to being in Christ, and
signifies rather forsaken of God, than denying him or entirely
ignorant of him. On Scripture passages, see Schmid, Bib. Theol.
des N. T., 486; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:62.
E. G. Robinson: “The first statement of the Bible is, not that
there is a God, but that ‘In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth’_ (Gen. 1:1)_. The belief in God never was and never
can be the result of logical argument, else the Bible would give
us proofs.” Many texts relied upon as _proofs_ of God’s existence
are simply _explications_ of the idea of God, as for example: _Ps.
94:9, 10—_“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that
formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the nations,
shall not he correct, even he that teacheth man knowledge?” Plato
says that God holds the soul by its roots,—he therefore does not
need to demonstrate to the soul the fact of his existence.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 308, says well that Scripture and
preaching only interpret what is already in the heart which it
addresses: “Flinging a warm breath on the inward oracles hid in
invisible ink, it renders them articulate and dazzling as the
handwriting on the wall. The divine Seer does not convey to you
_his_ revelation, but qualifies you to receive _your own_. This
mutual relation is possible only through the common presence of
God in the conscience of mankind.” Shedd, Dogmatic Theology,
1:195-220—“The earth and sky make the same sensible impressions on
the organs of a brute that they do upon those of a man; but the
brute never discerns the ‘invisible things’ of God, his ‘eternal
power and godhood’_ (Rom. 1:20)_.”
Our subconscious activity, so far as it is normal, is under the
guidance of the immanent Reason. Sensation, before it results in
thought, has in it logical elements which are furnished by
mind—not ours, but that of the Infinite One. Christ, the Revealer
of God, reveals God in every man’s mental life, and the Holy
Spirit may be the principle of self-consciousness in man as in
God. Harris, God the Creator, tells us that “man finds the Reason
that is eternal and universal revealing itself in the exercise of
his own reason.” Savage, Life after Death, 268—“How do you know
that your subliminal consciousness does not tap Omniscience, and
get at the facts of the universe?” Savage negatives this
suggestion, however, and wrongly favors the spirit-theory. For his
own experience, see pages 295-329 of his book.
C. M. Barrows, in Proceedings of Soc. for Psychical Research, vol.
12, part 30, pages 34-36—“There is a subliminal agent. What if
this is simply one intelligent Actor, filling the universe with
his presence, as the ether fills space; the common Inspirer of all
mankind, a skilled Musician, presiding over many pipes and keys,
and playing through each what music he will? The subliminal self
is a universal fountain of energy, and each man is an outlet of
the stream. Each man’s personal self is contained in it, and thus
each man is made one with every other man. In that deep Force, the
last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all psychical and
bodily effects find their common origin.” This statement needs to
be qualified by the assertion of man’s ethical nature and distinct
personality; see section of this work on Ethical Monism, in
chapter III. But there is truth here like that which Coleridge
sought to express in his Æolian Harp: “And what if all of animated
Nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into
thought, as o’er them sweeps, Plastic and vast, one intellectual
breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all?” See F. W. H.
Myers, Human Personality.
Dorner, System of Theology, 1:75—“The consciousness of God is the
true fastness of our self-consciousness.... Since it is only in
the God-conscious man that the innermost personality comes to
light, in like manner, by means of the interweaving of that
consciousness of God and of the world, the world is viewed in God
(‘sub specie eternitatis’), and the certainty of the world first
obtains its absolute security for the spirit.” Royce, Spirit of
Mod. Philosophy, synopsis in N. Y. Nation: “The one indubitable
fact is the existence of an infinite self, a Logos or World-mind
(345). That it exists is clear, I. Because idealism shows that
real things are nothing more nor less than ideas, or
‘possibilities of experience’; but a mere ‘possibility’, as such,
is nothing, and a world of ‘possible’ experiences, in so far as it
is real, must be a world of actual experience to some self (367).
If then there be a real world, it has all the while existed as
ideal and mental, even before it became known to the particular
mind with which we conceive it as coming into connection (368).
II. But there is such a real world; for, when I _think_ of an
object, when I _mean_ it, I do not merely have in mind an idea
resembling it, for I aim at the object, I pick it out, I already
in some measure possess it. The object is then already present in
essence to my hidden self (370). As truth consists in knowledge of
the conformity of a cognition to its object, that alone can know a
truth which includes within itself both idea and object. This
inclusive Knower is the Infinite Self (374). With this I am in
essence identical (371); it is my larger self (372); and this
larger self alone _is_ (379). It includes all reality, and we know
other finite minds, because we are one with them in its unity”
(409).
The experience of George John Romanes is instructive. For years he
could recognize no personal Intelligence controlling the universe.
He made four mistakes: 1. _He forgot that only love can see_, that
God is not disclosed to the mere intellect, but only to the whole
man, to the integral mind, to what the Scripture calls “the eyes
of your heart”_ (Eph. 1:18)_. Experience of life taught him at
last the weakness of mere reasoning, and led him to depend more
upon the affections and intuitions. Then, as one might say, he
gave the X-rays of Christianity a chance to photograph God upon
his soul. 2. _He began at the wrong end_, with matter rather than
with mind, with cause and effect rather than with right and wrong,
and so got involved in the mechanical order and tried to interpret
the moral realm by it. The result was that instead of recognizing
freedom, responsibility, sin, guilt, he threw them out as
pretenders. But study of conscience and will set him right. He
learned to take what be found instead of trying to turn it into
something else, and so came to interpret nature by spirit, instead
of interpreting spirit by nature. 3. _He took the Cosmos by bits_,
instead of regarding it as a whole. His early thinking insisted on
finding design in each particular part, or nowhere. But his more
mature thought recognized wisdom and reason in the ordered whole.
As he realized that this is a universe, he could not get rid of
the idea of an organizing Mind. He came to see that the Universe,
as a thought, implies a Thinker. 4. _He fancied that nature
excludes God_, instead of being only the method of God’s working.
When he learned how a thing was done, he at first concluded that
God had not done it. His later thought recognized that God and
nature are not mutually exclusive. So he came to find no
difficulty even in miracles and inspiration; for the God who is in
man and of whose mind and will nature is only the expression, can
reveal himself, if need be, in special ways. So George John
Romanes came back to prayer, to Christ, to the church.
On the general subject of intuition as connected with our idea of
God, see Ladd, in Bib. Sac., 1877:1-36, 611-616; 1878:619; Fisher,
on Final Cause and Intuition, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan.
1883:113-134; Patton, on Genesis of Idea of God, in Jour. Christ.
Philos., Apl. 1883:283-307; McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,
124-140; Mansel, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., vol. 14:604 and 615;
Robert Hall, sermon on Atheism; Hutton, on Atheism, in Essays,
1:3-37; Shairp, in Princeton Rev., March, 1881:264.
Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God’s Existence.
Although the knowledge of God’s existence is intuitive, it may be
explicated and confirmed by arguments drawn from the actual universe and
from the abstract ideas of the human mind.
Remark 1. These arguments are probable, not demonstrative. For this reason
they supplement each other, and constitute a series of evidences which is
cumulative in its nature. Though, taken singly, none of them can be
considered absolutely decisive, they together furnish a corroboration of
our primitive conviction of God’s existence, which is of great practical
value, and is in itself sufficient to bind the moral action of men.
Butler, Analogy, Introd., Bohn’s ed., 72—Probable evidence admits
of degrees, from the highest moral certainty to the lowest
presumption. Yet probability is the guide of life. In matters of
morals and religion, we are not to expect mathematical or
demonstrative, but only probable, evidence, and the slightest
preponderance of such evidence may be sufficient to bind our moral
action. The truth of our religion, like the truth of common
matters, is to be judged by the whole evidence taken together; for
probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence,
but multiply it. Dove, Logic of Christ. Faith, 24—Value of the
arguments taken together is much greater than that of any single
one. Illustrated from water, air and food, together but not
separately, supporting life; value of £1000 note, not in paper,
stamp, writing, signature, taken separately. A whole bundle of
rods cannot be broken, though each rod in the bundle may be broken
separately. The strength of the bundle is the strength of the
whole. Lord Bacon, Essay on Atheism: “A little philosophy
inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth
men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh
upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go
no further, but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate
and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 221-223—“The proof of a God and
of a spiritual world which is to satisfy us must consist in a
number of different but converging lines of proof.”
In a case where only circumstantial evidence is attainable, many
lines of proof sometimes converge, and though no one of the lines
reaches the mark, the conclusion to which they all point becomes
the only rational one. To doubt that there is a London, or that
there was a Napoleon, would indicate insanity; yet London and
Napoleon are proved by only probable evidence. There is no
constraining efficacy in the arguments for God’s existence; but
the same can be said of all reasoning that is not demonstrative.
Another interpretation of the facts is _possible_, but no other
conclusion is so _satisfactory_, as that God is; see Fisher,
Nature and Method of Revelation, 129. Prof. Rogers: “If in
practical affairs we were to hesitate to act until we had absolute
and demonstrative certainty, we should never begin to move at
all.” For this reason an old Indian official advised a young
Indian judge “always to give his verdict, but always to avoid
giving the grounds of it.”
Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 11-14—“Instead of doubting everything
that can be doubted, let us rather doubt nothing until we are
compelled to doubt.... In society we get on better by assuming
that men are truthful, and by doubting only for special reasons,
than we should if we assumed that all men are liars, and believed
them only when compelled. So in all our investigations we make
more progress if we assume the truthfulness of the universe and of
our own nature than we should if we doubted both.... The first
method seems the more rigorous, but it can be applied only to
mathematics, which is a purely subjective science. When we come to
deal with reality, the method brings thought to a standstill....
The law the logician lays down is this: Nothing may be believed
which is not proved. The law the mind actually follows is this:
Whatever the mind demands for the satisfaction of its subjective
interests and tendencies may be assumed as real, in default of
positive disproof.”
Remark 2. A consideration of these arguments may also serve to explicate
the contents of an intuition which has remained obscure and only half
conscious for lack of reflection. The arguments, indeed, are the efforts
of the mind that already has a conviction of God’s existence to give to
itself a formal account of its belief. An exact estimate of their logical
value and of their relation to the intuition which they seek to express in
syllogistic form, is essential to any proper refutation of the prevalent
atheistic and pantheistic reasoning.
Diman, Theistic Argument, 363—“Nor have I claimed that the
existence, even, of this Being can be demonstrated as we
demonstrate the abstract truths of science. I have only claimed
that the universe, as a great fact, demands a rational
explanation, and that the most rational explanation that can
possibly be given is that furnished in the conception of such a
Being. In this conclusion reason rests, and refuses to rest in any
other.” Rückert: “Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen
Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet ihr nicht ihn beweisen mit Beweisen.”
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 307—“Theology depends on noetic
and empirical science to give the occasion on which the idea of
the Absolute Being arises, and to give content to the idea.”
Andrew Fuller, Part of Syst. of Divin., 4:283, questions “whether
argumentation in favor of the existence of God has not made more
sceptics than believers.” So far as this is true, it is due to an
overstatement of the arguments and an exaggerated notion of what
is to be expected from them. See Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine,
translation, 140; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:119, 120; Fisher, Essays on
Supernatural Origin of Christianity, 572, 573; Van Oosterzee, 238,
241.
“Evidences of Christianity?” said Coleridge, “I am weary of the
word.” The more Christianity was _proved_, the less it was
_believed_. The revival of religion under Whitefield and Wesley
did what all the apologists of the eighteenth century could not
do,—it quickened men’s intuitions into life, and made them
practically recognize God. Martineau, Types, 2:231—Men can “bow
the knee to the passing _Zeitgeist_, while turning the back to the
consensus of all the ages”; Seat of Authority, 312—“Our reasonings
lead to explicit Theism because they start from implicit Theism.”
Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, 81—“The proofs are ...
attempts to account for and explain and justify something that
already exists; to decompose a highly complex though immediate
judgment into its constituent elements, none of which when
isolated can have the completeness or the cogency of the original
conviction taken as a whole.”
Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 31, 32—“Demonstration is only a
makeshift for helping ignorance to insight.... When we come to an
argument in which the whole nature is addressed, the argument must
seem weak or strong, according as the nature is feebly, or fully,
developed. The moral argument for theism cannot seem strong to one
without a conscience. The argument from cognitive interests will
be empty when there is no cognitive interest. Little souls find
very little that calls for explanation or that excites surprise,
and they are satisfied with a correspondingly small view of life
and existence. In such a case we cannot hope for universal
agreement. We can only proclaim the faith that is in us, in hope
that this proclamation may not be without some response in other
minds and hearts.... We have only probable evidence for the
uniformity of nature or for the affection of friends. We cannot
logically prove either. The deepest convictions are not the
certainties of logic, but the certainties of life.”
Remark 3. The arguments for the divine existence may be reduced to four,
namely: I. The Cosmological; II. The Teleological; III. The
Anthropological; and IV. The Ontological. We shall examine these in order,
seeking first to determine the precise conclusions to which they
respectively lead, and then to ascertain in what manner the four may be
combined.
I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.
This is not properly an argument from effect to cause; for the proposition
that every effect must have a cause is simply identical, and means only
that every caused event must have a cause. It is rather an argument from
begun existence to a sufficient cause of that beginning, and may be
accurately stated as follows:
Everything begun, whether substance or phenomenon, owes its existence to
some producing cause. The universe, at least so far as its present form is
concerned, is a thing begun, and owes its existence to a cause which is
equal to its production. This cause must be indefinitely great.
It is to be noticed that this argument moves wholly in the realm
of nature. The argument from man’s constitution and beginning upon
the planet is treated under another head (see Anthropological
Argument). That the present form of the universe is not eternal in
the past, but has begun to be, not only personal observation but
the testimony of geology assures us. For statements of the
argument, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn’s transl.), 370;
Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 8:34-44; Bib. Sac.,
1849:613; 1850:613; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 570; Herbert Spencer,
First Principles, 93. It has often been claimed, as by Locke,
Clarke, and Robert Hall, that this argument is sufficient to
conduct the mind to an Eternal and Infinite First Cause. We
proceed therefore to mention
1. _The defects of the Cosmological Argument._
A. It is impossible to show that the universe, so far as its substance is
concerned, has had a beginning. The law of causality declares, not that
everything has a cause—for then God himself must have a cause—but rather
that everything begun has a cause, or in other words, that every event or
change has a cause.
Hume, Philos. Works, 2:411 _sq._, urges with reason that we never
saw a world made. Many philosophers in Christian lands, as
Martineau, Essays, 1:206, and the prevailing opinions of
ante-Christian times, have held matter to be eternal. Bowne,
Metaphysics, 107—“For being itself, the reflective reason never
asks a cause, unless the being show signs of dependence. It is
change that first gives rise to the demand for cause.” Martineau,
Types, 1:291—“It is not existence, as such, that demands a cause,
but the coming into existence of what did not exist before. The
intellectual law of causality is a law for phenomena, and not for
entity.” See also McCosh, Intuitions, 225-241; Calderwood, Philos.
of Infinite, 61. _Per contra_, see Murphy, Scient. Bases of Faith,
49, 195, and Habit and Intelligence, 1:55-67; Knight, Lect. on
Metaphysics, lect. ii, p. 19.
B. Granting that the universe, so far as its phenomena are concerned, has
had a cause, it is impossible to show that any other cause is required
than a cause within itself, such as the pantheist supposes.
Flint, Theism, 65—“The cosmological argument alone proves only
force, and no mere force is God. Intelligence must go with power
to make a Being that can be called God.” Diman, Theistic Argument:
“The cosmological argument alone cannot decide whether the force
that causes change is permanent self-existent mind, or permanent
self-existent matter.” Only intelligence gives the basis for an
answer. Only mind in the universe enables us to infer mind in the
maker. But the argument from intelligence is not the Cosmological,
but the Teleological, and to this last belong all proofs of Deity
from order and combination in nature.
Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 201-296—Science has to do with those
changes which one portion of the visible universe causes in
another portion. Philosophy and theology deal with the Infinite
Cause which brings into existence and sustains the entire series
of finite causes. Do we ask the cause of the stars? Science says:
Fire-mist, or an infinite regress of causes. Theology says:
Granted; but this infinite regress demands for its explanation the
belief in God. We must believe both in God, and in an endless
series of finite causes. God is the cause of all causes, the soul
of all souls: “Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving
heart how near!” We do not need, as mere matter of science, to
think of any beginning.
C. Granting that the universe most have had a cause outside of itself, it
is impossible to show that this cause has not itself been caused, _i. e._,
consists of an infinite series of dependent causes. The principle of
causality does not require that everything begun should be traced back to
an uncaused cause; it demands that we should assign a cause, but not that
we should assign a first cause.
So with the whole series of causes. The materialist is bound to
find a cause for this series, only when the series is shown to
have had a beginning. But the very hypothesis of an infinite
series of causes excludes the idea of such a beginning. An
infinite chain has no topmost link (_versus_ Robert Hall); an
uncaused and eternal succession does not need a cause (_versus_
Clarke and Locke). See Whately, Logic, 270; New Englander, Jan.
1874:75; Alexander, Moral Science, 221; Pfleiderer, Die Religion,
1:160-164; Calderwood, Moral Philos., 225; Herbert Spencer, First
Principles, 37—criticized by Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 36.
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:128, says that the causal principle is
not satisfied till by regress we come to a cause which is not
itself an effect—to one who is _causa sui_; Aids to Study of
German Theology, 15-17—Even if the universe be eternal, its
contingent and relative nature requires us to postulate an eternal
Creator; Diman, Theistic Argument, 86—“While the law of causation
does not lead logically up to the conclusion of a first cause, it
compels us to affirm it.” We reply that it is not the law of
causation which compels us to affirm it, for this certainly “does
not lead logically up to the conclusion.” If we infer an uncaused
cause, we do it, not by logical process, but by virtue of the
intuitive belief within us. So substantially Secretan, and
Whewell, in Indications of a Creator, and in Hist. of Scientific
Ideas, 2:321, 322—“The mind takes refuge, in the assumption of a
First Cause, from an employment inconsistent with its own nature”;
“we necessarily infer a First Cause, although the palætiological
sciences only point toward it, but do not lead us to it.”
D. Granting that the cause of the universe has not itself been caused, it
is impossible to show that this cause is not finite, like the universe
itself. The causal principle requires a cause no greater than just
sufficient to account for the effect.
We cannot therefore infer an infinite cause, unless the universe
is infinite—which cannot be proved, but can only be assumed—and
this is assuming an infinite in order to prove an infinite. All we
know of the universe is finite. An infinite universe implies
infinite number. But no number can be infinite, for to any number,
however great, a unit can be added, which shows that it was not
infinite before. Here again we see that the most approved forms of
the Cosmological Argument are obliged to avail themselves of the
intuition of the infinite, to supplement the logical process.
_Versus_ Martineau, Study, 1:416—“Though we cannot directly infer
the infinitude of God from a limited creation, indirectly we may
exclude every other position by resort to its unlimited scene of
existence (space).” But this would equally warrant our belief in
the infinitude of our fellow men. Or, it is the argument of Clarke
and Gillespie (see Ontological Argument below). Schiller, Die
Grösse der Welt, seems to hold to a boundless universe. He
represents a tired spirit as seeking the last limit of creation. A
second pilgrim meets him from the spaces beyond with the words:
“Steh! du segelst umsonst,—vor dir Unendlichkeit”—“Hold! thou
journeyest in vain,—before thee is only Infinity.” On the law of
parsimony, see Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 628.
2. _The value of the Cosmological Argument_, then, is simply this,—it
proves the existence of some cause of the universe indefinitely great.
When we go beyond this and ask whether this cause is a cause of being, or
merely a cause of change, to the universe; whether it is a cause apart
from the universe, or one with it; whether it is an eternal cause, or a
cause dependent upon some other cause; whether it is intelligent or
unintelligent, infinite or finite, one or many,—this argument cannot
assure us.
On the whole argument, see Flint, Theism, 93-130; Mozley, Essays,
Hist. and Theol., 2:414-444; Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 148-154;
Studien und Kritiken, 1876:9-31.
II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful
Collocation in Nature.
This is not properly an argument from design to a designer; for that
design implies a designer is simply an identical proposition. It may be
more correctly stated as follows: Order and useful collocation pervading a
system respectively imply intelligence and purpose as the cause of that
order and collocation. Since order and useful collocation pervade the
universe, there must exist an intelligence adequate to the production of
this order, and a will adequate to direct this collocation to useful ends.
Etymologically, “teleological argument” = argument to ends or
final causes, that is, “causes which, beginning as a thought, work
themselves out into a fact as an end or result” (Porter, Hum.
Intellect, 592-618);—health, for example, is the final cause of
exercise, while exercise is the efficient cause of health. This
definition of the argument would be broad enough to cover the
proof of a designing intelligence drawn from the constitution of
man. This last, however, is treated as a part of the
Anthropological Argument, which follows this, and the Teleological
Argument covers only the proof of a designing intelligence drawn
from nature. Hence Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Bohn’s trans.),
381, calls it the physico-theological argument. On methods of
stating the argument, see Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:625. See also
Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 155-185; Mozley, Essays Hist. and
Theol., 2:365-413.
Hicks, in his Critique of Design-Arguments, 347-389, makes two
arguments instead of one: (1) the argument from _order_ to
_intelligence_, to which he gives the name Eutaxiological; (2) the
argument from _adaptation_ to _purpose_, to which he would
restrict the name Teleological. He holds that teleology proper
cannot prove _intelligence_, because in speaking of “ends” at all,
it must assume the very intelligence which it seeks to prove; that
it actually does prove simply the _intentional exercise_ of an
intelligence whose existence has been previously established.
“Circumstances, forces or agencies converging to a definite
rational result imply volition—imply that this result is
intended—is an end. This is the major premise of this new
teleology.” He objects to the term “final cause.” The end is not a
cause at all—it is a motive. The characteristic element of cause
is power to produce an effect. Ends have no such power. The will
may choose them or set them aside. As already assuming
intelligence, ends cannot prove intelligence.
With this in the main we agree, and count it a valuable help to
the statement and understanding of the argument. In the very
observation of _order_, however, as well as in arguing from it, we
are obliged to assume the same all-arranging intelligence. We see
no objection therefore to making Eutaxiology the first part of the
Teleological Argument, as we do above. See review of Hicks, in
Meth. Quar. Rev., July, 1883:569-576. We proceed however to
certain
1. _Further explanations._
A. The major premise expresses a primitive conviction. It is not
invalidated by the objections: (_a_) that order and useful collocation may
exist without being purposed—for we are compelled by our very mental
constitution to deny this in all cases where the order and collocation
pervade a system: (_b_) that order and useful collocation may result from
the mere operation of physical forces and laws—for these very forces and
laws imply, instead of excluding, an originating and superintending
intelligence and will.
Janet, in his work on Final Causes, 8, denies that finality is a
primitive conviction, like causality, and calls it the result of
an induction. He therefore proceeds from (1) marks of order and
useful collocation to (2) finality in nature, and then to (3) an
intelligent cause of this finality or “pre-conformity to future
event.” So Diman, Theistic Argument, 105, claims simply that, as
change requires cause, so orderly change requires intelligent
cause. We have shown, however, that induction and argument of
every kind presupposes intuitive belief in final cause. Nature
does not give us final cause; but no more does she give us
efficient cause. Mind gives us both, and gives them as clearly
upon one experience as after a thousand. Ladd: “Things have mind
in them: else they could not be minded by us.” The Duke of Argyll
told Darwin that it seemed to him wholly impossible to ascribe the
adjustments of nature to any other agency than that of mind.
“Well,” said Darwin, “that impression has often come upon me with
overpowering force. But then, at other times, it all seems—;” and
then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to indicate the
passing of a vision out of sight. Darwinism is not a refutation of
ends in nature, but only of a particular theory with regard to the
way in which ends are realized in the organic world. Darwin would
begin with an infinitesimal germ, and make all the subsequent
development unteleological; see Schurman, Belief in God, 193.
