Author: Charles Hartshorne
. . . In metaphysics, as. . . in ethics and in logic, . . . valid principles must be supposed somehow implicit in ordinary intercourse of mind with reality. . . . The truth which is sought is already implicit in the mind which seeks it, and needs only to be elicited and brought to clear expression. . . . [If the method employed in philosophy] be deductive, then the initial assumptions cannot coerce the mind. There are no propositions which are self-evident in isolation. [If it be] inductive by example, then the principles to be proved are implicit in the assumption that cited examples are veridical and typical. . . . A philosopher can offer proof only in the sense of so connecting his theses as to exhibit their mutual support, and only through appeal to other minds to reflect on their experience and their own attitudes and perceive that he correctly portrays them.
C. I. Lewis, in Mind and the World Order
The theistic question is now before us. How are we to set about answering it? We might immediately attempt to devise arguments for the existence of God, in the hope that these arguments, if successful, would tell us not only that, but what, God is, and would thus decide among the three types of doctrines, or, if unsuccessful, would justify us in giving up the idea of God — that is, in accepting the atheistic interpretation of third-type doctrine — or would justify us in declaring the question unanswerable and in adopting an agnostic view concerning the three doctrines.
We might not unreasonably begin with an examination of the traditional proofs for God. These proofs of course lead, if anywhere, to theism of the first type. They have [p. 58] been examined many times by leading philosophers and, with increasing frequency and emphasis, judged unsatisfactory. Ought I to add my mite to this judgment or attempt to correct modern philosophy on a matter which it has so carefully considered? It may be said, however, that the proofs have not been really met on their own ground. There is some justice in this claim. Modern thought has often drifted so far from medieval metaphysics as scarcely to see what that metaphysics was about. But the force of this consideration is weakened, for me at least, by another. Modern thought has not been content to pass judgment on the traditional proofs; it has also proposed disproofs of God as conceived in traditional or first-type theology. These disproofs have, if anything, been even less adequately met by traditionalists than traditional proofs by their critics. To me the disproofs (see chapter 3) are as conclusive as philosophical arguments could well be, and when I see how almost completely they are overlooked by first-type theists I am unable to feel much concerned because the basis of the alleged proofs is not any too clearly understood by modern skeptics.
We might also begin with an attempt to find proofs for second-type theism (and such proofs are now available) , with an eye for possible disproofs. But it is impossible to look for evidence without knowing what idea is to be tested. Now it is true that we do have before us a definition of second-type theism. Yet it is to be feared that the definition will be misunderstood, or viewed by some readers with such strong prejudice as to make accurate reasoning difficult. They will think that what the new proofs have to offer is not what anybody has meant and sought in asking about God. They will think that a partially perfectible God cannot be everlasting, safe from corruption, or perfect in benevolence. They will think that the doctrine proposed [p. 59] is “pantheistic,” which is a sort of theological synonym for what you don’t like. Or they will suspect that the doctrine is not really self-consistent or meaningful.
In view of these difficulties I have chosen to postpone to chapters 8 and 9 the presentation of the revised forms of the cosmological and ontological arguments which I believe to be valid proofs for second-type theism. In the five intervening chapters I attempt to show: (in chapter 3) that the support which tradition appears to give to first-type theism is nullified by a basic contradiction in this tradition itself, a contradiction which second-type theism can best remove; (in chapters 4 and 6) that ethical and aesthetic aspects of experience conflict with first-type and support second-type theory (affording, if you will, an ethico-aesthetic “proof” for the latter) ; (in chapter 5) that only theism of the second type can really do anything with the traditional “way of analogy” with which the emptiness of purely negative theology has been allegedly atoned for; and (in chapter 7) that finally the religious idea of “creation,” so far from supporting the purely absolutistic and non-temporal conception of the creator, is much better expressed by the absolute-relative conception, AR. In this way I hope to weaken the prejudices built up by centuries of repetition of certain misunderstandings of the theistic problem (misunderstandings which are less and less frequently found among religious historians) , so that the two proofs mentioned will have some chance of receiving careful attention.
In any case, proofs must rest on insights, and it has been found that no axioms are altogether perspicuous to persons sufficiently desirous of avoiding propositions derivable from them. Then too, in the ontological argument the axiom is the idea of God itself, taken as at least meaningful, as neither non-sense nor self-contradictory. The way to establish this axiom is to deduce the consequences of [p. 60] various ideas of God with a view to their consistency and power to express basic aspects of experience.
That philosophy should make elaborate use of deduction, and not merely subsequent but also prior to the search for evidence as to the truth of its premises, may be inferred from the fact that even in physics, which is certainly an empirical science, elaborate mathematical deductive systems have been as much the forerunners as the results of observation. It is very true indeed that it is the mathematical character of the ideas involved that makes definite deduction possible and fruitful. But there are certain simple, formal, mathematico-logical ideas applicable even to philosophical problems. Our formulation of the theistic issues employed one such formal idea, the set ofall, some, and none. But there are other such ideas, and other philosophical applications. Mathematics is a way of defining exact alternatives. Thus if we have two ideas, A and B, and their negatives, —A and —B, then mathematics tells us there are four possible cases: AB, A—B, —AB, —A—B. This is nearly the simplest mathematics conceivable, but that is no proof that it must be unimportant. In fact, simple as such notions are, it can be shown that great philosophers have sometimes reasoned at variance with their logical structure while implicitly employing them.
