Author: Albert C. Knudson
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THE most general and distinctive characteristic of Deity in its monotheistic sense is absoluteness. It is this which differentiates the divine from the human and from all finite beings, and gives to it its uniqueness. Personality and goodness are characteristics that God shares with men, but absoluteness sets him apart from all creaturely existence.
The word “absolute” is not biblical, nor is it religious. It is a philosophical term, and one that has come into common use only in modern times. But the idea expressed by it is as old as philosophy. It is inherent in the distinction between reality and appearance, a distinction whose explicit recognition led to the rise of the philosophic movement. Philosophy began as a quest after the real, the abiding, the absolute. Since the time of Wolff and Kant it has been customary to speak of this quest as a search for “the thing-in-itself.” The latter phrase, however, expressed nothing new. The idea contained in it has, according to Windelband, 1 had at least sixteen ancestors. Indeed, why he should stop with that number is not clear. Every monistic metaphysician has fathered the idea, and most metaphysicians have been of the monistic type. But for that matter the dualistic and pluralistic metaphysicians have also been in [p. 243] search of the thing-in-itself. Only they have been persuaded that there are two or more things-in-themselves instead of one. Some sort of ultimate reality, some sort of absolute unitary, dual or plural has thus been the object of every form of the metaphysical quest.
The first Greek philosophers sought for a first principle or substance that would account for the changing phenomena of the world. Thales found it in “water/ 7 Anaximenes in “air,” and Anaximander in “the Infinite.” The same quest led to the “elements” of Empedocles, the “Being” of Parmenides, the “atoms” of Democritus, the nous or reason of Anaxagoras, the “numbers” of the Pythagoreans, the “Ideas” of Plato, the “entelechies” and “Prime Mover” of Aristotle, the “One” of Plotinus, the “essence” of the scholastics, the “Substance” of Spinoza, the “monads” of Leibnitz, the “thing-in-itself” of Kant, the “Universal Ego” of Fichte, the principle of “Identity” in Schelling, the “Will” of Schopenhauer, and the “Absolute Spirit” of Hegel. All these metaphysical conceptions and the many others allied to them grew out of discontent with the world of sense-experience. It was felt that reality must be more permanent, more unified, more substantial, more rational than the things of sense seemed to be. Hence the effort was made to reconstitute the world so that it would conform more completely with the demands of reason; and the world so reconstituted was regarded as the “real” world by way of contrast with the world of experience or phenomena. The latter world is relative; relative to our sensibility, and relative [p. 244] also in the sense that its individual phenomena are determined by their relation to each other. The “real” world, on the other hand, is absolute in the sense that it is self-existent and in some way the source of the world of “appearance.”
Disregarding the dualistic and pluralistic conceptions of ultimate reality as lacking in logical thoroughness and as in any case irrelevant for our present purpose, we may distinguish three different views or types of thought with reference to the Absolute. One is agnostic. It affirms the Absolute, but declares that he or it is beyond the reach of theoretical knowledge. Kant and Spencer represent this standpoint, and so also did many of the mystics of the past. An approach to it is found in the book of Ecclesiastes (7. 24), where the author says, “That which is, is far off and exceeding deep; who can find it out?”
The second view looks upon the Absolute as the highest universal, as the sum of all being, actual and potential, as all-comprehensive, taking up into itself and surmounting in its own unity all possible distinctions and differences. This standpoint is represented by Hegelianism and by pantheism in general. Its controlling idea is that of logical subordination. The third view conceives of the Absolute as world ground or as an infinite energy producing and sustaining the world. Such a conception may be either materialistic or spiritualistic. It is dominated by the category of causality.
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In harmony with these three views there are three different interpretations of the word “absolute.” Some understand it to mean the “unrelated.” Thus understood the Absolute cannot stand in a causal relation to the world, nor can anything be affirmed of it that implies relationship of any kind. But such a Being would have no intelligible character whatsoever. In fact, it would be not only unknowable, but also unaffirmable. For the only reason for affirming an Absolute is to account for the world of experience. To ascribe to it a nature that unfits it to perform this function is to render it useless from the standpoint of human thought; and to do so because of the supposed derivation of its name is to substitute etymologizing for philosophizing.
Others understand by the word absolute the “unlimited,” and hence regard it as applicable only to a Being that embraces the entire universe, a Being that cannot be identified with personality nor any definite mode of existence. This is the pantheistic interpretation of the term.
The third meaning given it is “independent” or “self-existent.” This meaning may be presupposed by the other two; but here it is made central, and the other two are excluded. The Absolute is not the “unrelated” nor is it the “unlimited” in the sense of being the All; it is the independent and self -existent cause or ground of a dependent world. The world is not a part of the Absolute, but a consequence of its activity, an effect, and as such distinguishable from its cause. It may even as effect have a measure of [p. 246] independence due to the self-limitation of the Absolute. This is the causal and theistic view of the relation of the world to the Absolute as distinguished from the logical and pantheistic, on the one hand, and the agnostic, on the other.
The agnostic view is, as we have seen, inconsistent and self-destructive. The other two have not been always sharply distinguished from each other. Numerous attempts have been made to combine them; and they are not entirely opposed to each other. But they are guided by different ideals. The key to the one is found in the logical subordination of the individual to the universal. The greater the universality, it is believed, the greater the reality. Hence the all inclusive universal is the supreme reality, the Absolute. The key to the other is found in the principle of causality and particularly volitional causality. Here the real is the individual, the concrete; the universal has no independent existence. Ultimate reality is, therefore, to be thought of as the highest form of concrete individuality. The Absolute is purposive energy, will, rather than abstract reason. From the point of view of the latter the individual is included in and fused with the universal. This conception fits in with the mystical type of piety, a sense of oneness with the Divine. The other view of the Absolute lays stress on the independence of the individual and on the supreme importance of moral obedience as the condition of being in tune with the Infinite.
To the Absolute in all three senses of the term the agnostic, the logical, and the causal it has been customary to apply the divine name. But that there [p. 247] is a considerable disparity between some of the philosophical conceptions of the Absolute and the religious idea of God is evident, and consequently the question has arisen as to whether it is proper to equate the two ideas. In answering this question it is important to bear in mind the different senses in which the term “absolute” is used and also to inquire into the relation of the metaphysical and the religious craving to each other.