(_a_) Illustration of unpurposed order in the single throwing of
“double sixes,”—constant throwing of double sixes indicates
design. So arrangement of detritus at mouth of river, and warming
pans sent to the West Indies,—useful but not purposed. Momerie,
Christianity and Evolution, 72—“It is only within narrow limits
that seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced by chance. And
therefore, as the signs of purpose increase, the presumption in
favor of their accidental origin diminishes.” Elder, Ideas from
Nature, 81, 82—“The uniformity of a boy’s marbles shows them to be
products of design. A single one might be accidental, but a dozen
cannot be. So atomic uniformity indicates manufacture.”
Illustrations of purposed order, in Beattie’s garden, Tillotson’s
blind men, Kepler’s salad. Dr. Carpenter: “The atheist is like a
man examining the machinery of a great mill, who, finding that the
whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from a brick wall, infers
that the shaft is a sufficient explanation of what he sees, and
that there is no moving power behind it.” Lord Kelvin: “The
atheistic idea is nonsensical.” J. G. Paton, Life, 2:191—The
sinking of a well on the island of Aniwa convinces the cannibal
chief Namakei that Jehovah God exists, the invisible One. See
Chauncey Wright, in N. Y. Nation, Jan. 15, 1874; Murphy,
Scientific Bases of Faith, 208.
(_b_) Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 231-247—“Law is _method_,
not _cause_. A man cannot offer the very fact to be explained, as
its sufficient explanation.” Martineau, Essays, 1:144—“Patterned
damask, made not by the weaver, but by the loom?” Dr. Stevenson:
“House requires no architect, because it is built by stone-masons
and carpenters?” Joseph Cook: “Natural law without God behind it
is no more than a glove without a hand in it, and all that is done
by the gloved hand of God in nature is done by the hand and not by
the glove. Evolution is a process, not a power; a method of
operation, not an operator. A book is not written _by_ the laws of
spelling and grammar, but _according_ to those laws. So the book
of the universe is not written by the laws of heat, electricity,
gravitation, evolution, but according to those laws.” G. F.
Wright, Ant. and Orig. of Hum. Race, lecture IX—“It is impossible
for evolution to furnish evidence which shall drive design out of
nature. It can only drive it back to an earlier point of entrance,
thereby increasing our admiration for the power of the Creator to
accomplish ulterior designs by unlikely means.”
Evolution is only the method of God. It has to do with the _how_,
not with the _why_, of phenomena, and therefore is not
inconsistent with design, but rather is a new and higher
illustration of design. Henry Ward Beecher: “Design by wholesale
is greater than design by retail.” Frances Power Cobbe: “It is a
singular fact that, whenever we find out _how_ a thing is done,
our first conclusion seems to be that _God_ did not do it.” Why
should we say: “The more law, the less God?” The theist refers the
phenomena to a cause that knows itself and what it is doing; the
atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself and
what it is doing (Bowne). George John Romanes said that, if God be
immanent, then all natural causation must appear to be mechanical,
and it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing to
prove it due to natural causation: “Causes in nature do not
obviate the necessity of a cause in nature.” Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 47—Evolution shows that the direction of
affairs is under control of something like our own intelligence:
“Evolution spells Purpose.” Clarke, Christ. Theology, 105—“The
modern doctrine of evolution has been awake to the existence of
innumerable ends _within_ the universe, but not to the one great
end _for_ the universe itself.” Huxley, Critiques and Addresses,
274, 275, 307—“The teleological and mechanical views of the
universe are not mutually exclusive.” Sir William Hamilton,
Metaphysics: “Intelligence stands first in the order of existence.
Efficient causes are preceded by final causes.” See also Thornton,
Old Fashioned Ethics, 199-265; Archbp. Temple, Bampton Lect.,
1884:99-123; Owen, Anat. of Vertebrates, 3:796; Peirce, Ideality
in the Physical Sciences, 1-35; Newman Smyth, Through Science to
Faith, 96; Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 135.
B. The minor premise expresses a working-principle of all science, namely,
that all things have their uses, that order pervades the universe, and
that the methods of nature are rational methods. Evidences of this appear
in the correlation of the chemical elements to each other; in the fitness
of the inanimate world to be the basis and support of life; in the typical
forms and unity of plan apparent in the organic creation; in the existence
and coöperation of natural laws; in cosmical order and compensations.
This minor premise is not invalidated by the objections: (_a_) That we
frequently misunderstand the end actually subserved by natural events and
objects; for the principle is, not that we necessarily know the actual
end, but that we necessarily believe that there is some end, in every case
of systematic order and collocation. (_b_) That the order of the universe
is manifestly imperfect; for this, if granted, would argue, not absence of
contrivance, but some special reason for imperfection, either in the
limitations of the contriving intelligence itself, or in the nature of the
end sought (as, for example, correspondence with the moral state and
probation of sinners).
The evidences of order and useful collocation are found both in
the indefinitely small and the indefinitely great. The molecules
are manufactured articles; and the compensations of the solar
system which provide that a secular flattening of the earth’s
orbit shall be made up for by a secular rounding of that same
orbit, alike show an intelligence far transcending our own; see
Cooke, Religion and Chemistry, and Credentials of Science,
23—“Beauty is the harmony of relations which perfect fitness
produces; law is the prevailing principle which underlies that
harmony. Hence both beauty and law imply design. From energy,
fitness, beauty, order, sacrifice, we argue might, skill,
perfection, law, and love in a Supreme Intelligence. Christianity
implies design, and is the completion of the design argument.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:168—“A good definition of beauty
is immanent purposiveness, the teleological ideal background of
reality, the shining of the Idea through phenomena.”
Bowne, Philos. Theism, 85—“Design is never causal. It is only
ideal, and it demands an efficient cause for its realization. If
ice is not to sink, and to freeze out life, there must be some
molecular structure which shall make its bulk greater than that of
an equal weight of water.” Jackson, Theodore Parker,
355—“Rudimentary organs are like the silent letters in many
words,—both are witnesses to a past history; and there is
intelligence in their preservation.” Diman, Theistic Argument:
“Not only do we observe in the world the change which is the basis
of the Cosmological Argument, but we perceive that this change
proceeds according to a fixed and invariable rule. In inorganic
nature, general order, or _regularity_; in organic nature, special
order or _adaptation_.” Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 113-115,
224-230: “Inductive science proceeds upon the postulate that the
reasonable and the natural are one.” This furnished the guiding
clue to Harvey and Cuvier; see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences,
2:489-491. Kant: “The anatomist must assume that nothing in man is
in vain.” Aristotle: “Nature makes nothing in vain.” On molecules
as manufactured articles, see Maxfield, in Nature, Sept. 25, 1873.
See also Tulloch, Theism, 116, 120; LeConte, Religion and Science,
lect. 2 and 3; McCosh, Typical Forms, 81, 420; Agassiz, Essay on
Classification, 9, 10; Bib. Sac., 1849:626 and 1850:613; Hopkins,
in Princeton Review, 1882:181.
(_a_) Design, in fact that rivers always run by large towns? that
springs are always found at gambling places? Plants made for man,
and man for worms? Voltaire: “Noses are made for spectacles—let us
wear them!” Pope: “While man exclaims ‘See all things for my use,’
‘See man for mine,’ replies the pampered goose.” Cherries do not
ripen in the cold of winter when they do not taste as well, and
grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer when the new wine would
turn to vinegar? Nature divides melons into sections for
convenience in family eating? Cork-tree made for bottle-stoppers?
The child who was asked the cause of salt in the ocean, attributed
it to codfish, thus dimly confounding final cause with efficient
cause. Teacher: “What are marsupials?” Pupil: “Animals that have
pouches in their stomachs.” Teacher: “And what do they have
pouches for?” Pupil: “To crawl into and conceal themselves in,
when they are pursued.” Why are the days longer in summer than in
winter? Because it is the property of all natural objects to
elongate under the influence of heat. A Jena professor held that
doctors do not exist because of disease, but that diseases exist
precisely in order that there may be doctors. Kepler was an
astronomical Don Quixote. He discussed the claims of eleven
different damsels to become his second wife, and he likened the
planets to huge animals rushing through the sky. Many of the
objections to design arise from confounding a part of the creation
with the whole, or a structure in the process of development with
a structure completed. For illustrations of mistaken ends, see
Janet, Final Causes.
(_b_) Alphonso of Castile took offense at the Ptolemaic System,
and intimated that, if he had been consulted at the creation, he
could have suggested valuable improvements. Lange, in his History
of Materialism, illustrates some of the methods of nature by
millions of gun barrels shot in all directions to kill a single
hare; by ten thousand keys bought at haphazard to get into a shut
room; by building a city in order to obtain a house. Is not the
ice a little overdone about the poles? See John Stuart Mill’s
indictment of nature, in his posthumous Essays on Religion,
29—“Nature impales men, breaks men as if on a wheel, casts them to
be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the
first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them
with cold, poisons them with the quick or slow venom of her
exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve,
such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never
surpassed.” So argue Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
The doctrine of evolution answers many of these objections, by
showing that order and useful collocation in the system as a whole
is necessarily and cheaply purchased by imperfection and suffering
in the initial stages of development. The question is: Does the
system as a whole imply design? My opinion is of no value as to
the usefulness of an intricate machine the purpose of which I do
not know. If I stand at the beginning of a road and do not know
whither it leads, it is presumptuous in me to point out a more
direct way to its destination. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 20-22—“In
order to counterbalance the impressions which apparent disorder
and immorality in nature make upon us, we have to assume that the
universe at its root is not only rational, but good. This is
faith, but it is an act on which our whole moral life depends.”
Metaphysics, 165—“The same argument which would deny mind in
nature denies mind in man.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev.,
264—“Fifty years ago, when the crane stood on top of the tower of
unfinished Cologne Cathedral, was there no evidence of design in
the whole structure?” Yet we concede that, so long as we cannot
with John Stuart Mill explain the imperfections of the universe by
any limitations in the Intelligence which contrived it, we are
shut up to regarding them as intended to correspond with the moral
state and probation of sinners which God foresaw and provided for
at the creation. Evil things in the universe are symbols of sin,
and helps to its overthrow. See Bowne, Review of H. Spencer, 264,
265; McCosh, Christ. and Positivism, 82 _sq._; Martineau, Essays,
1:50, and Study, 1:351-398; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 599; Mivart,
Lessons from Nature, 366-371; Princeton Rev., 1878:272-303; Shaw,
on Positivism.
2. _Defects of the Teleological Argument._ These attach not to the
premises but to the conclusion sought to be drawn therefrom.
A. The argument cannot prove a personal God. The order and useful
collocations of the universe may be only the changing phenomena of an
impersonal intelligence and will, such as pantheism supposes. The finality
may be only immanent finality.
There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality.
National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee
works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the
world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8—“Plant the
ship-builder’s skill within the timber itself, and you have the
mode in which nature produces.” Here we see a dim anticipation of
the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation
from without. Neander: “The divine work goes on from within
outward.” John Fiske: “The argument from the watch has been
superseded by the argument from the flower.” Iverach, Theism,
91—“The effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause
from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent
rational principle.” Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350—“Theism is in no
way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world ...
nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give
it externality.”
Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62-80—“The universe exists in some
all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of
brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping
themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building,
adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last
presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and
finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of
self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in
size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron
endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other
locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new
locomotives in their turn.” So nature in its separate parts may
seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not
“disown a directive power,”—only this power is “behind the
mechanism as its final cause ... it must be teleological.”
Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe
as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light
of evolution, we must still hold that nature alone cannot prove
that this intelligence is personal. Hopkins, Miscellanies,
18-36—“So long as there is such a thing as impersonal and adapting
intelligence in the brute creation, we cannot necessarily infer
from unchanging laws a free and personal God.” See Fisher,
Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 576-578. Kant shows that the
argument does not prove intelligence apart from the world
(Critique, 370). We must bring mind to the world, if we would find
mind in it. Leave out man, and nature cannot be properly
interpreted: the intelligence and will in nature may still be
unconscious. But, taking in man, we are bound to get our idea of
the intelligence and will in nature from the highest type of
intelligence and will we know, and that is man’s. “Nullus in
microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus.” “We receive but
what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live.”
The Teleological Argument therefore needs to be supplemented by
the Anthropological Argument, or the argument from the mental and
moral constitution of man. By itself, it does not prove a Creator.
See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 26; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos.,
bk. 9, chap. 6; Foundations of our Faith, 38; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 215; Habit and Intelligence, 2:6, and chap. 27. On immanent
finality, see Janet, Final Causes, 345-415; Diman, Theistic
Argument, 201-203. Since righteousness belongs only to
personality, this argument cannot prove righteousness in God.
Flint, Theism, 66—“Power and Intelligence alone do not constitute
God, though they be infinite. A being may have these, and, if
lacking righteousness, may be a devil.” Here again we see the need
of the Anthropological Argument to supplement this.
B. Even if this argument could prove personality in the intelligence and
will that originated the order of the universe, it could not prove either
the unity, the eternity, or the infinity of God; not the unity—for the
useful collocations of the universe might be the result of oneness of
counsel, instead of oneness of essence, in the contriving intelligence;
not the eternity—for a created demiurge might conceivably have designed
the universe; not the infinity—since all marks of order and collocation
within our observation are simply finite.
Diman asserts (Theistic Argument, 114) that all the phenomena of
the universe must be due to the same source—since all alike are
subject to the same method of sequence, _e. g._, gravitation—and
that the evidence points us irresistibly to some _one_ explanatory
cause. We can regard this assertion only as the utterance of a
primitive belief in a first cause, not as the conclusion of
logical demonstration, for we know only an infinitesimal part of
the universe. From the point of view of the intuition of an
Absolute Reason, however, we can cordially assent to the words of
F. L. Patton: “When we consider Matthew Arnold’s ‘stream of
tendency,’ Spencer’s ‘unknowable,’ Schopenhauer’s ‘world as will,’
and Hartmann’s elaborate defence of finality as the product of
unconscious intelligence, we may well ask if the theists, with
their belief in one personal God, are not in possession of the
only hypothesis that can save the language of these writers from
the charge of meaningless and idiotic raving” (Journ. Christ.
Philos., April, 1883:283-307).
The ancient world, which had only the light of nature, believed in
many gods. William James, Will to Believe, 44—“If there be a
divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her, cannot
possibly be its _ultimate word_ to man. Either there is no spirit
revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there; and
(as all the higher religions have assumed) what we call visible
nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and surface-show whose
full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen, or _other_ world.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 234—“But is not
intelligence itself the mystery of mysteries?... No doubt,
intellect is a great mystery.... But there is a choice in
mysteries. Some mysteries leave other things clear, and some leave
things as dark and impenetrable as ever. The former is the case
with the mystery of intelligence. It makes possible the
comprehension of everything but itself.”
3. _The value of the Teleological Argument_ is simply this,—it proves from
certain useful collocations and instances of order which have clearly had
a beginning, or in other words, from the present harmony of the universe,
that there exists an intelligence and will adequate to its contrivance.
But whether this intelligence and will is personal or impersonal, creator
or only fashioner, one or many, finite or infinite, eternal or owing its
being to another, necessary or free, this argument cannot assure us.
In it, however, we take a step forward. The causative power which we have
proved by the Cosmological Argument has now become an intelligent and
voluntary power.
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Theism, 168-170—“In the present
state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large
balance of probability in favor of causation by intelligence.”
Ladd holds that, whenever one being acts upon its like, each being
undergoes changes of state that belong to its own nature under the
circumstances. Action of one body on another never consists in
transferring the state of one being to another. Therefore there is
no more difficulty in beings that are unlike acting on one another
than in beings that are like. We do not transfer ideas to other
minds,—we only rouse them to develop their own ideas. So force
also is positively not transferable. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 49,
begins with “the conception of things interacting according to law
and forming an intelligible system. Such a system cannot be
construed by thought without the assumption of a unitary being
which is the fundamental reality of the system. 53—No passage of
influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf, so long as the
things are regarded as independent. 56—The system itself cannot
explain this interaction, for the system is only the members of
it. There must be some being in them which is their reality, and
of which they are in some sense phases or manifestations. In other
words, there must be a basal monism.” All this is substantially
the view of Lotze, of whose philosophy see criticism in Stählin’s
Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, 116-156, and especially 123.
Falckenberg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 454, shows as to
Lotze’s view that his assumption of monistic unity and continuity
does not explain how change of condition in one thing should, as
equalization or compensation, follow change of condition in
another thing. Lotze explains this _actuality_ by the ethical
conception of an all-embracing Person. On the whole argument, see
Bib. Sac., 1849:634; Murphy, Sci. Bases, 216; Flint, Theism,
131-210; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:164-174; W. R. Benedict, on
Theism and Evolution, in Andover Rev., 1886:307-350, 607-622.
III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and Moral
Nature.
This is an argument from the mental and moral condition of man to the
existence of an Author, Lawgiver, and End. It is sometimes called the
Moral Argument.
The common title “Moral Argument” is much too narrow, for it seems
to take account only of conscience in man, whereas the argument
which this title so imperfectly designates really proceeds from
man’s intellectual and emotional, as well as from his moral,
nature. In choosing the designation we have adopted, we desire,
moreover, to rescue from the mere physicist the term
“Anthropology”—a term to which he has attached altogether too
limited a signification, and which, in his use of it, implies that
man is a mere animal,—to him Anthropology is simply the study of
_la bête humaine_. Anthropology means, not simply the science of
man’s physical nature, origin, and relations, but also the science
which treats of his higher spiritual being. Hence, in Theology,
the term Anthropology designates that division of the subject
which treats of man’s spiritual nature and endowments, his
original state and his subsequent apostasy. As an argument,
therefore, from man’s mental and moral nature, we can with perfect
propriety call the present argument the Anthropological Argument.
The argument is a complex one, and may be divided into three parts.
1. Man’s intellectual and moral nature must have had for its author an
intellectual and moral Being. The elements of the proof are as
follows:—(_a_) Man, as an intellectual and moral being, has had a
beginning upon the planet. (_b_) Material and unconscious forces do not
afford a sufficient cause for man’s reason, conscience, and free will.
(_c_) Man, as an effect, can be referred only to a cause possessing
self-consciousness and a moral nature, in other words, personality.
This argument is is part an application to man of the principles
of both the Cosmological and the Teleological Arguments. Flint,
Theism, 74—“Although causality does not involve design, nor design
goodness, yet design involves causality, and goodness both
causality and design.” Jacobi: “Nature conceals God; man reveals
him.”
Man is an effect. The history of the geologic ages proves that man
has not always existed, and even if the lower creatures were his
progenitors, his intellect and freedom are not eternal _a parte
ante_. We consider man, not as a physical, but as a spiritual,
being. Thompson, Christian Theism, 75—“Every true cause must be
sufficient to account for the effect.” Locke, Essay, book 4, chap.
10—“Cogitable existence cannot be produced out of incogitable.”
Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:258 _sq._
Even if man had always existed, however, we should not need to
abandon the argument. We might start, not from beginning of
existence, but from beginning of phenomena. I might see God in the
world, just as I see thought, feeling, will, in my fellow men.
Fullerton, Plain Argument for God: I do not infer you, as cause of
the _existence_ of your body: I recognize you as present and
_working_ through your body. Its changes of gesture and speech
reveal a personality behind them. So I do not need to argue back
to a Being who once _caused_ nature and history; I recognize a
_present_ Being, exercising wisdom and power, by signs such as
reveal personality in man. Nature is itself the Watchmaker
manifesting himself in the very process of making the watch. This
is the meaning of the noble Epilogue to Robert Browning’s Dramatis
Personæ, 252—“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or
decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and
knows.” “That Face,” said Mr. Browning to Mrs. Orr, “That Face is
the face of Christ; that is how I feel him.” Nature is an
expression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an
expression of my mind and will. But in both cases, behind and
above the face is a personality, of which the face is but the
partial and temporary expression.
Bowne, Philos. Theism, 104, 107—“My fellow beings act _as if_ they
had thought, feeling, and will. So nature looks _as if_ thought,
feeling, and will were behind it. If we deny mind in nature, we
must deny mind in man. If there be no controlling mind in nature,
moreover, there can be none in man, for if the basal power is
blind and necessary, then all that depends upon it is necessitated
also.” LeConte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 44—“There is only
one place in the world where we can get behind physical phenomena,
behind the veil of matter, namely, in our own brain, and we find
there a self, a person. Is it not reasonable that, if we could get
behind the veil of nature, we should find the same, that is, a
Person? But if so, we must conclude, an infinite Person, and
therefore the only complete Personality that exists. Perfect
personality is not only self-conscious, but self-existent. _They_
are only imperfect images, and, as it were, separated fragments,
of the infinite Personality of God.”
Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination in view of
moral ends. The brute has intelligence and will, but has neither
self-consciousness, conscience, nor free-will. See Julius Müller,
Doctrine of Sin, 1:76 _sq._ Diman, Theistic Argument, 91,
251—“Suppose ‘the intuitions of the moral faculty are the slowly
organized results of experience received from the race’; still,
having found that the universe affords evidence of a supremely
intelligent cause, we may believe that man’s moral nature affords
the highest illustration of its mode of working”; 358—“Shall we
explain the lower forms of will by the higher, or the higher by
the lower?”
2. Man’s moral nature proves the existence of a holy Lawgiver and Judge.
The elements of the proof are:—(_a_) Conscience recognizes the existence
of a moral law which has supreme authority. (_b_) Known violations of this
moral law are followed by feelings of ill-desert and fears of judgment.
(_c_) This moral law, since it is not self-imposed, and these threats of
judgment, since they are not self-executing, respectively argue the
existence of a holy will that has imposed the law, and of a punitive power
that will execute the threats of the moral nature.
See Bishop Butler’s Sermons on Human Nature, in Works, Bohn’s ed.,
385-414. Butler’s great discovery was that of the supremacy of
conscience in the moral constitution of man: “Had it strength as
it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would
absolutely govern the world.” Conscience = the moral judiciary of
the soul—not law, nor sheriff, but judge; see under Anthropology.
Diman, Theistic Argument, 251—“Conscience does not lay down a law;
it warns us of the existence of a law; and not only of a law, but
of a purpose—not our own, but the purpose of another, which it is
our mission to realize.” See Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,
218 _sq._ It proves personality in the Lawgiver, because its
utterances are not abstract, like those of reason, but are in the
nature of command; they are not in the indicative, but in the
imperative, mood; it says, “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” This
argues _will_.
Hutton, Essays, 1:11—“Conscience is an ideal Moses, and thunders
from an invisible Sinai”; “the Atheist regards conscience not as a
skylight, opened to let in upon human nature an infinite dawn from
above, but as a polished arch or dome, completing and reflecting
the whole edifice beneath.” But conscience cannot be the mere
reflection and expression of nature, for it represses and condemns
nature. Tulloch, Theism: “Conscience, like the magnetic needle,
indicates the existence of an unknown Power which from afar
controls its vibrations and at whose presence it trembles.” Nero
spends nights of terror in wandering through the halls of his
Golden House. Kant holds that faith in duty requires faith in a
God who will defend and reward duty—see Critique of Pure Reason,
359-387. See also Porter, Human Intellect, 524.
Kant, in his Metaphysic of Ethics, represents the action of
conscience as like “conducting a case before a court,” and he
adds: “Now that he who is accused before his conscience should be
figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd
representation of a tribunal; since, in such an event, the accuser
would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to
itself always some other than itself as Judge, unless it is to
arrive at a contradiction with itself.” See also his Critique of
the Practical Reason, Werke, 8:214—“Duty, thou sublime and mighty
name, that hast in thee nothing to attract or win, but challengest
submission; and yet dost threaten nothing to sway the will by that
which may arouse natural terror or aversion, but merely holdest
forth a Law; a Law which of itself finds entrance into the mind,
and even while we disobey, against our will compels our reverence,
a Law in presence of which all inclinations grow dumb, even while
they secretly rebel; what origin is there worthy of thee? Where
can we find the root of thy noble descent, which proudly rejects
all kinship with the inclinations?” Archbishop Temple answers, in
his Bampton Lectures, 58, 59, “This eternal Law is the Eternal
himself, the almighty God.” Robert Browning: “The sense within me
that I owe a debt Assures me—Somewhere must be Somebody, Ready to
take his due. All comes to this: Where due is, there acceptance
follows: find Him who accepts the due.”
