Author: Albert C. Knudson
PART II THE DOCTRINE OF GOD
[p. 203]
THE existence of God is a fundamental presupposition not only of the Christian religion, but of all religion in its more highly developed forms. There probably was a kind of religion anterior to the rise of the belief in a Divine Being or beings, but of it we know very little. Original Buddhism was atheistic, but whether it was a religion or not is a question. Certainly, it represented a very one-sided and inadequate expression of the religious nature, and it was not until it was transformed into a polytheism that it became a truly popular and vital religion. In modern times various efforts have been made to start a religion without God, but the results have not been encouraging. No such effort could be successful without a radical change in the religious nature of men. So long as religion implies a trustful feeling of absolute dependence and a deep longing for redemption, it will inevitably tend not only toward a belief in a superworld, but toward a belief in a transcendent personal Being.
The theism of Christianity does not, therefore, set it apart from the other religions of the world; it is, rather, a bond of union with them. For, however vague, impersonal, and agnostic the latter may be, they contain an implicit theism. There is in them [p. 204] a native urge toward something clearer and more adequate. Their impersonalism and agnosticism are not finalities; they are, rather, way stations on the road to a more definite and more satisfactory world-view. And this more adequate world-view Christianity offers them in its own clear-cut theism. It says to them what Paul said to the Athenians on Mars’ hill: “Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” It does not, then, negate their claims; it, rather, affirms and fulfills them. And this it is able to do because all religion by its very nature is implicitly theistic. It is in the thought or assumption of a transcendent and divine reality that all religion roots. What Christianity does is simply to make more explicit and carry to its logical consequences what is involved in the nature of religion in general. As it is said of the Old and New Testaments that the New is latent in the Old and the Old patent in the New, so it may be said of Christianity in its relation to other religions that it is latent in them, and they are patent in it. A common theistic interest binds them all together.
In beginning, then, our exposition of the Christian faith with its doctrine of God we are adopting a method suggested not by the uniqueness of Christian teaching, but by the logical structure of religious belief in general. All vital religion rests ultimately on faith in God. But God is differently conceived by different religions and by different philosophies. The fundamental problem of theology is, therefore, to determine, if possible, what is the true conception of God. Some there are who resent all such attempts [p. 205] and condemn them in advance. They do so not simply because they regard them as futile, as incapable of being carried to a successful issue, but because they look upon them as more or less out of harmony with the true nature of religion. To them it is the vagueness, the indefiniteness, the indefinability of Deity that is most appealing. If his being carries with it the vague notion of some supernal value, they are content. They care for nothing more definite. They have no interest in defining his nature more precisely. Indeed, they look with disfavor upon any such attempt, branding it as “rationalistic,” “scholastic,” or something still more reprehensible. But intelligible as all this is by way of reaction against an overdone intellectualism, it cannot satisfy the permanent religious needs of men. If God is real and if he means anything to us, it must be possible to form some more or less definite conception of his being. If it were not, religion would degenerate into an amorphous feeling, and for the mass of men would lose both its credibility and its worth. That God may be known is implied in the idea of revelation upon which the historical religions are based) and on this assumption men have built up their various conceptions of God* These conceptions have no doubt at times been analyzed and defined by their adherents with too great minuteness and precision; but it is nevertheless true that it is in the distinctness of its conception of God that the genius and strength of a religion are most clearly revealed. This has manifestly been the case with Christianity. In the history of Christian theology there are three [p. 206] main problems with reference to God that have been discussed. The first has to do with his being or existence; it is for the most part an apologetic problem. The second has to do with his attributes, and the third with the doctrine of the Trinity. The last is ^ distinctively Christian doctrine; in it the unique element in the Christian view of God comes to its clearest and fullest expression. The being and attributes of God are problems that Christianity shares with other religions and with philosophic theism.
In the discussion of the divine attributes there has been considerable difference of opinion among theologians. They have not agreed as to what an attribute is. Some of the older theologians seemed to regard the attributes as standing in an external relation to the divine being or nature, as something like pins stuck in a cushion. This is obviously a mistake. The attributes have no existence apart from the being of God, and the being of God has no reality apart from its attributes. The two belong together. Taken separately they are abstractions. The attributes are simply expressions of the nature of God. On the other hand, some of the profoundest theologians have denied that the attributes express any real differences within the divine nature. Augustine, for instance, said: “God is truly called in manifold ways great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatsoever other thing seems to be said of him not unworthily; but his greatness is the same as his wisdom; for he is not great by bulk, but by power; and his goodness is the same as his wisdom and greatness, and his truth the same as all those things; and in him it is not one thing to be [p. 207] blessed, and another to be great, or wise, or true, or good, or, in a word, to be himself.” [1] Somewhat more explicitly still Schleiermacher said: “All attributes which we ascribe to God are to be taken as denoting not something special in God, but only something special in the manner in which the feeling of absolute dependence is to be related to him. . . . The divine thinking is the same as the divine will, and omnipotence and omniscience are one and the same.” [2] These statements by Schleiermacher and Augustine, if taken strictly, would lead to virtual agnosticism… For if the divine attributes are subjective with us and represent no distinctions within God himself, it is evident that we have no valid knowledge of him, since it is only through his attributes that he can be known. We must, then, regard the divine attributes as truly expressive of the divine nature; and from this point of view we may, with O. A. Curtis, define an attribute as “any characteristic which we must ascribe to God to express what he really is,” [3] or we may, with H. B. Smith, define it as “any conception which is necessary to the explicit idea of God, any distinctive conception which cannot be resolved into any other.” [4]
If these definitions of an attribute be accepted, the question still arises as to what specific aspects of the Divine Being should be singled out as attributes and how they should be classified. Here too there is no [p. 208] general agreement, but the differences are not of any particular moment. Yet in seeking to determine how we ought to think about God it is a matter of some importance that we should single out those characteristics which are most significant in themselves and in their relation to current thought. In the past it was not uncommon to string together the various attributes without any attempt to relate them logically to each other. Richard Watson, for instance, discussed the following attributes in the order given: Unity, spirituality, eternity, omnipotence, ubiquity, omniscience, immutability, wisdom, goodness, holiness. [5] More recently it has been customary to distinguish between the metaphysical and the ethical attributes; and this distinction is valid and important. [6] But beyond it no scheme of the divine attributes has been agreed upon. Bather has the tendency been against any such schematization, and also against a multiplication of attributes. Interest now centers in a few fundamental characteristics or attributes of Deity, such as absoluteness, personality, and goodness. Is God to be thought of as absolute, as personal, as good, and, if so, in what sense? These are the questions now attracting attention, and it is with them that we shall deal. They do not exclude the older and more exhaustive inquiry into the divine attributes. But they approach the problem from a [p. 209] broader point of view, seeking to simplify it and to relate it more closely to the living thought of the day.
