[ p. 111 ]
NOTHING is more certain than that our presuppositions, outlook, everything which is included in the vague but expressive phraso “ mental atmosphere”, are entirely different from those amid which the Christian belief in God grew up and reached its traditional formulation; and we need not waste time in demonstrating an admitted fact. Yet though we are conscious that a change has occurred we do not find it easy to determine the main character of the contrast which we feel. There are no instruments of precision to gauge the variations of intellectual climate. But if we hope to present the Christian doctrine of God in a form which will appear reasonable to the “modern mind” we must arrive at some general view of the tendencies which are native to that mind. To study the modern mind and pay great attention to its questions, axioms, and convictions, is not, as is sometimes suggested, to attribute infallibility to it or even to imply that it is in every point superior to previous generations, but only to assume that it is a mind and happens to be the mind of the age in which we live. It is my own opinion that the present period of intellectual development will rank in history as one of the most important and that it will be found that even the confusions of the mind of the age contained the germs of a great advance in insight. In any case, the Christian idea of God is scarcely likely to be the creed of the future [ p. 112 ] if its defenders feel obliged to ignore or minimize every acquisition of new knowledge.
In our previous chapter we distinguished three factors which have contributed to the traditional theological conception of God, the authority of Scripture, religious experience, and the philosophical theories which formed the intellectual background. It will be convenient to consider these three factors in our present inquiry, the first two very shortly and the third at somewhat greater length.
The persisting Christian experience may be described as the ultimate datum for the Christian thinker ; and this factor more than any other manifestly possesses the quality of self-identity through temporal change. In the experience of men God in Christ is “ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”. The fundamental reactions of the Christian soul in redemption, loving trust, spiritual power, worship, are constantly renewed. They are essentially the same in all Christian generations, in St. Paul’s converts, in the piety of the Middle Ages, in Wesley, in the believer of to-day. When we look only at the various and embattled theologies we may wonder whether Christianity is not just a name which covers a multitude of different faiths ; but when we look at the Christian life and devotion which is behind the theologies we realize the unity, the undeniable self-identity of our religion, and we perceive that it owes this unity to the living power of the words and story of the Man of Galilee which vibrate again in the souls of men from generation to generation.
Nevertheless, this self-identical experience is not static. We can observe changes in emphasis which reflect individual temperaments, social conditions, and the general state of culture. The spiritual life of Christians at the present time has not precisely the same proportion or orientation as that either of the primitive Church or of [ p. 113 ] medieval Catholicism. The identity of the persisting experience renews itself in difference: that is the sign of its life.
Two points of difference may specially be remarked upon. First, Christian piety has been deeply affected by the results of New Testament criticism which have led to a firmer grasp of the true humanity of Jesus. The Son of Man was never wholly obscured by the dogmas which had defined His godhead. His voice always penetrated through the system of doctrine. But now more perhaps than at any other time we are able to recover the Son of Man as an authentic being who moved and spoke in the streets of Nazareth and Jerusalem, As a result we have been able better to understand the heroism of Jesus. We see Him no longer as One who enacted a réle known beforehand, with clear sight of the triumphant end, but as One who adventured to the utmost in faith in God and God’s Kingdom. Secondly, the modern world has been affected by social idealism, and this moral change has reacted upon religion. Men find in the Gospel an inspiration in the efforts for social righteousness and think of God’s Kingdom in terms of progress and brotherhood. There is undoubtedly a danger in this. We have not always avoided the blasphemy of seeming to harness God to our reforming chariot, treating Him as if He were a means to an end greater than Himself instead of the end towards which all things move. In spite of this, however, we must recognize the importance of this new social note in the religious experience of the nobler spirits of our day. It has brought with it an enlargement and adaptation of the idea of the Kingdom of God, it has caused the motive of individual salvation to fall more into the background and the thought of God in Christ as the Redeemer of the human race to occupy the foreground of our minds. [ p. 114 ] We may dismiss very briefly the changes which have taken place in our attitude to Scripture, because the subject has been dealt with fully by several writers, notably by Professor Dodd in his book on the Authority of the Bible in, the present series. It is difficult to overestimate the profound transformation which theology has undergone through the changed conception of the nature of Seripture. Even those who read the classics of theology, whether Patristic, Medieval, or Reformation, with respect and admiration will confess that they find themselves in a different world. The dogma of the infallible book was a presupposition for the greatest minds in Christendom. An impassible gulf separates the modern theologian from the whole past of his science. He cannot argue as his most revered predecessors argued ; their presuppositions are not his. This change of attitude towards Seripture is not due solely to the historical and literary criticism of the Bible itself but perhaps equally to the rise of the comparative study of religions, in the light of which the Bible takes its place among the sacred writings of the world. What authority, then, for the modern theologian resides in the Scripture? Not the authority of an infallible oracle but that which resides in religious experience itself. The Old and New Testaments can claim a place of supreme importance among the data of our thought just because they contain the record of a religious experience unique in its continuity and its sustained elevation.
