[ p. 157 ]
WE are concerned with the God who is known in the experience of religion, and primarily with the interpretation of Christian experience. The question what kind of Deity or Absolute, if any, the intellect may be led to conceive when exercised without reference to the religious life of man is not therefore our main interest. We shall not then pursue the path of the pure metaphysician, who is accustomed to approach the problem of religion and the idea of God at the end of his inquiry. We are committed to the view that the religious consciousness is of supreme significance and that the ideas of religion cannot profitably be considered except from within religion. Our first task is consequently to interrogate religion itself and make, if we can, its answer coherent and intelligible. Naturally we cannot be indifferent to the considerations and criticisms which are suggested by philosophy and science, even though we assert that the final word does not lie with them. Several results of a critical examination of religious ideas are possible, We might conceivably find that the conclusions to which we seemed to be forced by philosophical reflection were in complete opposition to those which seem to follow from a study of religious experience. Even if that were the position in which we were compelled to remain, it would not be reasonable to dismiss the religious life as based upon mere illusion. To do this would be [ p. 158 ] to place a surely unwarranted confidence in the completeness of our philosophical insight and its finality. But we should be reduced to the uncomfortable expedient of admitting that there was a contradiction between two forms or aspects of our spiritual life which we could not resolve ; and we should have to abandon for the time being all attempts to present belief in the God of religion as capable of rational defence. We should be forced back upon the experience itself as the sole ground of faith in, and knowledge of, its Object.
No one would really be satisfied with such a situation, and we should still appeal to a science and philosophy “better informed”, even though we might be able to see no means of acquiring that better information. We cannot believe that, in the end, the life of the spirit is thus divided against itself. More probably we might find that our philosophical conclusions and our religious experience were not in sheer contradiction, but that the ideas of religion needed some clarification and criticism to bring them into harmony with the deliverances of the pure intelligence. In that case it would be the obvious course to enquire how far the images and symbols in which the religious mind has summed up its experience can be interpreted and modified by the reason without injury to their content of spiritual value. The one expedient which is unwarranted is to dismiss the religious consciousness as having no relation with reality and its evidence as wholly nugatory. To do that would not be, in principle, different from the procedure of a thinker who, because he could find no satisfactory proof of the reality of nature, should write down his direct experience of an objective world as no better than a dream.
[ p. 159 ]
I
We have then first to enquire whether religious experience, taken as a whole, bears witness to a personal God.
The ordinary man, when asked if he believed that God was personal, would probably reply that he could not see why anyone should trouble themselves about an impersonal Deity, but would immediately go on to qualify his answer by saying that, of course, God cannot be personal in precisely the same sense as we are personal. The opinions of “ ordinary men ” in religion and morals are worthy of more attention than they commonly receive from philosophers, for, though they may lack logical consistency, they are formed in that commerce of the life of humanity from which our data in theology and ethics must be drawn. We shall find reason to believe that the plain man is right in this question of the divine personality, His conviction that God must be personal is based upon his own religious life and what he has gathered of the religious experience of others; but his suspicion that God must be personal in a mode different from that of human personality is also based partly on some moments of religious feeling as well as on the vague reflection that the divine Nature must be very different from ours.