That a thoroughgoing agnostic view of the Absolute is out of harmony with the Christian idea of God calls for no argument. One might, it is true, combine philosophical skepticism with a positive faith in Christianity, as do Barth and Brunner; but that is another matter. It is also evident that the all-inclusive Absolute of pantheistic speculation is a different Being from the Christian God, though the two have not always been regarded as mutually exclusive. Some of the medieval mystics distinguished between the Godhead and God, looking upon the latter as a personal emanation from the former; and some moderns have taken the view that God should be included in the larger whole represented by the Absolute. [1] Whether the full Christian idea of God can be fitted into such a frame is extremely doubtful. But in any case the distinction between God and the Absolute has been made, and in view of the agnostic and pantheistic senses in which the term “absolute” is so frequently used this is not strange, nor is it strange that some theologians should have rejected the idea [p. 248] of absoluteness altogether and refused to apply it to God. Ritschl, for instance, took this position. [2]
But the word “absolute,” as we have seen, does not, mean that which is out of all relations and hence unknowable, nor does it necessarily mean that which is inclusive of all existence; it may mean the independent or self-existent ground of the world and in this sense it is practically synonymous with the idea of creatorship. There is, then, no conflict between the Christian conception of God and the idea of the Absolute. The Christian God is absolute by virtue of the fact that he is “the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Almightiness and creatorship mean absoluteness. They mean that the entire world is dependent upon God for its existence and that there are no limits to his power except those which he himself has imposed.
In spite of this the feeling persists that there is a disparity between the idea of absoluteness and that of Deity. One, it is said, is philosophical in origin and the other religious; and philosophy and religion, it is added, are quite different things. This view, which is rather widely current and not without some justification, necessitates an inquiry into the psychological impulse that lies back of metaphysics, on the one hand, and religion, on the other.
We have already pointed out that metaphysics grew up out of discontent with the immediate world of sense-experience. Things as we perceive them do not [p. 249] have the inner unity or rationality that reason demands, and so the mind builds up a conceptual world which it regards as more real than that of sense. It substitutes the world of physics and astronomy for that of immediate experience, and then beyond all purely scientific theories it constructs a world of ultimate or metaphysical reality. The driving force in this whole movement is dissatisfaction with the world as given to us in spontaneous thought. And this too is the source of religion. It also grows up out of discontent with the world. The things of sense fail to satisfy us, our ideals are thwarted, and so we seek a higher and better world.? Religion and metaphysics thus have a common rootage, they spring up out of a common craving of the human spirit. Both are objectifications of the ideal.
There is, however, this difference, that the ideal is in one case predominantly logical and in the other predominantly practical. Consequently, the question arises as to whether these ideals both require an Absolute and a common Absolute. Insofar as they both carry with them an implicit faith in their own validity, it is evident that they imply a transcendent reality that may be called absolute by way of contrast with the imperfect and transitory things of sense. But over and above this vague faith in the ideal there are factors in both the intellectual and the religious nature of man that point to and call for a more definitely conceived Absolute. On the intellectual side there is, for instance, a fundamental demand for unity, a demand that cannot be met by the mere togetherness or systematic totality of such objects as [p. 250] we see about us, but one that requires us to transcend the phenomenal order and postulate a unitary Being as its ground and source. This monistic tendency of the human mind is deep and ineradicable. Closely associated with it and to some extent involved in it iis the idea of the infinite, an idea that is forced upon us by the inexhaustibility of the spatial and temporal synthesis. We cannot imagine an end either to space or time, and yet the mind cannot rest in the thought of mere endlessness. So it forms the conception of an infinite, that is more and other than the sum total of spatial and temporal phenomena and that is somehow their ground. Infinitude and unity thus enter by a kind of necessity into our thought of the rational ideal. But how this ideal as an objective reality should be conceived is a matter of dispute. No inflexible logic here guides us. If we are, however, not to conceive of it as a “spectral woof of impalpable abstractions or an unearthly ballet of bloodless categories,” it would seem that it must take on a spiritual or personal form. At any rate there is a deep personalistic bias in the human mind which points strongly in that direction. Either a theistic Absolute or complete philosophical skepticism would seem to be the alternatives that confront us; and as between the two a. healthy reason ought to have no difficulty in making its choice. Theism cannot be demonstrated, but it fulfills the demands of the rational ideal more completely than any other world view.
Turning now to the religious nature, we find that it more immediately than the theoretical reason affirms [p. 251] a supramundane reality. Indeed, it is in this affirmation, or rather intuition, that religion takes its rise. How we come to have such intuitions has been much debated. The main question at issue is as to whether they have a moral origin or not. Both views are confidently asserted. Olin A. Curtis, for instance, declares that the “sense of the supernatural originates only in the experience of the moral person.” It “is created by a movement of the moral life; and had man no conscience, he never would have such a sense at all.” “When, in conscience, a man first feels the ultimate authority of the moral overmaster he gets his first idea of the supernatural.” Then from this moral center he extends it to “all sorts of things, even nonmoral things.” [3] This is a common view and is supported by the Kantian and Ritschlian tradition.
On the other hand, Rudolf Otto, like Schleiermacher, argues strongly for the nonmoral origin of the sense of the divine. This sense, he maintains, is altogether unique. Among the ancient Semites it was connected with the idea of the holy, which was originally a nonmoral term. [4] Inasmuch, however., as this term came later to have a moral connotation and still has, Otto invented, as we have previously noted, the word “numinous” to designate the pure and unmodified experience of the divine. This experience he has analyzed with extraordinary insight. In general, he characterizes it as a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. It begins with a feeling of fear, and this feeling implies on the part of the object [p. 252] (1) the element of awefulness or absolute unapproachability, (2) the element of majesty or “overpoweringness,” and (3) the element of energy or urgency. Associated with this complex feeling, properly described as tremendum, is (4) the sense of mystery, the consciousness of the “wholly other,” the supernatural; and to these four elements is to be added (5) the element of fascination, of rapture. [5] These various elements are nonmoral. How they take their rise in our consciousness, we cannot say. They are ultimate, as ultimate as the categories of thought. Neither conscience nor the quest after life can account for their appearance and for their unique blending in our intuition of the divine.
But while the numinous experience may thus be differentiated from the moral, it should be noted that it is itself an experience of value. The terms that describe it or its object awe, majesty, urgency, the “wholly other,” fascination imply valuation or disvaluation, and in this respect the numinous resembles the moral. Indeed, the word “moral,” as we have already seen, is sometimes used as equivalent to “valuational,” and from that point of view the numinous experience might be said to involve the moral. There is in it a note of authority, a sense of oughtness. The numen has value for us; but it is a different value from that which is commonly designated as moral. Then, too, its existence is not derived directly from its value. We do not say that it is because it ought to be. Both its existence and its value are grasped in a single, unique, and immediate intuition. It seems, [p. 253] therefore, best to distinguish, with. Schleiermacher and Otto, between the religious and the moral consciousness.