We are here mainly concerned with the third factor, the intellectual background in accordance with which the work of theology has to be accomplished. The constructive period of Christian theology, as we have seen, found in existence a philosophical view and an array of conceptions which, up to a point, afforded the material for a Christian [ p. 115 ] philosophy. Here we must record a total difference between the present situation and that of the third and thirteenth centuries. When the intellectual horizon is scanned at the pre: nt time the most optimistic observer can find small promise of the coming of any generally accepted philosophy. I suppose that never before was it so difficult to find any theory of Reality which could claim to be the characteristic and agreed “ modern philosophy ”. Even the basis of constructive thought is the subject of controversy and indeed, as Professor Dewey has remarked, there is disagreement not only about solutions but about the problems which have to be solved. Only the most self-confident dogmatist could assert that his particular philosophy was the modern metaphysic.
And yet, it will be said, there is a generally accepted body of knowledge which stands for the modern world as solid and unquestionable as the logic and metaphysic of Aristotle stood for the later Middle Ages. Natural Science answers to this description; and we are well accustomed to the contrast which is drawn between scientific knowledge on the one hand and philosophy and theology on the other. The former, it is pointed out, furnishes us with a system of truth which is certain, constantly enlarging, never receding, while the latter gives us nothing but vague and fluctuating speculations which repeat themselves in somewhat modified forms but have within them no principle of progress.
It would, of course, be foolish to deny that the growth of physical science and, still more, the triumphs of scientific method are the distinguishing feature of our modern civilization and constitute, both practically and intellectually, its chief difference from all previous periods. This growing body of knowledge about the world really exists, and the successful application of the scientific method is a [ p. 116 ] fact. More important than the results of scientific research is the influence of the scientific method and the changed view which it brings of the ideal of knowledge. It carries with it an alteration in the conception of the nature of truth as well as of the way to reach it. Writers of very different standpoints have pointed out that the so-called ages of faith were also, in the proper sense, ages of reason.[1] The conviction was then dominant that certainty was to be attained by a process of deductive reasoning from self-evident principles. The syllogism reigned supreme, and the method of research was essentially analytical. Scientific method, on the contrary, begins not with first principles but with observed fact. First principles are the end of the inquiry not the startingplace. There is an important change to be recorded, therefore, in our natural approach to the problems of religion. We have seen that the a priori method of the traditional theology cannot be credited with more than a magnificent failure. The modern mind, with its training in the method of science, is prepared for a new beginning in theology, and can have no reasonable objection to our procedure if we start from the facts of religious experience and attempt to understand them. The more philosophical men of science have readily confessed that religion as a phenomenon cannot be omitted from among the facts of the world and that it may serve as the starting-point ofa theory of Reality. Professor J. S. Haldane, Professor Whitehead, Professor Eddington, and Mr. Julian Huxley among others have given expression to this view, and though we may think their conclusions inadequate we can but approve of their method.