Indeed the testimony of religious experience to the personality of God is not so unequivocal as our plain man might suppose. Had we chosen our witness from the Eastern races and framed our question in the form, Is the Divine personal? We should have had perhaps a different answer. Neti, neti, “it is not that”, has been on the whole the reply of Indian religion to all attempts to determine the divine Nature. But apart from the influence of divergent theological traditions, there are [ p. 160 ] moments of genuinely spiritual insight, which everyone would call religious but which neither suggest nor imply the presence of a personal God. States of the soul in which it comes to an overwhelming consciousness of its own nothingness in the face of the immensity of Being, the mere feeling of dependence on the infinite, are elements in any religious consciousness which has passed beyond the barbarous stage, but they do not, as such, contain the immediate suggestion of a personal response. A contemplation of the “starry heavens” may induce a religious emotion which has no tendency to evoke the thought of a Creator, nor does the religiousness of the contemplation depend necessarily on hearing the voice in “reason’s ear” proclaiming, “the hand that made us is Divine ”.[1]
When due allowance has been made, however, for this apparent gap in the testimony and for the fact that great religions have produced impersonal theologies, we must still maintain that the verdict of our ordinary man is justified. Clearly the conception of the nature of the religious experience which we have adopted commits us to some agreement with him. If that isin the main true, the essence of the religious situation is the intuition of a response to the human spirit which goes beyond every other type of responsiveness by reason of the fact that it is active and living. Now the highest and completest forms of living activity and the most varied powers of responsiveness are manifestly those which we call personal. If we are convinced that any God with whom we are concerned must be a living God, we shall be led of necessity [ p. 161 ] to think of Him as personal, for to be a person is the most adequate way of being alive.
We must recall here also that element in the religious attitude which wo have ventured to indicate by the phrase “the substantiation of values.” Whether the phrase be a good one or not, the fact which it is intended to describe is undeniable. Religion seeks in God the assurance that the permanent judgments of good and evil which the human mind is impelled to make have their ground in Reality. But so far as we know, no value of any kind can exist or have meaning apart from personal life and experience. Take away from the world every personal consciousness and, at a stroke, you destroy every value. At the most we could perhaps argue that the conditions would remain which would give rise to values when personal consciousness once more appeared. Moreover, the creation of values, wsthetic and moral, is in our experience the work of personal imaginations and wills. There is an abstract way of talking, much in favour at the present time, which speaks of the Eternal Values as if they had some independent existence or subsistence. This manner of speech may be useful enough for particular purposes, just as we are not wrong in forming a conception of “nature” as existing apart from mind ; but the one abstraction may be as misleading as the other if it is forgotten that they are abstractions made for convenience. In fact we know neither nature apart from mind nor value apart from personality.
We must hold, therefore, that those religious states of the soul, and those expressions of devotion which do not explicitly envisage the Divine Personality, are imperfect and one-sided when taken by themselves. And this is confirmed by a study of those religions which have a nontheistic theology or philosophy as their ostensible basis. [ p. 162 ] The actual religion of the majority of the members of the Church or community is generally polytheistie, and even the higher types of devotion are saturated with personal imagery. Buddhism is the crux of all theories of religion, and, if we take it as it was when conceived in the mind of its Founder, it furnishes us with the example of a missionary creed which can find no place for a personal God. The religion of Gotama is founded on a nihilistic, oven an atheistic, view of the world, But we must distinguish between Buddha and Buddhism. Doubtless the later developments of Buddhism, particularly in its Mahayana form, are, in many respects, a decline from the teaching of the Founder; but the transition, though ethically and philosophically perhaps a degeneration, is also a passage to religion from an ethical doctrine based upon a pessimistic psychology. The significant fact about Buddhism is that it could not remain at the standpoint of Buddha. To be a religion it was compelled by an inner necessity to have personal deities, and the veneration of the Path has been absorbed in the more personal veneration of the Redeemer who discovered it.
But here again we must be on our guard against accepting the language of devotion at its face value as evidence of the attitude of the soul and of the dominant ideas of the religion which it expresses. All prayer and adoration is full of half-conscious symbol and image. The worshipper is inevitably a poet who indicates his object rather than defines it. And the literature of devotion is, of course, full of acknowledgments of the inadequacy of all the words and pictures which it employs. Every utterance and thought of ours falls short of the Reality: this is not a conclusion of philosophy but a central conviction of the religious consciousness itself. It would not, therefore, be safe to affirm that religious experience [ p. 163 ] bears witness to Divine Personality without reserve. If the idea of the “ supra-personal” has any meaning, it could certainly be claimed that the religious consciousness would be, on the whole, in favour of ascribing this to God. But it is definitely opposed to the idea that suprapersonal is equivalent to “impersonal”. God is at least personal; and if the assertion of the divine Personality is an inadequate statement containing some element of illusion, it is not mere illusion but an imperfect account of that which transcends all our categories.