It is sometimes urged that the discussion of the question as to the existence of God should follow the exposition of the Christian conception of his nature, on the ground that it is only after we know what this conception is that we are prepared to justify it. [7] But in reply it may be pointed out that in seeking to justify the belief in God we are concerned with only the more general aspects of his being, and that the argument does not require a knowledge of the full Christian doctrine. Such a general knowledge as any well-educated Christian may be supposed to have will suffice. We begin, then, our study of the doctrine of God with an inquiry into the question of his existence, following it with three chapters on the absoluteness, the personality, and the goodness of God respectively, and concluding the study with an exposition and criticism of the Trinitarian teaching of the church.
In taking up the problem of the divine existence we are confronted at the outset with the question as to what existence or reality means. The common man answers the question by pointing to things. But it was long ago discovered that things are not what they seem, and so a distinction came to be made between appearance and reality. “Only in opinion,” said Democritus, “consists sweetness, bitterness, warmth, cold, color; in truth, there is nothing but atoms and empty space.” This limitation of reality to atoms or material things Plato rejected. He found a higher realm of reality in immaterial Ideas or souls. [p. 210] And at the beginning of the modern era Descartes reduced all finite reality to two radically different modes of being extended and thinking substances, or material things and minds. But Berkeley denied the substantial reality of matter, and a little later Hume denied the substantiality of the soul. Thus the older metaphysical conception of reality, both material and immaterial, both physical and mental, both static and dynamic, was called in question; and in its place or alongside of it there arose a positivistic view, which rejects the ideas of substance and cause and in principle reduces all reality to the phenomenal plane. This type of thought has never been carried through with complete consistency, but as a tendency it is perhaps the most characteristic feature of contemporary philosophy; and by its alliance with current empiricism and certain impersonal forms of idealism it has so modified or blurred the conception of reality that the subjective elements in human experience and thought are often declared to be as real as the objects of sense-experience. The latter, we are told, have no substantial or causal reality in them or back of them, and hence are real only insofar as they enter into experience or into some unsubstantial web of relations.
Under the influence of this positivistic view of reality efforts have been made to redefine God in such a way as to eliminate the older metaphysical implications of the term and yet to retain the idea of his real existence. He is, for instance, said to be real in the same sense as Alma Mater, Uncle Sam, and Humanity, though in a “greater” degree. He is [p. 211] “reality idealized,” lie is “experienced reality taken in a socialized way,” he is “the Spirit of the world of living beings, taken in their associated and ideal experience.” [8] Or from a slightly different point of view he is identified with a part or aspect of nature. He is said to be that “most subtle and intimate complexity of environmental nature which yields the greatest good when right adjustment is made.” [9]
In this redefinition of God it is evident that he is not regarded as real in the same sense as is that larger Nature of which he forms a part. It is, indeed, stated that “his reality is as demonstrable as the world itself,” but the world or nature is manifestly thought of as the more inclusive and original reality. It is real in the metaphysical sense of the term, while God is real only in a secondary sense as a part or product of nature. No individuality or independent activity is ascribed to him. He may be spoken of as “the Power which makes for righteousness,” but this is only in an accommodated sense. He is, rather, a law or process, and is real only in the sense in which a law or social group is real. If a deeper reality is attributed to him, it is in a pantheistic sense. The system under consideration, however if it may be called a system is far from being a consistent pantheism. It is a compound of positivism, naturalism, pantheism, and sociology, together with a dash of Platonic idealism and a persistent profession of empiricism. In such a fusion if not confusion of different points of view it is not always easy to determine [p. 212] exactly what is meant by the various statements concerning God. But it is clear that he is not to be regarded as the ultimate ground of the universe. He is a part or aspect or expression of it.
Insofar as he is identified with a social process, or a social group, or a social ideal, or some observable phase of nature, it may perhaps be justly claimed that he is as demonstrably real as the world about us, but he is not real in the only sense in which religion is interested in his reality. What religion is alone concerned about is a righteous and loving will upon which the world is dependent. No social process, no phase of the natural order, no vague universal can fill out the religious idea of Deity. For religion God must be an individual, absolute and personal Being. At least such is the Christian view. And the fundamental question of religion is whether such a Being exists. Existence as applied to him means, therefore, metaphysical existence, an independent, dynamic and spiritual mode of being.
That such a God exists is the banal affirmation of the Christian faith. But on what does this affirmation rest? It comes to us through tradition. We accept it as a part of our religious inheritance, or we reject it. The question consequently arises as to how we are to determine whether it is valid or not*
An early method of dealing with the problem, and one that is not yet obsolete, was that of inquiring into the origin of the belief. If the belief had a worthy origin, it was to be accepted; if not, it was to be rejected. Under this assumption the friends of religion traced the belief to a divine source, to revelation, [p. 213] while the foes of religion insisted that it not only had a purely human origin, but that it originated in some unworthy element or aspect of human nature or life, such as fear/selfish desire, perverted sexuality, priest and statecraft, social injustice, dreams, trances, or the belief in ghosts. The theories upholding the latter view were considered at some length in Chapter I. Here I need do no more than remind the reader that a belief or institution is not necessarily discredited because of its historical antecedents. Astronomy, chemistry, and manual labor do not lose their validity or dignity because they grew up out of astrology, alchemy, and slavery respectively. And so it is with the belief in God. It may have been preceded by various superstitions and its development may have been influenced by unworthy motives or pathological states of one kind or another, out the question of its validity cannot be decided by considerations such as these. Its truth or falsity can be determined only by its intrinsic rationality and worth or by its lack of these qualities.
