Theism

The Rev. Alexander Leitch, in the First Part of his 'Ethics of Theism' (1868), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief, the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of reason and faith.

Mr Venn's 'Hulsean Lectures' for 1869 "are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other subjects. These characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing conviction."

What I have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. This I accept as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another party. It is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from tolerance and charity. Perhaps it has never been better expounded and enforced than in Dr Pusey's 'Responsibility of the Intellect in Matters of Faith' (1873).

That religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture. In this fact lies the main reason why the highest evidence may not produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those who reject it. A person desirous of working himself fully into the truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in Dr Newman's 'Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, between A.D. 1826 and 1843,' and in Principal Shairp's 'Culture and Religion.'

Note IV., page 23Traditive Theory of Religion

Mr Fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces religion to a primitive revelation: "Although often advanced in the supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most irreligious. If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed 'an original atheism of consciousness.' Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man – must be implanted from without. The theory that would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory that would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may satisfy or rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek the Lord, if haply he might feel after and find Him' – the finding being by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. If there was a primitive revelation, it must have been – unless the word is used in an unusual and misleading sense – either written or oral. If written, it could hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional value to be easily lost. If it was oral, then either the language for it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. Then an oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property, or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the popular imagination – becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken and bewildering lights. But neither as documentary nor traditional can any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and philosophic discussion alike impossible." – Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, pp. 14, 15.

There is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work of Professor Cocker of Michigan on 'Christianity and Greek Philosophy' (1875). He argues: 1. "That it is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition." 2. "That the theory is altogether incompetent to explain the universality of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas." 3. "That a verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence purely passive and utterly unfurnished with any a priori ideas or necessary laws of thought." – Pp. 86-96.

A good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is a desideratum in theological literature.

Note V., page 29Normal Development of Society

The truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and illustrated. The earnestness with which Comte did so in both of his chief works is well known. A philosopher of a very different stamp, F. v. Baader, has in various of his writings given expression to profound thoughts on the subject. His essay entitled 'Evolutionismus und Revolutionismus des gesellschaftlichen Lebens' merits to be specially mentioned. Alexander Vinet has often been charged with a one-sided individualism, and perhaps not altogether without justice; but he always maintained that he was merely the advocate of individuality. "Individualism and individuality are two sworn enemies; the first being the obstacle and negation of all society – the second, that to which society owes all it possesses of savour, life, and reality. Nowhere does individualism prosper more easily than where there is an absence of individuality; and there is no more atomistic policy than that of despotism." Vinet has probably not held the balance exactly poised between the individual and society; but his dissertations, 'Sur l'individualité et l'individualisme' and 'Du rôle de l'individualité dans une réforme sociale,' would have been far less valuable than they are if he had forgotten that, although it is the individual who thinks, the thought of the individual cannot form itself outside of society nor without its aid. But he did not, as words like the following sufficiently prove: – "It is better to connect ourselves with society than to learn to dispense with it, or rather to persuade ourselves that we are able to dispense with it. It is only given to the brute to suffice to itself. Man has been chained to man. We hardly give more credit to spontaneous generation in the intellectual sphere than in the physical world; the most individual work is to a certain point the work of all the world; everywhere solidarity reappears, without, however, any prejudice to liberty: God has willed it so." "It is with the soul engaged in the life of religion, or that of thought, as with the vessel launched upon the waters, and seeking beyond the ocean for the shores of a new world. This ocean is society, religious or civil. It bears us just as the ocean does – fluid mass, on which the vessel can indeed trace furrows, but may nowhere halt. The ocean bears the ship, but the ocean may swallow it up, and sometimes does so; society swallows us up still more often, but yet it is what upbears us; nor can we arrive without being upborne by it, for it is like the sea, which, less fluid than the air, and less dense than the earth, just yields to and resists us enough to sustain without impeding our progress towards the desired goal." There are no finer pages in Martensen's 'Christian Ethics' than those in which he treats of "individualism and socialism," "liberty and authority in the development of society," and "conservatism and progress." The most adequate historical proof and illustration of the truth in question as to the nature of social evolution will be found in the Earl of Crawford's 'Progression by Antagonism' and 'Scepticism and the Church of England.'