Salter, Ethical Religion, quoted in Pfleiderer’s article on
Religionless Morality, Am. Jour. Theol., 3:237—“The earth and the
stars do not create the law of gravitation which they obey; no
more does man, or the united hosts of rational beings in the
universe, create the law of duty.” The will expressed in the moral
imperative is _superior_ to ours, for otherwise it would issue no
commands. Yet it is _one_ with ours as the life of an organism is
one with the life of its members. Theonomy is not heteronomy but
the highest autonomy, the guarantee of our personal freedom
against all servitude of man. Seneca: “Deo parere libertas est.”
Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 272—“In conscience we see an ‘alter
ego’, in us yet not of us, another Personality behind our own.”
Martineau, Types, 2:105—“Over a person only a person can have
authority.... A solitary being, with no other sentient nature in
the universe, would feel no duty”; Study, 1:26—“As Perception
gives us Will in the shape of _Causality_ over against us in the
Non-Ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of _Authority_
over against us in the Non-Ego.... 2:7—We cannot deduce the
phenomena of character from an agent who has none.” Hutton,
Essays, 1:41, 42—“When we disobey conscience, the Power which has
therein ceased to _move_ us has retired only to _observe_—to keep
_watch_ over us as we mould ourselves.” Cardinal Newman, Apologia,
377—“Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my
conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist,
or a polytheist, when I looked into the world.”
3. Man’s emotional and voluntary nature proves the existence of a Being
who can furnish in himself a satisfying object of human affection and an
end which will call forth man’s highest activities and ensure his highest
progress.
Only a Being of power, wisdom, holiness, and goodness, and all these
indefinitely greater than any that we know upon the earth, can meet this
demand of the human soul. Such a Being must exist. Otherwise man’s
greatest need would be unsupplied, and belief in a lie be more productive
of virtue than belief in the truth.
Feuerbach calls God “the Brocken-shadow of man himself”;
“consciousness of God = self-consciousness”; “religion is a dream
of the human soul”; “all theology is anthropology”; “man made God
in his own image.” But conscience shows that man does not
recognize in God simply his like, but also his opposite. Not as
Galton: “Piety = conscience + instability.” The finest minds are
of the leaning type; see Murphy, Scientific Bases, 370; Augustine,
Confessions, 1:1—“Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is
restless till it finds rest in thee.” On John Stuart Mill—“a mind
that could not find God, and a heart that could not do without
him”—see his Autobiography, and Browne, in Strivings for the Faith
(Christ. Ev. Socy.), 259-287. Comte, in his later days,
constructed an object of worship in Universal Humanity, and
invented a ritual which Huxley calls “Catholicism _minus_
Christianity.” See also Tyndall, Belfast Address: “Did I not
believe, said a great man to me once, that an Intelligence exists
at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.”
Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 1:505,506.
The last line of Schiller’s Pilgrim reads: “Und das Dort ist
niemals hier.” The finite never satisfies. Tennyson, Two Voices:
“’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for
which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.” Seth, Ethical
Principles, 419—“A moral universe, an absolute moral Being, is the
indispensable environment of the ethical life, without which it
cannot attain to its perfect growth.... There is a moral _God_, or
this is no _universe_.” James, Will to Believe, 116—“A God is the
most adequate possible object for minds framed like our own to
conceive as lying at the root of the universe. Anything short of
God is not a rational object, anything more than God is not
possible, if man needs an object of knowledge, feeling, and will.”
Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 41—“To speak of the Religion of the
Unknowable, the Religion of Cosmism, the Religion of Humanity,
where the personality of the First Cause is not recognized, is as
unmeaning as it would be to speak of the love of a triangle or the
rationality of the equator.” It was said of Comte’s system that,
“the wine of the real presence being poured out, we are asked to
adore the empty cup.” “We want an object of devotion, and Comte
presents us with a looking-glass” (Martineau). Huxley said he
would as soon adore a wilderness of apes as the Positivist’s
rationalized conception of humanity. It is only the ideal in
humanity, the divine element in humanity that can be worshiped.
And when we once conceive of this, we cannot be satisfied until we
find it somewhere realized, as in Jesus Christ.
Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 265-272—Huxley believes that Evolution is
“a materialized logical process”; that nothing endures save the
flow of energy and “the rational order which pervades it.” In the
earlier part of this process, _nature_, there is no morality or
benevolence. But the process ends by producing _man_, who can make
progress only by waging moral war against the natural forces which
impel him. He must be benevolent and just. Shall we not say, in
spite of Mr. Huxley, that this shows what the nature of the system
is, and that there must be a benevolent and just Being who
ordained it? Martineau, Seat of Authority, 63-68—“Though the
authority of the higher incentive is self-known, it cannot be
self-created; for while it is in me, it is above me.... This
authority to which conscience introduces me, though emerging in
consciousness, is yet _objective_ to us all, and is necessarily
referred to the nature of things, irrespective of the accidents of
our mental constitution. It is not dependent on us, but
independent. All minds born into the universe are ushered into the
presence of a real righteousness, as surely as into a scene of
actual space. Perception reveals _another_ than ourselves;
conscience reveals _a higher_ than ourselves.”
We must freely grant, however, that this argument from man’s
aspirations has weight only upon the supposition that a wise,
truthful, holy, and benevolent God exists, who has so constituted
our minds that their thinking and their affections correspond to
truth and to himself. An evil being might have so constituted us
that all logic would lead us into error. The argument is therefore
the development and expression of our intuitive idea of God.
Luthardt, Fundamental Truths: “Nature is like a written document
containing only consonants. It is we who must furnish the vowels
that shall decipher it. Unless we bring with us the idea of God,
we shall find nature but dumb.” See also Pfleiderer, Die Religion,
1:174.
A. _The defects of the Anthropological Argument are_: (_a_) It cannot
prove a creator of the material universe. (_b_) It cannot prove the
infinity of God, since man from whom we argue is finite. (_c_) It cannot
prove the mercy of God. But,
B. _The value of the Argument_ is, that it assures us of the existence of
a personal Being, who rules us in righteousness, and who is the proper
object of supreme affection and service. But whether this Being is the
original creator of all things, or merely the author of our own existence,
whether he is infinite or finite, whether he is a Being of simple
righteousness or also of mercy, this argument cannot assure us.
Among the arguments for the existence of God, however, we assign to this
the chief place, since it adds to the ideas of causative power (which we
derived from the Cosmological Argument) and of contriving intelligence
(which we derived from the Teleological Argument), the far wider ideas of
personality and righteous lordship.
Sir Wm. Hamilton, Works of Reid, 2:974, note U; Lect. on Metaph.,
1:33—“The only valid arguments for the existence of God and for
the immortality of the soul rest upon the ground of man’s moral
nature”; “theology is wholly dependent upon psychology, for with
the proof of the moral nature of man stands or falls the proof of
the existence of a Deity.” But Diman, Theistic Argument, 244, very
properly objects to making this argument from the nature of man
the sole proof of Deity: “It should be rather used to show the
attributes of the Being whose existence has been already proved
from other sources”; “hence the Anthropological Argument is as
dependent upon the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments as they
are upon it.”
Yet the Anthropological Argument is needed to supplement the
conclusions of the two others. Those who, like Herbert Spencer,
recognize an infinite and absolute Being, Power and Cause, may yet
fail to recognize this being as spiritual and personal, simply
because they do not recognize themselves as spiritual and personal
beings, that is, do not recognize reason, conscience and free-will
in man. Agnosticism in philosophy involves agnosticism in
religion. R. K. Eccles: “All the most advanced languages
capitalize the word ‘God,’ and the word ‘I.’ ” See Flint, Theism,
68; Mill, Criticism of Hamilton, 2:266; Dove, Logic of Christian
Faith, 211-236, 261-299; Martineau, Types, Introd., 3; Cooke,
Religion and Chemistry: “God is love; but nature could not prove
it, and the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world in
order to attest it.”
Everything in philosophy depends on where we begin, whether with
nature or with self, whether with the necessary or with the free.
In one sense, therefore, we should in practice begin with the
Anthropological Argument, and then use the Cosmological and
Teleological Arguments as warranting the application to nature of
the conclusions which we have drawn from man. As God stands over
against man in Conscience, and says to him: “Thou”; so man stands
over against God in Nature, and may say to him: “Thou.” Mulford,
Republic of God, 28—“As the personality of man has its foundation
in the personality of God, so the realization by man of his own
personality always brings man nearer to God.” Robert Browning:
“Quoth a young Sadducee: ‘Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain
we Have, as they tell us, souls?’ ‘Son, there is no reply!’ The
Rabbi bit his beard: ‘Certain, a soul have _I_—_We_ may have
none,’ he sneered. Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s Hammer, The
Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And
struck the simple, solemn.”
It is very common at this place to treat of what are called the
Historical and the Biblical Arguments for the existence of God—the
former arguing, from the unity of history, the latter arguing,
from the unity of the Bible, that this unity must in each case
have for its cause and explanation the existence of God. It is a
sufficient reason for not discussing these arguments, that,
without a previous belief in the existence of God, no one will see
unity either in history or in the Bible. Turner, the painter,
exhibited a picture which seemed all mist and cloud until he put a
dab of scarlet into it. That gave the true point of view, and all
the rest became intelligible. So Christ’s coming and Christ’s
blood make intelligible both the Scriptures and human history. He
carries in his girdle the key to all mysteries. Schopenhauer,
knowing no Christ, admitted no philosophy of history. He regarded
history as the mere fortuitous play of individual caprice. Pascal:
“Jesus Christ is the centre of everything, and the object of
everything, and he that does not know him knows nothing of nature,
and nothing of himself.”
IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and Necessary
Ideas.
This argument infers the existence of God from the abstract and necessary
ideas of the human mind. It has three forms:
1. That of Samuel Clarke. Space and time are attributes of substance or
being. But space and time are respectively infinite and eternal. There
must therefore be an infinite and eternal substance or Being to whom these
attributes belong.
Gillespie states the argument somewhat differently. Space and time are
modes of existence. But space and time are respectively infinite and
eternal. There must therefore be an infinite and eternal Being who
subsists in these modes. But we reply:
Space and time are neither attributes of substance nor modes of existence.
The argument, if valid, would prove that God is not mind but matter, for
that could not be mind, but only matter, of which space and time were
either attributes or modes.
The Ontological Argument is frequently called the _a priori_
argument, that is, the argument from that which is logically
prior, or earlier than experience, viz., our intuitive ideas. All
the forms of the Ontological Argument are in this sense _a
priori_. Space and time are _a priori_ ideas. See Samuel Clarke,
Works, 2:521; Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God. _Per contra_,
see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 364: Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 226—“To begin, as Clarke did, with the proposition
that ‘something has existed from eternity,’ is virtually to
propose an argument after having assumed what is to be proved.
Gillespie’s form of the _a priori_ argument, starting with the
proposition ‘infinity of extension is necessarily existing,’ is
liable to the same objection, with the additional disadvantage of
attributing a property of matter to the Deity.”
H. B. Smith says that Brougham misrepresented Clarke: “Clarke’s
argument is in his sixth proposition, and supposes the existence
proved in what goes before. He aims here to establish the
infinitude and omnipresence of this First Being. He does not prove
_existence_ from immensity.” But we reply, neither can he prove
the _infinity_ of God from the immensity of space. Space and time
are neither substances nor attributes, but are rather relations;
see Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 331-335; Cocker, Theistic
Conception of the World, 66-96. The doctrine that space and time
are attributes or modes of God’s existence tends to materialistic
pantheism like that of Spinoza, who held that “the one and simple
substance” (substantia una et unica) is known to us through the
two attributes of thought and extension; mind = God in the mode of
thought; matter = God in the mode of extension. Dove, Logic of the
Christian Faith, 127, says well that an extended God is a material
God; “space and time are attributes neither of matter nor mind”;
“we must carry the moral idea into the natural world, not the
natural idea into the moral world.” See also, Blunt, Dictionary
Doct. and Hist. Theol., 740; Porter, Human Intellect, 567. H. M.
Stanley, on Space and Science, in Philos. Rev., Nov.
1898:615—“Space is not full of things, but things are spaceful....
Space is a form of dynamic appearance.” Prof. C. A. Strong: “The
world composed of consciousness and other existences is not in
space, though it may be in something of which space is the
symbol.”
2. That of Descartes. We have the idea of an infinite and perfect Being.
This idea cannot be derived from imperfect and finite things. There must
therefore be an infinite and perfect Being who is its cause.
But we reply that this argument confounds the idea of the infinite with an
infinite idea. Man’s idea of the infinite is not infinite but finite, and
from a finite effect we cannot argue an infinite cause.
This form of the Ontological Argument, while it is _a priori_, as
based upon a necessary idea of the human mind, is, unlike the
other forms of the same argument, _a posteriori_, as arguing from
this idea, as an _effect_, to the existence of a Being who is its
_cause_. _A posteriori_ argument = from that which is later to
that which is earlier, that is, from effect to cause. The
Cosmological, Teleological, and Anthropological Arguments are
arguments _a posteriori_. Of this sort is the argument of
Descartes; see Descartes, Meditation 3: “Hæc idea quæ in nobis est
requirit Deum pro causa; Deusque proinde existit.” The idea in
men’s minds is the impression of the workman’s name stamped
indelibly on his work—the shadow cast upon the human soul by that
unseen One of whose being and presence it dimly informs us. Blunt,
Dict. of Theol., 739; Saisset, Pantheism, 1:54—“Descartes sets out
from a fact of consciousness, while Anselm sets out from an
abstract conception”; “Descartes’s argument might be considered a
branch of the Anthropological or Moral Argument, but for the fact
that this last proceeds from man’s constitution rather than from
his abstract ideas.” See Bib. Sac., 1849:637.
3. That of Anselm. We have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being. But
existence is an attribute of perfection. An absolutely perfect Being must
therefore exist.
But we reply that this argument confounds ideal existence with real
existence. Our ideas are not the measure of external reality.
Anselm, Proslogion, 2—“Id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest
esse in intellectu solo.” See translation of the Proslogion, in
Bib. Sac., 1851:529, 699; Kant, Critique, 368. The arguments of
Descartes and Anselm, with Kant’s reply, are given in their
original form by Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:420-428. The
major premise here is not that all perfect ideas imply the
existence of the object which they represent, for then, as Kant
objects, I might argue from my perfect idea of a $100 bill that I
actually possessed the same, which would be far from the fact. So
I have a perfect idea of a perfectly evil being, of a centaur, of
nothing,—but it does not follow that the evil being, that the
centaur, that nothing, exists. The argument is rather from the
idea of absolute and perfect Being—of “that, no greater than which
can be conceived.” There can be but one such being, and there can
be but one such idea.
Yet, even thus understood, we cannot argue from the idea to the
actual existence of such a being. Case, Physical Realism, 173—“God
is not an idea, and consequently cannot be inferred from mere
ideas.” Bowne, Philos. Theism, 43—The Ontological Argument “only
points out that the idea of the perfect must include the idea of
existence; but there is nothing to show that the self-consistent
idea represents an objective reality.” I can imagine the
Sea-serpent, the Jinn of the Thousand and One Nights, “The
Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their
shoulders.” The winged horse of Uhland possessed every possible
virtue, and only one fault,—it was dead. If every perfect idea
implied the reality of its object, there might be horses with ten
legs, and trees with roots in the air.
“Anselm’s argument implies,” says Fisher, in Journ. Christ.
Philos., Jan. 1883:114, “that existence _in re_ is a constituent
of the concept. It would conclude the existence of a being from
the definition of a word. This inference is justified only on the
basis of philosophical realism.” Dove, Logic of the Christ. Faith,
141—“The Ontological Argument is the algebraic formula of the
universe, which leads to a valid conclusion with regard to real
existence, only when we fill it in with objects with which we
become acquainted in the arguments _a posteriori_.” See also
Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:331, Dogm. Theol., 1:221-241, and in Presb.
Rev., April, 1884:212-227 (favoring the argument); Fisher, Essays,
574; Thompson, Christian Theism, 171; H. B. Smith, Introd. to
Christ. Theol., 122; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:181-187; Studien
und Kritiken, 1875:611-655.
Dorner, in his Glaubenslehre, 1:197, gives us the best statement
of the Ontological Argument: “Reason thinks of God as existing.
Reason would not be reason, if it did not think of God as
existing. Reason only is, upon the assumption that God is.” But
this is evidently not argument, but only vivid statement of the
necessary assumption of the existence of an absolute Reason which
conditions and gives validity to ours.
Although this last must be considered the most perfect form of the
Ontological Argument, it is evident that it conducts us only to an ideal
conclusion, not to real existence. In common with the two preceding forms
of the argument, moreover, it tacitly assumes, as already existing in the
human mind, that very knowledge of God’s existence which it would derive
from logical demonstration. It has value, therefore, simply as showing
what God must be, if he exists at all.
But the existence of a Being indefinitely great, a personal Cause,
Contriver and Lawgiver, has been proved by the preceding arguments; for
the law of parsimony requires us to apply the conclusions of the first
three arguments to one Being, and not to many. To this one Being we may
now ascribe the infinity and perfection, the idea of which lies at the
basis of the Ontological Argument—ascribe them, not because they are
demonstrably his, but because our mental constitution will not allow us to
think otherwise. Thus clothing him with all perfections which the human
mind can conceive, and these in illimitable fullness, we have one whom we
may justly call God.
McCosh, Div. Govt., 12, note—“It is at this place, if we do not
mistake, that the idea of the Infinite comes in. The capacity of
the human mind to form such an idea, or rather its intuitive
belief in an Infinite of which it feels that it cannot form an
adequate conception, may be no proof (as Kant maintains) of the
existence of an infinite Being; but it is, we are convinced, the
means by which the mind is enabled to invest the Deity, shown on
other grounds to exist, with the attributes of infinity, _i. e._,
to look on his being, power, goodness, and all his perfections, as
infinite.” Even Flint, Theism, 68, who holds that we reach the
existence of God by inference, speaks of “necessary conditions of
thought and feeling, and ineradicable aspirations, which force on
us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will
neither permit us to deny these perfections to God, nor to ascribe
them to any other being.” Belief in God is not the conclusion of a
demonstration, but the solution of a problem. Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 226—“Either the whole question is assumed in starting,
or the Infinite is not reached in concluding.”
Clarke, Christian Theology, 97-114, divides his proof into two
parts: I. Evidence of the existence of God from the intellectual
starting-point: The discovery of _Mind_ in the universe is made,
1. through the intelligibleness of the universe to us; 2. through
the idea of cause; 3. through the presence of ends in the
universe. II. Evidence of the existence of God from the religious
starting-point: The discovery of the _good God_ is made, 1.
through the religious nature of man; 2. through the great
dilemma—God the best, or the worst; 3. through the spiritual
experience of men, especially in Christianity. So far as Dr.
Clarke’s proof is intended to be a statement, not of a primitive
belief, but of a logical process, we must hold it to be equally
defective with the three forms of proof which we have seen to
furnish some corroborative evidence of God’s existence. Dr. Clarke
therefore does well to add: “Religion was not produced by proof of
God’s existence, and will not be destroyed by its insufficiency to
some minds. Religion existed before argument; in fact, it is the
preciousness of religion that leads to the seeking for all
possible confirmations of the reality of God.”
The three forms of proof already mentioned—the Cosmological, the
Teleological, and the Anthropological Arguments—may be likened to
the three arches of a bridge over a wide and rushing river. The
bridge has only two defects, but these defects are very serious.
The first is that one cannot get on to the bridge; the end toward
the hither bank is wholly lacking; the bridge of logical argument
cannot be entered upon except by assuming the validity of logical
processes; this assumption takes for granted at the outset the
existence of a God who has made our faculties to act correctly; we
get on to the bridge, not by logical process, but only by a leap
of intuition, and by assuming at the beginning the very thing
which we set out to prove. The second defect of the so-called
bridge of argument is that when one has once gotten on, he can
never get off. The connection with the further bank is also
lacking. All the premises from which we argue being finite, we are
warranted in drawing only a finite conclusion. Argument cannot
reach the Infinite, and only an infinite Being is worthy to be
called God. We can get off from our logical bridge, not by logical
process, but only by another and final leap of intuition, and by
once more assuming the existence of the infinite Being whom we had
so vainly sought to reach by mere argument. The process seems to
be referred to in _Job 11:7—_“Canst thou by searching find out
God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?”
As a logical process this is indeed defective, since all logic as well as
all observation depends for its validity upon the presupposed existence of
God, and since this particular process, even granting the validity of
logic in general, does not warrant the conclusion that God exists, except
upon a second assumption that our abstract ideas of infinity and
perfection are to be applied to the Being to whom argument has actually
conducted us.
But although both ends of the logical bridge are confessedly wanting, the
process may serve and does serve a more useful purpose than that of mere
demonstration, namely, that of awakening, explicating, and confirming a
conviction which, though the most fundamental of all, may yet have been
partially slumbering for lack of thought.
Morell, Philos. Fragments, 177, 179—“We can, in fact, no more
prove the existence of a God by a logical argument, than we can
prove the existence of an external world; but none the less may we
obtain as strong a _practical_ conviction of the one, as the
other.” “We arrive at a scientific belief in the existence of God
just as we do at any other possible human truth. We _assume_ it,
as a hypothesis absolutely necessary to account for the phenomena
of the universe; and then evidences from every quarter begin to
converge upon it, until, in process of time, the common sense of
mankind, cultivated and enlightened by ever accumulating
knowledge, pronounces upon the validity of the hypothesis with a
voice scarcely less decided and universal than it does in the case
of our highest scientific convictions.”
Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 572—“What then is the
purport and force of the several arguments for the existence of
God? We reply that these proofs are the different modes in which
faith expresses itself and seeks confirmation. In them faith, or
the object of faith, is more exactly conceived and defined, and in
them is found a corroboration, not arbitrary but substantial and
valuable, of that faith which springs from the soul itself. Such
proofs, therefore, are neither on the one hand sufficient to
create and sustain faith, nor are they on the other hand to be set
aside as of no value.” A. J. Barrett: “The arguments are not so
much a bridge in themselves, as they are guys, to hold firm the
great suspension-bridge of intuition, by which we pass the gulf
from man to God. Or, while they are not a ladder by which we may
reach heaven, they are the Ossa on Pelion, from whose combined
height we may descry heaven.”
Anselm: “Negligentia mihi videtur, si postquam confirmati sumus in
fide non studemus quod credimus intelligere.” Bradley, Appearance
and Reality: “Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what
we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an
instinct.” Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, lect.
III—“Belief in a personal God is an instinctive judgment,
progressively justified by reason.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy,
241—The arguments are “historical memorials of the efforts of the
human race to vindicate to itself the existence of a reality of
which it is conscious, but which it cannot perfectly define.” H.
Fielding, The Hearts of Men, 313—“Creeds are the grammar of
religion. They are to religion what grammar is to speech. Words
are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed
afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse.
As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must
follow.” Pascal: “The heart has reasons of its own which the
reason does not know.” Frances Power Cobbe: “Intuitions are God’s
tuitions.” On the whole subject, see Cudworth, Intel. System,
3:42; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 150 _sq._; Curtis, Human
Element in Inspiration, 242; Peabody, in Andover Rev., July, 1884;
Hahn, History of Arguments for Existence of God; Lotze, Philos. of
Religion, 8-34; Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:53-71.
Hegel, in his Logic, page 3, speaking of the disposition to regard
the proofs of God’s existence as the only means of producing faith
in God, says: “Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we said
that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of
the chemical, botanical and zoölogical qualities of our food; and
that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of
anatomy and physiology.” It is a mistake to suppose that there can
be no religious _life_ without a correct _theory_ of life. Must I
refuse to drink water or to breathe air, until I can manufacture
both for myself? Some things are given to us. Among these things
are “grace and truth”_ (John 1:17; __cf.__ 9)_. But there are ever
those who are willing to take nothing as a free gift, and who
insist on working out all knowledge, as well as all salvation, by
processes of their own. Pelagianism, with its denial of the
doctrines of grace, is but the further development of a
rationalism which refuses to accept primitive truths unless these
can be logically demonstrated. Since the existence of the soul, of
the world, and of God cannot be proved in this way, rationalism is
led to curtail, or to misinterpret, the deliverances of
consciousness, and hence result certain systems now to be
mentioned.
Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.