Much has been made by critics of the human origin of the belief in God and of the anthropomorphic character of our conception of Deity. It has been said that “God is the noblest work of man”; and to Heine we owe the taunting remark that “if God made man in his own image, man made haste to return the compliment.” Back in the early days of Greek philosophy Xenophanes satirized the anthropomorphisms of his day by saying that “the Ethiopians make their gods black-haired and flat-nosed, and the Thracians make theirs red-haired and blue-eyed.” “Yes,” he [p. 214] added, “and if the beasts had hands and could paint and carve, the horses would make their gods like horses, and the oxen make theirs like oxen.” The assumption underlying such utterances as these, which have been repeated through the centuries, is that the idea of a personal God is man’s creation, the giant reflection of his own personality, and that on this account it cannot have objective validity* But in response it may first be pointed out that nothing can exist for us except as we think it. Our idea of the world is our creation quite as much as is our idea of God, and the only significant question in either case is as to whether the idea is correct or not. That it has a human source does not compromise its validity any more in one instance than in the other. And as for the anthropomorphic element in the conception of God it should be noted that “man is organic to nature” and that there is consequently as good ground for attributing cosmic significance to personality as to any other form of existence. Indeed, weighty reasons, as we shall see later, may be offered for the view that it is only in and through personality that a rational understanding of ultimate reality is possible^. There is, then, nothing in the charge of anthropomorphism nor in the charge that the idea of God had a human origin that invalidates the theistic belief. [10]
On the other hand, one cannot justify the belief [p. 215] in God by attributing its origin to divine revelation, for revelation implies the existence of God. Without God there could be no revelation. To base the belief in God on revelation would, therefore, be to argue in a circle; for revelation itself is in turn based on the belief in God. The fact is that the belief in revelation is simply an expression of the belief in God. If we really know God he must have revealed himself. Revelation is a corollary of religious faith. It does not ground faith, it presupposes it. No argument in support of a supernatural revelation would have the slightest cogency apart from the belief in God. The whole rationale of revelation is grounded in the theistic faith.
It is also important to note that revelation does not stand opposed to what may be called the “human” or “natural” mode of acquiring knowledge; it does not necessarily involve the miraculous. History and psychology might conceivably describe the exact process by which the belief in God arose, but this would not exclude a divine agency. The revelational activity of the Divine Spirit is entirely consonant with a synchronous activity of the human spirit. Indeed, the two involve each other; they are different aspects of one and the same process. From one point of view the quest after God is a human search, a human striving, but from another point of view it is a divine revelation.
This, however, does not mean that everything is equally divine and that there are no degrees in the divine nearness to men. God has revealed himself more fully to some peoples and to some individuals [p. 216] than to others. [11] This is the basis on which the Christian claim to a special divine revelation rests, and much with reference to the uniqueness and high character of the prophetic-Christian view of God may be said in support of it. [12] Nowhere else do we find so pure and lofty a conception of the divine righteousness and love, and nowhere else do we find the monotheistic idea developing and maintaining itself under such untoward circumstances. It is a significant fact that it was not in a world-empire such as Assyria or Egypt, but in the two puny Hebrew kingdoms, and that at the very time they were going down to political ruin, that the idea of one God, and he a God of righteousness, emerged into distinct human consciousness. So contrary is this to all natural human calculation that the religious mind can hardly resist the conviction that the history of Israel was touched in a unique way by the finger of God. Israel was also the only nation whose religion survived the national downfall. When other ancient nations fell they threw their gods, as Isaiah said, to the moles and the bats, and this in all probability Israel also would have done if it had not been for the work of her prophets. Then, too, her religion was the only religion in southwestern Asia that succeeded in resisting the encroachments of Hellenic naturalism. These remarkable facts put the stamp of uniqueness upon Israel’s religion and upon the Christian religion based upon it, and justify us in seeing in both a special revelation of God. But [p. 217] this, after all, is a religious judgment. There is nothing in either Israelitic or Christian history that to the nonreligious mind necessarily excludes a naturalistic interpretation. No logical ground for either accepting or rejecting the theistic belief can, therefore, be found in the various theories of its historical origin. These theories are secondary, not primary, the effects of faith or unfaith, not their causes. One might, like the sage of whom Von Hugel tells us, trace the origin of religion back to “the scratching by a cow of an itch on her back,” [13] and yet not undermine the religious belief of to-day; or, on the other hand, one might find the ultimate source of religion in a primitive revelation and yet leave it with as little rational justification as ever.
We come back, then, to the Christian religious tradition with which we started and which is the immediate source of our belief in God. That this belief is traditional is, to some extent at least, in its favor. That it has been tried and tested through the centuries, that it has been the settled conviction of generation after generation of men, that it has passed through the fires of criticism, seven times overheated in modern times all this is manifestly to its credit. No doubt there have been errors hoary with age, no doubt falsehoods have at times been tenacious of life. But this has been due to sense prejudice, to selfishness of one kind or another, or to mental inertia. In the Christian belief in God, on the other hand, we have a conception that rises above the sense plane, that transcends all selfishness, both individual and [p. 218] corporate, and that has been subjected to the keenest and profoundest critical investigation. That it has persisted through the ages and still persists as the professed faith of the leading peoples of the world is, therefore, a weighty consideration in favor of its truth. But there is dissent from it, increasing dissent; and the modern man is in principle opposed to resting his faith on the mere authority of tradition. He recognizes in religion no external authority, either human or divine. Tradition, he insists, must present to him its credentials. It must justify itself, and this it can do only by awakening within him an inner persuasion of its truth. Mere assent to it will not suffice. There must be something deeper, genuine personal conviction; and the fundamental question in religion is as to how this conviction can be generated. What valid basis or bases, if any, are there for the Christian belief in God?