In spite of my evident dislike for first-type doctrine, I have this sympathy for it, this reason for taking it seriously: In defending the idea of perfection, which in some form is the common element of the first two types, traditional theology is able to do justice to the a priori or metaphysical element in theology and philosophy, the necessary aspect of God, which plainly no mere induction could reach. Third-type theism, on the contrary, implies that there is no necessary or absolute factor knowledge of which could [p. 61] be attained a priori, If God is in all ways less than perfect, less than is possible, then how much less could not be anything but a contingent fact. Thus third-type theism is logically, and in its actual representatives, a pure empiricism, while first-type theism is equally logically a pure rationalism.
We confront a strange dilemma here: the initial task of philosophical theology is to decide among three doctrines, but if we ask by what method the decision is to be made, it turns out that decision as to method apparently amounts to decision as to result. If we exclude contingent knowledge from theology, we thereby deny contingent aspects to God; if we exclude a priori knowledge, we exclude noncontingent or necessary aspects. The dogmatic insistence in theology upon the exclusive validity of induction, or of deduction from self-evident axioms, is thus purely question begging. Surely a method for answering a question must not, in its mere formulation, imply one among the formally possible answers to the question. To tell a physicist that he must generalize from perceived particulars does not tell him which of the conceivable physical systems will turn out to be true. But to tell a theologian that he must follow this method, not merely as the way of determining accidental aspects of God, should there be such, but as the way of determining the entire nature of God including his essence, is really to say God has no strict or necessary essence but is wholly a contingent being, and therefore that both first- and second-type theisms are false! It is easy to show that the question, Can we have a priori insight into the necessary features of existence? is one with the question, Are there such features? (Positivists please note.) For if there are such features, they must be universally present in existence and experience and therefore not wholly unknowable, and if there are none such, then of course there [p. 62] is no appropriate object for an a priori method to know. To set up as axiomatic in all knowledge, including philosophy and theology, the exclusive use of what is generally meant by the “empirical” method — whose logical principle is that the choice among alternative, that is, contingent, hypotheses is to be made by observation of particular facts — is to commit the methodological fallacy of begging the answer to one of the chief questions for philosophy and theology to solve, which is, Is there a necessary factor, along with the contingent factors, in existence? This question cannot be answered by a method which is meaningless if one of the formally possible (verbally conceivable) answers to it is true. The question whether the answer is really conceivable and meaningful is the same (and this can be proved deductively) as the question whether the answer is true. (Necessary truths are those whose contradictory is nonsense, hence those which avoid nonsense only by being true.)
Thus the question of method is in philosophy in part inseparable from the problems to be solved by the method. Is there then no method for determining method which itself is beyond controversy and begs no questions? I believe that there is, All argument, even about method, assumes something, but it need not, for all that, assume something genuinely controversial. There are at least two types of non-controversial assumptions in philosophy: First, self-evident formal structures of pure logic and mathematics, which no one sincerely questions. Second, data of experience so vivid that, however one interprets them, they are universally admitted to occur, such as “pain,” “memory,” “purpose,” “hate.” Third, it is selfevident and indeed one of the formal principles mentioned, that the way to deal with controversial matters is to start from the least controversial experiences and, by the application [p. 63] of formal, deductively powerful structures, which are also neutral to the controversies, test the relation of the more controverted ideas to those experiences. This is the general rational method, and it includes more than what is usually meant by empirical, for the experiences which are important in philosophy are observations not of particulars but of the dimensions of experience as such, its temporal character, its character as“purposive,” “‘ emotional,” more or less “harmonious,” “discordant,” and the like. Philosophy is concerned with experiences which at least claim to be universal and fundamental — just as religious experience involves at least the feeling that “God” is relevant to and involved in all experience and all existence. The problem is not to generalize from such experiences and their claims, but to see whether the complete generality already in them, as a semblance at least, is or is not genuine, to see whether one can successfully, and with all implications in mind, deny their claim to generality.
It seems self-evident, for instance, that all existence has value, for at every moment one values all of it that he thinks of and hence is interested in — that is, he values whatever he can mean by— “all of it.” The problem is to clear this apparent insight of irrelevant details, to see what it could conceivably imply, and to relate it to other insights of the kind. To assume that this must not be the philosophical method is to assume definite answers to certain philosophical questions. To assume that this method should be given a trial is merely to allow such answers and their negatives to be adequately considered.