Any correct explanation of the universe must postulate an intuitive
knowledge of the existence of the external world, of self, and of God. The
desire for scientific unity, however, has occasioned attempts to reduce
these three factors to one, and according as one or another of the three
has been regarded as the all-inclusive principle, the result has been
Materialism, Materialistic Idealism, or Idealistic Pantheism. This
scientific impulse is better satisfied by a system which we may designate
as Ethical Monism.
We may summarize the present chapter as follows: 1. _Materialism_:
Universe = Atoms. Reply: Atoms can do nothing without force, and
can be nothing (intelligible) without ideas. 2. _Materialistic
Idealism_: Universe = Force + Ideas. Reply: Ideas belong to Mind,
and Force can be exerted only by Will. 3. _Idealistic Pantheism_:
Universe = Immanent and Impersonal Mind and Will. Reply: Spirit in
man shows that the Infinite Spirit must be Transcendent and
Personal Mind and Will. We are led from these three forms of error
to a conclusion which we may denominate 4. _Ethical Monism_:
Universe = Finite, partial, graded manifestation of the divine
Life; Matter being God’s self-limitation under the law of
necessity, Humanity being God’s self-limitation under the law of
freedom, Incarnation and Atonement being God’s self-limitations
under the law of grace. Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of
one Substance, Principle, or Ground of Being, is consistent with
Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine that the soul is personally
distinct from matter on the one hand and from God on the other.
I. Materialism.
Materialism is that method of thought which gives priority to matter,
rather than to mind, in its explanations of the universe. Upon this view,
material atoms constitute the ultimate and fundamental reality of which
all things, rational and irrational, are but combinations and phenomena.
Force is regarded as a universal and inseparable property of matter.
The element of truth in materialism is the reality of the external world.
Its error is in regarding the external world as having original and
independent existence, and in regarding mind as its product.
Materialism regards atoms as the bricks of which the material
universe, the house we inhabit, is built. Sir William Thomson
(Lord Kelvin) estimates that, if a drop of water were magnified to
the size of our earth, the atoms of which it consists would
certainly appear larger than boy’s marbles, and yet would be
smaller than billiard balls. Of these atoms, all things, visible
and invisible, are made. Mind, with all its activities, is a
combination or phenomenon of atoms. “Man ist was er iszt: ohne
Phosphor kein Gedanke”—“One _is_ what he _eats_: without
phosphorus, no thought.” Ethics is a bill of fare; and worship,
like heat, is a mode of motion. Agassiz, however, wittily asked:
“Are fishermen, then, more intelligent than farmers, because they
eat so much fish, and therefore take in more phosphorus?”
It is evident that much is here attributed to atoms which really
belongs to force. Deprive atoms of force, and all that remains is
extension, which = space = zero. Moreover, “if atoms _are_
extended, they cannot be ultimate, for extension implies
divisibility, and that which is conceivably divisible cannot be a
philosophical ultimate. But, if atoms _are not_ extended, then
even an infinite multiplication and combination of them could not
produce an extended substance. Furthermore, an atom that is
neither extended substance nor thinking substance is
inconceivable. The real ultimate is force, and this force cannot
be exerted by nothing, but, as we shall hereafter see, can be
exerted only by a personal Spirit, for this alone possesses the
characteristics of reality, namely, definiteness, unity, and
activity.”
Not only force but also intelligence must be attributed to atoms,
before they can explain any operation of nature. Herschel says not
only that “the force of gravitation seems like that of a universal
will,” but that the atoms themselves, in recognizing each other in
order to combine, show a great deal of “presence of mind.” Ladd,
Introd. to Philosophy, 269—“A distinguished astronomer has said
that every body in the solar system is behaving as if it knew
precisely how it ought to behave in consistency with its own
nature, and with the behavior of every other body in the same
system.... Each atom has danced countless millions of miles, with
countless millions of different partners, many of which required
an important modification of its mode of motion, without ever
departing from the correct step or the right time.” J. P. Cooke,
Credentials of Science, 104, 177, suggests that something more
than atoms is needed to explain the universe. A correlating
Intelligence and Will must be assumed. Atoms by themselves would
be like a heap of loose nails which need to be magnetized if they
are to hold together. All structures would be resolved, and all
forms of matter would disappear, if the Presence which sustains
them were withdrawn. The atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is
“parvus in suo genere deus”—“a little god in its nature”—only
because it is the expression of the mind and will of an immanent
God.
Plato speaks of men who are “dazzled by too near a look at
material things.” They do not perceive that these very material
things, since they can be interpreted only in terms of spirit,
must themselves be essentially spiritual. Materialism is the
explanation of a world of which we know something—the world of
mind—by a world of which we know next to nothing—the world of
matter. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 297, 298—“How about your material
atoms and brain-molecules? They have no real existence save as
objects of thought, and therefore the very thought, which you say
your atoms produce, turns out to be the essential precondition of
their own existence.” With this agree the words of Dr. Ladd:
“Knowledge of matter involves repeated activities of sensation and
reflection, of inductive and deductive inference, of intuitional
belief in substance. These are all activities of mind. Only as the
mind has a self-conscious life, is any knowledge of what matter
is, or can do, to be gained.... Everything is real which is the
permanent subject of changing states. That which touches, feels,
sees, is more real than that which is touched, felt, seen.”
H. N. Gardner, Presb. Rev., 1885:301, 665, 666—“Mind gives to
matter its chief meaning,—hence matter alone can never explain the
universe.” Gore, Incarnation, 31—“Mind is not the _product_ of
nature, but the necessary _constituent_ of nature, considered as
an ordered knowable system.” Fraser, Philos. of Theism: “An
immoral act must originate in the immoral agent; a physical effect
is not _known_ to originate in its physical cause.” Matter,
inorganic and organic, presupposes mind; but it is not true that
mind presupposes matter. LeConte: “If I could remove your brain
cap, what would I see? Only physical changes. But you—what do you
perceive? Consciousness, thought, emotion, will. Now take external
nature, the Cosmos. The observer from the outside sees only
physical phenomena. But must there not be in this case also—on the
other side—psychical phenomena, a Self, a Person, a Will?”
The impossibility of finding in matter, regarded as mere atoms,
any of the attributes of a cause, has led to a general abandonment
of this old Materialism of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius,
Condillac, Holbach, Feuerbach, Büchner; and Materialistic Idealism
has taken its place, which instead of regarding force as a
property of matter, regards matter as a manifestation of force.
From this section we therefore pass to Materialistic Idealism, and
inquire whether the universe can be interpreted simply as a system
of force and of ideas. A quarter of a century ago, John Tyndall,
in his opening address as President of the British Association at
Belfast, declared that in matter was to be found the promise and
potency of every form of life. But in 1898, Sir William Crookes,
in his address as President of that same British Association,
reversed the apothegm, and declared that in life he saw the
promise and potency of every form of matter. See Lange, History of
Materialism; Janet, Materialism; Fabri, Materialismus; Herzog,
Encyclopädie, art.: Materialismus; but esp., Stallo, Modern
Physics, 148-170.
In addition to the general error indicated above, we object to this system
as follows:
1. In knowing matter, the mind necessarily judges itself to be different
in kind, and higher in rank, than the matter which it knows.
We here state simply an intuitive conviction. The mind, in using
its physical organism and through it bringing external nature into
its service, recognizes itself as different from and superior to
matter. See Martineau, quoted in Brit. Quar., April, 1882:173, and
the article of President Thomas Hill in the Bibliotheca Sacra,
April, 1852:353—“All that is really given by the act of
sense-perception is the existence of the conscious self, floating
in boundless space and boundless time, surrounded and sustained by
boundless power. The material moved, which we at first think the
great reality, is only the shadow of a real being, which is
immaterial.” Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 317—“Imagine an
infinitesimal being in the brain, watching the action of the
molecules, but missing the thought. So science observes the
universe, but misses God.” Hebberd, in Journ. Spec. Philos.,
April, 1886:135.
Robert Browning, “the subtlest assertor of the soul in song,”
makes the Pope, in The Ring and the Book, say: “Mind is not
matter, nor from matter, but above.” So President Francis Wayland:
“What is mind?” “No matter.” “What is matter?” “Never mind.”
Sully, The Human Mind, 2:369—“Consciousness is a reality wholly
disparate from material processes, and cannot therefore be
resolved into these. Materialism makes that which is immediately
known (our mental states) subordinate to that which is only
indirectly or inferentially known (external things). Moreover, a
material entity existing _per se_ out of relation to a cogitant
mind is an absurdity.” As materialists work out their theory,
their so-called matter grows more and more ethereal, until at last
a stage is reached when it cannot be distinguished from what
others call spirit. Martineau: “The matter they describe is so
exceedingly clever that it is up to anything, even to writing
Hamlet and discovering its own evolution. In short, but for the
spelling of its name, it does not seem to differ appreciably from
our old friends, Mind and God.” A. W. Momerie, in Christianity and
Evolution, 54—“A being conscious of his unity cannot possibly be
formed out of a number of atoms unconscious of their diversity.
Any one who thinks this possible is capable of asserting that half
a dozen fools might be compounded into a single wise man.”
2. Since the mind’s attributes of (_a_) continuous identity, (_b_)
self-activity, (_c_) unrelatedness to space, are different in kind and
higher in rank than the attributes of matter, it is rational to conclude
that mind is itself different in kind from matter and higher in rank than
matter.
This is an argument from specific qualities to that which
underlies and explains the qualities. (_a_) Memory proves personal
identity. This is not an identity of material atoms, for atoms
change. The molecules that come cannot remember those that depart.
Some immutable part in the brain? organized or unorganized?
Organized decays; unorganized = soul. (_b_) Inertia shows that
matter is not self-moving. It acts only as it is acted upon. A
single atom would never move. Two portions are necessary, and
these, in order to useful action, require adjustment by a power
which does not belong to matter. Evolution of the universe
inexplicable, unless matter were first moved by some power outside
itself. See Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, 92. (_c_) The highest
activities of mind are independent of known physical conditions.
Mind controls and subdues the body. It does not cease to grow when
the growth of the body ceases. When the body nears dissolution,
the mind often asserts itself most strikingly.
Kant: “Unity of apprehension is possible on account of the
transcendental unity of self-consciousness.” I get my idea of
unity from the indivisible self. Stout, Manual of Psychology,
53—“So far as matter exists independently of its presentation to a
cognitive subject, it cannot have material properties, such as
extension, hardness, color, weight, etc.... The world of material
phenomena presupposes a system of immaterial agency. In this
immaterial system the individual consciousness originates. This
agency, some say, is _thought_, others _will_.” A. J. Dubois, in
Century Magazine, Dec. 1894:228—Since each thought involves a
molecular movement in the brain, and this moves the whole
universe, mind is the secret of the universe, and we should
interpret nature as the expression of underlying purpose. Science
is mind following the traces of mind. There can be no mind without
antecedent mind. That all human beings have the same mental modes
shows that these modes are not due simply to environment. Bowne:
“Things act upon the mind and the mind reacts with knowledge.
Knowing is not a passive receiving, but an active construing.”
Wundt: “We are compelled to admit that the physical development is
not the cause, but much more the effect, of psychical
development.”
Paul Carus, Soul of Man, 52-64, defines soul as “the form of an
organism,” and memory as “the psychical aspect of the preservation
of form in living substance.” This seems to give priority to the
organism rather than to the soul, regardless of the fact that
without soul no organism is conceivable. Clay cannot be the
ancestor of the potter, nor stone the ancestor of the mason, nor
wood the ancestor of the carpenter. W. N. Clarke, Christian
Theology, 99—“The intelligibleness of the universe to us is strong
and ever present evidence that there is an all-pervading rational
Mind, from which the universe received its character.” We must add
to the maxim, “Cogito, ergo sum,” the other maxim, “Intelligo,
ergo Deus est.” Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:273—“The whole
idealistic philosophy of modern times is in fact only the carrying
out and grounding of the conviction that Nature is ordered by
Spirit and for Spirit, as a subservient means for its eternal
ends; that it is therefore not, as the heathen naturalism thought,
the one and all, the last and highest of things, but has the
Spirit, and the moral Ends over it, as its Lord and Master.” The
consciousness by which things are known precedes the things
themselves, in the order of logic, and therefore cannot be
explained by them or derived from them. See Porter, Human
Intellect, 22, 131, 132. McCosh, Christianity and Positivism,
chap. on Materialism; Divine Government, 71-94; Intuitions,
140-145. Hopkins, Study of Man, 53-56; Morell, Hist. of
Philosophy, 318-334; Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 403; Theol.
Eclectic, 6:555; Appleton, Works, 1:151-154; Calderwood, Moral
Philos., 235; Ulrici, Leib und Seele, 688-725, and synopsis, in
Bap. Quar., July, 1873:380.
3. Mind rather than matter must therefore be regarded as the original and
independent entity, unless it can be scientifically demonstrated that mind
is material in its origin and nature. But all attempts to explain the
psychical from the physical, or the organic from the inorganic, are
acknowledged failures. The most that can be claimed is, that psychical are
always accompanied by physical changes, and that the inorganic is the
basis and support of the organic. Although the precise connection between
the mind and the body is unknown, the fact that the continuity of physical
changes is unbroken in times of psychical activity renders it certain that
mind is not transformed physical force. If the facts of sensation indicate
the dependence of mind upon body, the facts of volition equally indicate
the dependence of body upon mind.
The chemist can produce _organic_, but not _organized_,
substances. The _life_ cannot be produced from matter. Even in
living things progress is secured only by plan. Multiplication of
desired advantage, in the Darwinian scheme, requires a selecting
thought; in other words the natural selection is artificial
selection after all. John Fiske, Destiny of the Creature,
109—“Cerebral physiology tells us that, during the present life,
although thought and feeling are always manifested in connection
with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought
and feeling be in any sense the product of matter. Nothing could
be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis,
that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is
not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What
goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular
movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way
correlated, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants.”
Leibnitz’s “preëstablished harmony” indicates the difficulty of
defining the relation between mind and matter. They are like two
entirely disconnected clocks, the one of which has a dial and
indicates the hour by its hands, while the other without a dial
simultaneously indicates the same hour by its striking apparatus.
To Leibnitz the world is an aggregate of atomic souls leading
absolutely separate lives. There is no real action of one upon
another. Everything in the monad is the development of its
individual unstimulated activity. Yet there is a preëstablished
harmony of them all, arranged from the beginning by the Creator.
The internal development of each monad is so adjusted to that of
all the other monads, as to produce the false impression that they
are mutually influenced by each other (see Johnson, in Andover
Rev., Apl. 1890:407, 408). Leibnitz’s theory involves the complete
rejection of the freedom of the human will in the libertarian
sense. To escape from this arbitrary connection of mind and matter
in Leibnitz’s preëstablished harmony, Spinoza rejected the
Cartesian doctrine of two God-created substances, and maintained
that there is but one fundamental substance, namely, God himself
(see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 172).
There is an increased flow of blood to the head in times of mental
activity. Sometimes, in intense heat of literary composition, the
blood fairly surges through the brain. No diminution, but further
increase, of physical activity accompanies the greatest efforts of
mind. Lay a man upon a balance; fire a pistol shot or inject
suddenly a great thought into his mind; at once he will tip the
balance, and tumble upon his head. Romanes, Mind and Motion,
21—“Consciousness causes physical changes, but not _vice versa_.
To say that mind is a function of motion is to say that mind is a
function of itself, since motion exists only for mind. Better
suppose the physical and the psychical to be only one, as in the
violin sound and vibration are one. Volition is a cause in nature
because it has cerebration for its obverse and inseparable side.
But if there is no motion without mind, then there can be no
universe without God.”... 34—“Because within the limits of human
experience mind is only known as associated with brain, it does
not follow that mind cannot exist without brain. Helmholtz’s
explanation of the effect of one of Beethoven’s sonatas on the
brain may be perfectly correct, but the explanation of the effect
given by a musician may be equally correct within its category.”
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, 1:§ 56—“Two things,
mind and nervous action, exist together, but we cannot imagine how
they are related” (see review of Spencer’s Psychology, in N.
Englander, July, 1873). Tyndall, Fragments of Science, 120—“The
passage from the physics of the brain to the facts of
consciousness is unthinkable.” Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion,
95—“The metamorphosis of vibrations into conscious ideas is a
miracle, in comparison with which the floating of iron or the
turning of water into wine is easily credible.” Bain, Mind and
Body, 131—There is no break in the physical continuity. See Brit.
Quar., Jan. 1874; art. by Herbert, on Mind and the Science of
Energy; McCosh, Intuitions, 145; Talbot, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1871.
On Geulincx’s “occasional causes” and Descartes’s dualism, see
Martineau, Types, 144, 145, 156-158, and Study, 2:77.
4. The materialistic theory, denying as it does the priority of spirit,
can furnish no sufficient cause for the highest features of the existing
universe, namely, its personal intelligences, its intuitive ideas, its
free-will, its moral progress, its beliefs in God and immortality.
Herbert, Modern Realism Examined: “Materialism has no physical
evidence of the existence of consciousness in others. As it
declares our fellow men to be destitute of free volition, so it
should declare them destitute of consciousness; should call them,
as well as brutes, pure automata. If physics are all, there is no
God, but there is also no man, existing.” Some of the early
followers of Descartes used to kick and beat their dogs, laughing
meanwhile at their cries and calling them the “creaking of the
machine.” Huxley, who calls the brutes “conscious automata,”
believes in the gradual banishment, from all regions of human
thought, of what we call spirit and spontaneity: “A spontaneous
act is an absurdity; it is simply an effect that is uncaused.”
James, Psychology, 1:149—“The girl in Midshipman Easy could not
excuse the illegitimacy of her child by saying that ‘it was a very
small one.’ And consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate
birth in any philosophy that starts without it, and yet professes
to explain all facts by continued evolution.... Materialism denies
reality to almost all the impulses which we most cherish. Hence it
will fail of universal adoption.” Clerk Maxwell, Life, 391—“The
atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking
about, and it is strange to find a number of them combining to
form a man of feeling.... 426—I have looked into most
philosophical systems, and I have seen none that will work without
a God.” President E. B. Andrews: “Mind is the only substantive
thing in this universe, and all else is adjective. Matter is not
primordial, but is a function of spirit.” Theodore Parker: “Man is
the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds
nothing so tall or grand as himself, nothing so valuable to him.
The greatest star is at the small end of the telescope—the star
that is looking, not looked after, nor looked at.”
Materialism makes men to be “a serio-comic procession of wax
figures or of cunning casts in clay” (Bowne). Man is “the
cunningest of clocks.” But if there were nothing but matter, there
could be no materialism, for a system of thought, like
materialism, implies consciousness. Martineau, Types, preface,
xii, xiii—“It was the irresistible pleading of the moral
consciousness which first drove me to rebel against the limits of
the merely scientific conception. It became incredible to me that
nothing was possible except the actual.... Is there then no _ought
to be_, other than _what is_?” Dewey, Psychology, 84—“A world
without ideal elements would be one in which the home would be
four walls and a roof to keep out cold and wet; the table a mess
for animals; and the grave a hole in the ground.” Omar Khayyám,
Rubaiyat, stanza 72—“And that inverted bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die, Lift not your hands to
It for help—for it As impotently moves as you or I.” Victor Hugo:
“You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers?
Why then is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to
fail? Winter is on my head, and eternal spring is in my heart....
The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear the immortal
symphonies of the worlds which invite me.”
Diman, Theistic Argument, 348—“Materialism can never explain the
fact that matter is always combined with force. Coördinate
principles? then dualism, instead of monism. Force cause of
matter? then we preserve unity, but destroy materialism; for we
trace matter to an immaterial source. Behind multiplicity of
natural forces we must postulate some single power—which can be
nothing but coördinating mind.” Mark Hopkins sums up Materialism
in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1879:490—“1. Man, who is a person, is made
by a thing, _i. e._, matter. 2. Matter is to be worshiped as man’s
maker, if anything is to be (_Rom. 1:25_). 3. Man is to worship
himself—his God is his belly.” See also Martineau, Religion and
Materialism, 25-31, Types, 1: preface, xii, xiii, and Study,
1:248, 250, 345; Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief,
145-161; Buchanan, Modern Atheism, 247, 248; McCosh, in
International Rev., Jan. 1895; Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1875, art.: Man
Transcorporeal; Calderwood, Relations of Mind and Brain; Laycock,
Mind and Brain; Diman, Theistic Argument, 358; Wilkinson, in
Present Day Tracts, 3:no. 17; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:487-499; A.
H. Strong, Philos. and Relig., 31-38.
II. Materialistic Idealism.
Idealism proper is that method of thought which regards all knowledge as
conversant only with affections of the percipient mind.
Its element of truth is the fact that these affections of the percipient
mind are the conditions of our knowledge. Its error is in denying that
through these and in these we know that which exists independently of our
consciousness.
The idealism of the present day is mainly a materialistic idealism. It
defines matter and mind alike in terms of sensation, and regards both as
opposite sides or successive manifestations of one underlying and
unknowable force.
Modern subjective idealism is the development of a principle found
as far back as Locke. Locke derived all our knowledge from
sensation; the mind only combines ideas which sensation furnishes,
but gives no material of its own. Berkeley held that externally we
can be sure only of sensations,—cannot be sure that any external
world exists apart from mind. Berkeley’s idealism, however, was
objective; for he maintained that while things do not exist
independently of consciousness, they do exist independently of
_our_ consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a correct
philosophy takes the place of a mindless external world as the
cause of our ideas. Kant, in like manner, held to existences
outside of our own minds, although he regarded these existences as
unknown and unknowable. Over against these forms of objective
idealism we must put the subjective idealism of Hume, who held
that internally also we cannot be sure of anything but mental
phenomena; we know thoughts, feelings and volitions, but we do not
know mental substance within, any more than we know material
substance without; our ideas are a string of beads, without any
string; we need no cause for these ideas, in an external world, a
soul, or God. Mill, Spencer, Bain and Tyndall are Humists, and it
is their subjective idealism which we oppose.
All these regard the material atom as a mere centre of force, or a
hypothetical cause of sensations. Matter is therefore a
manifestation of force, as to the old materialism force was a
property of matter. But if matter, mind and God are nothing but
sensations, then the body itself is nothing but sensations. There
is no _body_ to have the sensations, and no _spirit_, either human
or divine, to produce them. John Stuart Mill, in his Examination
of Sir William Hamilton, 1:234-253, makes sensations the only
original sources of knowledge. He defines matter as “a permanent
possibility of sensation,” and mind as “a series of feelings aware
of itself.” So Huxley calls matter “only a name for the unknown
cause of the states of consciousness”; although he also declares:
“If I am compelled to choose between the materialism of a man like
Büchner and the idealism of Berkeley, I would have to agree with
Berkeley.” He would hold to the priority of matter, and yet regard
matter as wholly ideal. Since John Stuart Mill, of all the
materialistic idealists, gives the most precise definitions of
matter and of mind, we attempt to show the inadequacy of his
treatment.
The most complete refutation of subjective idealism is that of Sir
William Hamilton, in his Metaphysics, 348-372, and Theories of
Sense-perception—the reply to Brown. See condensed statement of
Hamilton’s view, with estimate and criticism, in Porter, Human
Intellect, 236-240, and on Idealism, 129, 132. Porter holds that
original perception gives us simply affections of our own
sensorium; as cause of these, we gain knowledge of extended
externality. So Sir William Hamilton: “Sensation proper has no
object but a subject-object.” But both Porter and Hamilton hold
that through these sensations we know that which exists
independently of our sensations. Hamilton’s natural realism,
however, was an exaggeration of the truth. Bowne, Introd. to
Psych. Theory, 257, 258—“In Sir William Hamilton’s desire to have
no go-betweens in perception, he was forced to maintain that every
sensation is felt where it seems to be, and hence that the mind
fills out the entire body. Likewise he had to affirm that the
object in vision is not the thing, but the rays of light, and even
the object itself had, at last, to be brought into consciousness.
Thus he reached the absurdity that the true object in perception
is something of which we are totally unconscious.” Surely we
cannot be immediately conscious of what is outside of
consciousness. James, Psychology, 1:11—“The terminal organs are
telephones, and brain-cells are the receivers at which the mind
listens.” Berkeley’s view is to be found in his Principles of
Human Knowledge, § 18 _sq._ See also Presb. Rev., Apl.