At the same time, we must accept with caution the picture drawn by popular writers of the resistless march [ p. 117 ] of science contrasted with the variable opinions of philosophy. A moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that the image of the unwavering advance of a conquering army into the unknown is an undue simplification of the real position. The progress of science is not exactly like that. Professor Eddington has used the illustration of a jig-saw puzzle where we succeed in fitting more and more pieces into the pattern. Professor Eddington himself would be the first to admit that the analogy is imperfect. The puzzle is alive. Every great scientific advance produces a thorough modification in the whole body of existing knowledge. We may illustrate this by the case of the introduction of the concept of evolution. Applied at first within the sphere of biology, it has passed into other departments of investigation, so that there is no branch of natural or moral science which has not been radically modified by its influence. Doubtless the principle of relativity is destined to have similar far-reaching consequences. Thus it appears that the scientific view of the physical universe is a body of thought which grows in the proper sense of the word, not by accretion but like an organism, undergoing from time to time transformation as a whole.
A more penetrating glance at the intellectual conditions of the time will, however, disclose a fact which is probably more significant for the future than the obvious influence of scientific method. It is remarkable that the period which has seen some Of the most astounding successes df science has seen also doubts about the ultimate validity of scientific truth, which have been raised within the circle of science itself. The limits of scientific method are beginning to be recognized, and we have the conclusion suggested that by its nature it can never lead us to anything but a symbolical interpretation. It is governed [ p. 118 ] by the ideal of precise description and reduction to calculable terms and necessarily seeks to reduce reality to those aspects which lend themselves to mathematical treatment. Thus it is impelled to conceive the universe as expressible in equations, or to use Professor Eddington’s phrase, “a series of pointer readings”. In so far as the rigidly scientific method can be applied to mind, a scientific psychology will necessarily find mechanism there too. It follows, however, that science by itself can never Jead us to the Reality which we are most concerned to know; it can never reveal to us Reality in its concrete being, discover the Soul of the world or indicate any animating principle within it which gives it meaning and value.
Further, we must observe a growing scepticism concerning the objective validity of the categories which science employs. Can we even be sure that the uniformities which we find in nature are really there and have not been imposed upon it by our mind? This doubt, formerly dismissed as the logomachy of useless metaphysicians, now appears in writers whose sole aim is to consider the foundations of science. It would be easy to multiply references. Two may suffice. Mr. Bertrand Russell in his recent work, the Analysis of Matter, asserts that it is even probable that the universal “ reign of law ” of which we have heard so much is nothing but a fiction of the mind, a convenient make-believe.[2] Thus David Hume at last takes his revenge. A similar view has been more tentatively stated by Professor Eddington. “Mind exalts the permanent and ignores the transitory, and it appears from the mathematical study of relations that the only way in which mind can achieve its object is by picking out some particular quality as a permanent substance of the [ p. 119 ] perceptual world, partitioning a perceptual time and space for it to be permanent in, and as a necessary consequence of this Hobson’s Choice’ the laws of gravitation and mechanics have to be obeyed. Is it too much to say that the mind’s search for permanence has oreated the world of physics so that the world we perceive around us could scareely have been other than it is ?”[3]
We may, I think, sum up the tendency of the modern mind by saying that it is being forced, even against its will, to take up again the old problems of philosophy in a new form and from a new angle. Though natural science has produced a permanent revolution in our thought, it is becoming plainly inadequate for any solution of ultimate problems or to provide a world-view. Theology must still seek for some philosophical ally, though it will be a philosophy which has absorbed the results of science.[4]
One direct effect of the progress of physical science may be admitted. We have learnt to take more seriously the boundlessness of the universe, and the vastness of the picture which is unrolled before our mental eye is said to have given the final blow to the comfortable anthropomorphism of Christian imagination, The observation is trite and only partly true. The doctrine of God as held in the most orthodox traditional theology is not affected in the smallest degree by our new apprehension of the extent and complexity of the natural order, The attributes of infinity and “immensity” have always been ascribed to God, and no enlargement of our idea of the physical universe can be logically inconsistent with what theology has asserted about the divine Nature. On the contrary, the majesty and mystery upon which the deepest [ p. 120 ] theology has always insisted are enhanced to our imagination by the conclusions of