DIVINE law says that certain acts are good, and that certain acts are
evil; and that God will reward those who do well, and will punish those
who do ill. And we are told that God will so act because God is _just_.
But I claim that God _cannot_ justly punish those, who disobey, nor
reward those who obey His laws.
Religious people tell us that God is "The Great First Cause": that God
created _all_ things--mankind, the universe, nature and all her laws.
Who is answerable for a thing that is caused: he who causes it, or he
who does not cause it?
He who causes it is answerable. And God is "The First Great Cause" of
_all_ things. And the cause of all things is answerable for all things.
If God created _all_ things He must have created the evil as well as the
good.
Who, then, is responsible for good and evil? Only God, for He made them.
He who creates all is responsible for all. God created all: God is
responsible for all.
He who creates nothing is responsible for nothing. Man created nothing:
man is responsible for nothing.
Therefore man is not responsible for his nature, nor for the acts
prompted by that nature.
Therefore God cannot justly punish man for his acts.
Therefore the Divine law, with its code of rewards and punishments, is
not a just law, and cannot have emanated from a just God.
Therefore the Christian religion is built upon a foundation of error,
and there are no such things as God's wrath, God's pardon; heaven or
hell.
That argument has never been answered. But attempts have been made to
evade it, and the plea most commonly put forward has been so gracefully
expressed by Mr. G. K. Chesterton that I will quote it in his own words:
Now, the question round which this controversy has circled for ages is
simply this: Clearly God can, in the exercise of His omnipotence, give
part of Himself to His creatures; can give His strength to the bull,
or His beauty to the lily. Could God possibly, in the exercise of His
omnipotence, give to one of His creatures some portion of that other
quality of His--His originating power, His power of primal invention,
this making things from nothing or Himself? If God can do all things,
can He not make man free? Can He not give man the power to create
actions as God creates stars? He can give His force; can He give a
little of his sovereignty? Can He, in short, create a kind of little
God--an "imago Dei?"
The answer to that quaint piece of reasoning is that it begs the
question. For I do not say that God cannot give to man any power He
chooses; but that God is responsible, and man is not responsible, for
the nature and the acts of any power by God bestowed.
If man did not invent, nor create himself; if man did not create "the
power" bestowed upon him by God; if man did not bestow that power upon
himself, how can man be responsible for the power or for its acts?
God not only created man; He created the material of which man was made,
and the laws of the universe into which man was introduced.
God is the "First Great Cause": He created all things: the evil and the
good. How can God blame man for the effects of which God is the cause?
For the defeat of all Christian apologists it is not necessary for me to
add another word; the argument is invincible as it stands. But for the
reader's sake it may be as well to deal rather more fully with what
may be to him a new and startling idea. Let us then return to Mr.
Chesterton's plea.
God is said to give to man a "power": a power which, Mr. Chesterton
says, God "made out of Himself." And this power will create thoughts,
will create actions as God creates stars.
But we see that man cannot create the thoughts nor cause the actions
until God gives him the "power." Then it is the "power" that creates
the thoughts or acts. Then it is not man, but the "power"--the power God
made out of Himself and bestowed upon man--that creates the thoughts or
acts. Then the "power" is a kind of lord or ruler made by God, and put
by God over man, as a rider is placed upon a horse, or a pilot on a
ship. Then man is no more responsible for the acts or the thoughts of
this ruling power than a horse is responsible for the acts of a jockey,
or a ship for the acts of a pilot.
In fact, the "power" given by God to man is only another name for the
"will of God," or the "power of God"; and if man's acts are ruled, or
created, by the will or power of God, how can God justly punish man for
those acts?
If God created man as well as this imaginary "power" which God is said
to give to man, God is responsible for the acts of both.
It is claimed by others that man is responsible to God for his acts
because God gave him "reason," or because God gave him a "conscience,"
or because God gave him a "will" to choose.
But these words, "conscience," "reason," and "will," are only other
names for Mr. Chesterton's imaginary "power."
Let us be careful to keep our thoughts quite clear and unentangled. If
we speak of "will," or "power," or "reason," as a thing "given to man,"
we imply that "will," or "power," is a thing _outside_ of man, and not a
part of him.
Having failed to saddle man with responsibility for himself, our
opponents would now make him responsible for some "power" outside
himself. The simple answer is that man made neither himself nor his
powers, and that God made man and the power given to man; therefore God
and not man is responsible. Conscience and reason and the "power" are
rulers or guides given to man by God. God made these guides or rulers.