But what we are here concerned about is not to establish the uniqueness of our elementary religious experience, but to show that it contains in itself the germ of the Absolute. Complete unapproachability, “overpoweringness,” the “wholly other” --these are aspects of the primitive or purely religious-object that with the development of thought lead inevitably to the idea of an absolute power, upon which the whole world is dependent. The feeling of trust and the longing for redemption, awakened by the “fascination” and “urgency” of the religious object, lead also to the same conclusion. The history of religion teaches this fact so plainly that no serious student can fail to be deeply impressed by it. Through demonology, polytheism, and monolatry the religious spirit has moved steadily and irresistibly toward the belief in one God, Creator and Preserver of the world. Nothing short of such an absolute Being can satisfy the religious needs of men. If there is a valid basis for that feeling of trustful dependence and that quest after salvation which constitute the essence of religion, the universe must be grounded in free intelligence. Anything less than such a theism would leave religion in its highest and purest form without an adequate object. is inherent in the very structure of a spiritual faith.
Our conclusion, then, is that both the religious quest after redemption and the intellectual quest after truth lead to the affirmation of an Absolute. [p. 254] Both owe their origin to discontent with the sense world, both imply faith in a transcendent reality, and neither can find complete satisfaction apart from the belief in one Supreme Being. This Being is absolute in the sense that he is self-existent, that he has no limits except those which are self-imposed, and that the world is dependent upon him. In these respects the Absolute of religion is one with the Absolute of philosophy. God would not be God if he were not metaphysically absolute in the sense just stated. Absoluteness is the fundamental and differentiating characteristic of Deity.
It is necessary to emphasize the foregoing point, not only because the word “absolute” has fallen into disfavor on account of its agnostic and pantheistic associations, but because there is at present a pronounced reaction against absolutism in general in philosophy and a consequent attempt to dispense with it in theology also. We have already referred to Hitachi’s antipathy to the word “absolute,” due partly to a mistaken interpretation of it and partly to a mistaken desire to divorce theology completely from speculative theism. But with that I am not here concerned. What I have in mind is the current idea of a finite or growing God. This idea is in principle, of course, not new. It is implied in polytheism and in every dualistic and pluralistic system that has a place for God. But in recent years it has come into new vogue because of the prevalence of empiricistic, pragmatistic, and other anti-monistic types of thought.
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A distinction should perhaps be made between the idea of a finite and that of a growing or changing God. The former idea was broached by David Hume. [6] J. S. Mill [7] indorsed it, William James [8] advocated it, H. G. Wells, [9] the novelist, popularized it, and many others have echoed it. [10] The idea of a changing or growing God has been especially emphasized by the followers of Henri Bergson, [11] but it is not uncommon in other circles [12] and is naturally associated with the idea of a finite God. The motives lying back of these two conceptions are somewhat different, but both are reactions against what William James called “the rationalistic block universe” and “the static, timeless, perfect absolute.” The idea of a changing and growing God is directed against the “static,” “perfect,” a.nd “block” part of the rejected view, and the idea of his finitude is directed against the notion of the “absolute” and of a completed “universe.” But at this point two questions arise on which the exponents of the new doctrine are either not agreed or not clear.
One has to do with the relation of growth to the universe viewed as the totality of being. Bergson does not make it clear whether he thinks of the whole [p. 256] universe, including the creative source of the life movement, as growing or whether he restricts growth to the phenomenal realm. The latter view would be in accord with current theism. James, however, seems plainly to apply the idea of growth to the universe as a whole which he regards as an aggregate rather than as a system. It is, he says, an “unfinished” world, “spread out and strung-along.” He speaks of it as a “mass of phenomena,” but recognizes no Absolute upon which it is dependent. It is itself a growing whole. But what growth would mean when applied to the whole of reality is difficult to see. A finite individual grows by drawing upon its environment. But the universe as a whole has no environment upon which it can draw, and the application of growth or progress to it seems, therefore, quite unintelligible. [13] The world as a phenomenal order may grow and develop, but such development defies explanation and understanding except on a theistic basis. Without free intelligence there can be no real progress in a rational world.
The other question referred to relates to the idea of a finite God. According to James, he is to be thought of as “having an environment, being in time and working out a history just like ourselves.” [14] But is he to be regarded as morally perfect from the start? Or is he a struggling and achieving being like ourselves? If the latter, he would have a religious experience similar to our own [p. 257] and would need a God as much as we. Under those circumstances why he should himself be called God one is at a loss to know. Moral self-sufficiency is inherent in the idea of Deity. To attribute to God the same kind of moral struggle as that in which we are engaged, is to do violence to our profoundest religious sentiments. J. S. Mill is mistaken when he says that the belief in a finite God admits of “one elevated feeling, which is not open to those who believe in the omnipotence of the good principle in the universe, the feeling of helping God of requiting the good he has given by a voluntary co-operation which he, not being omnipotent, really needs, and by which a somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fulfillment of his purposes.” [15] It is not the limitation of the divine power and the divine need of human aid that constitutes the true religious stimulus to moral endeavor. The greatest moral dynamic of life is that which comes from the conviction that right is omnipotent and that its ultimate victory is assured. He who does not know this is a stranger to any deep religious experience. It is not sympathy with God, but faith in him that saves. A special advantage claimed for the theory of a finite God is that it solves the problem of suffering. This problem grows out of the fact that we ascribe to God both omnipotence and goodness. To harmonize these two attributes with each other in the light of the imperfection and suffering of the present world-order is extremely difficult, if not impossible. “The notion of a providential government by an omnipotent [p. 258] Being for the good of his creatures,” says J. S. Mill, “must be entirely dismissed.” [16] It seems to be entirely inconsistent with the facts of experience. But if we limit the power of God by denying that he is the creator and preserver of the world, it becomes possible for us to believe in his goodness, for the evil of the world may now be ascribed to other beings and forces. The rejection of the divine absoluteness thus removes the rock of offense contained in the fact of suffering. But on reflection it turns out that it also removes something more. It removes all ground for any profound faith in the divine providence. If God did not create the world and does not actually govern it, what basis have we for trusting him? God may be perfectly good, but if he is impotent, his goodness will mean little to us. It is the union of goodness with power that is the sole ground of faith. To purchase relief from a theoretical difficulty by drastically limiting the .divine power is no aid to true religion; it undermines faith rather than supports it. When it comes to such a question as that of suffering, religion has no interest in creating difficulties for the intellect; but it is not willing because of these difficulties to surrender the richness and depth of its own faith. In any case it would naturally in such a position seek relief by a limitation of human knowledge, rather than by a limitation of the divine power. Human ignorance is for it a much easier assumption than the divine impotence. Indeed, the latter in the extreme form represented by the current idea of a finite God is virtually [p. 259] a denial of faith. The very essence of faith is trust both in the power and goodness of God in spite of appearances to the contrary. The fact of suffering may baffle us if we hold to the divine omnipotence, but better a baffled faith than no faith at all.