research. The chief effects of the scientific revolution upon theology are to be found rather in the ideas which we form of God’s relation with men. Christian teaching has certainly thought of the creation as anthropocentric ; man has been for it not only the highest being in the visible order but also, in some sense, the being for the sake of whom that order exists. Contemplation of the ereation as we now know it may well seem to overthrow any such scheme of things. It does appear almost an absurdity to believe that this human race is the central and most significant element in the world. We may admit that the Christian imagination has not yet adjusted itself to the new scale of the universe. Nevertheless it is the imagination rather than the reason which needs adjustment, for reflection shows that we put the case in a misleading and one-sided way when we dwell solely upon the extension of the physical universe. What is it that anyone could be concerned to maintain about the centrality of man in the universe? The question has nothing to do with spatial considerations but with the position of man in some scale of value. We may indeed find it hard to obey the admonition of the son of Sirach, “ Say not, What is my soul in a boundless creation ?”[5] but the thought is not far behind that it is the human mind which has discovered the complexity of this creation. If there is an infinity in the object there is a corresponding infinity in the subject, and the illimitable power of thought answers to the unbounded nature of the world. To a considering man increase of knowledge of the universe is an added confirmation of the majesty of the mind which has to some extent grasped it. Here alone, so far as we’know, in the visible universe are [ p. 121 ] there understanding and valuation. In man the cosmos begins to know itself. If science is a revelation of the majesty of the world it is, at the same time, a revelation of the majesty of man.
The theory of relativity suggests that the physical universe is not, in fact, infinite and has destroyed the older presupposition of absolute space and time. The universe infinitely extended in space and time is probably, it would affirm, a mental construction made for practical purposes out of the space-time systems of experience. Dr. Wildon Carr has pointed out with, I think, irresistible cogency that the relativity theory issues in a dramatic reinstatement of the human mind at the centre. “The old material constitution is gone. The space-time framework is relative not absolute. What then is fundamental ? What is absolute? What is the pivotal fact on which the whole conception revolves? Clearly the central basic fact in the new conception, the fact on which everything depends and from which the whole scientific construction is reared, is the observer attached to his system of reference and for whom that system is at rest, not a disinterested observer contemplating an outside reality, but an observer who must co-ordinate the phenomena of nature for himself as the necessary condition of his active participation in reality. The principle of relativity and the new scientific concept of the universe starts from this and reverts to it.”[6]
We have already passed the border of philosophy ; and we must now make some attempt to estimate the tendencies of metaphysics. The strange confusion of the prospect has already been noticed, and it is evident that in such a time of transition prophecy is a more than usually gratuitous form of error. For the theologian the [ p. 122 ] position is embarrassing, since he is confronted with a task of larger reach than his predecessors. He must find the straw for his bricks. He has to settle, at least provisionally, some of the hotly debated problems of logic and metaphysics. We may forgive him if he is sometimes impatient when it is demanded that he should produce a theology in accord with the thought of the modern world, for when he asks what is the thought of the modern world a noise as of the builders of Babel answers him.
The agnostic tradition has not succumbed to the criticism of James Ward and F. H. Bradley. Does any philosophical idea ever really succumb ? It has attained a new virtue in the hands of Mr. Russell in the guise of Neutral Monism. We shall gain no help from this in our quest for a view of reality, for it is simply Herbert Spencer’s Unknowable with new trimmings.
Human knowing, and indeed all human experience, implies and contains the distinction between subject and object, the experience and the experienced, the knower and the known. A duality is thus involved in every conscious act. This dualism which runs through the whole mental and spiritual life the philosopher aims at transcending, by showing it to be comprised within a unity. Neutral Monism supposes that it has overcome dualism by the hypothesis of a reality which is neither mind nor matter, neither subject nor object. I fear that this solution takes us into the region not only of the unknowable but of the unmeaning. Apart from those who have lost themselves in the illimitable inane of the unknowable, we may classify philosophical theories on the basis of this duality of subject and object. On the one hand, those who go under the general name of Idealism have chosen to regard mind in some sense as the “ stuff” of which the world is made, as the real, and to resolve the [ p. 123 ] object world into perceptions, ideas, creations of mind. On the other hand, thinkers who are ranged under the banner of Naturalism haye sought to build their view of Reality starting from the standpoint of the objective world.