Note VI., page 32Definition and Classification by the Highest Type

Dr Whewell maintained that in natural history groups are fixed not by definition, but by type. "The class," he wrote, "is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of Definition we have a Type for our director. A type is an example of any class – for instance, a species of a genus – which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees." – Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. pp. 476, 477. Dr Whewell, it will be observed, was more cautious in his language than the theologians to whom I have referred. He did not speak of defining by type, but only of classifying, not by definition, but by type. His motive, however, for entertaining the view he laid down, was obviously the same which has led so many theologians to give definitions of religion which are only applicable to its highest forms. Probably it was insufficient. Prof. Huxley (Lay Sermons, pp. 90-92) very justly, it seems to me, argues that classification by type is caused by ignorance, and that as soon as the mind gets a scientific knowledge of a class it defines. Nothing which is not precisely limited is steadily fixed; nothing which is not circumscribed is exactly given: if the boundary-line is not determined, the central point cannot be accurately ascertained; what is eminently included cannot be known so long as what is strictly excluded is unknown. While assenting to the view of Prof. Huxley in the passage indicated, I may remark that he falls into one error which rather forcibly illustrates what is said in the page to which this note refers regarding the necessary poverty of the significance of a strictly scientific definition of an extensive class. He instances as a definition which is of a truly scientific kind and "rigorous enough for a geometrician," the following: "Mammalia are all animals which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." But clearly this definition says too much if we are to criticise it rigorously. Were it true, there would be no males among mammalia. The definition is in strictness applicable to females only.

Note VII., page 38Psychological Nature of Religion

In this note I shall briefly summarise three class lectures on the psychological nature of religion.

1. Investigations into the psychological nature of religion date only from about the end of last century.

For ages previously men sought to know what religion was; but they attempted to find an answer merely by reflection on positive or objective religion. Kant opened up to them a new path – that of investigation into the nature of religion as an internal or mental fact. O. Pfleiderer's account (Die Religion, pp. 5-124) of the researches thus started characterised, and criticised.

2. The testimony of consciousness is sufficient to establish the existence of religion as a subjective or mental state, but cannot certify whether, as such, it be simple or complex, primary or derivative, coextensive with human consciousness, or wider or narrower, or whether there be anything objectively corresponding to it.

3. In order to analyse religion, the ultimate genera of consciousness must be ascertained, which has only been slowly done. History of the process: Plato, Aristotle, their followers, Descartes, Spinoza, the English philosophers from Bacon to Dugald Stewart, Kant and the German psychologists, Brown, Hamilton, and Bain. Establishment of the threefold division of mental phenomena into cognitions, emotions, and volitions. Difficulties of the division shown by the author in 'Mind,' No. V.

Religion must be a state of intellect, sensibility, or will, or some combination of two or all of these factors.

4. Religion may be held to consist essentially and exclusively of knowledge; but this mistake is too gross to have been frequently committed.

The Gnostics, the earlier and scholastic theologians, the rationalists, Schelling and Cousin, have been charged with this error. The grounds of the charge indicated. Shown to be in all these cases exaggerated.

5. Schleiermacher refutes the theory by the consideration that the measure of our knowledge is not the measure of our religion.

Vindication and illustration of his argument. Service rendered by Schleiermacher to religion and theology in this connection.

6. Hegel came nearest to the identification of religion and thought, maintaining that sentiment was the lowest manifestation of religion, while the comprehension of the absolute, the highest knowledge, was its complete realisation, as also that religion was the self-consciousness of God through the mediation of the finite spirit.

Exposition and criticism of this theory. Examination of Vera's defence of it. Worship supposes two persons morally and spiritually as well as intellectually related.

7. While no mere intellectual act constitutes religion, the exercise of reason is an essential part of religion.

The denial of this an error prevalent among the modern theologians of Germany, owing to their accepting Kant's argumentation against the possibility of apprehending God by the speculative or pure reason as conclusive. If religion have no rational foundation, it has no real foundation. Reason does not apprehend merely what is finite. True place of reason in religion.

8. Religion has often been resolved into feeling or sentiment, but erroneously, since whatever feeling is fixed on requires some explanation of its existence, and this can only be found in some act or exercise of intellect.

9. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hume have traced religion to fear.

10. Fear explains atheism better than it explains religion, and in order even to be feared God must be believed in.

Men fear a great many things. Mere fear founds nothing, but only causes efforts to avoid the presence or thought of its object. Fear enters into religion, and is filial in the higher, and servile in the lower, forms of religion.

11. Feuerbach resolves religion into desire – into an ignorant and illusive personification of man's own nature as he would wish it to be.

12. This view presupposes the truth of atheism, does not explain why man should refer to supramundane ends or objects, and is contradicted by the historical facts, which show that reason and conscience have at least co-operated with desire in the origination and development of religion.