Current religious thought begins its defense of theism with what may be called the religious argument. It then passes to the moral argument and from that to the theoretical or “rational” argument. This analysis and order of treatment will be adopted in the following discussion.
The religious argument is based on the uniqueness of man’s religious nature. It is maintained, not that there is a separate religious faculty in the human mind, but that man has a capacity for religion as original and distinct as is his capacity for art, for morality, and for science, and that this capacity when [p. 219] fully and consistently developed leads to the belief in God. The latter part of this claim has already been discussed at sufficient length; the former was first clearly and definitely formulated by Schleiermacher. Before his time the uniqueness of religion was to some extent implied in the current supernatural and authoritarian conception of revelation and faith, but it was not scientifically developed and grounded. Schleiermacher was the first clearly and explicitly to distinguish religion psychologically from other forms of the mental life. Religion, he insisted, is not knowing or doing, but is a unique feeling, the feeling of absolute dependence. As siich it is ultimate and justifies itself. But the method of self-justification has been differently conceived.
Some argue that religion is akin to an instinct or some other natural human endowment by means of which adjustment is made to one’s environment. The existence of such an instinctor endowment presupposes the existence of the object toward which it is directed. The autumnal flight of the birds of passage implies the existence of the warmer southland, [14] the eye implies light, the ear sound, hunger food, reason a rational world; and so also, it is argued, religion implies the reality of the Divine Object after which it reaches out. If there were no such correspondence between the inner and organic world and the outer world, life would be impossible. The very fact of human life requires, therefore, that to every deepseated human power or need there be an objective [p. 220] counterpart. And not only is this conclusion involved in an analysis of the conditions of human life, it is genetically grounded. For our human powers, our senses, instincts and other capacities owe their origin to their environment. They have grown up as responses to the realities by which they were surrounded. Causally as well as analytically they consequently point to real existences corresponding to them. This is as true of the religious as of other capacities. Our yearning after God implies that he exists both as the cause and the object of our yearning. [15]
This argument, if it may be called such, is not “religious” in the strict sense of the term. It is not rooted in the religious consciousness, nor is it a direct expression of it. It is, rather, a theoretical argument, based on the genesis and structure of the religious nature. Its main contention is that religion, like the other natural human capacities, is a response to an objective reality and that for it this reality is God. Without God religion would be inexplicable as a normal factor in human life.
In this line of thought it is assumed that there must be a correspondence between the inner and outer world; and some such correspondence, it is clear, must be assumed if knowledge is to be possible. But error and illusion are patent facts of human life; and it is a question whether religion might not serve an important biological function, even though its ideational content be misleading. Perception, as applied [p. 221] to the physical world, is, we know, largely deception. Things are not what they seem. And so it may be in the spiritual realm. There may be no God, even though religious faith seems to require it; and yet faith in the ideal may be of the greatest practical value, just as our normal perception is. Whether faith in the ideal is permanently detachable from the belief in God is doubtful. But in the past popular faith in the superworld has varied so much and has often been so vague and confused that not a little can be said in favor of the view that the utility of religion is not dependent upon a clear-cut theism. The bare principle of adjustment to environment, such as we see illustrated in the organic realm, does not guarantee the truth of religious belief. The adjustment, it is true, would be more complete and our worldview more harmonious if our highest religious beliefs squared with reality; but there is nothing in the biological analogy that necessarily requires such a parallelism. As a mere instinct or mode of behavior, as a mere adjustment to environment, religion might conceivably be geared into a naturalistic system. How long it would in such a system retain its dynamic, is a question. But so long as it did, it would fulfill a social function. And when its dynamic failed, it would, like other obsolete institutions, become a kind of social vermiform appendix which had better be excised.
Against such a possibility as this stands a deepseated feeling that religion has played so important a role in human history and has been of such supreme value in human life that we cannot regard it as a [p. 222] mere transitory phase of human development. It must, we feel, be permanent. But this conviction is much more deeply grounded than the principle of social adjustment or anything logically contained in it. If it were not, it could hardly be regarded as self-evidencing.
A profounder way of presenting the religious argument for theism is that represented by Schleiermacher, Troeltsch, and Otto. They turn for the self-verification of religion not to a more or less dubious biological analogy, but to the; structure of the human mind itself. Schleiermacher, for instance, says that the “feeling of absolute dependence, in which our self-consciousness in general represents the finitude of our being, is not an accidental element, or a thing which varies from person to person, but is a universal element of life; and the recognition o:f this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God.” [16] In thus affirming the universality of the feeling of absolute dependence Schleiermacher may go beyond what the facts warrant; but insofar as he means to assert that religious experience is structural in human nature, that it “takes its place alongside of science and practice, as a necessary, an indispensable third, as their natural counterpart, not less in worth and splendor than either,” [17] so that it stands in its own right as fully as they, he is on solid ground. No moral or rational “proof” is necessary to give validity to religious [p. 223] belief. Religion is as independent, as ultimate and as irreducible as any other factor or element of our mental nature, and hence it may be regarded as verifying itself.
Troeltsch gave somewhat greater precision to this line of thought by linking it up with the Kantian doctrine of the categories and maintaining that there is a religious a priori, just as there are a moral, an aesthetic, and an intellectual a priori. [18] The term “a priori” suggests the logical or rational; and Troeltsch does speak of a “rational a priori of religion” and a “rational kernel of religion.” He looks upon religion as belonging to “reason.” But he uses the word “reason” in a broad sense as about equivalent to the human spirit in its normal and normative activity. “Rational” with him does not then mean “intellectual”; it does not denote the theoretical reason. Indeed, the religious a priori, though rational, is said to be “anti-intellectualistic”. It has its own unique and distinctive nature. But beyond that it cannot be defined. It is “formal” in character, as are the other categories, and manifests itself only in and through experience. Religious experience presupposes a religious a priori, and without it would be impossible. But this a priori or immanent principle has no detachable existence of its own. It is the condition of the religious consciousness, but not a separate factor in it. It denotes a rational capacity, “an autonomous validity”; and it is here that its significance lies. Grounded in a rational a priori, religion, [p. 224] like science, morality, and art, carries within itself the law of its own being and needs no validation from any other source.