“The cleavage between these two types of thought is fundamental. They are impelled by their respective presuppositions to attack different problems, or at least to see the same problems differently and to approach them in a different order. Thus, to take an important example, to the Naturalist philosopher the problem will present itself in the phrase which is the title of Dr. Broad’s book, The Mind and its Place in Nature, the assumption being that “nature” is given and the inquiry therefore is how to account for this very remarkable entity, mind, as one of the objects of nature. To the Idealist, however, the problem as stated by Dr. Broad appears to be wrongly put. For him the question is rather, What is nature’s place in mind? Given the reality of thought, which is beyond possibility of doubt, the need arises to determine what we mean by the objective order, by “nature” as it is taken for granted by common sense and science.
Diverse as these two traditions are, the conclusions which they tend to reach are not so widely separated as we might anticipate. Dr. Bosanquet was justified in the contention of one of his last writings that there is a “meeting of extremes” in contemporary philosophy. The rapprochement to which he drew attention is worth careful consideration by those who wish to construct a doctrine of God which shall be in touch with modern thought.
Jn trying to underline the converging thought of different schools I may begin by referring to one who [ p. 124 ] can never be mentioned without honour. We all remember with what fervent zeal William James argued and fulminated against what he called the “ block universe”, by which he understood any theory of Reality which regarded all as given and fixed, and activity, freedom, and change as illusions. Such philosophy seemed to him to be subversive of spiritual values and moral heroism. His prophecy of the coming ruin of the “ block universe ” has in part been fulfilled. In both the great divisions of philosophical tradition there is a gathering trend towards the affirmation of real activity, real history, real newness and value and away from the doctrine of the completed whole of which it could be said tout est donné.
Though James directed his polemic chiefly against the “ Absolute Idealists” represented by Mr. Bradley, there was another theory which deserved his reproaches— the system of mechanistic Naturalism, which assumed the title of the “scientific” philosophy. The general idea which underlay this philosophy in all its forms was that: evolution consists in the growing complexity of the arrangement and combination of primordial units according to fixed laws, and is therefore a process in which the higher finds its explanation by the lower and the end is implicit in the beginning. We have already seen that the advance of science itself has gravely damaged this scientific philosophy ”. The breaking up of the spacetime framework in the theory of relativity and the astonishing results of research on thé constitution of matter issuing in the quantum theory have left this mechanistic “block universe” in the air. “Radioactivity ”, says Professor Millikan, “not only revealed for the first time a world changing, transforming itself continually even in its chemical elements, but it [ p. 125 ] began to show the futility of the mechanistic pictures upon which we had set such store in the nineteenth century.”[7]
The Naturalist school in philosophy has not been dissolved ; but I think we may say that it has been transformed, very largely under the influence of new views in biology. The opinion so long and strenuously advocated by Professor J. 8. Haldane that life has to be explained on principles which are different from those of physics has rapidly gained ground, and the consequences are felt in metaphysical speculation. Two English thinkers in particular stand out as representing this new Naturalism —Professor S. Alexander and Professor C. Lloyd Morgan. They are definitely realist in their outlook. They take their stand in the objective world and for them, no less than for Herbert Spencer and his followers, evolution is the key to the understanding of nature. But evolution is conceived after a different fashion and no longer on mechanistic lines. We have the new concept of “emergent evolution”, The precise interpretation of this idea of emergence differs with various authors, but the general conception is adopted by Dr. Whitehead, General Smuts, Dr. McDougall, Mr. Julian Huxley, as well as by the authorities to whom we have already referred. In the next chapter I shall offer some reflections on the limitations of the idea of emergent evolution, but here we are concerned to notice simply the change which has taken place in evolutionary philosophy. Emergence is a concept introduced to account for the appearance in time of new qualities and higher types of existence.