The way to deal with the issue between empiricists and rationalists is to use the elements of reason and experience which neither can deny, in order to state exhaustively what the different conceivable methods might be. Contemporary positivists try to do this when they divide all judgments [p. 64] into analytic and synthetic; but, as I have tried elsewhere to show,[1] though they give a formally exhaustive division, in actual procedure they introduce without adequate discussion certain restrictions on the varieties of the two types of judgment which partly nullify their initial care.
To assert the validity of the metaphysical method is fo assert that there is some sort of necessary being. But experimenting with a method is not the same as asserting its validity, but amounts only to admitting that we cannot safely assume its invalidity. On the contrary, to rule out a method amounts to denying that its possible validity needs even to be considered. Now the only type of theism which is compatible with the validity (in theology) of both methods, empirical and metaphysical, is second-type theism; for it alone admits contingent features in the necessary being; and of course contingent features are utterly incapable of being known except by particular observations, that is, experiences whose data are contingent. Thus the possibility that both methods have validity, that neither is merely wrong or superfluous, seems to coincide with the possibility that some form of second-type doctrine is true. Since, therefore, the a priori method could be ruled out a priori only by presupposing it, and since it cannot be assumed in advance that the a priori method will return a verdict against the validity of the empirical method (as appropriate to one aspect of the philosophical problem) , there can be no methodological justification for neglecting the possibility that second-type theism is true, and that, accordingly, both methods are valid.
It also seems fairly clear that it is the a priori method, not the empirical, which is capable of adjudicating the claims of the two methods, of generously or justly granting a place to its apparent rival. The only way the empirical method could throw any light on the a priori element in [p. 65] knowledge would be by a reflection upon its own presuppositions. But such reflection is not really empirical. The point is that a priori it could not be that mere generalization from particulars could be valid if there were no generalities knowable directly; for mere generalization from particulars is simply the formal fallacy, some s is p, therefore all, or most, s is p. Generalization has meaning only when we have accepted, as valid independently of generalization from particulars, the generic (not merely general) idea of the actual world as such, as distinguished from mere possibilities, implying that observed particulars belong to “realities,” that is, are not just isolated disembodied qualities, but samples of a universe with some principle distinguishing it from all-possibility, some principle of “limited variety,” such as distinguishes a work of art from simply a jumble of all the possible ways of making an artistic pattern with choice of none. True, the principle has no real alternative, we could not be experiencing a merely possible world.[2] But this “could not” isa priori and metaphysical, not a generalization from particular experiences. It follows simply from the generic idea of experience, as do all the metaphysical truths.
The more our empirical theologians insist that nothing a priori should be considered, the more sure traditional theologians will become that “modernism” is wandering in hopeless error. Between two such extremes there can be no rational decision, only endless debate, misunderstanding, and a certain amount of contempt. What is the objection to a fair trial for the position that can see sense in both sides of the controversy?
It is not to the point that the empirical method has alone proved successful in science, for it is apparent a priori that contingent or non-generic truths about existence cannot be known a priori. This was admitted in the Middle Ages. [p. 66] If, nevertheless, the empirical method then languished, this was due not to the fact that the a priori method was admitted as valid of non-contingent truths, but (among a complex of reasons) to the circumstance that the a priori method was held to arrive at a supreme reality which was in all aspects necessary, therefore in no aspects approachable by the empirical method, from which it would follow that anything knowable empirically, that is, anything accidental, would not be a part of the supreme reality, and would be of no importance whatever, since the supreme reality equally with or without accidental things would contain all possible perfection. Thus the exclusion of the empirical method from theology implies, if taken strictly, the total unimportance of the objects of empirical knowledge, and thus tends to discredit the method, even in the spheres in which it is supposed to be legitimate, by vittually denying that its objects in any significant sense exist.
The success of the empirical method in modern times, in the spheres in which its legitimacy was, nominally at least, conceded even when the metaphysical method was most popular, proves, not that the a priori method must be given up in philosophy and theology, but that we must investigate the possibility of justifying a priori the legitimacy of empirical generalization even with reference to one aspect of that necessary being which is the only conceivable object of a priori knowledge of existence (more than merely formal a priori knowledge). That is, the hypothesis which on methodological grounds deserves consideration prior to all others in philosophy is that secondtype theism is true, and the empirical method therefore, and for a priori reasons, valid and important in its sphere. This result would satisfy all interests involved, except only pride of opinion, anti-religious bias, and other non-intellectual, essentially personal motives. The way to vindicate [p. 67] the method of the special sciences is to show that they furnish the only way there is or can be of knowing in any detail the contingent contents of the divine life, without which that life would be empty of all value, a mere scheme of existence, not an existent.
(As one way to know the “contingent contents of the divine” one might have to admit a rationally purified revelation. For there may be relations of God to man — contingent relations since man is a contingent being — which only the “pure in heart,” or the recipients of special “grace,” will be adequately aware of. The accidents of God may include immensely important and to secular reason obscure matters, such as man’s “original sin,” or his “salvation” from this sin by divine “forgiveness.” A theology which in principle accepts revelation as affording knowledge to those able to assimilate it may have light to throw upon truths otherwise likely or perhaps certain to be missed or seen less clearly. This is here left undecided, since this book deals with the mere essence of God, including the generic property of “having accidents,” but not the accidents themselves. These belong to the special sciences, including the science of revelation, if there be such. On the view that God is not subject to contingent relations see chapter 7.)