1885:301-315; Journ. Spec. Philos., 1884:246-260, 383-399;
Tulloch, Mod. Theories, 360, 361; Encyc. Britannica, art.:
Berkeley.
There is, however, an idealism which is not open to Hamilton’s
objections, and to which most recent philosophers give their
adhesion. It is the objective idealism of Lotze. It argues that we
know nothing of the extended world except through the forces which
impress our nervous organism. These forces take the form of
vibrations of air or ether, and we interpret them as sound, light,
or motion, according as they affect our nerves of hearing, sight,
or touch. But the only force which we immediately know is that of
our own wills, and we can either not understand matter at all or
we must understand it as the product of a will comparable to our
own. Things are simply “concreted laws of action,” or divine ideas
to which permanent reality has been given by divine will. What we
perceive in the normal exercise of our faculties has existence not
only for us but for all intelligent beings and for God himself: in
other words, our idealism is not subjective, but objective. We
have seen in the previous section that atoms cannot explain the
universe,—they presuppose both ideas and force. We now see that
this force presupposes will, and these ideas presuppose mind. But,
as it still may be claimed that this mind is not self-conscious
mind and that this will is not personal will, we pass in the next
section to consider Idealistic Pantheism, of which these claims
are characteristic. Materialistic Idealism, in truth, is but a
half-way house between Materialism and Pantheism, in which no
permanent lodging is to be found by the logical intelligence.
Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 152—“The objectivity of our
cognition consists therefore in this, that it is not a meaningless
play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a world whose
coherency is ordered in pursuance of the injunction of the sole
Reality in the world, to wit, the Good. Our cognition thus
possesses more of truth than if it copied exactly a world that has
no value in itself. Although it does not comprehend in what manner
all that is phenomenon is presented to the view, still it
understands what is the meaning of it all; and is like to a
spectator who comprehends the æsthetic significance of that which
takes place on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing
essential if he were to see besides the machinery by means of
which the changes are effected on the stage.” Professor C. A.
Strong: “Perception is a shadow thrown upon the mind by a
thing-in-itself. The shadow is the symbol of the thing; and, as
shadows are soulless and dead, physical objects may seem soulless
and dead, while the reality symbolized is never so soulful and
alive. Consciousness is reality. The only existence of which we
can conceive is mental in its nature. All existence _for_
consciousness is existence _of_ consciousness. The horse’s shadow
accompanies him, but it does not help him to draw the cart. The
brain-event is simply the mental state itself regarded from the
point of view of the perception.”
Aristotle: “Substance is in its nature prior to relation” = there
can be no relation without things to be related. Fichte:
“Knowledge, just because it is knowledge, is not reality,—it comes
not first, but second.” Veitch, Knowing and Being, 216, 217, 292,
293—“Thought can do nothing, except as it is a synonym for
Thinker.... Neither the finite nor the infinite consciousness,
alone or together, can constitute an object external, or explain
its existence. The existence of a thing logically precedes the
perception of it. Perception is not creation. It is not the
thinking that makes the ego, but the ego that makes the thinking.”
Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Divine thoughts presuppose a
divine Being. God’s thoughts do not constitute the real world. The
real force does not lie in them,—it lies in the divine Being, as
living, active Will.” Here was the fundamental error of Hegel,
that he regarded the Universe as mere Idea, and gave little
thought to the Love and the Will that constitute it. See John
Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, 1:75; 2:80; Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1872:
art. on Huxley; Lowndes, Philos. Primary Beliefs, 115-143; Atwater
(on Ferrier), in Princeton Rev., 1857:258, 280; Cousin, Hist.
Philosophy, 2:239-343; Veitch’s Hamilton, (Blackwood’s Philos.
Classics,) 176, 191; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 58-74.
To this view we make the following objections:
1. Its definition of matter as a “permanent possibility of sensation”
contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of
matter, we have direct knowledge of substance as underlying phenomena, as
distinct from our sensations, and as external to the mind which
experiences these sensations.
Bowne, Metaphysics, 432—“How the possibility of an odor and a
flavor can be the cause of the yellow color of an orange is
probably unknowable, except to a mind that can see that two and
two may make five.” See Iverach’s Philosophy of Spencer Examined,
in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 29. Martineau, Study, 1:102-112—“If
external impressions are telegraphed to the brain, intelligence
must receive the message at the beginning as well as deliver it at
the end.... It is the external object which gives the possibility,
not the possibility which gives the external object. The mind
cannot make both its _cognita_ and its _cognitio_. It cannot
dispense with standing-ground for its own feet, or with atmosphere
for its own wings.” Professor Charles A. Strong: “Kant held to
things-in-themselves back of physical phenomena, as well as to
things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena; he thought
things-in-themselves back of physical might be identical with
things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena. And since mental
phenomena, on this theory, are not specimens of reality, and
reality manifests itself indifferently through them and through
physical phenomena, he naturally concluded that we have no ground
for supposing reality to be like either—that we must conceive of
it as ‘weder Materie noch ein denkend Wesen’—‘neither matter nor a
thinking being’—a theory of the Unknowable. Would that it had been
also the Unthinkable and the Unmentionable!” Ralph Waldo Emerson
was a subjective idealist; but, when called to inspect a farmer’s
load of wood, he said to his company: “Excuse me a moment, my
friends; we have to attend to these matters, just as if they were
real.” See Mivart, On Truth, 71-141.
2. Its definition of mind as a “series of feelings aware of itself”
contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of mind,
we have direct knowledge of a spiritual substance of which these phenomena
are manifestations, which retains its identity independently of our
consciousness, and which, in its knowing, instead of being the passive
recipient of impressions from without, always acts from within by a power
of its own.
James, Psychology, 1:226—“It seems as if the elementary psychic
fact were not _thought_, or _this thought_, or _that thought_, but
_my thought_, every thought being owned. The universal conscious
fact is not ‘feelings and thoughts exist,’ but ‘I think,’ and ‘I
feel.’ ” Professor James is compelled to say this, even though he
begins his Psychology without insisting upon the existence of a
soul. Hamilton’s Reid, 443—“Shall I think that thought can stand
by itself? or that ideas can feel pleasure or pain?” R. T. Smith,
Man’s Knowledge, 44—“We say ‘my notions and my passions,’ and when
we use these phrases we imply that our central self is felt to be
something different from the notions or passions which belong to
it or characterize it for a time.” Lichtenberg: “We should say,
‘It thinks;’ just as we say, ‘It lightens,’ or ‘It rains.’ In
saying ‘Cogito,’ the philosopher goes too far if he translates it,
‘I think.’ ” Are the faculties, then, an army without a general,
or an engine without a driver? In that case we should not _have_
sensations,—we should only _be_ sensations.
Professor C. A. Strong: “I have knowledge of _other minds_. This
non-empirical knowledge—transcendent knowledge of
things-in-themselves, derived neither from experience nor
reasoning, and assuming that like consequents (intelligent
movements) must have like antecedents (thoughts and feelings), and
also assuming instinctively that something exists outside of my
own mind—this refutes the post-Kantian phenomenalism. _Perception_
and _memory_ also involve transcendence. In both I transcend the
bounds of experience, as truly as in my knowledge of other minds.
In memory I recognize a _past_, as distinguished from the present.
In perception I cognize a possibility of _other_ experiences like
the present, and this alone gives the sense of permanence and
reality. Perception and memory refute phenomenalism.
Things-in-themselves must be assumed in order to fill the gaps
between individual minds, and to give coherence and
intelligibility to the universe, and so to avoid pluralism. If
matter can influence and even extinguish our minds, it must have
some force of its own, some existence in itself. If consciousness
is an evolutionary product, it must have arisen from simpler
mental facts. But these simpler mental facts are only another name
for things-in-themselves. A deep prerational instinct compels us
to recognize them, for they cannot be logically demonstrated. We
must assume them in order to give continuity and intelligibility
to our conceptions of the universe.” See, on Bain’s Cerebral
Psychology, Martineau’s Essays, 1:265. On the physiological method
of mental philosophy, see Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1871:1; Bowen, in
Princeton Rev., March, 1878:423-450; Murray, Psychology, 279-287.
3. In so far as this theory regards mind as the obverse side of matter, or
as a later and higher development from matter, the mere reference of both
mind and matter to an underlying force does not save the theory from any
of the difficulties of pure materialism already mentioned; since in this
case, equally with that, force is regarded as purely physical, and the
priority of spirit is denied.
Herbert Spencer, Psychology, quoted by Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy,
2:80—“Mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective
faces of the same thing. Yet we remain utterly incapable of
seeing, or even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind still
continues to us a something without kinship to other things.”
Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, quoted by Talbot, Bap. Quar., Jan.
1871:5—“All that I know of matter and mind in themselves is that
the former is an external centre of force, and the latter an
internal centre of force.” New Englander, Sept. 1883:636—“If the
atom be a mere centre of force and not a real thing in itself,
then the atom is a supersensual essence, an immaterial being. To
make immaterial matter the source of conscious mind is to make
matter as wonderful as an immortal soul or a personal Creator.”
See New Englander, July, 1875:532-535; Martineau, Study, 102-130,
and Relig. and Mod. Materialism, 25—“If it takes mind to construe
the universe, how can the negation of mind constitute it?”
David J. Hill, in his Genetic Philosophy, 200, 201, seems to deny
that thought precedes force, or that force precedes thought:
“Objects, or things in the external world, may be elements of a
thought-process in a cosmic subject, without themselves being
conscious.... A true analysis and a rational genesis require the
equal recognition of both the objective and the subjective
elements of experience, without priority in time, separation in
space or disruption of being. So far as our minds can penetrate
reality, as disclosed in the activities of thought, we are
everywhere confronted with a Dynamic Reason.” In Dr. Hill’s
account of the genesis of the universe, however, the unconscious
comes first, and from it the conscious seems to be derived.
Consciousness of the object is only the obverse side of the object
of consciousness. This is, as Martineau, Study, 1:341, remarks,
“to take the sea on board the boat.” We greatly prefer the view of
Lotze, 2:641—“Things are acts of the Infinite wrought within minds
alone, or states which the Infinite experiences nowhere but in
minds.... Things and events are the sum of those actions which the
highest Principle performs in all spirits so uniformly and
coherently, that to these spirits there must seem to be a world of
substantial and efficient things existing in space outside
themselves.” The data from which we draw our inferences as to the
nature of the external world being mental and spiritual, it is
more rational to attribute to that world a spiritual reality than
a kind of reality of which our experience knows nothing. See also
Schurman, Belief in God, 208, 225.
4. In so far as this theory holds the underlying force of which matter and
mind are manifestations to be in any sense intelligent or voluntary, it
renders necessary the assumption that there is an intelligent and
voluntary Being who exerts this force. Sensations and ideas, moreover, are
explicable only as manifestations of Mind.
Many recent Christian thinkers, as Murphy, Scientific Bases of
Faith, 13-15, 29-36, 42-52, would define mind as a function of
matter, matter as a function of force, force as a function of
will, and therefore as the power of an omnipresent and personal
God. All force, except that of man’s free will, is the will of
God. So Herschel, Lectures, 460; Argyll, Reign of Law, 121-127;
Wallace on Nat. Selection, 363-371; Martineau, Essays, 1:63, 121,
145, 265; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 146-162. These writers are
led to their conclusion in large part by the considerations that
nothing dead can be a proper cause; that will is the only cause of
which we have immediate knowledge; that the forces of nature are
intelligible only when they are regarded as exertions of will.
Matter, therefore, is simply centres of force—the regular and, as
it were, automatic expression of God’s mind and will. Second
causes in nature are only secondary activities of the great First
Cause.
This view is held also by Bowne, in his Metaphysics. He regards
only personality as real. Matter is phenomenal, although it is an
activity of the divine will outside of us. Bowne’s phenomenalism
is therefore an objective idealism, greatly preferable to that of
Berkeley who held to God’s energizing indeed, but only within the
soul. This idealism of Bowne is not pantheism, for it holds that,
while there are no second causes in nature, man is a second cause,
with a personality distinct from that of God, and lifted above
nature by his powers of free will. Royce, however, in his
Religious Aspect of Philosophy, and in his The World and the
Individual, makes man’s consciousness a part or aspect of a
universal consciousness, and so, instead of making God come to
consciousness in man, makes man come to consciousness in God.
While this scheme seems, in one view, to save God’s personality,
it may be doubted whether it equally guarantees man’s personality
or leaves room for man’s freedom, responsibility, sin and guilt.
Bowne, Philos. Theism, 175—“ ‘Universal reason’ is a class-term
which denotes no possible existence, and which has reality only in
the specific existences from which it is abstracted.” Bowne claims
that the impersonal finite has only such otherness as a thought or
act has to its subject. There is no substantial existence except
in persons. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Neo-Kantianism
erects into a God the mere form of self-consciousness in general,
that is, confounds consciousness _überhaupt_ with a _universal_
consciousness.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 318-343, esp. 328—“Is
there anything in existence but myself? Yes. To escape solipsism I
must admit at least other persons. Does the world of apparent
objects exist for me only? No; it exists for others also, so that
we live in a common world. Does this common world consist in
anything more than a similarity of impressions in finite minds, so
that the world apart from these is nothing? This view cannot be
disproved, but it accords so ill with the impression of our total
experience that it is practically impossible. Is then the world of
things a continuous existence of some kind independent of finite
thought and consciousness? This claim cannot be demonstrated, but
it is the only view that does not involve insuperable
difficulties. What is the nature and where is the place of this
cosmic existence? That is the question between Realism and
Idealism. Realism views things as existing in a real space, and as
true ontological realities. Idealism views both them and the space
in which they are supposed to be existing as existing only in and
for a cosmic Intelligence, and apart from which they are absurd
and contradictory. Things are independent of _our_ thought, but
not independent of _all_ thought, in a lumpish materiality which
is the antithesis and negation of consciousness.” See also
Martineau, Study, 1:214-230, 341. For advocacy of the substantive
existence of second causes, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 582-588;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:596; Alden, Philosophy, 48-80; Hodgson,
Time and Space, 149-218; A. J. Balfour, in Mind, Oct. 1893: 430.
III. Idealistic Pantheism.
Pantheism is that method of thought which conceives of the universe as the
development of one intelligent and voluntary, yet impersonal, substance,
which reaches consciousness only in man. It therefore identifies God, not
with each individual object in the universe, but with the totality of
things. The current Pantheism of our day is idealistic.
The elements of truth in Pantheism are the intelligence and voluntariness
of God, and his immanence in the universe; its error lies in denying God’s
personality and transcendence.
Pantheism denies the real existence of the finite, at the same
time that it deprives the Infinite of self-consciousness and
freedom. See Hunt, History of Pantheism; Manning, Half-truths and
the Truth; Bayne, Christian Life, Social and Individual, 21-53;
Hutton, on Popular Pantheism, in Essays, 1:55-76—“The pantheist’s
‘I believe in God’, is a contradiction. He says: ‘I perceive the
external as different from myself; but on further reflection, I
perceive that this external was itself the percipient agency.’ So
the worshiped is really the worshiper after all.” Harris,
Philosophical Basis of Theism, 173—“Man is a bottle of the ocean’s
water, in the ocean, temporarily distinguishable by its limitation
within the bottle, but lost again in the ocean, so soon as these
fragile limits are broken.” Martineau, Types, 1:23—Mere immanency
excludes Theism; transcendency leaves it still possible;
211-225—Pantheism declares that “there is nothing but God; he is
not only sole cause but entire effect; he is all in all.” Spinoza
has been falsely called “the God-intoxicated man.” “Spinoza, on
the contrary, translated God into the universe; it was Malebranche
who transfigured the universe into God.”
The later Brahmanism is pantheistic. Rowland Williams,
Christianity and Hinduism, quoted in Mozley on Miracles, 284—“In
the final state personality vanishes. You will not, says the
Brahman, accept the term ‘void’ as an adequate description of the
mysterious nature of the soul, but you will clearly apprehend
soul, in the final state, to be unseen and ungrasped being,
thought, knowledge, joy—no other than very God.” Flint, Theism,
69—“Where the will is without energy, and rest is longed for as
the end of existence, as among the Hindus, there is marked
inability to think of God as cause or will, and constant
inveterate tendency to pantheism.”
Hegel denies God’s transcendence: “God is not a spirit beyond the
stars; he is spirit in all spirit”; which means that God, the
impersonal and unconscious Absolute, comes to consciousness only
in man. If the eternal system of abstract thoughts were itself
conscious, finite consciousness would disappear; hence the
alternative is either _no God_, or _no man_. Stirling: “The Idea,
so conceived, is a blind, dumb, invisible idol, and the theory is
the most hopeless theory that has ever been presented to
humanity.” It is practical autolatry, or self-deification. The
world is reduced to a mere process of logic; thought thinks; there
is thought without a thinker. To this doctrine of Hegel we may
well oppose the remarks of Lotze: “We cannot make mind the
equivalent of the infinitive _to think_,—we feel that it must be
that which thinks; the essence of things cannot be either
existence or activity,—it must be that which exists and that which
acts. Thinking means nothing, if it is not the thinking of a
thinker; acting and working mean nothing, if we leave out the
conception of a subject distinguishable from them and from which
they proceed.” To Hegel, Being _is_ Thought; to Spinoza, Being
_has_ Thought + Extension; the truth seems to be that Being _has_
Thought + Will, and _may_ reveal itself in Extension and Evolution
(Creation).
By other philosophers, however, Hegel is otherwise interpreted.
Prof. H. Jones, in Mind, July, 1893: 289-306, claims that Hegel’s
fundamental Idea is not Thought, but Thinking: “The universe to
him was not a system of thoughts, but a thinking reality,
manifested most fully in man.... The fundamental reality is the
universal intelligence whose operation we should seek to detect in
all things. All reality is ultimately explicable as Spirit, or
Intelligence,—hence our ontology must be a Logic, and the laws of
things must be laws of thinking.” Sterrett, in like manner, in his
Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, 17, quotes Hegel’s
Logic, Wallace’s translation, 89, 91, 236: “Spinoza’s _Substance_
is, as it were, a dark, shapeless abyss, which devours all
definite content as utterly null, and produces from itself nothing
that has positive subsistence in itself.... God is Substance,—he
is, however, no less the Absolute Person.” This is essential to
religion, but this, says Hegel, Spinoza never perceived:
“Everything depends upon the Absolute Truth being perceived, not
merely as Substance, but as Subject.” God is self-conscious and
self-determining Spirit. Necessity is excluded. Man is free and
immortal. Men are not mechanical parts of God, nor do they lose
their identity, although they _find themselves_ truly only in him.
With this estimate of Hegel’s system, Caird, Erdmann and Mulford
substantially agree. This is Tennyson’s “Higher Pantheism.”
Seth, Ethical Principles, 440—“Hegel conceived the superiority of
his system to Spinozism to lie in the substitution of Subject for
Substance. The true Absolute must contain, instead of abolishing,
relations; the true Monism must include, instead of excluding,
Pluralism. A One which, like Spinoza’s Substance, or the Hegelian
Absolute, does not enable us to think the Many, cannot be the true
One—the unity of the Manifold.... Since evil exists, Schopenhauer
substituted for Hegel’s Panlogism, which asserted the identity of
the rational and the real, a blind impulse of life,—for absolute
Reason he substituted a reasonless Will”—a system of practical
pessimism. Alexander, Theories of Will, 5—“Spinoza recognized no
distinction between will and intellectual affirmation or denial.”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:107—“As there is no
reason in the conception of pure space why any figures or forms,
lines, surfaces, solids, should arise in it, so there is no reason
in the pure colorless abstraction of Infinite Substance why any
world of finite things and beings should ever come into existence.
It is the grave of all things, the productive source of nothing.”
Hegel called Schelling’s Identity or Absolute “the infinite night
in which all cows are black”—an allusion to Goethe’s Faust, part
2, act 1, where the words are added: “and cats are gray.” Although
Hegel’s preference of the term Subject, instead of the term
Substance, has led many to maintain that he believed in a
personality of God distinct from that of man, his over-emphasis of
the Idea, and his comparative ignoring of the elements of Love and
Will, leave it still doubtful whether his Idea was anything more
than unconscious and impersonal intelligence—less materialistic
than that of Spinoza indeed, yet open to many of the same
objections.
We object to this system as follows:
1. Its idea of God is self-contradictory, since it makes him infinite, yet
consisting only of the finite; absolute, yet existing in necessary
relation to the universe; supreme, yet shut up to a process of
self-evolution and dependent for self-consciousness on man; without
self-determination, yet the cause of all that is.
Saisset, Pantheism, 148—“An imperfect God, yet perfection arising
from imperfection.” Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:13—“Pantheism applies
to God a principle of growth and imperfection, which belongs only
to the finite.” Calderwood, Moral Philos., 245—“Its first
requisite is moment, or movement, which it assumes, but does not
account for.” Caro’s sarcasm applies here: “Your God is not yet
made—he is in process of manufacture.” See H. B. Smith, Faith and
Philosophy, 25. Pantheism is practical atheism, for impersonal
spirit is only blind and necessary force. Angelus Silesius: “Wir
beten ‘Es gescheh, mein Herr und Gott, dein Wille’; Und sieh’, Er
hat nicht Will’,—Er ist ein ew’ge Stille”—which Max Müller
translates as follows: “We pray, ‘O Lord our God, Do thou thy holy
Will’; and see! God has no will; He is at peace and still.”
Angelus Silesius consistently makes God dependent for
self-consciousness on man: “I know that God cannot live An instant
without me; He must give up the ghost, If I should cease to be.”
Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Hegelianism destroys both God
and man. It reduces man to an object of the universal Thinker, and
leaves this universal Thinker without any true personality.”
Pantheism is a game of solitaire, in which God plays both sides.
2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it
directly contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are
not parts and particles of God, but distinct personal subsistences.
Martineau, Essays, 1:158—“Even for immanency, there must be
something wherein to dwell, and for life, something whereon to
act.” Many systems of monism contradict consciousness; they
confound harmony between two with absorption in one. “In Scripture
we never find the universe called τὸ πᾶν, for this suggests the
idea of a self-contained unity: we have everywhere τὰ πάντα
instead.” The Bible recognizes the element of truth in
pantheism—God is “_through all_”; also the element of truth in
mysticism—God is “_in you all_”; but it adds the element of
transcendence which both these fail to recognize—God is “above
all”_ (Eph. 4:6)_. See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of
Christianity, 539. G. D. B. Pepper: “He who is over all and in all
is yet distinct from all. If one is over a thing, he is not that
very thing which he is over. If one is in something, he must be
distinct from that something. And so the universe, over which and
in which God is, must be thought of as something distinct from
God. The creation cannot be identical with God, or a mere form of
God.” We add, however, that it may be a manifestation of God and
dependent upon God, as our thoughts and acts are manifestations of
our mind and will and dependent upon our mind and will, yet are
not themselves our mind and will.
Pope wrote: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body
nature is and God the soul.” But Case, Physical Realism, 193,
replies: “Not so. Nature is to God as works are to a man; and as
man’s works are not his body, so neither is nature the body of
God.” Matthew Arnold, On Heine’s Grave: “What are we all but a
mood, A single mood of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who
alone is all things in one?” Hovey, Studies, 51—“Scripture
recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, but it also teaches
the existence of a world of things, animate and inanimate, in
distinction from God. It represents men as prone to worship the
creature more than the Creator. It describes them as sinners
worthy of death ... moral agents.... It no more thinks of men as
being literally parts of God, than it thinks of children as being
parts of their parents, or subjects as being parts of their king.”
A. J. F. Behrends: “The true doctrine lies between the two
extremes of a crass dualism which makes God and the world two
self-contained entities, and a substantial monism in which the
universe has only a phenomenal existence. There is no identity of
substance nor division of the divine substance. The universe is
eternally dependent, the product of the divine _Word_, not simply
_manufactured_. Creation is primarily a spiritual act.” Prof.
George M. Forbes: “Matter exists in subordinate dependence upon
God; spirit in coördinate dependence upon God. The body of Christ
was Christ externalized, made manifest to sense-perception. In
apprehending matter, I am apprehending the mind and will of God.