From the religious point of view the doctrine of a finite and growing God is, then, unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a truncated and disintegrating faith. It is also unsatisfactory from the metaphysical standpoint. We have already seen that a growing and struggling God would himself need a God in much the same way that we do; and, in a similar way, if we were to account for his existence, we should have to refer it to the Absolute. As a finite being he would not be self-existent. In him we could, therefore, find nothing ultimate. One might, it is true, hold to a fundamental pluralism and think of the universe as a mere aggregate, but that, as Pringle-Pattison says, would be “trifling with one’s intellect.” A basal monism the human mind demands, and from this standpoint a finite God would at the best play only a secondary role. Indeed, the very idea of such a being suggests the mythological. He is not immanent in the structure of reality in the way that a living God should be and must be. He has no cosmic significance. So far as the explanation of the world is concerned he might easily be dispensed with.
The point is occasionally made that if God enters into human experience he must be finite, for our experience is finite and can apprehend only finite objects. As absolute God lies beyond the reach of experience. He becomes a truly living God only in [p. 260] finite form. This view rests upon a narrow and confused, notion of what experience is and of the elements that enter into it. It is also usually associated with an agnostic or pantheistic conception of the Absolute. The assumption underlying it seems to be that experience is a purely receptive process, that external objects somehow enter into it, and that in the nature of the case an infinite Being could not gain access into so limited a receptacle as the human mind or human experience. To this assumption the sufficient reply is that experience is the result of a creative activity on the part of the mind, that no object enters the mind either physically or metaphysically, that the mind builds up its own objects on the condition of external stimuli and in accordance with principles immanent within itself, and that among these principles there may be a religious a priori by virtue of which the mind is sensitive to the supernatural or infinite and lays hold of it. In its earlier attempts to conceive and define the supernatural object the mind was naturally pluralistic and dualistic, but by a law of its own being it has moved steadily toward the monotheistic view. It may be that William James is right in saying that even monotheism in its popular religious form has never gotten beyond the conception of God as merely primus inter pares. [17] But if so, it is not because a thoroughgoing monotheism is a metaphysical rather than a religious doctrine, but because of the inconsistent and inconsequential character of popular religious thought. Certainly, in popular Christian monotheism there are elements [p. 261] such as that of the divine creatorship which require, when thought through, a higher and more absolutistic view of God than that of “first among equals.” Indeed, creatorship is itself the true mark of absoluteness. A being who is Creator is by virtue of that fact self-existent and the independent ground of the universe. As such he stands apart from all other beings and constitutes a class by himself. In a word, he is absolute. No other view of him will satisfy the demands of either the religious or the theoretical reason.
It is unfortunate that the word “absolute” has been used in such an abstract and purely logical or etymological sense that prejudice has arisen against it in religious circles. There is a tendency either to repudiate it altogether as inapplicable to God or to use it gingerly and along with it to assert that God is also a “limited” and “finite” Being. The result is widespread confusion of thought on the subject. The fact is that the Christian God is an absolute Being, in the sense that he is the creator of the world, its self-existent and independent ground. This is the specific sense in which the word “absolute” should be used. “Limited” and “finite,” on the other hand, should be applied only to the God of a polytheistic, pluralistic, or dualistic system. More particularly they should at present be used to define such an artificial and truncated Deity as that represented by H. G. Wells and other apostles of a good but noncreative and nonprovidential Divine Being.
In view, however, of the fact that absolutists of the abstract and etymological type are accustomed [p. 262] to bring the charge of finitude and limitation against the God of Christian theism, there is need of such a presentation of the case as we have in Bishop Francis J. McConnell’s well-known book entitled Is God Limited? Here it is argued at length and with richness and felicity of illustration (1) that “if we are to think of God at all, we must think of him as under some sort of limitation,” and (2) that in the derogatory sense of the term the unlimited God of abstract thought is really more “limited” than the Christian God. “It is the abstract theologians says Bishop McConnell, “who limit God.” “The movement away from the concrete toward the abstract” is itself a “limitation.” To empty “all the concrete out of divine experience” is to impoverish the idea of God and lock him away “behind the bars of estranging limitation.” The N real question, then, is not whether God has limitations, but how these limitations are to be conceived. We may distinguish two kinds of limitations those that are imposed from without and those that are self-imposed or that inhere in the divine nature. It is only the latter that may be affirmed of God. “What the Christian consciousness demands is a God not dependent on anything else.” “Self-dependence in God” is the basal truth to be observed in thinking about him. In this sense of the term Bishop McConnell not only admits, but firmly maintains that there is a “legitimate demand for an absolute God,” [18] but he is so keenly sensitive to other uses of the term that he thinks it important at present to emphasize the limitations of God rather than his [p. 263] absoluteness. A self-limited God, however, he regards as more truly absolute than the illimitable Absolute of abstract philosophy. To deny to God the power of self-limitation would itself be to limit God, and that in an unworthy way.
A more radical method of conceiving the divine limitations has been recently proposed by Professor E. S. Brightman. [19] He suggests that there is in the divine nature “a retarding factor,” a “datum akin to sensation in man,” a “content,” a “Given,” which needs to be overcome and whose presence accounts for the irrational aspects of suffering and for “the cosmic drag which retards and distorts the expression of value in the empirical world.” In other connections later I shall have occasion to consider this theory more fully. I mention it here simply to observe that, while Professor Brightman describes his conception as that of a “finite God,” and while he introduces into the divine nature a larger degree of limitation than is customary, he still holds to the divine creatorship in the current theistic sense of the term and hence ascribes absoluteness to God in the sense in which this term should be understood in theistic discourse.
No matter, then, what limitations may be ascribed to God, he is absolute so long as he is regarded as the independent and self-existent source or ground of the universe. What the older theologians called aseity, self-caused existence, expresses the essential content [p. 264] of the divine absoluteness. But the term carries with it also the idea of perfection, and from this point of view the divine absoluteness manifests itself in three different realms: the metaphysical, the cognitive, and the ethical. The last of these will come up for consideration in Chapter IX. The second will perhaps most naturally be dealt with in Chapter VIII. Only the first needs to be treated in the present chapter. Metaphysical absoluteness, however, is itself complex. It may be analyzed into various elements. Of these there are three of outstanding significance omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity. In these attributes the metaphysical absoluteness of God comes to its completest expression, and to an exposition of them the remainder of the chapter will be devoted.