There are, as we might expect, two opposite errors in regard to method in philosophy. One is to deny that experience can yield strictly universal truths. The other is to exaggerate the type of absoluteness possessed by such truths as we can know them, to misconceive the role of “axioms.” The former extreme is positivism, the latter is dogmatism in the proper technical sense. Here I wish to consider the dogmatic extreme.
Dogmatism is of two kinds. One may exaggerate the import of the axiomatic or a priori by trying to derive particular [p. 68] consequences from it, forgetting that it is purely general, and that from the more to the less general there is no valid inference, To yield a particular or a specific conclusion, one premise must be no less particular or specific. This means that the entirety of generalizations less than absolute in their generality must be known otherwise than by deduction from first principles. The entire field of the special sciences is thus liberated from the pretensions of metaphysicians, such as those of Hegelians, who appear to have thought that, if not particulars, at least more or less specific generalities are deducible from philosophical generalities. When scientists respond to such misuses of metaphysics by attacking metaphysics as such, they are merely falling into the opposite form of the same failure to distinguish things really different which was the cause of the abuses they dislike. Of course it may not be a simple matter to determine when a proposition is of complete generality, but many difficult things are yet possible.
The other form of dogmatism consists in the fallacious notion that insights into the absolute must be absolute insights. By deduction (it was thought) we learn the consequences of initial propositions whose truth is arrived at altogether independently of deduction, either by intuitive selfevidence or by induction. Since the latter is inapplicable to necessary truths, these must be known by sheer self-evidence. Deduction could exploit truth already discovered, but could not itself help in the discovery. This is of course a fallacy. By expanding propositions deductively, we find out much more adequately what they really assert, and the more we know what they assert the better we know how well they fit experience or the immediately intuited or selfevident. Even if it be a question of necessary truths, first principles, the value of deduction as part of the machinery for testing and clarifying such truth is as great as in the induction of contingent generalizations. Logicians have [p. 69] come to realize that since the deducible consequences of logic’s laws are themselves just as necessary, just as truly laws, as the initial statements or “axioms,” it is as reasonable to test the truth of the axioms by looking to the selfevidence of their consequences as vice versa. Indeed, all logical ideas are axioms, the only difference among them being in simplicity or convenience of explication. The same is true in metaphysics. Theists of the first type, however, thought differently. They set up certain axioms, such as that “actuality is prior to possibility,” quickly proceeded to deduce the theological consequences, and refused vigorously to consider any apparent clash of these consequences, either with each other or with experience, as indications of imperfection in the assumptions. On the contrary, the inference was rather, “since the axioms are correct, the only problem is as to the best way of resolving the apparent difficulties of their consequences.” The prize goes to him who most completely explains, or explains away, the difficulties. The prize goes, in fact, to a beautiful spirit, St. Thomas of Aquin, whose principal technical defect, among magnificent technical virtues, was that he did not realize that ultimately it would be as necessary to justify the axioms as to justify the existence and nature of God derived from them.
Deduction is a way of magnifying the testability of assumptions, rather than simply a way of magnifying their importance and meaning, once tested. We should never put all the burden of the evidence upon axioms, but distribute it over the whole chain of consequences. This is well recognized in regard to scientific reasoning. But in philosophy its recognition has been impeded by the contention, in itself true, that philosophy deals with assumptions whose relation to observable facts is not the same as ¢ in science. Philosophical principles, being first principles, apply to all conceivable as well as to all actual facts, and [p. 70] what is to be tested is not the frequency with which they obtain, their probability in the usual sense, but their necessity. Truths can be necessary only if their denial is absurd, and this can only mean if insight into the meaning of the denial suffices to exhibit it as self-contradictory. In short, the assumptions of philosophy are self-evident upon careful inspection of the terms involved. These terms, like all terms, refer to experience, for there is nothing else for them to refer to. But since self-evidence gives necessity, certainty, there seems no need to consult experience further, once the assumptions have been validated.
The conclusion is a non sequitur. There is no point beyond which we can afford to lose interest in the applicability of philosophical propositions to direct experience. If we have deduced that God is love, and at the same time that he is impassive, it is fully in order to ask if it is within the meaning of love to admit impassivity. If not, then so much the worse for our previous assumptions, as well as for our present apparent insight into the essential passivity of love. Both must be held questionable until the self-evidence of the earlier assumptions has been reconsidered, in the light of a full and candid hearing afforded to the contradictory of these assumptions, one by one. Axioms must be defended against a vigorous devil’s advocate. In Aquinas there is a devil’s advocate for the denial of theorems, but scarcely for the denial of axioms. Experience, especially in recent times, has shown that false axioms can present a striking semblance of self-evidence, a fact that enhances the significance of the difficulties which some of the Thomistic theorems involve. These difficulties were naturally not fully apparent to Thomas, but he did deal ingeniously with some of them, and since it is all in a cause known as good the disciple is more disposed to admire the ingenuity than to push the quest for credentials.