Certainly a world of which emergence holds is not a “ block universe ” nor one in which tout est donné. Something [ p. 126 ] akin to creative activity has been admitted within nature. And the speculative theories which have been based upon this new idea of evolution enhance the impression that the background of philosophical thought has radically altered since the beginning of the present century. Professor Alexander traces the development of the universe from its beginning in the inconceivably simple “ stuff” of space-time to the emergence of life, mind, and spirit. There is moreover, we are told, a “nisus ”.in space-time which has been the motive force of the evolution so far and may be depended upon to carry the world to yet higher levels of being. We are forbidden, it is true, to describe this “ nisus ” as a lifeforce, still less are we permitted to use the word “ spirit ”. Indeed we are at a loss to know wherewith to compare it; but at least we may point out that the rigid framework of the older naturalist theory has dissolved. Something within it has been discerned which has a strange resemblance to creative activity. There is no settled and completed whole.
The Idealist tradition was represented in England when James wrote chiefly by the very great thinker, F. H. Bradley, and Dr. Bosanquet ; in America the friend and critic of James, Josiah Royce, defended with singular power and literary skill a similar standpoint. The Absolute Idealism of the end of the nineteenth century might be described as Hegelianism interpreted in the sense of Spinoza. The general outlines of the theory are familiar to all students of philosophy, and it will be sufficient here to note that for Bradley and his colleagues Reality is spiritual, it is experience. This absolute experience constitutes a perfectly harmonious and coherent whole, which alone is, in the full sense, real. The status in reality of those types of existence which common [ p. 127 ] sense regards as most certainly real is determined by their measure of coherence, that is by the degree in which they approximate to the full systematic harmony of the Absolute. All are real in their degree, but none is fully real. The salient point in this philosophy which concerns us is that all change and activity, and hence evolution and history, belong to the world of appearance : they are aspects of the Absolute but not ultimately real or true. The Absolute, as Bradley says, has no seasons. We may observe in this system of thought the reappearance of the idea which we encountered in our last chapter—the perfect cannot change. In the Absolute we find both the contrast with and the promise of satisfaction for our haunting sense of incompleteness.
Let us not seek to deny the profound appeal of this type of thought. To me at least it is obvious that it contains an insight which no philosopher who cares to meet the deepest needs of the human spirit can neglect. It has one element which is of vital importance for the religious view of the world, for this sense of incompleteness and thirst for that Other without which we can find no rest is, as we have seen, at the root of all our spiritual quest.
O searching hands and questing feet
And love and longing still denied,
There is not any hour complete
Nor any season satisfied.
The running winds of Springtime call
For culmination and repose,
And Autumn, letting roses fall,
Sighs for the Spring that brings the rose.[^8]
The Idealistic tradition has not remained without [ p. 128 ] modification in the present generation ; and it is important to notice that it has been modified in a manner closely analogous to that which has overtaken Naturalism. Here, too, the ideas of the dynamic, of activity and history, have reasserted themselves. The Italian philosophers Croce and Gentile are the most important representatives of the new Idealism. The differences between them, important as they are, donot concern us here. Both haye abandoned the static conception of the Absolute and repudiated the “block universe”. The new Idealism is idealism in the most uncompromising form. All is mind or thought. We dare not, says Gentile, admit any reality other than or over against mind, for if we do so we shall be led, in the end, to deny the reality of mind.[8] Mind is either the sole reality or it is not real at all. But here we come upon the essential difference between the old and the new Idealism. Reality, in the conviction of the later idealists, is not passive thought, cogitatum, thing thought, but cogitatio, thinking. Mind is not substance but activity. The ultimate and indeed the sole reality is the activity of thought. It might appear that this philosophy was committed to the absurdity of supposing that the world is created by the thought of the individual; but this is avoided, at least by Gentile, through his doctrine of the Transcendental Ego, That Transcendental Ego is the true subject and the only real thinker. The “ empirical egos ” of common experience and social intercourse are not really subsistent subjects, but are themselves a part of that objective world which the Transcendental Ego, in its activity of thought which is its being, creates. The only thinker is the Ego which can never become object, the “person who knows no plural”.
An important consequence of this “ activist ” idealism [ p. 129 ] is the attitude taken to the conception of “ nature ” and the Universe. The “nature” which science postulates as the sphere of its inquiries is not an independent order of being having a real existence independent of mind ; on the contrary, it is an abstraction made for practical ends from the concrete reality of history, it is in fact a creation of thought. In the same way, the idea of the Universe, understood as a whole of existence, a completed system, is illusory. There is no whole of physical being, no whole of any kind; no system which includes within itself “thought ” and “things”. The ultimate Reality is creative thinking, which in order to be active “ posits ” the objective world.