Of the three attributes just mentioned, omnipotence is the most fundamental. Indeed, it mav be said to be virtually synonymous with metaphysical absoluteness. For omnipresence means that the divine power is not limited by space, and eternity means that it is not limited by time. Even aseity may be said to be implied in omnipotence. For an omnipotent being would in the nature of the case be able to maintain its own existence. It may also be added that omniscience and moral perfection would be empty possessions apart from a corresponding and sustaining power. It is power that gives reality to the Divine Being and to all beings.
The idea of the supernatural was implied, as we have seen, in the earliest numinous experience, in [p. 265] the sense of the “holy”; and it has been the presupposition of every vital religious faith. The Hebrew word for God, El or Elohim, was probably derived from a root meaning “to be strong”; and according to a popular etymology current in ancient Israel the name “Jehovah,” or “Yahweh,” expressed originally the idea of independent power or self-existence. “I am. that I am” was supposed to be the thought lying back of it. [20] It was, of course, only gradually that the Hebrews arrived at the idea of the sole deity and absolute power of Jehovah. These ideas formed the staple of the preaching of D enter o-Isaiah in the sixth century, but they did not originate with him. How far back they may be traced is uncertain. They are assumed in the teaching of the eighth-century prophets, and cannot have been entirely unknown before their time. The idea of Jehovah’s creatorship probably goes back to a considerably earlier date. [21] But whatever may have been the early history of these ideas, there is no doubt that by the sixth century B. c. they had emerged into distinct consciousness and had become the basis of an enthusiastic faith. Jehovah was now recognized by people as well as by prophets as Creator and omnipotent Lord. He measures, we are told, the waters in the hollow of his hand (Isa. 40. 12); and all the marvels of the stellar universe, we read, are but as a whisper when compared with the mighty thunder of his power (Job 26.14).
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This conception of the divine omnipotence was carried over into the New Testament and forms the background of its teaching. [22] In both Testaments the motive of the doctrine was practical rather than theoretical. It was personal trust that inspired it, not logic. The Israelites instinctively believed that Jehovah was equal to all their needs, and hence with the expansion of their needs extended their conception of his power until it embraced heaven and earth, and time and eternity. It was so also in the New Testament. What led Jesus and his disciples to accept the belief in the divine omnipotence was the recognition of its religious value or, rather, necessity. It was faith, not reason, that led Jesus to say that “all things are possible with God” [23] and that led Paul to speak of God as one “that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” [24] When, then, the church later refused to follow the lead of Marcion and reject the Creator-God of the Old Testament in favor of the Saviour-God of the New Testament, it was but carrying out the demands of faith itself. Only omnipotence can guarantee redemption. This is the implicit logic of the religious reason. Faith can become an actual triumph over the world only insofar as it includes the idea of the divine omnipotence. And, on the other hand, only he truly believes in the divine omnipotence who is led by it to a world-transcendent trust in God. The classical [p. 267] expression of this faith is found in the great Christian paean of victory in the eighth chapter of Romans.
In view of the practical origin and nature of the biblical doctrine of the divine omnipotence it is not strange that we find in Scripture itself no effort to define it or to carry out its speculative implications. But with the development of Christian theology it was inevitable that this effort should be made. What exactly is implied in the idea of omnipotence? Are there any limits to the divine power, and if so, what are they? Is truth a barrier to the divine will? Does God have a nature, and if so, does it limit his power and his will? Is his power exhausted in the actual universe, or has he reserves of power as yet, untouched? Are will and ability distinguishable factors in his being as with us, or do they coincide, with each other so that one involves the other? Such are some of the questions that have been asked by theologians, and a brief response may be made to them.
As in the case of the divine absoluteness, so here the etymologists have been active. They have told us that divine omnipotence means that God can do everything, and to “everything” there is no exception. If omnipotent, God must be able to create a universe in which the law of Identity, the law of Contradiction and the law of the Excluded Middle would not be valid. He must be able to create a being of such a nature that he himself could not destroy it, though the existence of such a being would contradict his own omnipotence. He must be able to “make the past not to have been,” as Thomas Aquinas put [p. 268] it. [25] He must be able to “draw a triangle which is courageous or which has two right angles.” He must be able to “make a straight stick with only one end.” If he is not able to do such irrational and self-contradictory things as these, he is not omnipotent. So the etymologist has argued, and that this barren type of thought does not belong wholly to the past is indicated by the fact that a distinguished English philosopher not long ago devoted upward of twenty pages to revamping it. [26]
The sufficient response to such argumentation is that omnipotence does not mean that God can do the nondoable. There are limitations within the structure of reality that establish a distinction between the possible and the impossible. And all that any sane advocate of the divine omnipotence has ever meant is that “God can do all things that are possible” (Aquinas); the intrinsically impossible lies beyond the scope of divine power as it does beyond that of rational conception. The self-contradictory has no meaning, it is a mere juxtaposition of words, and cannot be translated into reality. Nor can any reason, practical or theoretical, be offered for ascribing to God the power to do that which is inherently irrational. The fact is that in affirming the divine omnipotence religion is interested simply in the redemptive purpose of God. So long as the realization of this purpose is guaranteed, faith is content. It has no further concern about the divine power. And philosophy in attributing omnipotence to God has [p. 269] manifestly no other interest than to maintain that there is a unitary and absolute power upon which the world depends. To say that God, if omnipotent, must be able to do everything, whether conceivable or inconceivable, is not only to go beyond the demands of faith and reason, but to contradict them both.
Reason and faith both imply that God has a nature. Without it his will would have no content or direction; its activity would be like that of the man of whom it is said that he leaped upon a horse and rode off in all directions. Only as it is linked up with the divine nature can the divine will escape being a vague and empty abstraction. It becomes real and significant only insofar as it is expressive of the divine character, and this means that it has limits, but limits only by way of contrast with mere vacuity. The word “limitation” has unfortunately two different meanings which are often not distinguished. It denotes imperfection or diminution of reality, and it also denotes definiteness and concreteness of being. Now, it is in the latter sense only that we affirm limitation of the divine will and the divine nature. Rationality and goodness, for instance, imply a certain definiteness, and in this sense limitation of the Divine Being, but they are not limitations in the sense that they imply imperfection or a lessened degree of reality. They are, rather, expressions of the divine perfection. When we, then, speak of the omnipotence of God, we do not mean that he has power to act contrary to his own nature; we mean that his power expresses itself perfectly and completely in and [p. 270] through his nature. In thus giving direction to the divine will the divine nature may be said to limit it. But without such a limiting nature God would not be God. He would be sheer emptiness. Limitation in the sense of definiteness of nature is of the very essence of being.