The Christian doctrine of God is concerned to maintain this position—that He is not less than personal, and that when we think of Him under personal terms we are not utterly misrepresenting His nature: moreover, that this personal conception is far more true and adequate than any impersonal or abstract thought. Further than this we need not go. It would be an error to suppose that the Christian faith has ever been committed to the belief that God is a person, though that belief may be quite compatible with orthodoxy. But the doctrine of the Trinity as generally interpreted is not easily reconciled with the view that the Godhead is a Person ; rather it implies that the Godhead is a unity of Persons. Nevertheless the Christian faith and the Christian experience are alike involved in the assertion that in the divine Life is the perfection of personality so that it is manifested in the Incarnation through the life of a perfect human Person.
II
So far we have been using the words “ person” and “personal” as if their meaning were clear and wellknown; but we must now approach the problem of the nature of personality in order that we may consider the [ p. 164 ] implications of Divine Personality and any reasons which, apart from the testimony of religious experience, may be urged in defence of this belief. Discussions of this kind usually begin with an attempt to define the word “person ” and to distinguish the characteristic qualities which mark “ persons ” off from all other kinds of being. I will say at once that I propose to offer no definition, for the very good reason that I believe personality to be indefinable. As we shall see in the sequel, personality is that which for us is ultimately real, that from which we derive all our conceptions of reality and being, and at the same time is incapable of being an object of knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is not surprising, therefore, that all proposed definitions of personality have so far been failures. But though we cannot hope to frame a logical definition, we are not on that account precluded from all knowledge about personality. Even if we can never gain a clear concept of “ person” we may have, as Berkeley phrased it, a “notion” or describe an intuition so that it may be recognized by others.
An enquirer into the nature of personality may occupy cither of two points of view. He may treat the problem “ objectively” and consider persons as one species of objects among the many which make up the world ; or he may adopt the “subjective” standpoint and strive to enter into the meaning of personality by reflection upon himself. The two methods are not mutually exclusive, indeed the one implies the other ; but it is obvious that we may expect to gain a deeper apprehension of personal life through consideration of our own experience than by the observation of other persons.
When we take persons as part of the world of objects, we notice at once that they belong to the class of living beings and occupy the highest segment of the scale which [ p. 165 ] ranges down from man to the simplest cell. The difference between the higher and the lower members of the series of living beings may be defined in various ways, but one of the simplest and most illuminating is to follow the clue of individuality. The living being of whatever grade is an individual in a sense which is not true of any non-living material object. It may indeed be a question whether the word individual should be applied below the level of life except in a derived or metaphorical sense. But we need not enter into this discussion: it is sufficient for our purpose that the living being is distinctively an individual ; it constitutes a whole and acts as a whole through a period of time. Further, every rise in the scale of life is an increase of individuality. The dog is plainly more individual than the oyster.
But this accretion of individuality is attended by, and intimately connected with, an increase of complexity both in structure and function. From the beginning, the individual is a unity of multiplicity, a systematic whole of parts and activities. In the more completely individual beings both the complexity and the unity have grown greater. This attribute of living things, unity with complexity, is known to us first of all through their behaviour ; and even if we confine ourselves to this, we can observe a consistency of behaviour through changing circumstances, an adaptability in the pursuit of remote ends, which marks off the types at the higher end of the scale from those at the lower. But even in an objective approach to the problem, we need not confine ourselves to noting external behaviour. Though the mode of consciousness or sentience of the simpler forms of individuality may be inconceivable to us, we are aware that there is a rise in the scale of consciousness corresponding to the rise in the scale of structure and [ p. 166 ] function. An inner complexity answers to the outward. And here too the same general characteristics present themselves : the higher types of individuality are unities of very complex mental elements. But when we take into account the inner aspect of individuals, we notice a quality of the more advanced types which might have escaped our attention while we confined ourselves to external behaviour. That spontaneity, that living and acting from @ centre, which is present in some measure in every living boing, comes to a full development in those individuals which we should call persons. They are selfconscious and self-directing, capable of modifying behaviour in accordance with general principles or judgments of value.