The trouble, then, is by no means merely that the reasoning [p. 71] is toward a predestined conclusion, the existence of God, but just as much that it starts from a preordained premise, the substantial correctness of the Aristotelian conception of matter and form. True it is, also, that the definition of God arrived at (first-type theism) is believed by Aquinas to be true in advance of all his reasoning, since it is the definition made venerable by practically unanimous testimony (on the points here in question) of the Fathers, as well as being in agreement with the Scriptures as then interpreted. Thus when the Scriptures say God is perfect or unchanging, this was taken to mean, in every respect and sense perfect and unchanging, as though the Bible had been written for the express purpose of guiding philosophers as such. How could we expect that a mere human being, even though a saintly one, should have refused to be satisfied with a result which conformed so beautifully both to the assumptions and to the conclusions of his tradition, with such magnificent architectural logic between?
For that Aquinas’ logic on its deductive side is magnificent I both grant and insist. The only criticism to be made is that —as I shall argue in the next chapter — equally rigorous logic can be used to derive contradictory theorems; for the premises contain inconsistent elements which equally validly point in opposite directions. Still, in a sense Aquinas is correct even here, in that his procedure is one which makes the maximal use of the experi entially sound implications of the premises with a minimum of warping of the deductive chain. Most of those who have tried to patch up the traditional system have permitted more of the erroneous implications (those involving a misinterpretation of generic experiential insights) to figure in the deduction, without doing equally well by the sound ones, and usually without so much systematic skill in setting out the relationships. The only way to beat [p. 72] Aquinas is to take as doubtful what he took as most certain in philosophy, and to experiment with other axioms. Until this is done, Thomists are entirely right in holding that Spinoza or Kant or Hegel or Bradley or Royce is, taking his system as a whole, at least no more rigorous than the gentle master — while at the same time as true to experience; although I for one am convinced that each of these men is more defensible on isolated points. Their value was that of explorers, who found new truths at the cost of forgetting some of the truths already known. Only three evaluations of their work are plausible: (1) it marks genuine but one-sided advances, whose full value must be found in a systematic revision of the tradition in the light of their discoveries; or (2) it marks for the most part mere decay, and had best be dismissed in favor of the medieval synthesis; or (3) it represents the lingering self-annihilation of the superstition that metaphysics is a legitimate study, and we had best start over again with a purely positivistic program. These are also the three reactions most in evidence today. The time has gone by for patchwork. A radical but systematic revision of Thomism from top to bottom, a radical rejection of the metaphysical enterprise — these are the two ways of finding positive value in the work of modern philosophy. On any other view it is a failure, as Roman Catholics accuse it of being.
If the ultimate object of philosophy and theology — God as the integrated sum of existence — is both necessary and contingent, both perfect and perfectible, then metaphysics, which studies the necessary aspect, is not the whole of philosophy or theology, which must consist rather of a synthesis of metaphysics and all special sciences whatever, including any “revelation” of contingent aspects of God there may be. People often think exclusively of this synthesis when they speak of philosophy, and they sometimes [p. 73] even infer that philosophy is primarily a dream for the future, when the task of the sciences is completed — if it ever is. But philosophy in its totality is rather the contemplation of what has an everlasting, necessary, and at all times knowable essence, together with the contemplation of as many of the contingent features of the contemplated object as may be accessible to us. Thus philosophy (and theology is only philosophy as developed from the standpoint of the faith or religious experience of a person or group, rather than from the standpoint of the minimal common faith or experience of men in general) is all of knowledge, though there is an aspect of philosophy which is independent of all other knowledge, as there is an aspect of the object of philosophy which is independent of all other things.
The conflict now going on between second-type theism, as necessarily dual in method, and third-type or purely empirical theology, may seem to refute the suggestion made in the previous chapter that present-day theology is tending toward convergent results. This is true except to the extent that empirical theologians may not be wholly free from metaphysical arguments, and in a number of cases (for instance, the outstanding one of F. R. Tennant) they seem to me in fact not thus free, and in this way they attain to some form of second-type doctrine. For example, Professor Brightman says God’s will is perfect, though his ability to carry it out is not.[3] But on empirical grounds (unless religious experience be made the decisive datum) how can we decide between this view and the notion that God’s ability is perfect, although his intentions are not wholly benevolent? Either way we explain the facts of evil which Professor Brightman has in mind. Further, his notion of the Given as an intrinsic limitation of God’s power, a passive element in his activity, analogous to sensation [p. 74] and emotion in us, can be defined and defended only in the context of an adequate analysis of what is or can be meant by “passivity,” “sensation,” etc.; and the exploration of such concepts taken in their most fundamental or general senses, as they here must be, can only amount to a metaphysical system whose defense is not merely empirical, since the very meaning of “experience,” “facts,” etc., will have to be grounded by this system. (In such a system it might, I suggest, appear that “passive” only means “acted upon by another,” so that the Given can only be a relation to some activity other than the divine, and therefore cannot be explained merely by a limitation, or anything else, in God alone.)