But if God has a nature and his nature conditions his will, the question arises as to what the constituents of his nature are and how far his will is conditioned by them. That truth and right are grounded in the divine nature would perhaps be generally conceded. We could not regard them as made or unmade by the divine will. They stand in their own right and are in a sense immutable. Yet they are not external authorities to which the divine will must bow. They have no objective existence. They inhere in the divine nature and are laws of the Divine Being. As such they may be said to be deeper than the divine will; still, they are not independent of it. Like other necessities of the divine nature, they are made real only through the activity of the divine will. But they are not arbitrary creations of it. They are grounded in the very being of God. On this point there probably would be general agreement.
Differences, however, arise when it comes to the question of the relation of the divine will to creation, the question of the relation of the divine will to the divine ability, and the question as to whether there may be in the divine nature an imperfect or incomplete factor which limits the divine will. With reference to the first of these questions the prevailing tendency in Christian thought has been to refer creation [p. 271] to the free will of God; if lie had chosen so to do, he might have entirely abstained from creative activity. The other view, however, has had its advocates that creation is eternal and that it is an outgrowth of the divine nature. God, it is said, would not be God if he were not Creator. It is not, then, a matter of choice with him whether he will create or not. [27] If we adopt this view, it is evident that we have in the creative activity of God another constituent of his nature that determines or that gives direction to his will.
The second question above referred to may be put in this form: Omnipotence, we say, means that God can do whatever he wills. But the converse, we have been told by Schleiermacher [28] and Biedermann, [29] also holds true, that God wills to do and does whatever he can do. There is, in other words, no difference between will and ability. The divine ability, inherent in the divine nature, carries with it the divine will and expresses itself automatically in creative action. There is no possible beyond the actual. The two are one. The actual world is, therefore, the complete expression of the divine will and ability. There are no transcendent reserves of divine power. Nature reflects all there is of God. But this pantheistic view is manifestly inconsistent with the divine omnipotence. God, if truly omnipotent, cannot have exhausted himself in the present temporal order. The very idea of omnipotence implies that of the [p. 272] supernatural, as does also the idea of Deity itself in its spontaneous and vital form. So to those who identify the divine will with the divine ability and equate both with the actual energy operative in the world of nature to such naturalistically and pantheistically inclined thinkers we may say, as Jesus said to the Sadducaic skeptics of his day: “Ye do err, not knowing . . . the power of God” (Matt. 22. 29).
The last of the three questions mentioned above had to do with a resisting or retarding element in the divine nature. This brings us back to Professor Brightman’s theory. Here we have a situation almost the reverse of that dealt with in the preceding paragraph. There the divine will and ability, the possible and the actual, were fused into one and equated with the immanent energy of the universe. The resulting limitation was that of an exclusive immanence a limitation that runs counter to the implicit transcendence not only of an omnipotent Deity, but of religious faith itself. Here, however, we have a conflict between the divine will and the divine nature. There is a tension between the possible and the actual. Within the divine nature or experience there is an element or content that resists the divine will. God himself is perfectly good and rational. He wills the highest values, but within his own being there is an intractable or recalcitrant factor that frustrates their realization. Whether it merely delays or permanently thwarts their realization is not altogether clear. It only delays apparently the attainment of certain specific ends. But it would seem to thwart permanently [p. 273] the full realization of the divine purpose, [30] for it is said to be an “eternal” aspect of the divine consciousness, and as such would seem to impose a permanent limitation upon the divine will. God, then, is absolutely good, but he is not omnipotent, and because of that fact he is involved in an endless struggle with a resisting element in his own nature. He “appears to be a spirit in difficulty.”
This theory has the advantage of offering a specific reason for the divine activity and also the advantage of accounting for the unideal aspects of the world without compromising the divine character. It, furthermore, has the very considerable merit of providing a metaphysical basis for the Christian idea of sacrificial love and what looks like moral struggle in God. But it has the disadvantage of introducing into the divine consciousness a dualism that can hardly be regarded as satisfactory either religiously or intellectually. Two fundamental motives lie back of religion and of metaphysical philosophy. One is the need of a supreme good and the other the need of an ultimate unity. These two needs can find complete satisfaction only in an omnipotent Being who is able to reduce all multiplicity to unity and able to subdue [p. 274] all resisting forces to his own holy will. Without omnipotence there can be neither perfect unity nor perfect goodness. There might be perfect goodness of intention without omnipotence, but what religion seeks is an absolute objective goodness and this cannot exist even as an object of hope without an omnipotent will. To deny omnipotence to God is to deny to him also moral perfection. Absolute goodness presupposes absolute power.
Then, too, the theory in question seems to establish too sharp a distinction between the nature and will of God. We use these terms to denote different aspects of the divine life, but it is evident, when thought through, that they do not represent distinct elements within the Divine Being. One involves the other. The nature gives content to the will, and the will gives reality and validity to the nature. Neither could exist without the other. It is the union of the two that constitutes the divine personality. Or, rather, the divine personality comes first and nature and will are merely abstractions from it. The divine nature does not exist first, and then the divine will act upon it, as it were, ab extra. Rather does the divine nature exist only in and through the activity of the divine will, so that one might in a sense say with Spinoza that God is the cause of himself. To this Professor Brightman would readily assent, but he says nevertheless that “there is within God, in addition to his reason and his. active creative will, a passive element which enters into every one of his conscious states,” and this passive or given element he assigns to the divine nature. The divine will has [p. 275] apparently nothing to do with its production; and hence a kind of antithesis arises between them. At least we seem to have a portion of the divine nature which is not ratified by the divine will, [31] and this runs counter to the correlative relation of the two to each other just expressed. If the divine will is throughout the ground of the Divine Being, there would seem to be no place in the latter for such an imperfectly assimilated or subdued element as the “Given” of Professor Brightman’s theory calls for.
The attribute of omnipresence, as we have already indicated, is a specification under that of omnipotence. It means that space constitutes no barrier or limitation to the divine power. The divine^ activity extends to all parts of the universe, and is as controlling in one part as in another.
This conception, like that of omnipotence and of monotheism in general, was, of course, a gradual development and in Scripture had a practical root. It grew out of a manifest need, the need of being assured of the divine help and fellowship wherever one might be and the need also of knowing that nothing can be hidden from the divine presence. At first this need in ancient Israel was so circumscribed geographically that it remained content with a national Deity, but with the rise of new international relationships, the broadening of outlook and the deepening of insight it burst its national bounds and in the eighth [p. 276] century B. C. asserted in unequivocal terms faith in the omnipresence of Jehovah. Not in captivity, nor in the depths of the sea, nor the yet greater depths of Sheol, could anyone, according to Amos 9. 1-4, escape his avenging hand. And, on the other hand, his mercy was as far-reaching as his justice. It extended to the ends of the earth. This was the moving theme of Deutero-Isaiah two centuries later; and from that time on the thought of the divine omnipresence was a basal one in Old Testament piety. The most impressive expression of it is found in Psa. 139. 7-12, where we are told that flight to the most distant place in space would not remove us from the divine care, nor would the blackest darkness hide us from the light of the Divine Presence. In the New Testament this conception of God is everywhere assumed. “In him,” says Paul, “we live, and move, and have our being;” and again he declares that absolutely nothing can separate us from his love.
