The arguments advanced in the preceding chapters appear to justify a quite definite answer to the question, In what sense, if any, is there a supreme or perfect being? They point unambiguously to the AR conception, the second of the seven possible views defined in the first chapter, and diagrammed once more below.
FIRST-TYPE THEISM
SECOND-TYPE THEISMS
THIRD-TYPE THEISMS AND ATHEISM
A in
all
some
no respects
(A)
(AX)
(X)
CASE
I
2 3 4
5 6 7
A
AR ARI AI
R RI I
DEFINITIONS:
A, unsurpassable by anything, even by self
R, unsurpassable, except by self
I, surpassable, either by others or by self and others
The first view, or A (taken as sole property of God), being self-contradictory, is excluded by a negative ontological argument (chapter 3). It also conflicts with absolute requirements of ethics and aesthetics (chapters 4 and 6). It fails, finally, to furnish an ultimate or cosmic subject of change, or to afford any help in the explanation of time. Rather it denies time (chapters 7 and 8). The other five views, third to seventh inclusive, differ from AR in one or more of the following ways: (1) by introducing sheer imperfection into at least some aspect of God (ARI, AI, RI, I); or (2) by altogether denying absolute perfection to him (R, RI, I); or (3) by altogether denying relative perfection [p. 343] to him (AI, I). Against each of these three procedures there are decisive objections.
To introduce sheer imperfection into God is to contradict his unique status, to make him in so far just one more entity along with others without any essential func tions peculiar to him. It means that the supreme being is inferior to some at least conceivable being (other than himself in another possible state) or that the supreme being is capable of falling into a position of inferiority. Such an unstable supremacy seems to meet no requirement of value or of ontology. It could not be the ultimate subject of change, for instance, for such a subject will always possess all positive predicates that are possessed by anything at a given time.
The complete denial of absolute perfection means that of all beings it is true that in each of their aspects they are surpassable, either by themselves alone or by others alone, or by both themselves and others. For instance, the ultimate subject of change must be less ultimate in this respect than it is capable of being, or than something else is capable of being. But this implies a possible change for which there would be no ultimate subject, thus contradicting the premise that all change is change of something. Ultimacy is not a matter of degree, unless of the absolute degree, and this is unsurpassable.
The complete denial of relative perfection is no less fatal. A being incapable of acquiring increased value is a being without intelligible relation to change, to ethical choice, or to the aesthetic value of variety (absolute variety being inconceivable).
In addition to all this, the ontological argument strongly tends toward the conclusion that AR, being free from inconsistency and having positive meaning which leads to valuable and experientially unforced interpretations at [p. 344] every point, can be construed only as descriptive of exist: ence (since it cannot, in consistency with its own meaning, be taken as descriptive of potentiality, and since additional to existence and potentiality no third mode of being is available as the object of a meaningful conception)… Thus AR is self-evidently true of an existent being, and the other six conceptions become at best superfluous.
But AR is of course a mere logical schema, not a full description of God. Our arguments have, however, indicated how the schema is to be made more concrete. We have seen that there is perfect agreement between the unforced interpretation of the religious idea of divine love and the meaning of AR when interpreted through the dimensions of existence as given even in secular experience. These dimensions so far as abstract and therefore independent of the distinction between possibility and concrete existence admit absolute perfection and indeed require it. The mere abstract correctness and adequacy of knowledge and of will in relation to the objects known and willed require as the measure of knowledge and will and also of their objects a perfect case, hence omniscience, omnipotence (meaning unsurpassable power, not all possible power in one, this being indeed impossible) , and pure righteousness are validated. They are required to render the final subject of change really the final subject. One cannot conceive God as knowing a great deal, or nearly everything, and at the same time see in him the recipient of all actual predicates. All means all, not many or most. And if the will of God is merely remarkably catholic in its sympathies, then there are some events whose occurrence has nothing to do with him, and then he cannot really be the self-identity of time and change as such. Even more obviously, he will not furnish the ethical ideal, or the ultimate cause which all endeavor is to promote, even though it be through the glorious failure of lesser causes.
[p. 345] On the other hand, the dimensions of experience, where these are so concretely conceived as to depend upon actuality as such, do not admit perfection except in the relative or self-surpassing sense. To know what there is to know is cognitive perfection, but to find the known enjoyable to contemplate involves a dependence upon the variety and harmony of the known, and to this variety and harmony there is no absolute upper limit. Additions to the world to be known inevitably constitute additions to the aesthetic richness of the knowledge even though this be cognitively perfect at both the earlier and the later moments. Hence there is entire agreement between the requirements of metaphysics and the religious idea that God derives satisfaction, and varying degrees of displeasure, from our acts and fortunes.
Doubtless many will still feel that somehow the religious idea is richer than the mere metaphysical idea as justified by the arguments we have advanced. Two aspects of the problem must be distinguished.
In so far as the religious idea involves reference to the special nature of man, whose very existence is (so far as I can see) metaphysically contingent, philosophical theology in its purity knows nothing of the content of the idea. Sin, grace, forgiveness, as phenomena peculiar to the relations of God to man, are simply not discussed, though certainly not denied. The infinite fullness of the divine life is empirical not metaphysical. Empirical science and theology (revealed theology is in this sense empirical) are the “sources for any knowledge we have of God beyond the bare outline of the dimensions of his being. (That he has an infinitude of contingent features is metaphysical; what these features are is not.) Yet apart from his contingent content God would be an absolute emptiness and futility, of no more value to himself than to us. The final, the highest knowledge is not metaphysical, but empirical in [p. 346] that total sense in which both the generic or merely identical or universal features and also the inexhaustibly growing particularities of experience are included. Only philosophy, science, and religious theology, theology drawing upon special experiences of gifted individuals and groups, can together furnish man with his greatest measure of such total knowledge.
There is another sense, however, in which the metaphysical idea of God is more concrete than it is often thought to be. Taking “perfect love ” in strict generality, without regard to what is loved and to what is peculiar to loving this rather than that, it is, I believe, true that this idea is at once the description of the generic nature of God, that nature which he always has, and the minimal fulfillment of metaphysical (and secular ethical) requirements. It seems to me clear that all conceptions of the cosmic factors of existence that stop short of this idea do so only by failing to elucidate the meaning of abstractions in relation to experience in its general dimensions. If the cosmos is not held together by love, it is held together by empty words, like “causality” for instance, whose referents in direct experience are never clearly detected and hence whose meaning is more or less undetermined. Between the complete emptiness of mere matter, mere something, mere being, and the love of God generically considered, philosophical history discloses no reasonable half-way point. Metaphysics evaporates into thin air, or it leads us to religion. And for it to evaporate into thin air is for us to treat our abstractions from experience as though experience could throw no light upon their meaning. The most general abstractions from experience are still experiential, they cannot refer to what is just not experience, to mere matter, mere being. Or, if one admits that experience is ultimate but denies that loving experience is anything but pp 347 aspecial case, the answer is that mere experience apart from any social-sympathetic character is just as unidentifiable as mere being apart from experience. Cosmic being is cosmic experience, is cosmic sociality or love. This much of philosophic idealism has been untouched by the criticisms of realists, which always focus upon some perversion or misunderstanding of the social conception of reality. This much of idealism is what secular and religious people alike, though not with the same degree of consciousness, intuit as the atmosphere of all existence and all striving.