Rudolf Otto accepts the idea of a religious a priori, but his conception of it is somewhat different from Troeltsch’s, and he has analyzed it more fully. [19] He, for instance, distinguishes between a rational and an irrational a priori. The former manifests itself in the conceptions that we form of the Deity, such as his absoluteness, his personality, and goodness; the latter manifests itself in what Otto calls the “numinous” feeling, an awareness of the divine. Both of these have their roots in the hidden depths of the spirit and are in that sense a priori. But not only are they a priori, there is a connection between them, and it, too, has an a priori character. The numinous feeling and the conception of the divine goodness are bound together in an inward and necessary union, so that when the moral character of God is affirmed the religious spirit instinctively ratifies it. A striking illustration of this is found toward the close of the second book of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates says, “God, then, is simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others,” to which Adeimantos replies, “Now that thou sayst it, it is also quite clear to me.” What he had not thought of before, the high moral character of Deity, commended itself to him as self-evident the moment it was stated by Socrates. And so it was with the Hebrews to whom Amos addressed himself. Their religious consciousness almost in spite of themselves [p. 225] acknowledged the validity of his conception of Jehovah as a God of absolute righteousness, although it was a novel doctrine. There are, then, three religious a prioris one rational, another irrational, and the third the bond of union between the other two. But interesting and suggestive as this analysis is, it cannot be said to advance in any material way the apologetic problem. Whether the religious a priori be single or triple, clearly defined or not, the main truth underlying it is that of the autonomous validity of our religious nature. Religion is as structural in reason or in our total personality as are science, art, and morality, and may, therefore, be regarded as equally permanent and equally trustworthy. As these other interests justify themselves, so also do religion and the belief in God.
Yet another form of the religious argument may be briefly considered. This one is more empiricistic and consists in maintaining that the existence of God is given immediately in religious experience. It is not an explication of a hidden a priori, nor a mere postulate of our moral nature, nor an inference from experience. It has the same kind of objectivity that the material world has. It is an intuited and verifiable reality. We may be said, then, to know God through our religious experience in the same direct way that we know the physical world through our sense-experience.
To this putting of the case there are two main objections. The first is based on the Berkeleyan and Humean criticism of sense-experience, and the second on the Kantian criticism of metaphysical and religious[p. 226] knowledge in general. Berkeley and Hume showed once for all that matter as a substantial and causal reality is not an empirical datum. We may ascribe our sense-experience to such a hypothetical matter, but it is important to bear in mind that matter in this metaphysical sense is hypothetical and not an immediately experienced or intuited reality. The analogy of sense-experience fails, therefore, to establish the reality of the metaphysical object in religious experience. In the latter the belief in God is a plus added to the original empirical data in the same way that matter is in sense-experience. And we have in each case the same problem to decide as to whether the addition is valid or not.
Then, too, Kant made it unmistakably clear that we cannot know God or any metaphysical object in the same way that we know the sense world. 20 Our knowledge of ultimate reality is subjectively conditioned. Volitional and moral factors enter into it so that it would more properly be called faith than knowledge. Faith, it is true, may become so vivid as to take on a perceptual form; but this holds true only of the more extreme type of mysticism. As a rule, it moves on a different plane, and confusion may result from assimilating it too closely to sense-perception and scientific knowledge. Certainly, our perception or knowledge of God is quite different from our perception or knowledge of the phenomenal order. The former is volitionally and morally conditioned in a way that the latter is not. That faith has an object is emphatically true, and from this point of view we [p. 227] may speak of it as religious perception or religions experience or religious knowledge. But we need to be on our guard against being led astray by these terms. They by no means guarantee the validity of our faith. By whatever name or terms faith may be known or described, it is still faith, and as such differentiates itself from mere perception. It does not become more objective, nor more certain, nor more immediate because of the partial analogy that exists between it and sense-experience.
The truth and strength of the religious argument do not lie in the magic of a new religious nomenclature or in the mystical immediacy of religious cognition, but in the fundamental independence of religious faith, in its priori character. All the ideal interests of mankind science, art, morality, and religion rest ultimately on faith; [20] and faith in one form is logically as good as faith in any other form. Religious faith has in this respect nothing to fear. It occupies as impregnable a position as does the faith that underlies science, morality, and art. It cannot be dislodged by merely theoretical considerations. It stands in its own right. This is the invincible truth of the religious argument for the divine existence. [21] Wherever faith in God is spontaneous, vigorous and [p. 228] sincere, as it is, for instance, in Scripture, it justifies itself.
The moral argument stands closely related to the religious argument. I have elsewhere [22] treated the two as parts or aspects of one and the same argument, to which I gave the name “valuational.” The term “pneumatological” has also been applied to it on the ground that it has to do with the logic of the spirit rather than that of the pure reason. [23] Such a fusion of the religious and moral arguments is natural in view of their close relation to each other. But there is still a sufficient difference between them to warrant our treating them separately.
The main line of cleavage between them lies in the fact that the religious argument emphasizes the immediacy with which faith or religious experience lays hold of! its object. God is given to us in an act of faith or mystical intuition which resembles perception both in its objectivity and its certitude. We know him directly or have a conviction or awareness of his reality akin to that with which we apprehend the presence of another person. The moral argument, on the other hand, stresses the spiritual necessity of the belief in God. We have from this point of view no immediate experience of him. But without him conscience would fall into contradiction with itself. If we are, therefore, to avoid ethical inconsistency, we must affirm his existence. Our moral [p. 229] nature requires it. God is an implication, a postulate of our practical reason.