But while there is no question about the divine omnipresence from the biblical and practical points of view, how it should be. conceived metaphysically is a problem. Some tell us that we ought to accept it as a religious truth and not attempt to form any clear philosophical conception of it. As thinking people, however, we can hardly adopt such a position. Some sort of notion of what is involved in omnipresence we must form. The idea of a “boundless bulk,” a divine substance filling all space, is, of course, to be rejected. Such a view would be inconsistent with the divine unity. For whatever occupies space can be divided. Furthermore, a space-filling [p. 277] substance would be present in any particular place only part for part; it would not be _ommi_present. To be omnipresent means to be “all there,” to be present at every point with one’s entire being. It was this idea that the scholastic mystics had in mind when they said that God has his center everywhere and his circumference nowhere. But such a conception manifestly has no meaning except on the personal plane. Only in and through an infinite self-consciousness could omnipresence in this sense of the term be realized. The very idea would be self-contradictory if applied to an impersonal or spatial being.
Infinite self-consciousness alone, however, does not constitute omnipresence. Presence in the world from the metaphysical point of view means something more than consciousness of it. It means immediate action in it. Immediate action extended to all things would, then, be omnipresence; and this is the sense in which the term should be understood. “God is in all things,” said Thomas Aquinas, [32] “not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works.” Divine presence means, then, divine agency. This is the form under which we are to conceive the relation of God to the world. Under the Ptolemaic system God was supposed to have his home in heaven, a region beyond the stars, and to intervene in the world beneath, exercising a kind of control over it. To visualize the universe meant, therefore, in a sense to visualize God along with it. He formed a constituent part of it, so that he seemed as real to men as the world itself. But [p. 278] with the advent of the Copernican astronomy heaven was banished from the spatial universe, and with the establishment of the modern mechanistic and evolutionary world-view no place was left for divine intervention in the temporal order. Consequently, God seemed unnecessary to the world*, and the sense of his reality declined among men. This holds true today, and if he is again to be made real in the human consciousness, it can be only by giving him an established place in our modern world-view. Such a place is accorded him, if we conceive of him as the sustaining cause of the world and identify the ultimate cosmic energy with his will. [33] In any case, it is in this sense that we are to understand his omnipresence.
The attribute of eternity is another specification under that of omnipotence. As omnipotence affirms that the divine power is not limited by space, so eternity affirms that it is not limited by time. As God is not a local being, so also he is not a temporal being in the sense of being confined to any particular period of time. In some way he spans all time, just as his activity extends to every point of space. But there are special difficulties connected with the idea of eternity that make it somewhat uncertain how it should be conceived.
First, however, a word should be said about its religious basis. Schleierniacher tells us that the idea of omnipresence is a more living idea and has a more [p. 279] general currency that it has been “more splendidly and more widely honored” in devotional literature, and that the idea of eternity “pervades the religious life to a lesser degree and is marked by a colder tone.” [34] But this is by no means universally true. We, no doubt, live largely in the present and hence as a rule think of God in his present relation to us. But that he is omnipresent is an idea that hardly stands so close to our individual experience as does that of his eternity. Eternity stares us all in the face, but not so the distant points in space. The latter we may disregard altogether. And so we find that, while Israel only slowly arrived at the idea of the omnipresence of Jehovah, it seems to have grasped the idea of his eternity from the outset. Nowhere in the Old Testament is it stated or even hinted that Jehovah was not eternal. The close relation of this idea to religious experience may also be judged from the fact that “eternal life” became in New Testament times the standing expression for the highest good that religion brings to us. The eternity of God would thus seem to be grounded quite as directly and deeply in human need as his omnipresence.
But how to conceive of the divine eternity is a question that, has puzzled thinkers since the days of Plato; and the same may also be said of time. “What is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.” These words of Augustine [35] have been echoed again and again through the centuries, and reflect the uncertain state [p. 280] of mind in which many still find themselves. What makes time a more difficult problem than that of space is that it enters into our inner life as space does not. Space is external to us. Our minds do not occupy space; they transcend it. And hence it is not difficult to think of God as superior to it and as omnipresent through the activity by means of which he grounds it. Whether we think of it as merely the form of external experience or as having some sort of independent reality, it is in any case an effect of the divine activity rather than an obstacle in its path. But with time the situation is different. The temporal relation applies to our inner as well as our outer experience. We cannot divest ourselves of it, and hence it is extremely difficult to conceive of a being that transcends it in the way that we think of God as transcending space.
Eternity may be understood in three different senses. It may denote (1) endless duration, or (2) timelessness, or (3) a combination of both. The first is the common view. According to it eternity differs from time only in extent. “From, everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” The thought is an impressive one, and not unworthy of the Absolute. But there are serious difficulties inherent in it. One may from this standpoint think of time in two different ways. One may regard it as an all-containing form filled out with the divine duration or as a law of the divine nature. In the former case time would be a kind of existence, external to God 1, conditioning his existence; indeed, destroying his inner unity. For a being in real time would be subject to division in the same way [p. 281] that a being in real space would. On the other hand, time as a law of the divine nature would make of God a changing and developing being and thus deprive him of that absoluteness without which he could not be the ultimate ground of change. An absolute, self-existent Being may initiate change, but he cannot be subject to the law of change. If he were, he would be a conditioned being, and as such would require for his explanation a higher being upon which he would be dependent. Mere endless duration does not, therefore, fill out the idea of eternity as ascribed to Deity.
Hence it became customary to oppose eternity to time and to interpret it as timelessness. This conception we owe to Plato and Aristotle. It is illustrated in the case of truth as a logical content. Ideas in their meaning are changeless. They remain the same, unaffected by the flow of time, and so are eternal. To them Plato apparently ascribed objective reality. Aristotle rejected his master’s teaching at this point, but his own Prime Mover, defined as the thought of thought, was, as Bergson has pointed out, 37 simply Plato’s Ideas, “pressed into each other and rolled up into a ball.” Consequently, God to him had the unchangeability of ideas and was eternal in the same sense as they. But how such an abstract and timeless Deity could initiate the world of change and how any living content could be introduced into his own being is a problem that has never been solved and that has constituted an insuperable obstacle to religious thought. Eternity in the sense of timelessness becomes [p. 282] an unmanageable conception the moment an effort is made to translate it from a logical abstraction into concrete reality. The living God cannot in his consciousness be the complete antithesis of time; he must somehow stand in a direct and appropriative relation to it.