It is of great importance to dwell on this aspect of personal individuality, for, from the objective point of view, herein lies its primary distinction from other forms of individuality. The spontaneity of the lower forms of life is exercised within narrow limits, and the individuals who belong to these grades of being run in grooves from which they cannot escape. Their spontaneity is, to borrow Bergson’s favourite word, “canalized”. Of man alone can it be said that his potentialities are without known limit. In him spontaneity has become creativity ; and, with the emergence of this new quality, we are confronted with a new type of being. Creativeness is the mark of personality. If we would see what personality is we may look at its achievements, Culture, art, civiliza~ tion have been made by persons : and these creations of personal mind, which transcend the realm of nature, are sustained by persons. They live by a continual act of creative power which proceeds from innumerable persons. Take away personal life and they vanish as though they had never been.
Though we may gain indispensable insight into the [ p. 167 ] nature of personality from an objective consideration of its phenomena, we may expect that a subjective approach will offer us profounder acquaintance and more perplexing problems. The analytical type of psychology which starts from the data of introspection has much to say on this question, but has too often been misleading on account of an imperfection in its method. It has dealt with the problem of the self as if it was a mere question of analysis. It has tacitly assumed that the self is a composite existence which can be understood by discriminating the elements which compose it and exhibiting their relation with one another. In the process of this analysis the idea of a substantial “ soul ” or “ self” which “has ” its states, or is the bearer of its experiences, has disappeared, and the self has been reduced to a sum or series of states or experiences. Nor has philosophy been, on the whole, inclined to accept the real substantive being of self or soul. In the Absolute Idealism which has been, until recently, the provailing academic philosophy in England and America, selfhood has been represented as but a passing appearance of the Absolute.[2] In spite of this converging attack, however, the plain man has found it difficult to believe that his self is a mere mental construction, and has obstinately continued to believe that he is, in some way, more real than his states of consciousness and oxperiences—that he has them rather than that they are he.
Recent movements of psychological enquiry seem to promise some support to this obstinate conviction, Dr. Tennant has pointed out the fallacious method involved in giving exclusive attention to the “rational aspects of personality”, such as “its capacity for fellowship ” or “ membership of a system of real beings ”, [ p. 168 ] for in this way a fundamental clement of personality is overlooked. Dr. Tennant calls this neglected factor “the impervious individuality” and the “ alogical core”.[3] The former phrase is perhaps sufficiently explicit, and the truth which it expresses is evident when we reflect that my experience, though it may be almost identical in content with yours, remains mine and is not in fact identical with yours. However greatly I may sympathize with your pain I do not feel it, nor can you feel mine. Persons are not, as Dr. Tennant remarks, “ entirely fluid”: they have or are centres of experience. By the “logical clement” Dr, Tennant means to indicate that, at the centre of the self, there is a factor which defies intellectual analysis. But we may venture to take a further step and ask ourselves what this “core” is and why it evades our understanding. The answer which we may suggest is that the central and essential self is activity, and that movement and activity are, by their nature, beyond the grasp of the analytical intellect.