This moral argument has taken on several different forms. We may distinguish three. The first and simplest starts with the fact of the moral law and argues from it to a lawgiver. The essence of morality, we are told, consists in the recognition of an objective and binding law, and this law implies a moral ruler. Without a ruler there could be no law. But this line of reasoning manifestly rests upon a naive, heteronomous and monarchic conception of the moral life. In our actual experience duty does not come as an external command. It is autonomous, it arises within us, is self-imposed. That it furnishes some basis for the belief in a supreme judge may be true. But the existence of such a Being is not given directly in the moral consciousness itself, nor is it a necessary logical inference from the fact of duty or of moral law. Law in the moral realm does not necessarily imply an external lawgiver. Neither psychology nor ethics lends any support to such a claim.
The most famous form of the moral argument is that given it by Kant. The great Konigsberger, after destroying, as he believed, the traditional theistic “proofs,” sought to re-establish theism upon a purely ethical basis. The moral nature, he held, implies two things: first, an a priori moral law to which unconditional obedience is due, and, secondly, “the distribution of happiness in exact proportion to morality.” But such a proportionate distribution is not to be found in the world as we know it. Hence, he argued, we must assume or postulate a Supreme Being who [p. 230] will bring it about; and, furthermore, since complete virtue cannot be attained in any finite period of time, we must assume for man an endless life. To this argument it has been objected that it presupposes a eudemonistic view of morality. But this is a mistake. Kant strenuously maintained the contrary view. Virtue does not consist in seeking well-being. It is, rather, independent and self-sufficient. It is itself the supreme good. But while the supreme good, it is not the sole good nor the summum bonum. The latter includes happiness; and this means that our moral aspiration is directed toward outward fortune as well as toward inner worth. The good will is all-important, but it is not all that is important. In order to be good, it must will the good; and this means that there is an objective good which it can will. In other words it means that the universe is not indifferent to the distinction between good and evil. It means that there must be, as Kant says, “a harmony between nature and morality.” If there were not, the moral nature would be thrown back upon itself. It would have no object, no end, and would thus contradict itself. It would be an alien in the world, a rebel against all that is; and the ultimate consequence would be its elimination from human life as essentially false.
This, however, Kant regarded as virtually a reductio ad absurdum. The moral law is structural in human reason, it is a rational a priori and as such must be as permanent as reason itself. With it we may, therefore, start as a universal and necessary fact, and from it deduce whatever is logically involved [p. 231] in it. It, for instance, requires that the virtuous man be the recipient of moral approval and that he be treated accordingly. But such approval and such treatment in the present world-order are uncertain and limited in extent, and never will be fully realized unless there be a Supreme Ruler who will bring nature and morality or happiness and virtue into harmony with each other. We are, therefore, morally and rationally justified in affirming the existence of such a Euler. For conscience cannot be content with a purposeless obedience to a formal law. Beyond the law there must be an end to be attained and in this end man must find “something which he can love.” Our moral nature requires this, and hence we may say with Kant that “morality inevitably leads to religion.”
This line of argument could be considerably strengthened by pointing out the disastrous ethical consequences of a refusal to draw the religious or theistic conclusion. [24] Atheism reduces men to automata, and automata could hardly have duties as duties are ordinarily understood. They might perhaps recognize the formal moral principles, but these are conditioned in their application by our general world view and by our conception of human personality, its nature and destiny. If we held an atheistic or naturalistic view of the world and of human life, our formal moral judgments might readily be applied in such a way as to undermine our existing ethical code; and certainly in such a world view there would [p. 232] be no basis for ethical idealism. The moral life would lose its inspiration and would sink to a low level of individual or social expediency. It is only in a theistic world-view that a rational basis for a high and noble morality can be found. Without such a world view life would have no meaning, its ideals would collapse, and its springs of action be broken. [25] At least this would be the logical result. To one, consequently, who believes in the sanctity of the moral life and who would regard its overthrow as an act of unreason, the theistic conclusion must seem inevitable.
Kant regarded the foregoing line of thought as the sole valid basis for the belief in God, and many of his disciples have taken the same view. Some, however, have felt that he interpreted morality in too narrow and formal a way. To define religion as “the recognition of all duties as divine commands” does not do justice to the uniqueness and breadth of religion. If the moral consciousness is to be made the one source and justification of religious belief, it must be broadened so as to take in life as a whole. It must be understood as including “the awareness of all ultimate ends of desire of whatever sort.” [26] But this puts a new construction upon the word “moral” and virtually transforms the moral argument into what I have called the “valuational” argument. If all the ideal values of life are included in “moral” aspiration, there is, of course, no objection to deducing [p. 233] religion from morality. But in that case morality loses its distinctiveness and becomes synonymous with faith in and devotion to the ideal in general. That religion has its ultimate source and ground in such a faith is no doubt true. Beyond faith in this sense we cannot go for the validation of any ideal interest. But this, it is important to note, holds true also of knowledge. All knowledge rests on faith. The quest after truth is a quest after an ideal value quite as truly as is the quest after goodness, beauty, and God; and each of these quests finds its ultimate justification in an immanent faith. Religion stands alongside of or transcends the other quests and yet at the same time embraces them. It has the same fundamental basis as they, and whether we call this basis “moral” or “practical” or “valuational” does not matter much so long as we bear in mind what is meant. In view, however, of the fact that it is customary to use the word “moral” in its narrower sense, it would seem best to retain the distinction between the moral and religious arguments and to use another term to designate the common element in them. By the moral argument we understand, then, the Kantian form of it, as above expounded. It consists in pointing out the moral necessity of religion. The religious argument, on the other hand, dwells on the self -evidencing power of religious faith. Both see in religion the product of an evaluational process, and both imply confidence in the validity of that process. [27]
[p. 234]
Rather sharply differentiated from the preceding practical or evaluational arguments stands the theoretical argument or arguments. We have already seen that the theoretical, or pure reason, is not free from assumptions. It is guided by an ideal. It assumes that the world is intelligible and tha.t we are able to understand it; and this understanding of the world constitutes for it an ideal end; It aims at the satisfaction of a subjective interest just as our moral, religious and aesthetic natures do. In its fundamental ground and aim it is, therefore, practical, and hence it is permissible to speak of the primacy of the practical reason. It is in the latter that the theoretical reason finds both its setting and its justification. But while the theoretical reason thus has certain points of kinship with the quest after goodness, beauty, and God, it has its own unique laws, its own distinctive logic; and these laws have a quasimechanical character. They operate with a kind of inner necessity, and seem to be concerned more directly with objective reality than is the practical reason. We consequently set the theoretical reason apart by itself, and ask what it has to say about the belief in God.