This is the highest sort of reality. Neither matter nor finite
spirits, then, are mere phenomena.”
3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is
highest in rank, and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the
existence of personal intelligences. A substance which is itself
unconscious, and under the law of necessity, cannot produce beings who are
self-conscious and free.
Gess, Foundations of our Faith, 36—“Animal instinct, and the
spirit of a nation working out its language, might furnish
analogies, if they produced personalities as their result, but not
otherwise. Nor were these tendencies self-originated, but received
from an external source.” McCosh, Intuitions, 215, 393, and
Christianity and Positivism, 180. Seth, Freedom as an Ethical
Postulate, 47—“If man is an ‘imperium in imperio,’ not a person,
but only an aspect or expression of the universe or God, then he
cannot be free. Man may be depersonalized either into nature or
into God. Through the conception of our own personality we reach
that of God. To resolve our personality into that of God would be
to negate the divine greatness itself by invalidating the
conception through which it was reached.” Bradley, Appearance and
Reality, 551, is more ambiguous: “The positive relation of every
appearance as an adjective to Reality; and the presence of Reality
among its appearances in different degrees and with diverse
values; this double truth we have found to be the centre of
philosophy.” He protests against both “an empty transcendence” and
“a shallow pantheism.” Hegelian immanence and knowledge, he
asserts, identified God and man. But God is more than man or man’s
thought. He is spirit and life—best understood from the human
_self_, with its thoughts, feelings, volitions. Immanence needs to
be qualified by transcendence. “God is not God till he has become
all-in-all, and a God which is all-in-all is not the God of
religion. God is an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance
of the Absolute.” Bradley’s Absolute, therefore, is not so much
personal as super-personal; to which we reply with Jackson, James
Martineau, 416—“Higher than personality is lower; beyond it is
regression from its height. From the equator we may travel
northward, gaining ever higher and higher latitudes; but, if ever
the pole is reached, pressing on from thence will be descending
into lower latitudes, not gaining higher.... Do I say, I am a
pantheist? Then, _ipso facto_, I deny pantheism; for, in the very
assertion of the Ego, I imply all else as objective to me.”
4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious
natures by denying man’s freedom and responsibility; by making God to
include in himself all evil as well as all good; and by precluding all
prayer, worship, and hope of immortality.
Conscience is the eternal witness against pantheism. Conscience
witnesses to our freedom and responsibility, and declares that
moral distinctions are not illusory. Renouf, Hibbert Lect.,
234—“It is only out of condescension to popular language that
pantheistic systems can recognize the notions of right and wrong,
of iniquity and sin. If everything really emanates from God, there
can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have
been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavored to harmonize
these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral
evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled ’Ethica’;
but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of
Euclid.” Hodge, System. Theology, 1:299-330—“Pantheism is
fatalistic. On this theory, duty = pleasure; right = might; sin =
good in the making. Satan, as well as Gabriel, is a
self-development of God. The practical effects of pantheism upon
popular morals and life, wherever it has prevailed, as in Buddhist
India and China, demonstrate its falsehood.” See also Dove, Logic
of the Christian Faith, 118; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,
202; Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:603-615; Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. On
the fact of sin as refuting the pantheistic theory, see Bushnell,
Nature and the Supernat., 140-164.
Wordsworth: “Look up to heaven! the industrious sun Already half
his course hath run; He cannot halt or go astray; But our immortal
spirits may.” President John H. Harris; “You never ask a cyclone’s
opinion of the ten commandments.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
245—“Pantheism makes man an automaton. But how can an automaton
have duties?” Principles of Ethics, 18—“Ethics is defined as the
science of conduct, and the conventions of language are relied
upon to cover up the fact that there is no ‘conduct’ in the case.
If man be a proper automaton, we might as well speak of the
conduct of the winds as of human conduct; and a treatise on
planetary motions is as truly the ethics of the solar system as a
treatise on human movements is the ethics of man.” For lack of a
clear recognition of personality, either human or divine, Hegel’s
Ethics is devoid of all spiritual nourishment,—his
“Rechtsphilosophie” has been called “a repast of bran.” Yet
Professor Jones, in Mind, July, 1893:304, tells us that Hegel’s
task was “to discover what conception of the single principle or
fundamental unity which alone _is_, is adequate to the differences
which it carries within it. ‘_Being_,’ he found, leaves no room
for differences,—it is overpowered by them.... He found that the
Reality can exist only as absolute Self-consciousness, as a
Spirit, who is universal, and who knows himself in all things. In
all this he is dealing, not simply with thoughts, but with
Reality.” Prof. Jones’s vindication of Hegel, however, still
leaves it undecided whether that philosopher regarded the divine
self-consciousness as distinct from that of finite beings, or as
simply inclusive of theirs. See John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
Christianity, 1:109.
5. Our intuitive conviction of the existence of a God of absolute
perfection compels us to conceive of God as possessed of every highest
quality and attribute of men, and therefore, especially, of that which
constitutes the chief dignity of the human spirit, its personality.
Diman, Theistic Argument, 328—“We have no right to represent the
supreme Cause as inferior to ourselves, yet we do this when we
describe it under phrases derived from physical causation.”
Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 351—“We cannot conceive of anything
as impersonal, yet of higher nature than our own,—any being that
has not knowledge and will must be indefinitely inferior to one
who has them.” Lotze holds truly, not that God is
_supra_-personal, but that man is _infra_-personal, seeing that in
the infinite Being alone is self-subsistence, and therefore
perfect personality. Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 224—“The
radical feature of personality is the survival of a permanent
self, under all the fleeting or deciduous phases of experience; in
other words, the personal identity that is involved in the
assertion ‘I am.’... Is limitation a necessary adjunct of that
notion?” Seth, Hegelianism: “As in us there is more _for
ourselves_ than _for others_, so in God there is more of thought
_for himself_ than he manifests _to us_. Hegel’s doctrine is that
of immanence without transcendence.” Heinrich Heine was a pupil
and intimate friend of Hegel. He says: “I was young and proud, and
it pleased my vain-glory when I learned from Hegel that the true
God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God who lived in
heaven, but was rather _myself upon the earth_.” John Fiske, Idea
of God, xvi—“Since our notion of force is purely a generalization
from our subjective sensations of overcoming resistance, there is
scarcely less anthropomorphism in the phrase ‘Infinite Power’ than
in the phrase ‘Infinite Person.’ We must symbolize Deity in some
form that has meaning to us; we cannot symbolize it as physical;
we are bound to symbolize it as psychical. Hence we may say, God
is Spirit. This implies God’s personality.”
6. Its objection to the divine personality, that over against the Infinite
there can be in eternity past no non-ego to call forth self-consciousness,
is refuted by considering that even man’s cognition of the non-ego
logically presupposes knowledge of the ego, from which the non-ego is
distinguished; that, in an absolute mind, self-consciousness cannot be
conditioned, as in the case of finite mind, upon contact with a not-self;
and that, if the distinguishing of self from a not-self were an essential
condition of divine self-consciousness, the eternal personal distinctions
in the divine nature or the eternal states of the divine mind might
furnish such a condition.
Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:163, 190 _sq._—“Personal
self-consciousness is not primarily a distinguishing of the ego
from the non-ego, but rather a distinguishing of itself from
itself, _i. e._, of the unity of the self from the plurality of
its contents.... Before the soul distinguishes self from the
not-self, it must know self—else it could not see the distinction.
Its development is connected with the knowledge of the non-ego,
but this is due, not to the fact of _personality_, but to the fact
of _finite_ personality. The mature man can live for a long time
upon his own resources. God needs no other, to stir him up to
mental activity. Finiteness is a hindrance to the development of
our personality. Infiniteness is necessary to the highest
personality.” Lotze, Microcosmos, vol. 3, chapter 4; transl. in N.
Eng., March, 1881:191-200—“Finite spirit, not having conditions of
existence in itself, can know the ego only upon occasion of
knowing the non-ego. The Infinite is not so limited. He alone has
an independent existence, neither introduced nor developed through
anything not himself, but, in an inward activity without beginning
or end, maintains himself in himself.” See also Lotze, Philos. of
Religion, 55-69; H. N. Gardiner on Lotze, in Presb. Rev.,
1885:669-673; Webb, in Jour. Theol. Studies, 2:49-61.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre: “Absolute Personality = perfect
consciousness of self, and perfect power over self. We need
something external to waken our consciousness—yet
self-consciousness comes [logically] before consciousness of the
world. It is the soul’s act. Only after it has distinguished self
from self, can it consciously distinguish self from another.”
British Quarterly, Jan. 1874:32, note; July, 1884:108—“The ego is
_thinkable_ only in relation to the non-ego; but the ego is
_liveable_ long before any such relation.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:185, 186—In the pantheistic scheme, “God distinguishes himself
from the _world_, and thereby finds the object required by the
subject; ... in the Christian scheme, God distinguishes himself
from _himself_, not from something that is not himself.” See
Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:122-126; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt
and Christ. Belief, 161-190; Hanne, Idee der absoluten
Persönlichkeit; Eichhorn, Die Persönlichkeit Gottes; Seth,
Hegelianism and Personality; Knight, on Personality and the
Infinite, in Studies in Philos. and Lit., 70-118.
On the whole subject of Pantheism, see Martineau, Study of
Religion, 2:141-194, esp. 192—“The _personality_ of God consists
in his voluntary agency as free cause in an unpledged sphere, that
is, a sphere transcending that of immanent law. But precisely this
also it is that constitutes his _infinity_, extending his sway,
after it has filled the actual, over all the possible, and giving
command over indefinite alternatives. Though you might deny his
infinity without prejudice to his personality, you cannot deny his
personality without sacrificing his infinitude: for there is a
mode of action—the _preferential_, the very mode which
distinguishes rational beings—from which you exclude him”;
341—“The metaphysicians who, in their impatience of distinction,
insist on taking the sea on board the boat, swamp not only it but
the thought it holds, and leave an infinitude which, as it can
look into no eye and whisper into no ear, they contradict in the
very act of affirming.” Jean Paul Richter’s “Dream”: “I wandered
to the farthest verge of Creation, and there I saw a _Socket_,
where an _Eye_ should have been, and I heard the shriek of a
Fatherless World” (quoted in David Brown’s Memoir of John Duncan,
49-70). Shelley, Beatrice Cenci: “Sweet Heaven, forgive weak
thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth, in the
void world—The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!”
For the opposite view, see Biedermann, Dogmatik, 638-647—“Only
man, as finite spirit, is personal; God, as absolute spirit, is
not personal. Yet in religion the mutual relations of intercourse
and communion are always personal.... Personality is the only
adequate term by which we can represent the theistic conception of
God.” Bruce, Providential Order, 76—“Schopenhauer does not level
up cosmic force to the human, but levels down human will-force to
the cosmic. Spinoza held intellect in God to be no more like man’s
than the dog-star is like a dog. Hartmann added intellect to
Schopenhauer’s will, but the intellect is unconscious and knows no
moral distinctions.” See also Bruce, Apologetics, 71-90; Bowne,
Philos. of Theism, 128-134, 171-186; J. M. Whiton, Am. Jour.
Theol., Apl. 1901:306—Pantheism = God consists in all things;
Theism = All things consist in God, their ground, not their sum.
Spirit in man shows that the infinite Spirit must be personal and
transcendent Mind and Will.
IV. Ethical Monism.
Ethical Monism is that method of thought which holds to a single
substance, ground, or principle of being, namely, God, but which also
holds to the ethical facts of God’s transcendence as well as his
immanence, and of God’s personality as distinct from, and as guaranteeing,
the personality of man.
Although we do not here assume the authority of the Bible,
reserving our proof of this to the next following division on The
Scriptures a Revelation from God, we may yet cite passages which
show that our doctrine is not inconsistent with the teachings of
holy Writ. The immanence of God is implied in all statements of
his omnipresence, as for example: _Ps. 139:7 sq.—_“Whither shall I
go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
_Jer. 23:23, 24—_“Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God
afar off?... Do not I fill heaven and earth?” _Acts 17:27, 28—_“he
is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and
have our being.” The transcendence of God is implied in such
passages as: _1 Kings 8:27—_“the heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain thee”; _Ps. 113:5—_“that hath his seat on high”;
_Is. 57:15—_“the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.”
This is the faith of Augustine: “O God, thou hast made us for
thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in thee.... I
could not be, O my God, could not be at all, wert thou not in me;
rather, were not I in thee, of whom are all things, by whom are
all things, in whom are all things.” And Anselm, in his
Proslogion, says of the divine nature: “It is the essence of the
being, the principle of the existence, of all things.... Without
parts, without differences, without accidents, without changes, it
might be said in a certain sense alone to exist, for in respect to
it the other things which appear to be have no existence. The
unchangeable Spirit is all that is, and it is this without limit,
simply, interminably. It is the perfect and absolute Existence.
The rest has come from non-entity, and thither returns if not
supported by God. It does not exist by itself. In this sense the
Creator alone exists; created things do not.”
1. While Ethical Monism embraces the one element of truth contained in
Pantheism—the truth that God is in all things and that all things are in
God—it regards this scientific unity as entirely consistent with the facts
of ethics—man’s freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt; in other words,
Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of one substance, ground, or
principle of being, is qualified by Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine
that the soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand, and from
God on the other.
Ethical Monism is a monism which holds to the ethical facts of the
freedom of man and the transcendence and personality of God; it is
the monism of free-will, in which personality, both human and
divine, sin and righteousness, God and the world, remain—two in
one, and one in two—in their moral antithesis as well as their
natural unity. Ladd, Introd. to Philosophy: “Dualism is yielding,
in history and in the judgment-halls of reason, to a monistic
philosophy.... Some form of philosophical monism is indicated by
the researches of psycho-physics, and by that philosophy of mind
which builds upon the principles ascertained by these researches.
Realities correlated as are the body and the mind must have, as it
were, a common ground.... They have their reality in the ultimate
one Reality; they have their interrelated lives as expressions of
the one Life which is immanent in the two.... Only some form of
monism that shall satisfy the facts and truths to which both
realism and idealism appeal can occupy the place of the true and
final philosophy.... Monism must so construct its tenets as to
preserve, or at least as not to contradict and destroy, the truths
implicated in the distinction between the _me_ and the _not-me_,
... between the morally good and the morally evil. No form of
monism can persistently maintain itself which erects its system
upon the ruins of fundamentally ethical principles and ideals.”...
Philosophy of Mind, 411—“Dualism must be dissolved in some
ultimate monistic solution. The Being of the world, of which all
particular beings are but parts, must be so conceived of as that
in it can be found the one ground of all interrelated existences
and activities.... This one Principle is an Other and an Absolute
Mind.”
Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, II, 3:101, 231—“The unity of
essence in God and man is the great discovery of the present
age.... The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is
the endeavor to point out the essential unity of the divine and
human. To the theology of the present day, the divine and human
are not mutually exclusive, but are connected magnitudes.... Yet
faith postulates a difference between the world and God, between
whom religion seeks an union. Faith does not wish to be a relation
merely to itself, or to its own representations and thoughts; that
would be a monologue,—faith desires a dialogue. Therefore it does
not consort with a monism which recognizes only God, or only the
world; it opposes such a monism as this. Duality is, in fact, a
condition of true and vital unity. But duality is not dualism. It
has no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity.” Professor
Small of Chicago: “With rare exceptions on each side, all
philosophy to-day is monistic in its ontological presumptions; it
is dualistic in its methodological procedures.” A. H. Bradford,
Age of Faith, 71—“Men and God are the same in substance, though
not identical as individuals.” The theology of fifty years ago was
merely individualistic, and ignored the complementary truth of
solidarity. Similarly we think of the continents and islands of
our globe as disjoined from one another. The dissociable sea is
regarded as an absolute barrier between them. But if the ocean
could be dried, we should see that all the while there had been
submarine connections, and the hidden unity of all lands would
appear. So the individuality of human beings, real as it is, is
not the only reality. There is the profounder fact of a common
life. Even the great mountain-peaks of personality are superficial
distinctions, compared with the organic oneness in which they are
rooted, into which they all dip down, and from which they all,
like volcanoes, receive at times quick and overflowing impulses of
insight, emotion and energy; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation
and Ethical Monism, 189, 190.
2. In contrast then with the two errors of Pantheism—the denial of God’s
transcendence and the denial of God’s personality—Ethical Monism holds
that the universe, instead of being one with God and conterminous with
God, is but a finite, partial and progressive manifestation of the divine
Life: Matter being God’s self-limitation under the law of Necessity;
Humanity being God’s self-limitation under the law of Freedom; Incarnation
and Atonement being God’s self-limitations under the law of Grace.
The universe is related to God as my thoughts are related to me,
the thinker. I am greater than my thoughts, and my thoughts vary
in moral value. Ethical Monism traces the universe back to a
beginning, while Pantheism regards the universe as coëternal with
God. Ethical Monism asserts God’s transcendence, while Pantheism
regards God as imprisoned in the universe. Ethical Monism asserts
that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, but that
contrariwise the whole universe taken together, with its elements
and forces, its suns and systems, is but a light breath from his
mouth, or a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. Upton,
Hibbert Lectures: “The Eternal is present in every finite thing,
and is felt and known to be present in every rational soul; but
still is not broken up into individualities, but ever remains one
and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying
principle, immanently and indivisibly present in every one of that
countless plurality of finite individuals into which man’s
analyzing understanding dissects the Cosmos.” James Martineau, in
19th Century, Apl. 1895:559—“What is Nature but the province of
God’s pledged and habitual causality? And what is Spirit, but the
province of his free causality, responding to the needs and
affections of his children?... God is not a retired architect, who
may now and then be called in for repairs. Nature is not
self-active, and God’s agency is not intrusive.” Calvin: Pie hoc
potest dici, Deum esse Naturam.
With this doctrine many poets show their sympathy. “Every fresh
and new creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God
proceeds.” Robert Browning asserts God’s immanence;
Hohenstiel-Schwangau: “This is the glory that, in all conceived Or
felt, or known, I recognize a Mind—Not mine, but like mine—for the
double joy, Making all things for me, and me for him”; Ring and
Book, Pope: “O thou, as represented to me here In such conception
as my soul allows—Under thy measureless, my atom-width! Man’s
mind, what is it but a convex glass, Wherein are gathered all the
scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite
there, be our heaven for earth, Our Known Unknown, our God
revealed to man?” But Browning also asserts God’s transcendence:
in Death in the Desert, we read: “Man is not God, but hath God’s
end to serve, A Master to obey, a Cause to take, Somewhat to cast
off, somewhat to become”; in Christmas Eve, the poet derides “The
important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one
with the Creator”; he tells us that it was God’s plan to make man
in his image: “To create man, and then leave him Able, his own
word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him too, As a mere
machine could never do That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its
fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of
course.... God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands
away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly
made to live And look at him from a place apart And use his gifts
of brain and heart”; “Life’s business being just the terrible
choice.”
So Tennyson’s Higher Pantheism: “The sun, the moon, the stars, the
seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O soul, the vision
of Him who reigns? Dark is the world to thee; thou thyself art the
reason why; For is not He all but thou, that hast power to feel ‘I
am I’? Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit
can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and
feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot
see; But if we could see and hear, this vision—were it not He?”
Also Tennyson’s Ancient Sage: “But that one ripple on the
boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
Forever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion
of the deep”; and In Memoriam: “One God, one law, one element, And
one far-off divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves.”
Emerson: “The day of days, the greatest day in the feast of life,
is that in which the inward eye opens to the unity of things”; “In
the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings.” Mrs.
Browning: “Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush
afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” So
manhood is itself potentially a divine thing. All life, in all its
vast variety, can have but one Source. It is either one God, above
all, through all, and in all, or it is no God at all. E. M.
Poteat, On Chesapeake Bay: “Night’s radiant glory overhead, A
softer glory there below, Deep answered unto deep, and said: A
kindred fire in us doth glow. For life is one—of sea and stars, Of
God and man, of earth and heaven—And by no theologic bars Shall my
scant life from God’s be riven.” See Professor Henry Jones, Robert
Browning.
3. The immanence of God, as the one substance, ground and principle of
being, does not destroy, but rather guarantees, the individuality and
rights of each portion of the universe, so that there is variety of rank
and endowment. In the case of moral beings, worth is determined by the
degree of their voluntary recognition and appropriation of the divine.
While God is all, he is also in all; so making the universe a graded and
progressive manifestation of himself, both in his love for righteousness
and his opposition to moral evil.
It has been charged that the doctrine of monism necessarily
involves moral indifference; that the divine presence in all
things breaks down all distinctions of rank and makes each thing
equal to every other; that the evil as well as the good is
legitimated and consecrated. Of pantheistic monism all this is
true,—it is not true of ethical monism; for ethical monism is the
monism that recognizes the ethical fact of personal intelligence
and will in both God and man, and with these God’s purpose in
making the universe a varied manifestation of himself. The worship
of cats and bulls and crocodiles in ancient Egypt, and the
deification of lust in the Brahmanic temples of India, were
expressions of a non-ethical monism, which saw in God no moral
attributes, and which identified God with his manifestations. As
an illustration of the mistakes into which the critics of monism
may fall for lack of discrimination between monism that is
pantheistic and monism that is ethical, we quote from Emma Marie
Caillard: “Integral parts of God are, on monistic premises, liars,
sensualists, murderers, evil livers and evil thinkers of every
description. Their crimes and their passions enter intrinsically
into the divine experience. The infinite Individual in his
wholeness may reject them indeed, but none the less are these evil
finite individuals constituent parts of him, even as the twigs of
a tree, though they are not the tree, and though the tree
transcends any or all of them, are yet constituent parts of it.
Can he whose universal consciousness includes and defines all
finite consciousnesses be other than responsible for all finite
actions and motives?”
To this indictment we may reply in the words of Bowne, The Divine
Immanence, 130-133—“Some weak heads have been so heated by the new
wine of immanence as to put all things on the same level, and make
men and mice of equal value. But there is nothing in the
dependence of all things on God to remove their distinctions of
value. One confused talker of this type was led to say that he had
no trouble with the notion of a divine man, as he believed in a
divine oyster. Others have used the doctrine to cancel moral
differences; for if God be in all things, and if all things
represent his will, then whatever is is right. But this too is
hasty. Of course even the evil will is not independent of God, but
lives and moves and has its being in and through the divine. But
through its mysterious power of selfhood and self-determination
the evil will is able to assume an attitude of hostility to the
divine law, which forthwith vindicates itself by appropriate
reactions.
“These reactions are not divine in the highest or ideal sense.
They represent nothing which God desires or in which he delights;
but they are divine in the sense that they are things to be done
under the circumstances. The divine reaction in the case of the
good is distinct from the divine reaction against evil. Both are
divine as representing God’s action, but only the former is divine
in the sense of representing God’s approval and sympathy. All
things serve, said Spinoza. The good serve, and are furthered by
their service. The bad also serve and are used up in the serving.
According to Jonathan Edwards, the wicked are useful ‘in being
acted upon and disposed of.’ As ‘vessels of dishonor’ they may
reveal the majesty of God. There is nothing therefore in the
divine immanence, in its only tenable form, to cancel moral
distinctions or to minify retribution. The divine reaction against
iniquity is even more solemn in this doctrine. The besetting God
is the eternal and unescapable environment; and only as we are in
harmony with him can there be any peace.... What God thinks of
sin, and what his will is concerning it can be plainly seen in the
natural consequences which attend it.... In law itself we are face
to face with God; and natural consequences have a supernatural
meaning.”
4. Since Christ is the Logos of God, the immanent God, God revealed in
Nature, in Humanity, in Redemption, Ethical Monism recognizes the universe
as created, upheld, and governed by the same Being who in the course of
history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by
his death on Calvary. The secret of the universe and the key to its
mysteries are to be found in the Cross.
_John 1:1-4 (marg.), 14, 18—_“In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without
him was not any thing made. That which hath been made was life in
him; and the life was the light of men.... And the Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us.... No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.” _Col. 1:16, 17—_“for in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him;
and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.” _Heb.