In following up this suggestion we must distinguish between the concept of self or personality and the intuition of selfhood. Psychologists have not always kept this distinction in mind, and have consequently been satisfied with an account of how the idea of self has originated, which is only part of the whole problem. James Ward in his Principles of Psychology insisted on the impossibility of constructing a psychology of the self without admitting a subject of experience as the essential datum.[4] Subsequent developments of psychology have confirmed Ward’s view. There are signs that the reaction against the merely analytical view will go much further. An important contribution has been made to [ p. 169 ] the discussion by Dr. Francis Aveling in his Psychological Approach to Reality, which is based upon empirical and experimental investigations on the experience of the self, and has attempted to relate them to the problems of philosophy. Dr. Aveling contends that the lived and cognized experience, from which we must set out in any philosophical construction, is always an experience of a self or “ego”. “The primordial fact of knowing consists in the cognized experience which may be stated and only may be stated in the form of such a judgment as “I know something ’.”[5] It may be expressed fully only by the formula, “ I conscious of myself as feeling, willing, or knowing, know myself feeling, willing, or knowing something”. There is always “ given ” in experience the central, organizing and active ego.
The importance of this view is obvious, and we must confess that it has no consensus of psychologists in its favour. That the existence of this central, active, and organizing self is an immediate datum of conscious experience would certainly be denied by many authorities. But in this matter the decision lies with the test of introspection. No amount of reasoning or analysis can settle the question at issue. At the most it can show the unsatisfactory nature of theories of the self which ignore the central ego and may suggest, as Dr. Aveling has done, an explanation of the failure of many investigators to discover this fundamental intuition of the self. It is interesting to notice that here too the psychological theory can claim the support of a philosophical school. The denial of the “real” self on the grounds of analytical psychology finds confirmation in the philosophy of Absolute Idealism ; the affirmation of the reality of the self as given in conscious activity is in harmony with the [ p. 170 ] “activist” Idealism of Gentile. There is indeed a remarkable and evidently independent agreoment between Dr. Aveling and the Italian philosopher.
We must emphasize again the sharp distinction between the “activist” view of the self which we are defending and that conception which is current in most modern psychology. According to that theory the self grows out of prior elements, being built up: in our view from the first the central and essential element in selfhood is the real and active ego, which is continually creative.’ We must not, however, fall into the error of supposing that we have an intuition of the self as “ substance” in the common meaning ofthe word. We do not have immediate acquaintance with the self as an entity which has the potentiality of knowing, feeling, and willing ; the self is known in experience always and only as activity. The self revealed in intuition must not, again, be identified with the “ pure subject” which has played a great part in theories of knowledge. The real and central ego is never intuited as the mere knower, the characterless logical subject, but always as the feeling, willing, and knowing activity. Our deepest self-consciousnoss, then, is an immediate awareness of “ the profound self which is the subject of knowledge, the bearer of feeling and the agent in willing ”.[6] It is in this self-experience that we touch the one indubitable reality from which all our conceptions of the meaning of “reality” are ultimately derived. Descartes was not wrong when he found in “ cogito ergo sum ” the unassailable foundation of knowledge ; but he mistook the significance of this discovery when he interpreted the knowing self as “ thinking substance”. The one fundamental reality is the activity of thinking, which includes within it feeling and will.
This activist conception of the self is not put forward [ p. 171 ] as a substitute for the doctrines of scientific psychology. Thoy have truth in them and can be harmonized with the conception of the organizing and moulding activity to which, as we maintain, we are led by introspection. Among the psychological conclusions concerning personality we may dwell on that which is of the highest importance. The progress of a self towards full personality is undoubtedly a process of integration, the achievement of greater coherence and unity. In other words, that activity which is the life of the solf may reach a higher degree of significance and assume, as it were, the shape of an intelligible curve rather than that of an aimless zig-zag. Further, this coherence is conditioned by and dependent on the adoption of ideal ends, so that it is true to say that the personal life is pre-eminently one which has a meaning beyond that of the mere self, it stands for something in the world in a sense which would not be true of lower centres of consciousness and activity. This characteristic of personality is closely connected with another which it is no less important to keep in mind— personality is essentially social: fellowship with other persons, response to them and reaction to their activities, are, so far as we know, permanent conditions of personal life.