Up to the time of Kant the chief stress was placed on the theoretical argument, and from the standpoint of pure logic this was justified. In strict logic we cannot pass from what ought to be to what is, and yet this is what we do in the moral and religious arguments. If we then wish a logical demonstration of the divine existence, we must turn to the theoretical [p. 235] reason; in the traditional theistic arguments such a demonstration was attempted. But since the time of Kant it has been evident that these arguments attempted the impossible. There can be no strictly logical demonstration outside of the field of mathematics and formal logic. In the objective and concrete realm the law we follow is to assume that whatever the mind demands for the satisfaction of its subjective needs and tendencies is real in default of positive disproof. [28] This law forms the basis of the moral and religious arguments, and it also underlies the theoretical arguments. The latter as well as the former furnish no demonstration of the divine existence. But the objective validity of the theoretical reason is more generally accepted than that of the practical reason, and hence in the past it was customary to begin the defense of theism with considerations drawn from it. Of late, however, the reverse has been the tendency, and not a few under the influence of Kantian teaching have gone so far as to deny all cogency and validity to the theoretical arguments.
Considerable stress has been laid on the fact that Scripture offers no “proofs” of the existence of God. [29] The Old Testament does now and then refer to the heavens and to the wonders of creation in general as evidence of the divine wisdom, power, and glory, but it does so, not to prove that there is a God, but, rather, to illustrate and make more vivid an already existent belief in him. In the New Testament there are a few passages such as Rom. 1. 19-20, Acts 17. 24-28 [p. 236] and 14. 15-17 which imply that God has revealed himself in nature so that we may not only infer his existence, but come to know him. Indeed, the first of these passages declares that the revelation is so unmistakably clear that no one has any excuse for being without the knowledge of God. But this thought is nowhere elaborated. In Scripture the belief in God is spontaneous. Where not merely traditional it is an immediate expression of the religious and moral nature, and its validity is taken for granted without argument of any kind. But this does not mean that the theistic arguments are of no value. It simply means that in ancient Israel there was little or no need of them. People generally accepted the belief in God without question. Even the fool, who, according to Psa. 14 and 53, said in his heart there was no God, did not mean to deny the divine existence. What he meant was that he himself acted as though there were no God; he took no account of his existence. His atheism was practical, not theoretical. [30] Then, too, it should be noted that the Semitic mind was not speculative. There is in the Bible no philosophy in the theoretical sense of the term. Belief among the ancient Jews and the Christians of apostolic times was immediate and instinctive. They needed no formal arguments to support their faith. But this fact has no dogmatic significance for us. It imposes no obligation upon us to semitize the modern mind. We are Greek as well as Hebraic in our intellectual and religious inheritance, and in any case the value of the theoretical [p. 237] arguments for the divine existence must be determined by current rational standards and not by appeal to biblical authority.
We have already seen that our moral and religious natures can find ultimate satisfaction only in the belief in God, and it would be in harmony with the unity of our personality if a similar affirmation could be made with reference to our intellectual nature. That such an affirmation is warranted has been the conviction of most of the profoundest minds in the history of Christian thought. In support of this conviction various arguments have been developed. From the historical point of view these arguments may be reduced to two groups, the conceptual and the causal, [31] the latter including the cosmological and teleological arguments and the former the ontological and other allied arguments based on Platonic realism. From the standpoint of modern thought, however, the conceptual arguments have lost, to a large extent, their cogency, and in their place has arisen the epistemological argument.
This argument takes two main forms. The first directs attention to the dualism and parallelism of thought and thing or idea and object involved in knowledge. There is no way of escaping this dualism. To identify idea and object is not only to fly in the face of our fundamental conviction of an objective otherness, but to subvert the true nature of knowledge and leave us without a tenable conception or explanation of error. [32] The dualism of thought [p. 238] and thing we must, then, accept, but knowledge also requires that there be a parallelism between them, and this parallelism can only be accounted for by a theistic monism. If an intelligent Being cast the world in the mold of thought and then created us in his image, we can see how the thought-series might correctly grasp the thing-series, but without this assumption the parallelism of the two series must remain an insoluble riddle.
The second form of the epistemological argument dwells upon the intelligibility of the world and from it infers an intelligent Author. If the world is intelligible, there must be intelligence back of it. Language can express thought only in case it is itself produced by thought, and so it is with the world. Logically this is probably the strongest argument for the divine existence. Borden P. Bowne so regarded it, and the very last sentence he wrote was an expression of it. “The problem of knowledge,” he said, “implies thought at both ends thought at the further end to make nature the bearer of meanings and thought at the nearer end to receive and rethink the meaning.” [33]
The causal argument has also taken two main forms. Traditionally these have appeared as distinct arguments the cosmological and the teleological; but no sharp line of demarcation between them can be maintained. From the modern point of view one form of the causal argument seeks to establish the unity of the world-ground, and the other seeks to establish its intelligence. The first is a modification [p. 239] of the older cosmological argument, and the second a continuation or development of the older teleological argument.