1:2, 3—_“his Son ... through whom also he made the worlds ...
upholding all things by the word of his power”; _Eph. 1:22,
23—_“the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that
filleth all in all” = fills all things with all that they contain
of truth, beauty, and goodness; _Col. 2:2, 3, 9—_“the mystery of
God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge hidden ... for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.”
This view of the relation of the universe to God lays the
foundation for a Christian application of recent philosophical
doctrine. Matter is no longer blind and dead, but is spiritual in
its nature, not in the sense that it _is_ spirit, but in the sense
that it is the continual _manifestation_ of spirit, just as my
thoughts are a living and continual manifestation of myself. Yet
matter does not consist simply in _ideas_, for ideas, deprived of
an external object and of an internal subject, are left suspended
in the air. Ideas are the product of Mind. But matter is known
only as the operation of force, and force is the product of Will.
Since this force works in rational ways, it can be the product
only of Spirit. The system of forces which we call the universe is
the immediate product of the mind and will of God; and, since
Christ is the mind and will of God in exercise, Christ is the
Creator and Upholder of the universe. Nature is the omnipresent
Christ, manifesting God to creatures.
Christ is the principle of cohesion, attraction, interaction, not
only in the physical universe, but in the intellectual and moral
universe as well. In all our knowing, the knower and known are
“connected by some Being who is their reality,” and this being is
Christ, “the Light which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. We
_know_ in Christ, just as “in him we live, and move, and have our
being”_ (Acts 17:28)_. As the attraction of gravitation and the
principle of evolution are only other names for Christ, so he is
the basis of inductive reasoning and the ground of moral unity in
the creation. I am bound to love my neighbor as myself because he
has in him the same life that is in me, the life of God in Christ.
The Christ in whom all humanity is created, and in whom all
humanity consists, holds together the moral universe, drawing all
men to himself and so drawing them to God. Through him God
“reconciles all things unto himself ... whether things upon the
earth, or things in the heavens”_ (Col. 1:20)_.
As Pantheism = exclusive immanence = God imprisoned, so Deism =
exclusive transcendence = God banished. Ethical Monism holds to
the truth contained in each of these systems, while avoiding their
respective errors. It furnishes the basis for a new interpretation
of many theological as well as of many philosophical doctrines. It
helps our understanding of the Trinity. If within the bounds of
God’s being there can exist multitudinous finite personalities, it
becomes easier to comprehend how within those same bounds there
can be three eternal and infinite personalities,—indeed, the
integration of plural consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine
consciousness may find a valid analogy in the integration of
subordinate consciousnesses in the unit-personality of man; see
Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, 53, 54.
Ethical Monism, since it is ethical, leaves room for human wills
and for their freedom. While man could never break the natural
bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond
and introduce into creation a principle of discord and evil. Tie a
cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger,
diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. So there
has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power,
spiritually to isolate himself from God while yet he is naturally
joined to God. As humanity is created in Christ and lives only in
Christ, man’s self-isolation is his moral separation from Christ.
Simon, Redemption of Man, 339—“Rejecting Christ is not so much
refusal to _become_ one with Christ as it is refusal to _remain_
one with him, refusal to let him be our life.” All men are
naturally one with Christ by physical birth, before they become
morally one with him by spiritual birth. They may set themselves
against him and may oppose him forever. This our Lord intimates,
when he tells us that there are natural branches of Christ, which
do not “abide in the vine” or “bear fruit,” and so are “cast
forth,” “withered,” and “burned”_ (John 15:4-6)_.
Ethical Monism, however, since it is Monism, enables us to
understand the principle of the Atonement. Though God’s holiness
binds him to punish sin, the Christ who has joined himself to the
sinner must share the sinner’s punishment. He who is the life of
humanity must take upon his own heart the burden of shame and
penalty that belongs to his members. Tie the cord about your
finger; not only the finger suffers pain, but also the heart; the
life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to
untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member.
Humanity is bound to Christ, as the finger to the body. Since
human nature is one of the “all things” that “consist” or hold
together in Christ (_Col 1:17_), and man’s sin is a
self-perversion of a part of Christ’s own body, the whole must be
injured by the self-inflicted injury of the part, and “it must
needs be that Christ should suffer”_ (Acts 17:3)_. Simon,
Redemption of Man, 321—“If the Logos is the Mediator of the divine
immanence in creation, especially in man; if men are
differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos
is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation—_i.
e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the self-perversion of
these human differentiations react on him who is their
constitutive principle?” A more full explanation of the relations
of Ethical Monism to other doctrines must be reserved to our
separate treatment of the Trinity, Creation, Sin, Atonement,
Regeneration. Portions of the subject are treated by Upton,
Hibbert Lectures; Le Conte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 43-50;
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 297-301, 311-317, and
Immanence of God, 5-32, 116-153; Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge,
574-590, and Theory of Reality, 525-529; Edward Caird, Evolution
of Religion, 2:48; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:258-283;
Göschel, quoted in Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:170. An
attempt has been made to treat the whole subject by A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1-86, 141-162, 166-180,
186-208.
PART III. THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD.
Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.
I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.
1. _Needs of man’s nature._ Man’s intellectual and moral nature requires,
in order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its
moral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of
religious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its
present state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The
proof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical.
A. Psychological proof.—(_a_) Neither reason nor intuition throws light
upon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us;
for example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal
existence after death. (_b_) Even the truth to which we arrive by our
natural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses
minds and wills perverted by sin. (_c_) To break this power of sin, and to
furnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the
merciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature.
(_a_) Bremen Lectures, 72, 73; Plato, Second Alcibiades, 22, 23;
Phædo, 85—λόγου θείου τινός. Iamblicus, περὶ τοῦ Πυθαγορικοῦ βίου,
chap. 28. Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, shows how completely reason
and intuition failed to supply the knowledge of God which man
needs: “Renown is loud,” he says, “and not to lose one’s senses is
God’s greatest gift.... The being praised outrageously Is grave;
for at the eyes of such a one Is launched, from Zeus, the
thunder-stone. Therefore do I decide For so much and no more
prosperity Than of his envy passes unespied.” Though the gods
might have favorites, they did not love men as men, but rather,
envied and hated them. William James, Is Life Worth Living? in
Internat. Jour. Ethics, Oct. 1895:10—“All we know of good and
beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less all we know of
evil.... To such a harlot we owe no moral allegiance.... If there
be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her,
cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no
Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed
there; and, as all the higher religions have assumed, what we call
visible nature, or _this_ world, must be but a veil and
surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen
or _other_ world.”
(_b_) _Versus_ Socrates: Men will do right, if they only know the
right. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:219—“In opposition to the
opinion of Socrates that badness rests upon ignorance, Aristotle
already called the fact to mind that the doing of the good is not
always combined with the knowing of it, seeing that it depends
also on the passions. If badness consisted only in the want of
knowledge, then those who are theoretically most cultivated must
also be morally the best, which no one will venture to assert.” W.
S. Lilly, On Shibboleths: “Ignorance is often held to be the root
of all evil. But mere knowledge cannot transform character. It
cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will
from bad to good. It may turn crime into different channels, and
render it less easy to detect. It does not change man’s natural
propensities or his disposition to gratify them at the expense of
others. Knowledge makes the good man more powerful for good, the
bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it can do.” Gore,
Incarnation, 174—“We must not depreciate the method of argument,
for Jesus and Paul occasionally used it in a Socratic fashion, but
we must recognize that it is not the basis of the Christian system
nor the primary method of Christianity.” Martineau, in Nineteenth
Century, 1:331, 531, and Types, 1:112—“Plato dissolved the idea of
the right into that of the good, and this again was
indistinguishably mingled with that of the true and the
beautiful.” See also Flint, Theism, 305.
(_c_) _Versus_ Thomas Paine: “Natural religion teaches us, without
the possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary or proper
to be known.” Plato, Laws, 9:854, _c_, for substance: “Be good;
but, if you cannot, then kill yourself.” Farrar, Darkness and
Dawn, 75—“Plato says that man will never know God until God has
revealed himself in the guise of suffering man, and that, when all
is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the
universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to
order.” Prometheus, the type of humanity, can never be delivered
“until some god descends for him into the black depths of
Tartarus.” Seneca in like manner teaches that man cannot save
himself. He says: “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God
comes _to_ men, yes, _into_ men.” We are sinful, and God’s
thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways.
Therefore he must make known his thoughts to us, teach us what we
are, what true love is, and what will please him. Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 227—“The inculcation of moral truths can
be successfully effected only in the personal way; ... it demands
the influence of personality; ... the weight of the impression
depends upon the voice and the eye of a teacher.” In other words,
we need not only the exercise of authority, but also the
manifestation of love.
B. Historical proof.—(_a_) The knowledge of moral and religious truth
possessed by nations and ages in which special revelation is unknown is
grossly and increasingly imperfect. (_b_) Man’s actual condition in
ante-Christian times, and in modern heathen lands, is that of extreme
moral depravity. (_c_) With this depravity is found a general conviction
of helplessness, and on the part of some nobler natures, a longing after,
and hope of, aid from above.
Pythagoras: “It is not easy to know [duties], except men were
taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received
them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some
divine means.” Socrates: “Wait with patience, till we know with
certainty how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and man.”
Plato: “We will wait for one, be he a God or an inspired man, to
instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our
eyes.” Disciple of Plato: “Make probability our raft, while we
sail through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe
conveyance, such as some divine communication would be.” Plato
thanked God for three things: first, that he was born a rational
soul; secondly, that he was born a Greek; and, thirdly, that he
lived in the days of Socrates. Yet, with all these advantages, he
had only probability for a raft, on which to navigate strange seas
of thought far beyond his depth, and he longed for “a more sure
word of prophecy”_ (2 Pet. 1:19)_. See references and quotations
in Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 35, and in
Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 156-172, 335-338; Farrar, Seekers
after God; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 187.
2. _Presumption of supply._ What we know of God, by nature, affords ground
for hope that these wants of our intellectual and moral being will be met
by a corresponding supply, in the shape of a special divine revelation. We
argue this:
(_a_) From our necessary conviction of God’s wisdom. Having made man a
spiritual being, for spiritual ends, it may be hoped that he will furnish
the means needed to secure these ends. (_b_) From the actual, though
incomplete, revelation already given in nature. Since God has actually
undertaken to make himself known to men, we may hope that he will finish
the work he has begun. (_c_) From the general connection of want and
supply. The higher our needs, the more intricate and ingenious are, in
general, the contrivances for meeting them. We may therefore hope that the
highest want will be all the more surely met. (_d_) From analogies of
nature and history. Signs of reparative goodness in nature and of
forbearance in providential dealings lead us to hope that, while justice
is executed, God may still make known some way of restoration for sinners.
(_a_) There were two stages in Dr. John Duncan’s escape from
pantheism: 1. when he came first to believe in the existence of
God, and “danced for joy upon the brig o’ Dee”; and 2. when, under
Malan’s influence, he came also to believe that “God meant that we
should know him.” In the story in the old Village Reader, the
mother broke completely down when she found that her son was
likely to grow up stupid, but her tears conquered him and made him
intelligent. Laura Bridgman was blind, deaf and dumb, and had but
small sense of taste or smell. When her mother, after long
separation, went to her in Boston, the mother’s heart was in
distress lest the daughter should not recognize her. When at last,
by some peculiar mother’s sign, she pierced the veil of
insensibility, it was a glad time for both. So God, our Father,
tries to reveal himself to our blind, deaf and dumb souls. The
agony of the Cross is the sign of God’s distress over the
insensibility of humanity which sin has caused. If he is the Maker
of man’s being, he will surely seek to fit it for that communion
with himself for which it was designed.
(_b_) Gore, Incarnation, 52, 53—“Nature is a first volume, in
itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is
Christ.” (_c_) R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God,
228—“Mendicants do not ply their calling for years in a desert
where there are no givers. Enough of supply has been received to
keep the sense of want alive.” (_d_) In the natural arrangements
for the healing of bruises in plants and for the mending of broken
bones in the animal creation, in the provision of remedial agents
for the cure of human diseases, and especially in the delay to
inflict punishment upon the transgressor and the space given him
for repentance, we have some indications, which, if uncontradicted
by other evidence, might lead us to regard the God of nature as a
God of forbearance and mercy. Plutarch’s treatise “De Sera Numinis
Vindicta” is proof that this thought had occurred to the heathen.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether a heathen religion could even
continue to exist, without embracing in it some element of hope.
Yet this very delay in the execution of the divine judgments gave
its own occasion for doubting the existence of a God who was both
good and just. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on
the throne,” is a scandal to the divine government which only the
sacrifice of Christ can fully remove.
The problem presents itself also in the Old Testament. In Job 21,
and in Psalms, 17, 37, 49, 73, there are partial answers; see _Job
21:7—_“Wherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty
in power?” _24:1—_“Why are not judgment times determined by the
Almighty? And they that know him, why see they not his days?” The
New Testament intimates the existence of a witness to God’s
goodness among the heathen, while at the same time it declares
that the full knowledge of forgiveness and salvation is brought
only by Christ. Compare _Acts 14:17—_“And yet he left not himself
without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven
rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and
gladness”; _17:25-27—_“he himself giveth to all life, and breath,
and all things; and he made of one every nation of men ... that
they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find
him”; _Rom. 2:4—_“the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”;
_3:25—_“the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the
forbearance of God”; _Eph. 3:9—_“to make all men see what is the
dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God”;
_2 Tim. 1:10—_“our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and
brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.” See
Hackett’s edition of the treatise of Plutarch, as also Bowen,
Metaph. and Ethics, 462-487; Diman, Theistic Argument, 371.
We conclude this section upon the reasons _a priori_ for expecting a
revelation from God with the acknowledgment that the facts warrant that
degree of expectation which we call hope, rather than that larger degree
of expectation which we call assurance; and this, for the reason that,
while conscience gives proof that God is a God of holiness, we have not,
from the light of nature, equal evidence that God is a God of love. Reason
teaches man that, as a sinner, he merits condemnation; but he cannot, from
reason alone, know that God will have mercy upon him and provide
salvation. His doubts can be removed only by God’s own voice, assuring him
of “redemption ... the forgiveness of ... trespasses” (Eph. 1:7) and
revealing to him the way in which that forgiveness has been rendered
possible.
Conscience knows no pardon, and no Savior. Hovey, Manual of
Christian Theology, 9, seems to us to go too far when he says:
“Even natural affection and conscience afford some clue to the
goodness and holiness of God, though much more is needed by one
who undertakes the study of Christian theology.” We grant that
natural affection gives some clue to God’s goodness, but we regard
conscience as reflecting only God’s holiness and his hatred of
sin. We agree with Alexander McLaren: “Does God’s love need to be
proved? Yes, as all paganism shows. Gods vicious, gods careless,
gods cruel, gods beautiful, there are in abundance; but where is
there a god who loves?”
II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.
1. _As to its substance._ We may expect this later revelation not to
contradict, but to confirm and enlarge, the knowledge of God which we
derive from nature, while it remedies the defects of natural religion and
throws light upon its problems.
Isaiah’s appeal is to God’s previous communications of truth: _Is.
8:20—_“To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not
according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” And
Malachi follows the example of Isaiah; _Mal. 4:4—_“Remember ye the
law of Moses my servant.” Our Lord himself based his claims upon
the former utterances of God: _Luke 24:27—_“beginning from Moses
and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the
scriptures the things concerning himself.”
2. _As to its method._ We may expect it to follow God’s methods of
procedure in other communications of truth.
Bishop Butler (Analogy, part ii, chap. iii) has denied that there
is any possibility of judging _a priori_ how a divine revelation
will be given. “We are in no sort judges beforehand,” he says, “by
what methods, or in what proportion, it were to be expected that
this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.” But
Bishop Butler somewhat later in his great work (part ii, chap. iv)
shows that God’s progressive plan in revelation has its analogy in
the slow, successive steps by which God accomplishes his ends in
nature. We maintain that the revelation in nature affords certain
presumptions with regard to the revelation of grace, such for
example as those mentioned below.
Leslie Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891:180—“Butler
answered the argument of the deists, that the God of Christianity
was unjust, by arguing that the God of nature was equally unjust.
James Mill, admitting the analogy, refused to believe in either
God. Dr. Martineau has said, for similar reasons, that Butler
‘wrote one of the most terrible persuasives to atheism ever
produced.’ So J. H. Newman’s ‘kill or cure’ argument is
essentially that God has either revealed nothing, or has made
revelations in some other places than in the Bible. His argument,
like Butler’s, may be as good a persuasive to scepticism as to
belief.” To this indictment by Leslie Stephen we reply that it has
cogency only so long as we ignore the fact of human sin. Granting
this fact, our world becomes a world of discipline, probation and
redemption, and both the God of nature and the God of Christianity
are cleared from all suspicion of injustice. The analogy between
God’s methods in the Christian system and his methods in nature
becomes an argument in favor of the former.
(_a_) That of continuous historical development,—that it will be given in
germ to early ages, and will be more fully unfolded as the race is
prepared to receive it.
Instances of continuous development in God’s impartations are
found in geological history; in the growth of the sciences; in the
progressive education of the individual and of the race. No other
religion but Christianity shows “a steady historical progress of
the vision of one infinite Character unfolding itself to man
through a period of many centuries.” See sermon by Dr. Temple, on
the Education of the World, in Essays and Reviews; Rogers,
Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 374-384; Walker, Philosophy of the
Plan of Salvation. On the gradualness of revelation, see Fisher,
Nature and Method of Revelation, 46-86; Arthur H. Hallam, in John
Brown’s Rab and his Friends, 282—“Revelation is a gradual
approximation of the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of
finite humanity.” A little fire can kindle a city or a world; but
ten times the heat of that little fire, if widely diffused, would
not kindle anything.
(_b_) That of original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons
in that nation, that it may through them be communicated to mankind.
Each nation represents an idea. As the Greek had a genius for
liberty and beauty, and the Roman a genius for organization and
law, so the Hebrew nation had a “genius for religion” (Renan);
this last, however, would have been useless without special divine
aid and superintendence, as witness other productions of this same
Semitic race, such as Bel and the Dragon, in the Old Testament
Apocrypha; the gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament; and later
still, the Talmud and the Koran.
The O. T. Apocrypha relates that, when Daniel was thrown a second
time into the lions’ den, an angel seized Habakkuk in Judea by the
hair of his head and carried him with a bowl of pottage to give to
Daniel for his dinner. There were seven lions, and Daniel was
among them seven days and nights. Tobias starts from his father’s
house to secure his inheritance, and his little dog goes with him.
On the banks of the great river a great fish threatens to devour
him, but he captures and despoils the fish. He finally returns
successful to his father’s house, and his little dog goes in with
him. In the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus carries water in his mantle
when his pitcher is broken; makes clay birds on the Sabbath, and,
when rebuked, causes them to fly; strikes a youthful companion
with death, and then curses his accusers with blindness; mocks his
teachers, and resents control. Later Moslem legends declare that
Mohammed caused darkness at noon; whereupon the moon flew to him,
went seven times around the Kaāba, bowed, entered his right
sleeve, split into two halves after slipping out at the left, and
the two halves, after retiring to the extreme east and west, were
reunited. These products of the Semitic race show that neither the
influence of environment nor a native genius for religion
furnishes an adequate explanation of our Scriptures. As the flame
on Elijah’s altar was caused, not by the dead sticks, but by the
fire from heaven, so only the inspiration of the Almighty can
explain the unique revelation of the Old and New Testaments.
The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression
of their life we “must look beneath the surface, in the soul,
where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face
with God” (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 28). But the Hebrew
religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason,
and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of
knowledge, and the æsthetic sense. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek
Genius, 34—“The Phœnicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it
was the Greeks who wrote.” Aristotle was the beginner of science,
and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the
scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by
striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would
never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not
been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has
contributed her constitutional government, and America her manhood
suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God
is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to
every other. _Acts 17:26_—God “made of one every nation of men to
dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their
appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; _Rom.
3:12—_“What advantage then hath the Jew?... first of all, that
they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” God’s choice of the
Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious
truth, is analogous to his choice of other nations, as the
repositories and communicators of æsthetic, scientific,
governmental truth.
Hegel: “No nation that has played a weighty and active part in the
world’s history has ever issued from the simple development of a
single race along the unmodified lines of blood-relationship.
There must be differences, conflicts, a composition of opposed
forces.” The conscience of the Hebrew, the thought of the Greek,
the organization of the Latin, the personal loyalty of the Teuton,
must all be united to form a perfect whole. “While the Greek
church was orthodox, the Latin church was Catholic; while the
Greek treated of the two wills in Christ, the Latin treated of the
harmony of our wills with God; while the Latin saved through a
corporation, the Teuton saved through personal faith.” Brereton,
in Educational Review, Nov. 1901:339—“The problem of France is
that of the religious orders; that of Germany, the construction of
society; that of America, capital and labor.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
Religion, 1:183, 184—“Great ideas never come from the masses, but
from marked individuals. These ideas, when propounded, however,
awaken an echo in the masses, which shows that the ideas had been
slumbering unconsciously in the souls of others.” The hour
strikes, and a Newton appears, who interprets God’s will in
nature. So the hour strikes, and a Moses or a Paul appears, who
interprets God’s will in morals and religion. The few grains of
wheat found in the clasped hand of the Egyptian mummy would have
been utterly lost if one grain had been sown in Europe, a second
in Asia, a third in Africa, and a fourth in America; all being
planted together in a flower-pot, and their product in a
garden-bed, and the still later fruit in a farmer’s field, there
came at last to be a sufficient crop of new Mediterranean wheat to
distribute to all the world. So God followed his ordinary method
in giving religious truth first to a single nation and to chosen
individuals in that nation, that through them it might be given to
all mankind. See British Quarterly, Jan. 1874: art.: Inductive
Theology.
(_c_) That of preservation in written and accessible documents, handed
down from those to whom the revelation is first communicated.
Alphabets, writing, books, are our chief dependence for the
history of the past; all the great religions of the world are
book-religions; the Karens expected their teachers in the new
religion to bring to them a book. But notice that false religions
have scriptures, but not Scripture; their sacred books lack the
principle of unity which is furnished by divine inspiration. H. P.
Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration, 68—“Mohammed
discovered that the Scriptures of the Jews were the source of
their religion. He called them a ‘book-people,’ and endeavored to
construct a similar code for his disciples. In it God is the only
speaker; all its contents are made known to the prophet by direct
revelation; its Arabic style is perfect; its text is
incorruptible; it is absolute authority in law, science and
history.” The Koran is a grotesque human parody of the Bible; its
exaggerated pretensions of divinity, indeed, are the best proof
that it is of purely human origin. Scripture, on the other hand,
makes no such claims for itself, but points to Christ as the sole
and final authority. In this sense we may say with Clarke,
Christian Theology, 20—“Christianity is not a book-religion, but a
life-religion. The Bible does not give us Christ, but Christ gives
us the Bible.” Still it is true that for our knowledge of Christ
we are almost wholly dependent upon Scripture. In giving his
revelation to the world, God has followed his ordinary method of
communicating and preserving truth by means of written documents.
Recent investigations, however, now render it probable that the
Karen expectation of a book was the survival of the teaching of
the Nestorian missionaries, who as early as the eighth century
penetrated the remotest parts of Asia, and left in the wall of the
city of Singwadu in Northwestern China a tablet as a monument of
their labors. On book-revelation, see Rogers, Eclipse of Faith,
73-96, 281-304.
3. _As to its attestation._ We may expect that this revelation will be
accompanied by evidence that its author is the same being whom we have
previously recognized as God of nature. This evidence must constitute
(_a_) a manifestation of God himself; (_b_) in the outward as well as the
inward world; (_c_) such as only God’s power or knowledge can make; and
(_d_) such as cannot be counterfeited by the evil, or mistaken by the
candid, soul. In short, we may expect God to attest by miracles and by
prophecy, the divine mission and authority of those to whom he
communicates a revelation. Some such outward sign would seem to be
necessary, not only to assure the original recipient that the supposed
revelation is not a vagary of his own imagination, but also to render the
revelation received by a single individual authoritative to all (compare
Judges 6:17, 36-40—Gideon asks a sign, for himself; 1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah
asks a sign, for others). But in order that our positive proof of a divine
revelation may not be embarrassed by the suspicion that the miraculous and
prophetic elements in the Scripture history create a presumption against
its credibility, it will be desirable to take up at this point the general
subject of miracles and prophecy.