13. Schleiermacher resolves religion into a feeling of absolute dependence – of pure and complete passiveness.

Statement of his theory. Shown to rest on a pantheistic conception of the Divine Being. His reduction of the Divine attributes into power.

14. No such feeling can exist, the mind being incapable of experiencing a feeling of nothingness – a consciousness of unconsciousness.

15. Could it be supposed to exist, it would have no religious character, because wholly blind and irrational.

16. The theory of Schleiermacher makes the moral and religious consciousness subversive of each other, the former affirming and the latter denying our freedom and responsibility.

17. Mansel supposes the religious consciousness to be traceable to the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation; but the latter feeling implies the perception of moral law, and is not religious unless there be also belief in a moral lawgiver.

18. Schenkel represents conscience as 'the religious organ of the soul,' but this is not consistent with the fact that conscience is the faculty which distinguishes right from wrong.

Schenkel's view of conscience shown to make its religious testimony contradict its ethical testimony.

19. Strauss combines the views of Epicurus, Feuerbach, and Schleiermacher; but three errors do not make a truth.

Account of the criticism to which the Straussian theory of religion has been subjected by Vera, Ulrici, and Professor H. B. Smith.

20. Although there can be no true religion without love, and although to love the true God with the whole heart is the ideal of religion, religion cannot be resolved exclusively into love; since love presupposes knowledge, and is not the predominant feeling, if present at all, in the lower forms of religion.

21. Religion includes will, implying the free and deliberate surrender of the soul to God, – the making self an instrument where it might, although wrongfully, have been made an end, – but it is not merely will, since all volition, properly so called, presupposes reason and feeling.

22. Kant made religion merely a sanction for duty, and duty the expression of a will which is its own law, and which is unaffected by feeling; but this view rested on erroneous conceptions as to (1) the relation of religion and morality, (2) the nature of the will, and (3) the place of feeling in the mental economy.

Religion and morality inseparable in their normal conditions; but not to be identified, religion being communion with God, while morality is conformity to a law which is God's will but which may not be acknowledged to be His will, so that they may and do exist in abnormal forms apart from each other.

The will has not its law in itself. Kant's errors on this subject.

Feeling is the natural and universal antecedent of action. Kant's errors on this subject.

23. Dr Brinton (Religious Sentiment, &c., 1876) analyses religion into emotion and idea – an effective and intellectual element – the latter of which arises necessarily from the law of contradiction and excluded middle.

Merits and defects of his theory.

24. The religious process is at once rational, emotional, and volitional.

Its unity, and the co-operation of knowing, feeling, and willing.

25. Description of (1) its essential contents, (2) its chief forms, (3) its principal moments or stages, and (4) its manifestations in spiritual worship and work.

Note VIII., page 58Argument e consensu gentium

Pessimism will be treated of along with other anti-theistic theories. The fact that religion is a natural and universal phenomenon, as widespread as humanity and as old as its history, and the fact insisted on in the lecture, that religion can only realise its proper nature in a theistic form, give us, when adequately established, the modern and scientific statement of the old argument —e consensu gentium. This argument, which we already meet with in Cicero (De Nat. Deor., i. 17; Tusc. Ques., i. 13; De Leg., i. 8) and Seneca (Epist. 117), in Clement of Alexandria (Strom., v. 14) and Lactantius (Div. Inst., i. 2), has gradually grown into the science of comparative theology. An instructive essay might be written on its development.

Mr J. S. Mill, who had obviously no suspicion that there had been any development of the kind, criticised the argument in his essay on Theism, pp. 154-160. He was entirely mistaken in representing it as an appeal to authority – "to the opinions of mankind generally, and especially of some of its wisest men." It has certainly very rarely – probably never – been advanced in a form which could justify such an account of it. He was also mistaken in supposing that it had any necessary connection with the view which ascribes to men "an intuitive perception, or an instinctive sense, of Deity." I agree with his objections to that view; but the argument does not imply it. If it prove that man's mental constitution is such that, in the presence of the facts of nature and life, religion necessarily arises, and that the demands of reason, heart, and conscience, in which it originates, can only be satisfied by the worship and service of one God, with the attributes which theism assigns to Him, it has accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from it.