However this may be, I do not see how one can survey theological writings of recent decades and not feel that a new reformation is in progress. Protestantism, having lived on the crumbs of medieval theology for centuries, is now really facing the issues for itself.
The severity of some of my strictures against first-type theism must be weighed in the light of my contention that this doctrine serves to “block the path of inquiry” (Peirce) , thus committing the greatest of logical sins. Defenders of the doctrine in effect hold that the maximal verbally possible formulation of God’s superiority makes such perfect and undeniable sense that no careful examination of more qualified formulations need or should be made.[4] They urge that the verbally maximal is also the minimal conception of God worth considering, without inquiry into the possibility that absolute maximization results in nonsense rather than in a positive maximal concept, or into the possibility that both maximality and a protean character of infinite expansiveness, rather than mere expandedness, are required for a consistent view of the supreme being. The two concepts may be polar contrasts [p. 75] each of which is essential to the other. Thus the attitude of first-type theism has in common with that of atheism the tendency to bar the path of inquiry into the formal possibilities.
On the other hand, “empirical” theologians or philosophers also (because of their consciousness of the abuses to which deduction is subject) frequently fail to examine adequately the formal character of their “hypothesis,” its consistency, simplicity (or hyper-simplicity) , deductive structure, and logically possible alternatives. Empiricists, like metaphysicians, are often too impatient to arrive at proof, even though in their case it is an empirical proof that is sought.
That there is no unambiguous priority of the “proofs” for God over his definition (material for the definition being furnished, say, by religious tradition) can be seen in another way. One of the alleged proofs, which, according to Kant at least, is presupposed by all the others, is the ontological, and this proof is based on the definition of God. The proof has been rejected by many illustrious theologians; but also it has been accepted by many illustrious theologians. Rejection has generally been on the ground that we cannot know the nature of God (as at least not impossible —and so much the ontological argument must presuppose) except by the same proofs as serve, without the ontological argument, to establish the existence of God. (This is not quite the Kantian treatment of the matter, which will be considered in chapter 9.) This reasoning is based on the old principle that we do not positively and literally know what God is, we do not know him in himself, but in the creatures, in his effects, as infinitely less than and other than himself. However, this principle is so equivocal, so subject in most theologians (with a few honorable exceptions —or seeming exceptions— [p. 76] as in the candid Maimonides, or the perhaps less candid, certainly less systematic, Philo) to dilution through the doctrine of “analogy,” taken positively, that it is a dubious foundation for the rejection of the ontological argument. This much I believe can be maintained with safety, that if the description by analogy is not purely dishonest, a bluff, it does give us some dim notion of what positively God is, and furthermore, even such a dim notion should teach us something about whether or not a being so described is conceivable (which, as we shall see, is the only form of possibility here required). To have absolutely no notion of the consistency or inconsistency of an idea, or no notion of whether or not one really has an idea and not rather a set of words without meaning, is to have no idea whatever, even analogical. Therefore there ought to be some significance to the ontological argument, some of the usual objections to which are demonstrably untenable.
It is, for instance, demonstrably illogical to object that properties cannot imply existence on the ground that in the case of beings other than God they do not do so; for it is plain that the properties of contingent beings must be contingently related to existence, and equally plain, as based on the converse of the same reason, that the properties, at least the essential properties (whether or not these are the only ones) of a necessary being, one whose existence is not accidental or derivative, cannot be contingently reTated to existence. Now to all theologians (of type one or two) God is a necessary, and the only necessary, being. Hence to object to the ontological argument on the basis of a supposed principle that essence cannot imply existence is to argue from a premise that is equally fatal to any argument for God (first or second type) and to the mere possibility of there being a God — in short, is to argue from an atheistic (or at least finitistic) assumption.
[p. 77] Since necessity of existence is essential to God (as he is almost universally conceived) , one of two things must be true: the conception, universal as it is, is sheer nonsense, contradicting the basic law connecting properties and individuals; or this law is not absolute, because of the metaphysical uniqueness of the supreme being. In the latter case the ontological argument is in so far valid; in the former, we must admit a negative ontological argument, in disproof of God, and such an argument is likely to be accepted by atheists. It is quite conceivable that some definitions of God, at least, contain discoverable selfcontradictions, and hence suffice to disprove the God so defined. Indeed, it is a common accusation against traditional theology that its basic definition is in truth inconsistent with itself (a mind without a body, a will without change, etc.). This might be apparent quite apart from an estimate of the proofs supposed to establish the existence of an object of the definition. For, once more, if we have no content for our conclusion from the theistic arguments, no content conceivable in abstraction from the arguments, then it is hard to see in what sense they are arguments or the conclusion is a conclusion. If we have a content, its consistency must be open to inquiry. If it proves inconsistent, then we have a valuable clue to the interpretation of the alleged proofs. We know that they are unsatisfactory (certainly many great minds have thought them so) and, more than that, we have an indication of the locus of the fallacy. We know that it need not necessarily lie in the proofs, in so far as they are proofs for God, since it may lie rather in them in so far as they are taken as proofs for the kind of God covered by the self-contradictory definition. If there is an alternative definition available, with enough in common with the traditional definition to apply reasonably to “God,” perhaps with even [p. 78] more exact appropriateness to the real nature of religion from which the idea of God seems to have sprung, and on the other hand differing from the older definition on just the points which involved this definition in contradictions, then it may turn out that the proofs as revised to fit the new definition are not fallacious at all.