The argument for a unitary world-ground begins with the admitted fact of systematic interaction and consists in showing that such an interacting system as the material universe is recognized to be can be rationally conceived only as the work of a co-ordinating One. There is and can be no actual transference of states or conditions from one independent thing to another, nor are there forces playing between them or influences passing from one to the other. These are simply figures of speech. The real explanation of systematic interaction can be found only in the immanent action of an underlying One. Independent things cannot in and of themselves form an interacting system. The very idea of such a system excludes a fundamental pluralism. If such a system exists, there must be a unitary Agent that mediates the interaction of the many or is the dynamic ground of their being. Only a fundamental monism can, therefore, account for such a universe as that revealed to us by science, or, more exactly, assumed by it. In other words, science supports monotheism as over against polytheism. [34]
But the underlying One might be an impersonal and blind energy. We need, therefore, some evidence of its intelligence, and .this we find in the order of the material universe, the indications of design in the organic realm, and the existence of finite minds. [p. 240] Order, which is the mark of reason, points to a rational world-ground; the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in animate nature point to an underlying purpose; and intelligence in man points to intelligence in his Maker.
“He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?”
These lines of reflection have not been invalidated by modern physical science nor by the Darwinian theory of evolution. They create in the present, as they have in the past and as they will in the future, a strong presumption in favor of the theistic worldview.
There is a third form of the causal argument that may be briefly mentioned. It consists in showing that causality can be clearly and consistently conceived only on the plane of free intelligence. On the impersonal plane the cause disappears in the production of the effect, and metaphysical predication becomes, consequently, impossible. We have either a subject without a predicate or a predicate without a subject. In other words, there is no persistent or abiding cause that produces effects of one kind or another and yet remains the same. Only on the personal plane do we have identity coupled with change and unity with plurality. Here the conscious and free agent constitutes itself one and the same and yet does a great many different things. How in the midst of its changing and plural activities it maintains its identity and unity, we do not know. But that it does, is a manifest fact of experience; and it [p. 241] is in this empirical fact that we have the one and only key to the nature of ultimate reality. The causal ground of the world must be self-conscious and free if it is to be rationally conceivable.
These theoretical arguments epistemological and causal do not demonstrate the existence of God. Such a demonstration, as we have seen, is impossible. But when thought through they do make it clear that the theistic world-view is “the line of least resistance” for the intellect as it is also for the moral and religious nature. And more than this the Christian faith does not ask. It is quite content, so long as the middle wall of partition between the theoretical and practical reason is broken down and both are seen to point toward a common spiritual interpretation of the universe.
De Trinitate, VII, 7; English translation by A. W. Haddan, pp. 173L ↩︎
Der Christliche Glaube, Pars. 50 and 55; English translation, PP. 194, 221. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, p. 474. ↩︎
System of Christian Theology, p. 12. ↩︎
Theological Institutes, Pt. II, Chaps. II-VTI. ↩︎
Biedermaun substitutes “psychological” for “ethical.” Others have distinguished between “positive and negative,” “proper and metaphorical,” “communicable and incommunicable,” “internal and external,” “immanent and transeunt,” “quiescent and operative,” “absolute and relative” attributes. But none of these distinctions has any particular value. ↩︎
So W. N. Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 357ff . ↩︎
B. S. Ames, Religion, pp. 133f., 154. ↩︎
Henry N. Wieman, The Wrestle of Religion With Truth, p. vi. ↩︎
Canon Streeter has pointed out that if theism is anthropomorphic, materialism is “mechanomorphic.” It fashions the Infinite in the image of a machine, and this conception is “essentially myth.” The mechanistic view, as he shows, is “doubly anthropomorphic,” for it is derived from human constructions made for human purposes (Reality, pp. 9ff.). ↩︎
Cf. The Diviner Immanence, by Francis J. McConnell. ↩︎
Cf. The Evidential Value of Prophecy, by E. A. Edghill; The Belief in God, Chap. IV, by Bishop Charles Gore. ↩︎
Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion, p. 141. ↩︎
See Jer. 8. 7, where religion is likened to the instinct of the birds of passage. ↩︎
For an elaboration of this argument see W. N. Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 402-28. ↩︎
Der Christliche Glaube, Par. 33; English translation, pp. 133f. ↩︎
On Religion; Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, translated by J. Oman, pp. 37f. ↩︎
Psychologic und Erkenntnistheorie in der Religionswissenzchaft; Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 754-68, 805-36. ↩︎
The Idea of the Holy, pp. 116-20, 140-46. ↩︎
It is a matter of interest that even naturalistic writers are now beginning to admit that science roots in faith and that it is itself a faith. See, for instance, Chap. Ill of Religion and the Modern World, by J. H. Randall and J. H. Randall, Jr. The profoundei implications of this admission, however, these writers do not seem to realize. ↩︎
I know no more effective putting of this argument than that found in the Introduction to Borden P. Bowne’s Theism, pp. 1-43. ↩︎
The Philosophy of Personalism, pp. 306-14. ↩︎
Adolf Fricke, Darstellung und KritiTc tier Beweise fur Gottes personliches Dasein. ↩︎
For a vigorous and convincing statement of these consequence? see B. P. Bovrne’s Theism, pp. 291-314. ↩︎
For a suggestive and helpful exposition of the religious implications of moral optimism see D. C. Macintosh, The Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 40-133. ↩︎
Cf . The Interpretation of Religion, pp. 256f., by John Baillie. ↩︎
For a concrete and vital exposition of the moral and religious arguments see The Meaning of God, by Professor H. F. Rail. ↩︎
See B. P. Bowne’s Theism, p. 18. ↩︎
See my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 51f . ↩︎
Cf . The Philosophy of Personalism, pp. 258ff. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 104ff. ↩︎
The Methodist Review, May, 1922, p. 369. See also the Life of Borden Parker Bowne, pp. 122ff., by Bishop Francis J. McConnell. ↩︎
See B. P. Bowne’s Theism, pp. 44-63, and my Philosophy of Personalism, pp. 197ff. ↩︎