The effort consequently has been made to interpret eternity in such a way as to make it inclusive of or at least consistent with the consciousness of time. Insofar as time involves development, growth, and decay, it is manifestly inconsistent with the divine eternity. There is also a large relative element in our temporal judgments, due to our physical and mental limitations, that cannot be ascribed to God. But that he is aware of our temporal experiences and that he by his creative energy sustains the temporal order is most emphatically affirmed in Christian teaching. It would seem, then, that there must be some sort of succession, some sort of before and after, in his consciousness and in his activity. It has been said that the succession in his thinking is logical, not chronological. But logical succession is not “real” succession, and hence does not properly reproduce the actual succession of the cosmic order. Strict timelessness cannot be attributed to a Creator-God. The moment we ascribe creative activity to the Deity he moves over into the temporal sphere, and his eternity becomes tinged with time. This also is what we should expect in view of the relation of the phenomenal to the real. It is through the phenomenal and the temporal that we arrive at the knowledge of the real and the eternal. Time does not, then, mask [p. 283] eternity. It is, as Dean Inge [36] says, “the symbol and sacrament” of it, and as such reveals it. The eternal consciousness is, therefore, to be regarded as in some sense embracing time while also transcending it.
The time-transcendence of Deity may be conceived in several different ways. The “specious present” of our human experience may be magnified into the “eternal now” of the divine. But such “a maximized consciousness of time,” as Pringle-Pattison terms it, [37] does not quite fill out the idea of eternity. By the eternity of God we mean not only that he grasps in the sweep of his consciousness the entire temporal order, but that he sees the informing principle of the whole, that he keeps before his mind’s eye the eternal goal of creation. It is in this unifying plan and purpose of the universe that the truly eternal element in the divine consciousness is to be found. The temporal facts appear in it, but only as symbols or vehicles of a larger meaning and value. It was this aspect of the divine eternity that Ritschl singled out as constitutive of it.
Another way of conceiving the eternity of God is to lay stress on the fact that intelligence implies a supertemporal element and that personality constitutes itself one and the same in spite of the multiplicity and change involved in its own consciousness and activity. Knowledge of the temporal flow would be impossible if there were not something in the intellect that stood apart from it and observed it. Then, too, personality knows itself as one and abiding. [p. 284] Through the miraculous power of memory it rises above the flux of time and becomes in a sense supertemporal. So it is also with the divine consciousness. God constitutes himself forever the same, and herein lies his eternity. There is no divine stuff that persists through endless time. But above the stream of time, as its author and observer, stands the divine intelligence, forever renewing the consciousness of its own unity and identity. Such a conception of the divine eternity is entirely consistent with that concreteness and richness of experience which the religious nature insists on attributing to God. The eternity or timelessness of God does not exclude a knowledge, on his part, of our temporal experiences, nor does it necessarily exclude the temporal from his own experience. If it did, it would be, as Bishop McConnell [38] rightly insists, a limitation of the divine power.
We need to remember, however, that in the divine omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity we have, after all, attributes that transcend all human power of understanding, that separate the divine from the human completely, and that set God on high as the “wholly Other,” the Absolute, a Being to be worshiped and adored rather than fully understood.
Cf. H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, II, pp. 238ff.; Philosophy and Religion, pp. l01ff. ↩︎
Theologie und Metaphysik (zweite Auflage), pp. 17ff. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, pp. 82f . ↩︎
See my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 137ff. ↩︎
The Idea of the Holy, pp. 12-41. ↩︎
Dialogues, Pt. XI. ↩︎
Three Essays on Religion, pp. 242ff. ↩︎
A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 310ff. ↩︎
God the Invisible King. ↩︎
Cf. R. B. Perry, Present Conflict of Ideals, pp. 316-30. ↩︎
For example, H. W. Carr, The Philosophy of Change, pp. 187f. See chapter on “The Notion of a Changing God,” in Pantheistic Dilemmas, pp. 107ff., by H. C. Sheldon. ↩︎
Cf. Harold Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 67f.; George B. Foster, The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence. ↩︎
This line of thought has been developed at some length by Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God, pp. 366ff. ↩︎
A Pluralistic Universe, p. 318. ↩︎
Three Essays on Religion, p. 256. ↩︎
Three Essays on Religion, p. 243. ↩︎
Pragmatism, p. 298. ↩︎
Is God Limited? Pp. 17, 20, 21, 52, 53. ↩︎
The Problem of God, Chaps. V and VII. This is an interesting, informing and stimulating study, characterized by originality, breadth of view, and personal conviction. ↩︎
Exod. 3. 13-15. E. ↩︎
For a detailed study of this and other related questions, see my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 115-136. ↩︎
Matt. 11. 25; 5. 34; Rom. 1. 20; 11. 36; 1 Cor. 8. 6; 15. 28; 2 Cor. 5. 18, etc. ↩︎
Mark 10. 27. Cf . 14. 36. ↩︎
f 99 Summa Theologica, Pt. I, Qu. 25, Art. 4. ↩︎
J. M. E. McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion, pp. 202-20. ↩︎
Cf. A. S. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God, pp. 298-321. For a criticism, see Bishop Charles Gore, Belief in God, pp. 69-73. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, Par. 54, pp. 211ff. ↩︎
Christliche Dogmatik, pp. 462ff. ↩︎
From this statement of his position Professor Brightman dissents on the ground that “the divine purpose is eternal increase of value” and that so long as this increase is effected the divine purpose is not thwarted. But if the divine purpose aims merely at an increase of value and not at an ideal increase of value, it would seem to be ethically defective. Either the divine will exceeds achievement, or there must be divine acquiescence in the present imperfect order. And in the latter case there would seem to be no place left for the resisting “Given.” Such a permanent resisting element in the divine nature, even though it leads to an eternal increase of value, seems to me to involve a permanent thwarting of the divine will and purpose. ↩︎
To this Professor Brightman would add: “but adequately and progressively utilized and spiritualized.” ↩︎
Summa Theologica, Pt. I, Qu. 8, Art. 1. ↩︎
For an elaboration of this idea see Th. Steinmann, Die Frage nach Gott, pp. 18-77. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, Par. 53. ↩︎
Confessions, Bk. XI, 17. ↩︎
The Philosophy of Plotinus, II, p. 102. ↩︎
The Idea of God, p. 356. ↩︎
Is God Limited? Pp. 45-55. ↩︎