Any fair-minded person must admit that it would be rationally satisfying to learn that the trust placed in these venerable proofs by so many of the most acute minds of all times has not been purely unfounded, and yet that on the other hand the confidence with which the proofs as they stand have been rejected by minds as great as Hume, Russell, Kant, Dewey, was also well founded. Any other eventuation to the ancient controversy is so deep an insult to human reason itself that one who thinks candidly must feel that he himself can hardly escape the implications of this insult. If theology has been sheer folly —and many of the wisest men, even down to the present, have been theologians — then who can have confidence of being wise? And if theology has been practically pure wisdom, while at least a respectable minority of wise men have seen little in it but folly, then again the human mind is a feeble instrument indeed. Perhaps it is that, and certainly it has its feebleness, but any less despairing hypothesis that seems capable of explaining the conflict deserves a hearing. Such a hypothesis, as we have suggested, is available. It cannot have been adequately refuted; for those who do not accept it are those largely unacquainted with it. To end this situation is a major philosophical task of our generation.
The question, Is there a God? methodologically considered means, Is there an inherent harmony, capable of logical expression, between the religious and the secular functions of the human mind, and of the world as portrayed [p. 79] in these functions? It is the possibility of “secular functions” (Whitehead) for God which makes the bridge, if there is one, between faith and reason. Or, the bridge may be expressed as the possibility of implicit religious functions for secular concepts (concepts like that of time or space or the cosmos). If there be such an ultimate identity in the implications of religion and everyday life, it follows that the non-believer is mistaken in thinking he does not believe, since merely to live a secular life is, on this hypothesis, to affirm God in the same sense, whatever it be, in which the religious person affirms him, although in the latter case there is fuller consciousness of the content of the affirmation. I am totally unable to conceive any argument for the religious conception (first or second type) which does not imply that the difference between believers and unbelievers is nothing but a difference in selfconsciousness and consistency in regard to what all believe “at heart,” or in so far as action is the ultimate expression of what a man believes. For if God exists, then, according to nearly all theologies, he is ubiquitous, hence present in the experience of the most hardened skeptic or sinner, and only by some sort of self-contradiction denied by any mind. To deny God cannot mean to shut him out of one’s experience, if so be that he exists; and since we are always talking about experience if we talk significantly at all, and since God is in every fragment and aspect of experience or nowhere, hence either we must always be contradicting everything we say when we deny God, or else there is no God in anyone’s experience, and consequently it is the believer who means nothing when he says, “There is a God” (for God could mean something only through experience). The theological question, like all genuinely philosophical questions, is infinitely radical, and this being so the difference between the theological yes and the theological [p. 80] no cannot possibly be measured by the variations in wholly genuine human belief, but only by the gap between what must, in some underlying stratum of affirmation, be intended by all men, and what cannot really and wholeheartedly be intended by any man. Philosophers might be divided into those who see this radical nature of their problems and those who do not; and this division seems to me almost to coincide with that between philosophers and (at most) students of philosophy. By this test, logical positivists are philosophers; for they see that if, for instance, there is no (absolute) God, it can only be because nobody really thinks there is, and the question is meaningless, except when we are feeling rather than thinking.
Though it is annoying to some persons to be told that they may really believe what they think they doubt or deny, yet, on the other hand, the invidiousness of theological dispute is really, it seems to me, greatly mitigated if we recognize that what we are engaged upon is an effort, through cooperation, to discover what the bottom layer of our common human thought really is. And those who are irritated or scornful concerning the alleged ability of their fellows to tell them what they themselves “really” believe should remember that the reverse claim is equally in order: religious people, for example, must admit, as a hypothesis for discussion, the view that whoever says of himself that he believes in God is quite mistaken as to the reality of this belief of his.
In short, we not only believe, we believe that we believe. There are strands and levels of belief, by no means necessarily wholly consistent with each other. The task of philosophy is entirely that of finding, by the two methods of logical analysis and recollection of key phases of experience, those truths which in terms of feeling and living we never can be wholly separated from, and therefore must [p. 81] also consciously believe if belief is to achieve consistency and sincerity.