Analytical psychology has much to teach us on the subject. of self-consciousness. Though the “deep” consciousness of the self is an immediate intuition of constitutive activity, we have a more intellectual acquaintance with ourselves in which the self is taken as an object for knowledge and reflection. We form an idea of our self, of our character and disposition and powers. It is clear that, like all reflective knowledge, this is liable to error. The phenomenon of mistaken estimates of character and capacity formed by their possessor is [ p. 172 ] sufficiently common. It is also obvious that, for discursive thought, the self is unknowable in its completeness. The “I” which is the knower, the subject, must always be distinct from the “me” which is known, the object. We are forced to admit that our idea of ourselves must always be imperfect and we cannot fully know what we are. But it does not follow from this that our selfknowledge is utterly false and valueless. The conception of ourselves which we form and reflect upon is a construction based upon the tendencies to action, the impulses, ideas, and ideals which have actually been manifested in our activity as persons ; and though it is impossible that we should know ourselves with such accuracy that we could predict certainly our mode of action in any future situation, we can at least form probable opinions concerning both ourselves and others.
There is, however, a further defect in this knowledge of self which is ineradicable from the human consciousness. The intuition of the actuality of the self as activity can never be translated into an adequate intellectual knowledge of its nature, because the “ me’’, which is the object of our reflection and criticism, can never be the product of the active Ego alone, and hence it can never be the representation of the real self and of nothing else. For the acts and impulses, which, retained in memory, form the data of our conception of the self are, to a large extent, to an indefinite extent, modified by circumstances which are beyond our power to influence or radically alter. In so far as our activity is determined by the environment we are debarred from a complete knowledge of ourselves. The “me” which I contemplate is not simply the creation of the Ego but the resultant of the central activity of the self modified by the circumstances in which that activity has been exercised. Personality, [ p. 173 ] as we know it, is defective in this respect, that though selfknowledge is present and indeed an indispensable character of personal existence, it cannot be complete and adequate. Precisely the same line of thought will convince us that a like remark must be made about freedom. Though the creative activity of the ego is the essence of personality, that without which it could not exist, the freedom cannot in human persons be absolute, for the activity is partly determined and limited by the conditions and the environment. We are thus in a position to see that personality in its human form is imperfect, and to note the obvious suggestions which it contains of a Personality in which its limitations are removed.
III
We may now approach the personality of God with a somewhat more definite conception of the nature of the problems involved, and perhaps with a deeper appreciation of the kind of justification which may be found for the religious conviction that God is personal. The idea of God is, first, the idea of the Most Real Being. But, as we have seen, the intuition of the self is that element and moment in our experience in which we come upon that which is most unquestionably real, and that moreover from which all our concepts of reality are, in the last resort, derived. On this ground then the personality of God suggests itself as the most acceptable hypothesis. The idea of God, again, is the idea of the Source of all other beings: the Creator. But we have seen that creation is, in our experience, a distinctive mark of personal life. The conception of a Source of being suggests the hypothesis of a Personal God. The idea of God is the idea of the Ground of unity, of the Being in whom all things cohere. But personal life is the most definite form of multiplicity [ p. 174 ] in unity with which wo are acquainted, and on this ground it is most reasonable to think of God as personal. Moreover, personality as we know it, is a type of existence which bears on its face the promise of a greater perfection and a higher degree of individuality. From the very imperfect unities which our own selves present we are led to form the conception of a personal Life in which these imperfections have vanished. The perfect Person would be the solution of the problem of the one and the many which has haunted philosophy. This does not mean, however, that the problem is solved by the hypothesis of a personal God from the standpoint of philosophy, because, as we have seen, the concept of personality cannot be made “clear and distinct ”.