Mr Mill was, however, it seems to me, perfectly correct in holding that the mere prevalence of the belief in Deity afforded no ground for inferring that the belief was native to the mind in the sense of independent of evidence. In no form ought the argument from general consent to be regarded as a primary argument. It is an evidence that there are direct evidences – and when kept in this its proper place it has no inconsiderable value – but it cannot be urged as a direct and independent argument. This is a most important consideration, which is in danger of being overlooked in the present day. Some authors would actually contrast the argument for theism or Christianity derivable from the comparative study of religion with the ordinary or formal proofs, and would substitute it for them, not seeing that, although powerful in connection with, and dependence on, these proofs, it has little relevancy or weight when dissociated from them.

The two recent writers who have made most use of the argument are, perhaps, Ebrard, who has devoted to it the whole of the second volume of his Apologetics, and Baumstark, whose 'Christian Apologetics on an Anthropological Basis' has for its exclusive aim to prove that man has been made for religion, and that the non-Christian religions do not, while Christianity does, satisfy his religious cravings and needs. In this country we ought not to forget the service which Mr Maurice rendered by his 'Religions of the World,' and Mr Hardwicke by his 'Christ and other Masters.'

The position maintained by Sir John Lubbock, that religion is not a universal phenomenon, and that advocated by Comte, that it is a temporary and transitional phenomenon, will be examined in the volume on Anti-theism.

Note IX., page 75The Theistic Evidence Complex and Comprehensive

Cousin has said, "There are different proofs of the existence of God. The consoling result of my studies is, that these different proofs are more or less strict in form, but they have all a depth of truth which needs only to be disengaged and put in a clear light, in order to give incontestable authority. Everything leads to God. There is no bad way of arriving at Him, but we go to Him by different paths."

The truth, that all the faculties of man's being must co-operate in the formation of the idea of God, is well enforced and illustrated in an article on "The Origin of the Concept of God," by the Rev. George T. Ladd, in the 'Bibliotheca Sacra,' vol. xxxiv.; also in Principal M'Cosh's 'Method of the Divine Government,' B. i., c. i., sec. 1, and 'Intuitions of the Mind,' Pt. iii., B. ii., c. v., sec. 2. The following quotation from Mr Ladd's article is a statement of its central idea: "Nothing is more necessary, in the endeavour to understand how the concept under consideration originates, than to hold correct views of the entire relation of man to truth. The view which, if not held as a theory, is quite too frequently carried out in the practical search after knowledge, seems to be this one – that truth is a product of mind wrought out by the skilful use of the ratiocinative faculties. It follows, then, that the correct working of these faculties is almost the only important or necessary guarantee of truth. But it is not any lone faculty or set of faculties which is concerned in man's reception of truth. The truth becomes ours only as a gift from without. All truth is of the nature of a revelation, and demands that the organ through which the revelation is made should be properly adjusted. The organ for the reception of truth is symmetrically cultured manhood, rightly correlated action, and balanced capabilities of man's different powers. The attitude of him who would attain to truth is one of docility, of receptiveness, of control exercised upon all the powers of the soul, – so that none of them, by abnormal development or activity, interfere with the action of all the rest… If the statements just made are true with regard to human knowledge in general, they are pre-eminently true with regard to such knowledge as is presented to the soul in the form of the concept of God. The pure in heart shall see God; they that obey shall know of the doctrine; the things of the spirit are spiritually judged of. These statements are as profound in their philosophic import as they are quickening in their practical tendencies. This concept comes as God's revelation of Himself within all the complex activities of the human soul. It is adapted to man as man in the totality of his being and energies. And the whole being of man must be co-operative in the reception of this self-revelation of God, as well as met and filled by the form which the revelation takes, in order that the highest truth concerning God may become known… In his work on Mental Physiology, Dr Carpenter speaks of certain departments of science 'in which our conclusions rest, not on any one set of experiences, but upon our unconscious co-ordination of the whole aggregate of our experience; not on the conclusions of any one train of reasoning, but on the convergence of all our lines of thought toward one centre.' These words, italicised by that author himself, well represent the form in which the knowledge of God is given to the human soul. It is the convergence of these lines of thought that run together from so many quarters which makes a web of argument far stronger to bind men than any single thread could be. This is a form of proof which, while it is, when understood aright, overwhelmingly convincing, gives also to all the elements of our complex manhood their proper work to do in its reception. In its reception it makes far greater difference, whether the moral and religious sections of the whole channel through which the truth flows are open or not, than whether the faculty of the syllogism is comparatively large or not. Nor is there any effort to disparage any intellectual processes involved, in thus insisting upon the complete and co-ordinated activity of the soul, as furnishing the organon for the knowledge of God. All the strings of the harp must be in tune, or there will be discord, not harmony, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it."