The theist who says he believes in Providence, but shows that he has little but anxiety for the future, contradicts his words by his deeds and attitudes. But so, one might argue, does the atheist who says there is no Providence, and yet relies upon a long-run future such as will never destroy the significance of his present choices and efforts. The difference between the two cases is that (1) it is possible to face the future with an indefinite approximation to the serenity implied by faith in Providence (so interpreted, however, as not to imply that there is no kind of risk in the time process), and (2) it is desirable to set up this approximation as an ideal; whereas an indefinite approximation to a complete lack of trust in the future is simply an indefinite approximation to the destruction of the will to live and is the reverse of an ideal, being denied by the mere continued living, even though halfhearted, of pessimists. (It would be denied even by suicide; for that too is an act, a choice. Only the man who dies by sheer force of despair — nay, not even he, unless the despair be wholly involuntary, and can it be so? — could really be said to believe nothing as to the reliability of the cosmos.)
Faith in God means trust in the value of choice not merely in practical affairs; there is also a phase of the problem in the theoretical life. The very “ground of induction” (the reality of natural laws or reliable uniformities) is some sort of faith, even though it is one to which there is no conceivable alternative —as there never is to a philosophical tenet, if we see clearly into our own minds. The alternative to faith is merely confusion or unconsciousness, not a doctrine credible in the same sense. I do not believe atheists have yet succeeded in drawing the theoretical boundary between their obviously real faith and that which [p. 82] they say they deny. The difference seems to be one of explicitness, except in so far as atheists rightly reject certain explicit formulations of traditional theology which there is good reason to think do not represent the actual content of theism as a working faith.
In the last few sentences, I have slipped into a statement of my own religious beliefs. But, whatever one’s beliefs, it is a corollary of the incomplete credibility of the philosophically false that alternative “hypotheses” are not, as in science, equally meaningful as possibilities, though differing in truth value, but rather a class of quasi-possible views, only one of which is genuinely conceivable and possible. It is for this reason that we must strive for formally exhaustive divisions, since to reject at the outset as patently absurd, or to overlook altogether, a formally possible view is to forget that all the views but one will prove patently absurd when their pretended meaning is adequately scrutinized, and that it is more or less accidental and personal which views exhibit their absurdity most easily, immediately, and reliably (for the true view, if subtly misunderstood, will also appear as absurd) .
Formal classifications, being neutral, preserve us from overemphasis upon accidental and subjective factors, force us to give careful consideration to all ofa set of views among which the true must, by formal necessity, be included, and hence enable us to judge the absurdity of the others by the only safe criterion, which is the “light of the true idea itself” (Spinoza). If any view is omitted from consideration, and this happens to be the true one, then we will only be comparing absurdities; and the one which appears to us least absurd will be the one which is most protected from our adequate scrutiny, for some reason personal to us, such as the force of tradition or the charm of novelty, or at least it will be the one whose inadequacy is less readily [p. 83] seen in a given state of culture, or even one harder to detect owing to the very generic character of the human mind (Bacon’s “idol of the tribe”) .
Since, of the three principal logical possibilities in theology, two (One and Three) have long ago been widely and carefully explored, and since now at long last the third (Two) is receiving widespread attention, the most general question which theology involves must be not very far from such possibility of a rational answer as human powers permit. The rest depends probably upon non-rational factors chiefly, such as the varying strength of clerical and anticlerical politics and emotions, or the degree of concentration of attention upon narrowly limited problems of science and life. Man’s various interests must compete as well as cooperate; for his attention span is small. And one cannot remain wholly rational about an idea which is the final integrating principle of thought about emotions and values in general, as well as about truth values or facts. He can only do the best he can, by striving to sympathize with the positions of other thinkers, by cultivating interest in the logical aspects of the problem as fascinating intellectual patterns like any others, by meditating upon the ethics of inquiry, and by recalling that men of fine minds seem to live not badly, some of whom do and some of whom do not accept any given idea concerning God. Anyone who knows how many concealed as well as overt forms prejudice and stubborn pride or other forms of intellectual incompetence in these matters can take will not be too anxious to condemn my book utterly because of the signs of such failings which he may all too probably discover in it.
See Beyond Humanism, chap. 16. ↩︎
See Lewis, Mind and the World Order, pp. 367 ff. ↩︎
See E. S. Brightman, The Problem of God (Abingdon Press, 1930) . Professor Brightman’s position is perhaps not intended to be empirical in the narrow sense which I am criticizing. Professor D. C. Macintosh calls his own method empirical, but expressly provides for a metaphysical element. ↩︎
This is how Jacques Maritain characterizes Scholastic metaphysics: “It knew with perfect certainty that it had followed without the least interruption the thread of the logical necessities" (Réflexions sur l’intelligence, p. 281). Previously Maritain has informed his readers that William James and other pragmatists have reached “humiliating absurdities” in their theological speculations because they followed a method which renounces interest in the truth, It should, I think, be clear that Maritain’s own rhetorical method, as here displayed, is well enough adapted to defend such truth as Scholasticism may have in its possession but less likely to be helpful if perchance there are important truths with which Scholastic doctrines are incompatible. ↩︎