It is interesting to note that Gentile himself claims that his philosophy is the Christian philosophy and that in his metaphysic there has appeared, for the first time, a speculative doctrine which can support the essential Christian experience of God. There is some ground for this assertion ; and Gentile’s thought must be recognized as coming close to that type of Christian mysticism which we find in its purest form in Eckhardt and of which Fichte gave some philosophical interpretation in his later writings.[9] But it can scarcely be admitted that his philosophy, as it stands, is adequate for the construction of a genuinely Christian doctrine of God. It seems to fail the Christian theologian precisely at the point where it departs most widely from common sense. The resolution of the finite self into some very shadowy reflection or projection of the Transcendental Ego, the swallowing up of the many thinkers in the one Thinking, is plainly contrary to our prima facie experience. To me at least it seems that one of the most certain facts about the world is that it is experienced at different centres of [ p. 130 ] consciousness and acted upon from different centres of conation. And it is equally clear that the central Christian view of God and the world is opposed to such an absorption of the finite self. The Christian religion has consistently laid stress upon the enormous importance and value of the human self as the medium indeed for the revelation of God, but as having existence for itself and, within limits, power over itself. I suggest that the cause of this difference between Gentile and a fully Christian philosophy is the absence of any definite conception of creation from his theory. “Let us make man in our own image : ”[10] no thought which does not give that its full significance, maintaining both the reality of the image and the finite self’s otherness with respect to God, can be completely Christian.
In this chapter we have been taking a hasty bird’s-eye view of the intellectual conditions of the time so far as they have relevance to our idea of God. We have seen that the tendency within natural science itself is towards a revival of philosophical reflection on the nature of Reality. No longer do we hear the confident assertion that science will solve all our problems. The type of Naturalism which formerly assumed the designation of the scientific philosophy has been irretrievably damaged by the latest scientific developments. The state of philosophical thought does not give us any generally accepted foundation on which theology can build. The confusion of the prospect is, however, somewhat relieved when we examine the tendencies of the conflicting systems. There is a real convergence. The evolving universe in which every event was theoretically predictable given a knowledge of the conditions has no longer much support. The problems of newness and value have [ p. 131 ] forced themselves on the attention of naturalist philosophies and the view of the evolving world which is now suggested is very different from that of the mechanistic Naturalism. It is one in which we can find the presence of a creative movement—perhaps of creative life.
The Idealist philosophy, again, has moved away from the “block universe ” conception and towards the conception of mind as activity rather than substance. In all this we may observe one prevailing current. We are passing from static modes of thought to dynamic. The substitution of the electron and the proton for the atom as the unit of matter is only one instance of a change which is exemplified in every sphere of knowledge and speculation. To this our thought of God has to be adjusted, or perhaps it would be truer to say, this modern movement challenges us to recover and rethink that belief in the living God which has always been our inheritance. But we must not disguise the fact that the changed view leaves us with a new problem or rather an old problem in a new form. The question arises : given that the world contains, or perhaps is, life, change, process, creation of values, does there still remain the need for a transcendent God? Is not the process itself the sole reality ? Is not God just the “ soul of the world dreaming on things to come ” ?
Eg. Mr. G. K. Chesterton and Professor A. N. Whitehead. ↩︎
Analysis of Matter, pp. 236, 237. ↩︎
Space, Time, Gravitation, p. 197. ↩︎
For the scientific need for philosophy, see J. S. Haldane: Philosophy and the Sciences, especially pp. 225 ff. ↩︎
Ecclus. XVI. 17. ↩︎
Unique Status of Man, pp. 170, 171. ↩︎
Evolution in Science and Religion. Yale University Press, pp. 13, 14. ↩︎
Theory of Mind as Pure Act, pp. 18 ff. ↩︎
Otto: West-oestliche Mystik, pp. 303 ff. and 237 ff. ↩︎
Gen. I. 26. ↩︎