These guides must be true guides, or false guides: they must be good or
bad.
God is all-knowing, as well as all-powerful. Not only has He power to
create at will a true guide or a false guide, but He _knows_ when He
creates a guide, and when He bestows that guide upon man, whether it
will be a true or a false guide. Therefore, when God created the reason
or the conscience and gave it to man, He _knew_ whether the reason or
the conscience would guide man right or wrong. If the power made and
bestowed by God leads man wrongly, it is leading man as God _willed_ and
_knew_ it would lead him. How, then, can God justly blame man for the
acts that reason or power "creates"?
God creates a number of good propensities, and a number of evil
propensities, packs them up in a bundle and calls them "man." Is the
skinful of propensities created and put together by God responsible for
the proportion of good and evil powers it comprises?
But then Mr. Chesterton suggests that God puts over the bundle a "power"
of control. That power controls man for evil: as God must have known it
would. Is the bundle of God's making responsible for the failure of
the power God made and sent to manage it? God must have known when He
created and put the "power" in control that it would fail.
Tell me now, some wise philosopher, or great divine, or learned
logician, which is the _man?_ Is it the good propensities, or the evil
propensities, or the power of control? And tell me how can any one or
all of these be responsible to the God who invented them, who created
them, who joined them together; who made and united them, knowing they
would fail?
Here is a grand conception of an "all-wise," "all-powerful," perfectly
"just" God, who creates a man whom He knows _must_ do evil, gives him a
guide who cannot make him do well, issues commands for him to act as
God has made it impossible for him to act, and finally punishes him for
failing to do what God knew from the first he was incapable of doing.
And the world is paying millions of money, and bestowing honours and
rewards in profusion upon the learned and wise and spiritual leaders who
teach it to believe such illogical nonsense as the above.
When we turn from the old idea of instantaneous creation to the new idea
of evolution, the theories about "God's mercy" and "God's wrath" are
still more impossible and absurd.
For now we are to believe that God, the "First Great Cause," "in the
beginning" created not man and beast, and forest and sea, and hill and
plain, but "matter," and "force," and "law."
Out of the matter and force God made, working to the law God made, there
slowly developed the nebulæ, the suns, the planets.
Out of the same matter and force, changed in form by the working of
God's laws, there slowly developed the single-celled jelly-like creature
from which, by the working of God's laws, all other forms of life have
since evolved.
Out of matter and force, working to God's laws, man has been evolved.
Is there any step in the long march of evolution from the first creation
of matter and force to the evolution of man, when the jelly speck, or
the polyp, or the fish, or the reptile, or the beast, or the ape, or the
man, had power to change, or to assist, or to resist the working of the
laws God made?
Is there any step in the long march of evolution, any link in the long
chain of cause and effect, when any one of the things or beings evolved
by law working on matter and force could by act or will of their own
have developed otherwise than as they did?
Is it not plain that man has developed into that which he is by slow
evolution of matter and force, through the operation of divine laws over
which he had no more control than he now has over the revolution of the
suns in their orbits?
How, then, can we believe that man is to blame for being that which he
is?
Is there any quality of body or of mind that has not been _inevitably_
evolved in man by the working of God's laws?
You are not going to tell me that I am answerable or blame-able for the
nature of matter and force, nor for the operations of God's laws, are
you?
You will not suggest that I am responsible for the creation: so long
ago, and I so new, so weak, so small!
God, when He created matter and force and law, knew the nature of matter
and force, and the power and purpose of law. He knew that they must work
as He had made and meant them to work. He knew that we _must_ be as His
agents _must_ make us.
Will He punish or reward us, then, for the acts of His agents: the
agents He made and controlled? Absurd.
But, it may be urged, "man has a soul." So! He got that soul from God.
God made the soul and fixed its powers for good and evil.
It is the soul, then, that is responsible, is it? But the soul did not
create itself, and can only act as God has ordained that it shall and
must act.
If man is not to blame for his own acts he is not to blame for the acts
of his soul; and for the same reason.
"Soul," or "man," "reason," or "conscience," responsibility lies with
the causer, and not with the thing caused.
And God is "The First Great Cause," and how then can God justly punish
any of His creatures for being as He created them?
It is impossible. It is unthinkable. But upon this unthinkable and
impossible absurdity the whole code of divine laws is built.
Therefore the Christian religion is untrue, and man is not responsible
to God for his nature nor for his acts.