[ p. 11 ]
TWENTY years ago, Budolf Eueken was able to startle a good many people by the mere title of a book, Can We Still Be Christians? There are doubtless those who will remember James Denney’s somewhat caustic review of the book. Denney felt that the word “still” was unnecessarily ominous, and he was not at all favorably impressed with the kind of Christianity that Eueken thought we could “still” accept and live by.
Whether Eucken’s title were justified at the time, or not, there are few who would dispute that the question of questions respecting religion to-day is Can We Still Believe in Godf While, speaking for ourselves, we may have a confidence resembling the stalwart Denney’s, we should still have to admit that our most urgent problem is to create that confidence in others. A few years ago we were being treated to discussions of “Christianity Without Christ.” To-day the discussions have to do with “Religion Without God.” What kind of Christianity it was that purposed to dispense with Christ hardly needs now to be described. It has already revealedas it was bound to do its own intrinsic fallaciousness. We shall hope that the present uncertainty concerning God will have a similar issue. Nevertheless, it is by no means clear to a good many sincere and earnest people to-day that God is necessary to religion. Or if God is retained, it is a God very difficult to recognize. God is Value God is Process God [ p. 12 ] is Change God is Space-Time God is Idealized Reality God is Principle of Concretion God is Idea God is a Projection God is Yourself God is Nature’s TJpthrust God is Tendency to Good contemporary discussions are full of characterizations such as these; and in many cases those who offer them seem quite convinced that religion can be “saved” only as one or other of these substitutes for the God of “the Great Tradition” shall be accepted, and the older view ,be entirely surrendered.
The writer believes that this is all wrong, and he has written this book to say why. He has considered the positions of such extremists as Krutch, Barnes, Samson, Sellars, Max Otto and Bertrand Russell, and the positions of men less extreme such as Julian Huxley, Haydon, Schmidt, Murry, S. Alexander, Overstreet and Joad the positions, too, of men like Ames, Wieman, Montague and Brightman, friendly as the last-named scholars are to the theistic emphasis. He is frank to confess that he has found in the writings of these men nothing which seems to him to render untenable that view of God which Christianity has always assumed, namely, Purposive Mind and Creative Will, infinite in Goodness, Wisdom, and Power. As much can be said for the view to-day as ever has been said, and nothing is being said against it that has not been said already. Neither theism nor atheism can expect to be original. The case for both has been stated long ago. We can do little more than state the same case in our own way, and advocate our choice as best we may.
But we might as well face the fact that the attack on God in the sense defined and that is the only [ p. 13 ] kind of God that really matters is in the end an attack on religion. 'There is no need to question the sincerity of those who think otherwise. They were brought up in the theistic faith, and the religious attitudes thereby produced have remained even when their original support has been withdrawn. But to assume that these same attitudes may be produced in others who are told from the outset that the theistic faith is false and unnecessary, reveals an amount of optimism which one person at least believes to be unwarranted. If no one else is logical here, Krutch is, when he declares that a Godless world will mean a loveless world and a loveless world will hardly be religious.
The issue is drawn. The threat to Christianity to-day is not at the point of this or that dogma. The threat is at its very foundation God. If we cannot keep theism, we cannot keep Christianity : Leuba told us that 'some fifteen years ago. Every great Christian idea requires God for its validating. But it must be an adequate God. A half-hearted, apologetic theism will get us nowhere. Only a thoroughgoing theism will suffice. Nothing is to be gained by compromise in a life-and-death struggle for religion. The introduction of a conflict into the very bosom of God such as Brightman proposes will hardly win our philosophical atheists the wild beast who is waiting to devour you will simply sniff contemptuously at the nice bone you throw him, and go on waiting it will not help the difficulties of the great host of perplexed and earnest seekers, and to the convinced theist it will appear as little short of fantastic, with all the drawbacks and none of the advantages of [ p. 14 ] Zoroastrian dualism. What the nature of things necessarily puts asunder God and Evil let not man join together. The belief in any kind of God Wieman’s as much as Inge’s, Montague’s as much as Sorley’s, Brightman’s as much as Hocking’s involves the exercise of both reason and faith. Since in order to find God at all, we must go Wieman notwithstanding beyond the bounds of sense-experience, why not go all the way? It costs a lot to have God, but the cost of a little one is the same as* the cost of a great one. And if this be denied, then let it be said that a God every way adequate makes a less demand on reason and faith than is made by any one of the discrowned gods now being introduced into the modern Pantheon.
Can We Still Believe in God? 'This book has been written in the confidence that we can if we will. It is a frank and unabashed statement of the faith of our fathers concerning a God who is real, a God who is adequate, a God who is available. There is probably nothing in it that has not been stated before. To many this will seem fatal; they will have nothing that is not new. Perhaps not but in that case they will have very little. They may turn to the writings of the men whose names were mentioned above. Indeed, thousands have already done so, and they have been captivated by their cleverness, their wit, their brilliancy, their plausibility. The nontheistic humanist and the quasi-iheist can present a good case, and oftentimes they reveal a deadly earnestness which one cannot but respect. But there is here, after all, no great answer to the greatest of questions. As always, men are asking, “Is there God?” and too [ p. 15 ] often the answer is either a downright “No!” which is at least intelligible, or a half-hearted “Yes a sort of one !” which only more deeply confounds the confusion. There are, however, still those who have not bowed in the house of Eimmon. Such living voices as those of Hocking, Sorley and Temple, of Inge, Pringle-Pattison and Knuclson, of Leighton and Streeter, of Lyman, Bell, Raven and W. R. Matthews, of Titius, Heim, Barth, and among the last but by no means the least the voice of A. E. Taylor, are still to be heard in the land. The present writer acknowledges to them, and many others like them, his own deep obligation. He can only hope that their voices will continue to be heard, and that they will be followed, and that they will help us to
“Fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stabllsh, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God.”
Much that is written in this book has been discussed by the writer with the members of “The Drew Seminar Club of New York,” a group of men organized for graduate theological study. It has been his great honor to be their leader for nine consecutive years. They are men beset by all the difficulties of ministering to churches under the present conditions. We have had our differences, but we have all agreed that the modern danger is not that there shall be “too much God,” but that there shall be too little. There could have been no greater privilege than that of association with men such as these [ p. 16 ] men who are bearing the heat and the burden of the day, and the privilege is here gratefully and humbly recognized.
The notes appended to each chapter are intended as helps to the professional student. In the case of foreign works, "the references are to the standard translations, where these exist, although in one or two instances the translations have been made directly from the originals.
EDWIN LEWIS.
Drew Forest, Madison, New Jersey.