Such metaphysical considerations as these powerfully support the evidence drawn from the religious and moral consciousness. We may cheerfully admit that, taken by themselves, they would not take us further than the conclusion that the hypothesis of a personal God is one for which something can be said. It is at least a tenable theory among others, and if it presents difficulties they are not more serious than those which arise in connexion with rival hypotheses. The only kind of philosopher who has no difficulties to face is the one who makes no positive statement about Reality at all. But he who sets out in the quest for Reality without any reference to the apparent testimonies of religion and morals can scarcely be supposed to be in earnest, for he is inviting gratuitous error by omitting the most significant data. If, however, we are convinced that the religious and moral experience of man is of real value, the considerations to which we have just referred will give us additional reason for adhering to that belief in a personal God which is the outcome of religion taken as a whole.
[ p. 175 ]
We must not dismiss the subject without some brief reference to the special objections which have been alleged against the conception of a personal Creator. Some of these are connected with the problem of evil and must be considered in a later chapter ; but there are others which arise from the nature of personality rather than from the nature of the creation. The most famous and most fundamental of the latter class is that with which Lotze grappled in a well-known passage of the Microcosmos. It is said that personality implies the existence of a contrast between self and not-self, the distinction between the ego and an “ other ”, but that it is impossible to admit any “ other” or not-self when we are trying to conceive divine Personality or infinite self-hood. The view of personality to which we have been led in this discussion will allow us to reply in general to this difficulty as Lotze replied. Though the contrast between ego and non-ego is an invariable accompaniment of personality as known to us, the essential nature of personality does not and cannot consist in the contrast taken by itself. Its being is a positive activity. That this activity should find itself opposed and limited by forces or conditions which are not created by itself may therefore be, not a necessary element in personality as such, but a characteristic of human personality.
The same difficulty has been stated more recently by writers on psychology, who have pointed out that personal life seems to be possible only within an environment. Thus Dr. William Brown holds that God must be conceived as supra-personal. He cannot be properly thought of as a person in the same sense as we are persons, because He can have no environment and we cannot maintain that there is anything “outside” Him.[7] [ p. 176 ] We might perhaps add to this that the responsiveness which is characteristic of personal existence, and the capacity for fellowship, seem to imply that there must be an environment not only of impersonal reality other than the person but of other persons as well. We need the social environment as well as that of nature for our personal existence.
We must say at once that we are not concerned to defend any doctrine of the solitary personality of God, nor are we committed to the opinion that God is an infinite Person in such a sense that there can be nothing which is not, in every possible meaning of the words, “ included ” within Him. We are concerned to maintain the validity of creative Personality, the God on whom all things depend, not the idea of an Absolute in whom all things are. The Divine Unity, moreover, must be, in our view, a concrete unity, which means a unity of multiplicity and not a bare unitary self. In the next chapter we shall have to consider the doctrine of the Trinity ; but we must here anticipate some of the conclusions which will there be drawn. We have argued in this chapter that the quality of selfImowledge, which is, in some measure, a necessary attribute of personality, cannot be present in full measure in human persons, and that the perfect Personality of God alone can possess this quality in its completeness. In the Divine experience, and in no other experience, can the “me”, the self known, be the “express image,” the adequate representation, of the “I”, the knower. But a moment’s reflection will show us that we must go further. We cannot stop with the idea of the “me” (the Son) as the merely passive construction of the “I” (the Father), because such a passive object of contemplation would not be in the most complete manner the “ express image” of the Contemplator. It would leave out precisely that [ p. 177 ] element which constitutes the essence of self-hood and personality—that of being a centre of knowing and activity. The Son, therefore, must Himself be a centre of knowing and activity. Ho cannot be a passive object, but rather a living Other in whoso activity the Father knows Himself. Thus we have no need to refuse the test of reciprocal activity and of responsiveness and fellowship when we are considering the Personality of God. On the contrary, our conception of God naturally leads us to think of the Divine Nature as a unity of Persons in mutual responsiveness and fellowship.