III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.
1. Definition of Miracle.
A. Preliminary Definition.—A miracle is an event palpable to the senses,
produced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event
therefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of
nature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent
to explain.
This definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the
miracle:—(_a_) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law;
since natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much
as before. (_b_) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies—a
product merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect
of a will outside of nature. (_c_) A miracle is not an event without a
cause; since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (_d_) A
miracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of
wisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so
that in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued.
(_e_) A miracle is not contrary to experience; since it is not contrary to
experience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (_f_) A miracle
is not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination;
but is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective
proof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious
teacher.
For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and
Christianity, 302. On the whole subject, see Mozley, Miracles;
Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in
Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A. H. Strong, Philosophy
and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The
definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the
miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which
profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New
Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them
either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or
objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the
former aspect they are called τέρατα, “wonders,” and σημεῖα,
“signs,”_ (John 4:48; Acts 2:22)_. In the latter aspect they are
called δυνάμεις, “powers,” and ἔργα, “works,”_ (Mat 7:22; John
14:11)_. See H. B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp.
94—“σημεῖον, sign, marking the purpose or object, the moral end,
placing the event in connection with revelation.” The Bible Union
Version uniformly and properly renders τέρας by “wonder,” δυνάμις
by “miracle,” ἔργον by “work,” and σημεῖον by “sign.” Goethe,
Faust: “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das
Unzulängliche wird hier Ereigniss”—“Everything transitory is but a
parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.” So the miracles
of the New Testament are acted parables,—Christ opens the eyes of
the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies
the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the
dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and
sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.
A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is
demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed
interest of natural law. Such a modification is proposed by
Babbage, in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage
illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine,
which would present to the observer in regular succession the
series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make
a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million;
Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock
which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results
are due simply to the original construction of the respective
machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:591,
592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in
Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 129-147. Babbage and Peabody would deny
that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God,
and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God
is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted
the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the
appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this
view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine
working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the
system, while it still holds God’s work to be essential, not only
to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the
religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict
the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the
prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See
Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.
But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large
degree the element of “signality” which is needed, if it is to
accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which
miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as
an attestation of revelation—the advantage, namely, that while
special providence affords _some_ warrant that this revelation
comes from God, miracle gives _full_ warrant that it comes from
God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the
knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and
the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory
far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example,
could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun.
Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse
to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense
in which the term nature is ordinarily used. Our Lord, moreover,
seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: “If
I by the finger of God cast out demons”_ (Luke 11:20)_; _Mark
1:41—_“I will; be thou made clean.” The view of Babbage is
inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate
exercise of _will_ in the miracle, but because it regards nature
as a mere _machine_ which can operate apart from God—a purely
deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products
of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be
only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature,
like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William
Elder, Ideas from Nature: “The century-plant which we have seen
growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our
old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural
notwithstanding.” If, however, we interpret nature dynamically,
rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of
the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine,
there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both
natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has
natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is
produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to
an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment
combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles
as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix-xxvi, 7,
143-166; Bushnell, Nature and Supernatural, 333-336; Smith’s and
Hastings’ Dict. of Bible, art.: Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton
Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:541, 542.
B. Alternative and Preferable Definition.—A miracle is an event in nature,
so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command
of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on
the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design
of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.
This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the
preliminary definition given above:—(_a_) It recognizes the immanence of
God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis
between the laws of nature and the will of God. (_b_) It regards the
miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already
present in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general
plan. (_c_) It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular
activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these
will best secure his purpose in creation. (_d_) It leaves it possible that
all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be
traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may
be only names for the one and self-same will of God. (_e_) It reconciles
the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any
possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by
maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself
are to be interpreted as signs of God’s special commission to him under
whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.
Augustine, who declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,”
defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 21:8—“Portentum ergo fit
non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” He says also
that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is
more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be,
than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again.
E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104—“The natural is God’s work.
He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and
the supernatural. The natural is supernatural. God works in
everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means,
is God’s end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.” Shaler,
Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something
exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in
nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from
the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel
fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame.
Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result
of a regularly rising temperature. Nature may be God’s regular
action, miracle its unique result. God’s regular action may be
entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely
natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt
the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591—“Everything is
miracle,—therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is
miracle,—therefore science sees God nowhere.”
Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as
infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles, 18—“The
Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the
emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was
all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.”
Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 4:117—“The force of a miracle to us,
arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew,
because he had no notion of natural law.” _Ps. 77:19, 20—_“Thy way
was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy
footsteps were not known”—They knew not, and we know not, by what
precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise
track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is
that “Thou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses
and Aaron.” J. M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion: “The
supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very
life; ... not an outside power interfering with the course of
nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating
through it.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 35—“Miracle,
instead of spelling ‘monster’, as Emerson said, simply bears
witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the
divine character.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:533—“To cause the sun to
rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but
the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike
the manner in the other.”
Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural
processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to
deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go,
in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan,
the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction
of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when
regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New
Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves
to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is
turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and
in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The
virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of
parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just
demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life
and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ’s resurrection
may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect
human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the
type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down
our life and take it again. The scientist may yet find that his
disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in
science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are
not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian
argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would
evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the
impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his
instrument.
This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and
irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by
some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which
minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as
mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs
to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig.,
1:295—“Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the
idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the
ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment
the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power,
wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a
poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe’s
apothegm: “Miracle is faith’s dearest child.” Foster, Finality of
the Christian Religion, 128-138—“We most honor biblical miraculous
narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl
defines miracles as “those striking _natural_ occurrences with
which the experience of God’s special help is connected.” He
leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his
school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of
Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ’s resurrection as
a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven
Puzzling Books, 202—“In the hands of perfect and spiritual man,
the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in
ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority
of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may
be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality,
2:288—“I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all
reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of
Christ.” We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working
of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation
of the new life which he imparts: _John 14:12—_“He that believeth
on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works
than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”
We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to
miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not
to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is
not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All’s Well
that Ends Well, 2:3:1—“They say miracles are past; and we have our
philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things
supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of
terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we
should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There
was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her
texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.”
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334—“Biological and psychological
science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic,
is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and
that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity,
there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a
Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural
agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the
scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God,—therefore no
miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33—“The miracle
of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate
power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great
exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.”
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“Redemption is not natural but
supernatural—supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature
which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work
of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God
had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a
witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand,
growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very
end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are
not a common but a sacred writing,—they are the hieroglyphics of
God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.” President Mark
Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See
Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard,
in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view
of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The
Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of
Science, 336.
2. Possibility of Miracle.
An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature.
This is evident from the following considerations:
(_a_) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and
transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and
chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended
or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in
accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to
themselves.
By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that
is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image
of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man’s will
does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the
transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and
Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel,
23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the
world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd,
Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of
the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation,
from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the
forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and
oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now,
after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and
tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water
forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of
cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its
temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore,
Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in
which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena
unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not
resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the
creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new
nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will
radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are
the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as
Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the
same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the
essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of
that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony.
William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly
to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.”
(_b_) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature,
and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish,
while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still
operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the
water—for the axe still has weight (_cf._ 2 K. 6:5-7).
_Versus_ Hume, Philos. Works, 4:130—“A miracle is a violation of
the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often
needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s
definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support
the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts
upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron
to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it. But this last is
miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith, 26, 27:
After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high
up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without
altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant
continent. Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 471;
Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row,
Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge:
Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working
or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not
suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into
the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the
ball would not diminish and the ball would never return.
“Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that
attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or
violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws,
each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But
men live notwithstanding. Life is supernatural. Only as a force
additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So
spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday
School Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60—“Wherever you find
thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the
dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free
personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the _personal_
view of life for the _impersonal_ and _mechanical_ view.
Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of
facts,—it is not _science_.”
(_c_) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts
upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his
physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human
will can _use_ means, only because it has the power of acting initially
_without_ means.
See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept.
1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311—“Not Divinity
alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its
measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way
on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle.
Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350—“The making of all events miraculous
is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world
with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.” George Adam Smith, on
_Is. 33:14—_“devouring fire ... everlasting burnings”: “If we look
at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings
collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not
the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not
see God.” P. S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is
invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and
insert a piece of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once
you have an arc-light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is
only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws,
which thus gives light to the ages,”—or, let us say rather, the
momentary change in the method of their operation whereby the will
of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
100—“Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysische Möglichkeit, Hume ihre
geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit,
Schleiermacher ihre religiöse Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige
Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische
Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit.”
(_d_) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what
the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to
accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God
dwells in and controls the universe. If man’s will can act directly upon
matter in his own physical organism, God’s will can work immediately upon
the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if
there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The
impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of
atheism or pantheism.
See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an
Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to
hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1—“A
miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a
use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher
powers.” See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und
Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ, 18,
19, 26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,” 1888:303; W. E.
Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science
and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32—Three postulates:
(1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man’s
will is free; (3) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding
brain-action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes
throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec.
1894:229—Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things
are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of
ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in
unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of
consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural;
prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which _the Mind_
in nature cannot ignore. _Cf.__ Ps. 115:3—_“our God is in the
heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased” = his almighty power
and freedom do away with all _a priori_ objections to miracles. If
God is not a mere _force_, but a _person_, then miracles are
possible.
(_e_) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in
Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos
or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make
God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy.
Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of
life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of
miracle.
See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166—“This conception of
evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose
influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does
not regard the universe as a _plenum_ to which nothing can be
added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a
plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of
whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once
imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its
law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from
the finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning’s
phrase, ‘All’s love, but all’s law,’ must be interpreted as
meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the
operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present
God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a
rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of
unique and startling manifestations of power.
“The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is
the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent
with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the
past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress
there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces,
and the new combination of forces can be explained only by some
new force that causes the combination. This new force, moreover,
must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the
better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be
continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase,
nay, they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition
of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new
combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will.
But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan
the rationality of evolution depends.
“A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and
mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the
superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which
apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but
of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and
there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the
bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would
be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and
superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly;
imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and
you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new
beginnings.
“Evolution, then, depends on increments of force _plus_ continuity
of plan. New creations are possible because the immanent God has
not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far
away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral
universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are
possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which
the universe was built. If we were deists, believing in a distant
God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be
irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of
which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy,
evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of
Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the
fulness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”
Lotze’s own statement of his position may be found in his
Microcosmos, 2:479 _sq._ Professor James Ten Broeke has
interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the
miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction
between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of
which the movements of the natural world are carried on only
_through_ the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the
general course of things, according to existing facts and the
purpose of the divine Governor.”
3. Probability of Miracles.
A. We acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature,
there is a presumption against miracles. Experience testifies to the
uniformity of natural law. A general uniformity is needful, in order to
make possible a rational calculation of the future, and a proper ordering
of life.
See Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. ii; F. W. Farrar, Witness of
History to Christ, 3-45; Modern Scepticism, 1:179-227; Chalmers,
Christian Revelation, 1:47. G. D. B. Pepper: “Where there is no
law, no settled order, there can be no miracle. The miracle
presupposes the law, and the importance assigned to miracles is
the recognition of the reign of law. But the making and launching
of a ship may be governed by law, no less than the sailing of the
ship after it is launched. So the introduction of a higher
spiritual order into a merely natural order constitutes a new and
unique event.” Some Christian apologists have erred in affirming
that the miracle was antecedently as probable as any other event,
whereas only its antecedent improbability gives it value as a
proof of revelation. Horace: “Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus
vindice nodus Inciderit.”
B. But we deny that this uniformity of nature is absolute and universal.
(_a_) It is not a truth of reason that can have no exceptions, like the
axiom that a whole is greater than its parts. (_b_) Experience could not
warrant a belief in absolute and universal uniformity, unless experience
were identical with absolute and universal knowledge. (_c_) We know, on
the contrary, from geology, that there have been breaks in this
uniformity, such as the introduction of vegetable, animal and human life,
which cannot be accounted for, except by the manifestation in nature of a
supernatural power.
(_a_) Compare the probability that the sun will rise to-morrow
morning with the certainty that two and two make four. Huxley, Lay
Sermons, 158, indignantly denies that there is any “must” about
the uniformity of nature: “No one is entitled to say _a priori_
that any given so-called miraculous event is impossible.” Ward,
Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:84—“There is no evidence for the
statement that the mass of the universe is a definite and
unchangeable quantity”; 108, 109—“Why so confidently assume that a
rigid and monotonous uniformity is the only, or the highest,
indication of order, the order of an ever living Spirit, above
all? How is it that we depreciate machine-made articles, and
prefer those in which the artistic impulse, or the fitness of the
individual case, is free to shape and to make what is literally
manufactured, hand-made?... Dangerous as teleological arguments in
general may be, we may at least safely say the world was not
designed to make science easy.... To call the verses of a poet,
the politics of a statesman, or the award of a judge mechanical,
implies, as Lotze has pointed out, marked disparagement, although
it implies, too, precisely those characteristics—exactness and
invariability—in which Maxwell would have us see a token of the
divine.” Surely then we must not insist that divine wisdom must
always run in a rut, must ever repeat itself, must never exhibit
itself in unique acts like incarnation and resurrection. See
Edward Hitchcock, in Bib. Sac., 20:489-561, on “The Law of
Nature’s Constancy Subordinate to the Higher Law of Change”;
Jevons, Principles of Science, 2:430-438; Mozley, Miracles, 26.
(_b_) S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 18 December, 1831—“The light
which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern of the ship,
which shines only on the waves behind us.” Hobbes: “Experience
concludeth nothing universally.” Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy,
131—“Evidence can tell us only what has happened, and it can never
assure us that the future _must_ be like the past; 132—Proof that
all nature is mechanical would not be inconsistent with the belief
that everything in nature is immediately sustained by Providence,
and that my volition counts for something in determining the
course of events.” Royce, World and Individual, 2:204—“Uniformity
is not absolute. Nature is a vaster realm of life and meaning, of
which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God’s
life. The rhythm of the heart-beat has its normal regularity, yet
its limited persistence. Nature may be merely the _habits of free
will_. Every region of this universally conscious world may be a
centre whence issues new conscious life for communication to all
the worlds.” Principal Fairbairn: “Nature is Spirit.” We prefer to
say: “Nature is the manifestation of spirit, the regularities of
freedom.”
(_c_) Other breaks in the uniformity of nature are the coming of
Christ and the regeneration of a human soul. Harnack, What is
Christianity, 18, holds that though there are no interruptions to
the working of natural law, natural law is not yet fully known.
While there are no miracles, there is plenty of the miraculous.
The power of mind over matter is beyond our present conceptions.
Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 210—The effects are no more
consequences of the laws than the laws are consequences of the
effects = both laws and effects are exercises of divine will.
King, Reconstruction in Theology, 56—We must hold, not to the
_uniformity_ of law, but to the _universality_ of law; for
evolution has successive stages with new laws coming in and
becoming dominant that had not before appeared. The new and higher
stage is practically a miracle from the point of view of the
lower. See British Quarterly Review, Oct. 1881:154; Martineau,
Study, 2:200, 203, 209.
C. Since the inworking of the moral law into the constitution and course
of nature shows that nature exists, not for itself, but for the
contemplation and use of moral beings, it is probable that the God of
nature will produce effects aside from those of natural law, whenever
there are sufficiently important moral ends to be served thereby.
Beneath the expectation of uniformity is the intuition of final
cause; the former may therefore give way to the latter. See
Porter, Human Intellect, 592-615—Efficient causes and final causes
may conflict, and then the efficient give place to the final. This
is miracle. See Hutton, in Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1885, and
Channing, Evidences of Revealed Religion, quoted in Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:534, 535—“The order of the universe is a means, not an
end, and like all other means must give way when the end can be
best promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an
idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of
business when they clog instead of advancing it.” Balfour,
Foundations of Belief, 357—“The stability of the heavens is in the
sight of God of less importance than the moral growth of the human
spirit.” This is proved by the Incarnation. The Christian sees in
this little earth the scene of God’s greatest revelation. The
superiority of the spiritual to the physical helps us to see our
true dignity in the creation, to rule our bodies, to overcome our
sins. Christ’s suffering shows us that God is no indifferent
spectator of human pain. He subjects himself to our conditions, or
rather in this subjection reveals to us God’s own eternal
suffering for sin. The atonement enables us to solve the problem
of sin.
D. The existence of moral disorder consequent upon the free acts of man’s
will, therefore, changes the presumption against miracles into a
presumption in their favor. The non-appearance of miracles, in this case,
would be the greatest of wonders.
Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 331-335—So a man’s
personal consciousness of sin, and above all his personal
experience of regenerating grace, will constitute the best
preparation for the study of miracles. “Christianity cannot be
proved except to a bad conscience.” The dying Vinet said well:
“The greatest miracle that I know of is that of my conversion. I
was dead, and I live; I was blind, and I see; I was a slave, and I
am free; I was an enemy of God, and I love him; prayer, the Bible,
the society of Christians, these were to me a source of profound
_ennui_; whilst now it is the pleasures of the world that are
wearisome to me, and piety is the source of all my joy. Behold the
miracle! And if God has been able to work that one, there are none
of which he is not capable.”
Yet the physical and the moral are not “sundered as with an axe.”
Nature is but the lower stage or imperfect form of the revelation
of God’s truth and holiness and love. It prepares the way for the
miracle by suggesting, though more dimly, the same essential
characteristics of the divine nature. Ignorance and sin
necessitate a larger disclosure. G. S. Lee, The Shadow Christ,
84—“The pillar of cloud was the dim night-lamp that Jehovah kept
burning over his infant children, to show them that he was there.
They did not know that the night itself was God.” Why do we have
Christmas presents in Christian homes? Because the parents do not
love their children at other times? No; but because the mind
becomes sluggish in the presence of merely regular kindness, and
special gifts are needed to wake it to gratitude. So our sluggish
and unloving minds need special testimonies of the divine mercy.
Shall God alone be shut up to dull uniformities of action? Shall
the heavenly Father alone be unable to make special communications
of love? Why then are not miracles and revivals of religion
constant and uniform? Because uniform blessings would be regarded
simply as workings of a machine. See Mozley, Miracles, preface,
xxiv; Turner, Wish and Will, 291-315; N. W. Taylor, Moral
Government, 2:388-423.
E. As belief in the possibility of miracles rests upon our belief in the
existence of a personal God, so belief in the probability of miracles
rests upon our belief that God is a moral and benevolent being. He who has
no God but a God of physical order will regard miracles as an impertinent
intrusion upon that order. But he who yields to the testimony of
conscience and regards God as a God of holiness, will see that man’s
unholiness renders God’s miraculous interposition most necessary to man
and most becoming to God. Our view of miracles will therefore be
determined by our belief in a moral, or in a non-moral, God.
Philo, in his Life of Moses, 1:88, speaking of the miracles of the
quails and of the water from the rock, says that “all these
unexpected and extraordinary things are amusements or playthings
of God.” He believes that there is room for arbitrariness in the
divine procedure. Scripture however represents miracle as an
extraordinary, rather than as an arbitrary, act. It is “his work,
his strange work ... his act, his strange act”_ (Is. 28:21)_.
God’s ordinary method is that of regular growth and development.
Chadwick, Unitarianism, 72—“Nature is economical. If she wants an
apple, she develops a leaf; if she wants a brain, she develops a
vertebra. We always thought well of backbone; and, if Goethe’s was
a sound suggestion, we think better of it now.”
It is commonly, but very erroneously, taken for granted that
miracle requires a greater exercise of power than does God’s
upholding of the ordinary processes of nature. But to an
omnipotent Being our measures of power have no application. The
question is not a question of power, but of rationality and love.
Miracle implies self-restraint, as well as self-unfolding, on the
part of him who works it. It is therefore not God’s common method
of action; it is adopted only when regular methods will not
suffice; it often seems accompanied by a sacrifice of feeling on
the part of Christ _Mat. 17:17—_“O faithless and perverse
generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear
with you? bring him hither to me”; _Mark 7:34—_“looking up to
heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be
opened”; _cf.__ Mat. 12:39—_“An evil and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but
the sign of Jonah the prophet.”
F. From the point of view of ethical monism the probability of miracle
becomes even greater. Since God is not merely the intellectual but the
moral Reason of the world, the disturbances of the world-order which are
due to sin are the matters which most deeply affect him. Christ, the life
of the whole system and of humanity as well, must suffer; and, since we
have evidence that he is merciful as well as just, it is probable that he
will rectify the evil by extraordinary means, when merely ordinary means
do not avail.
Like creation and providence, like inspiration and regeneration,
miracle is a work in which God limits himself, by a new and
peculiar exercise of his power,—limits himself as part of a
process of condescending love and as a means of teaching
sense-environed and sin-burdened humanity what it would not learn
in any other way. Self-limitation, however, is the very perfection
and glory of God, for without it no self-sacrificing love would be
possible (see page 9, F.). The probability of miracles is
therefore argued not only from God’s holiness but also from his
love. His desire to save men from their sins must be as infinite
as his nature. The incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection,
when once made known to us, commend themselves, not only as
satisfying our human needs, but as worthy of a God of moral
perfection.
An argument for the probability of the miracle might be drawn from
the concessions of one of its chief modern opponents, Thomas H.
Huxley. He tells us in different places that the object of science
is “the discovery of the rational order that pervades the
universe,” which in spite of his professed agnosticism is an
unconscious testimony to Reason and Will at the basis of all
things. He tells us again that there is no necessity in the
uniformities of nature: “When we change ‘will’ into ‘must,’ we
introduce an idea of necessity which has no warrant in the
observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover
elsewhere.” He speaks of “the infinite wickedness that has
attended the course of human history.” Yet he has no hope in man’s
power to save himself: “I would as soon adore a wilderness of
apes,” as the Pantheist’s rationalized conception of humanity. He
grants that Jesus Christ is “the noblest ideal of humanity which
mankind has yet worshiped.” Why should he not go further and
concede that Jesus Christ most truly represents the infinite
Reason at the heart of things, and that his purity and love,
demonstrated by suffering and death, make it probable that God
will use extraordinary means for man’s deliverance? It is doubtful
whether Huxley recognized his own personal sinfulness as fully as
he recognized the sinfulness of humanity in general. If he had
done so, he would have been willing to accept miracle upon even a
slight preponderance of historical proof. As a matter of fact, he
rejected miracle upon the grounds assigned by Hume, which we now
proceed to mention.
4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.
_The amount of testimony necessary to prove a miracle_ is no greater than
that which is requisite to prove the occurrence of any other unusual but
confessedly possible event.
Hume, indeed, argued that a miracle is so contradictory of all human
experience that it is more reasonable to believe any amount of testimony
false than to believe a miracle to be true.
The original form of the argument can be found in Hume’s
Philosophical Works, 4:124-150. See also Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:615.
For the most recent and plausible statement of it, see
Supernatural Religion, 1:55-94. The argument maintains for
substance that things are impossible because improbable. It
ridicules the credulity of those who “thrust their fists against
the posts, And still insist they see the ghosts,” and holds with
the German philosopher who declared that he would not believe in a
miracle, even if he saw one with his own eyes. Christianity is so
miraculous that it takes a miracle to make one believe it.
The argument is fallacious, because
(_a_) It is chargeable with a _petitio principii_, in making our own
personal experience the measure of all human experience. The same
principle would make the proof of any absolutely new fact impossible. Even
though God should work a miracle, he could never prove it.
(_b_) It involves a self-contradiction, since it seeks to overthrow our
faith in human testimony by adducing to the contrary the general
experience of men, of which we know only from testimony. This general
experience, moreover, is merely negative, and cannot neutralize that which
is positive, except upon principles which would invalidate all testimony
whatever.
(_c_) It requires belief in a greater wonder than those which it would
escape. That multitudes of intelligent and honest men should against all
their interests unite in deliberate and persistent falsehood, under the
circumstances narrated in the New Testament record, involves a change in
the sequences of nature far more incredible than the miracles of Christ
and his apostles.