But when this has been granted we still have not entirely disposed of the difficulty that, if God is personal, there must be something “ outside” Him. Let us come to grips with the general problem. Obviously, the use of images such as “outside” and “inside”, which are derived from space, are likely to be misleading unless we continually remind ourselves that they are symbols, and insist on translating the symbol into its equivalent at every turn of the discussion. There is plainly a meaning of “outside” in which no intelligent Theist could admit that there is anything “outside ” God—the literal meaning. If we agreed that there could be anything “ outside” God without qualification, we should find ourselves committed to the proposition that God is in space and that He is in some place and not in other places. If, however, by “ outside” is meant “ distinct from ”, we may reasonably agree that there is something “ outside God.” There can be no occasion to dissent from the statement, “ there are beings from which God distinguishes Himself ”. This is, in fact, a necessary tenet of Theism and specially of Christian Theism, though this truth has not always been understood by Theistic philosophers. Any disguise of this distinction between God and His creatures in [ p. 178 ] imagined loyalty to the “ infinity ” of God leads straight in the direction of Pantheism. We shall maintain at length hereafter that the creation, though dependent upon God, is distinct from Him.
The contention that the creatures are distinct from God can be shown to be necessary from another point of view, when we take into account an important aspect of personality on which perhaps we have so far laid insufficient stress. The personal individual is the ethical individual. As we have seen, the unity of those active centres of consciousness which have attained the dignity of personality is conditioned by the recognition of values and the pursuit of ideals. Now the attempt to realize an ideal implies that there is some sphere of being where the ideal waits to be realized. The mind for which an ideal end has any meaning is one for which there is a contrast between the content of its own thought and some actual state of things. No doctrine of God could, of course, allow that the imperfection, the contrast with the ideal, is in the Godhead itself. It would be no less absurd than blasphemous to imagine that God is trying to become better, or that one Person within the Godhead is striving for the amelioration of another. If therefore we hold that God is personal, we are forced to the conclusion that He finds in the created world, or in the creatures, the sphere, distinct from Himself, in which His ideal ends are to be attained. Apart from that created order with its imperfection and its capacity for progress He could not be personal. Here we are concerned simply with the problem of divine Personality ; but the idea which we have here tried to make clear has obviously further implications which must be reserved for our discussion of creation.
Let us try to get the difficult investigations of this [ p. 179 ] chapter into some kind of perspective. The reader may justly complain that a great deal of what has here been presented for his acceptance is highly speculative, and that the psychological portion has not behind it even a consensus of psychologists. He may be inclined to reject the whole because some parts are not clearly made out. I would at least implore him not to wait for a consensus of psychologists before making up his mind on this question: he might more hopefully look for a consensus patrum. The main thesis which has been defended here does not stand or fall with the more speculative arguments. It is that the Divine Being is not wrongly thought of when conceived in terms of personal life. Possibly the Godhead is best described as “ supra-personal”, but impersonal categories are not admissible. They give us a false conception of the Divine, not a higher one. Though the nature of personality is not strictly definable, we have gained some notion of what personal existence implies ; and our reflections upon it have led us to a view which enables us to ascribe personality to God in a sense which is not different in kind from that in which we use the term of human persons. Only we must suppose the Divine Experience to be the sole example of personality in its completeness. Doubtless at some points in our argument there is much matter for controversy, but the main line of thought does not, I believe, rest upon assumptions which are really doubtful. Our chief business, after all, is not to arrive at a final definition of “ person” but to justify and clarify the Christian experience of personal relationship with God. At the same time, I would most stoutly maintain the general accuracy of the “ activist ” account of the self which has been adopted in this chapter. Its importance may be more obvious as we proceed.
“ In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice ;
For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is Divine.” J. Addison. ↩︎
Cf. Bradley, Appearence and Reality, second edition, p. 173. ↩︎
F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. I. pp. 126, 127. ↩︎
Principles of Psychology, pp 34-41. ↩︎
Op. cit., pp. 192-3. ↩︎
Aveling, op. cit., p. 205. ↩︎
W. Brown, Science and Personality, pp. 224 ff. ↩︎