III
It will not be necessary to dwell at any length on the third difficulty—the incompatibility of divine sovereignty and grace with moral personality.
How to reconcile divine power and human freedom is the great problem which meets us on the very threshold of the study of man's relation to God. The solution, in so far as it is possible for the mind, must be sought in the divine immanence. God works through man, and man acts through God. Reason, conscience, and will are equally the testimony to God's indwelling in man and man's {94} indwelling in God. It is, as St. Paul says, God who worketh in us both to will and to do. But just because of that inherent power, it is we who work out our own character and destiny. The divine is not introduced into human life at particular points or in exceptional crises only. Every man has something of the divine in him, and when he is truest to himself he is most at one with God. The whole meaning of human personality is a growing realisation of the divine personality. God's sovereignty has no meaning except in relation to a world of which He is sovereign, and His purposes can only be fulfilled through human agency. While His thoughts far transcend in wisdom and sublimity those of His creatures they must be in a sense of the same kind—thoughts, in other words, which beings made in His image can receive, love and, in a measure, share. And though God cannot be conceived as the author of evil, He may permit it and work through it, bringing order out of chaos, and evolving through suffering and conflict His sovereign purposes.
The problem becomes acutest when we endeavour to harmonise the antinomy of man's moral freedom and the doctrine of grace. However insoluble the mystery, it is not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity. Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists more strenuously than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign election of God, yet none presents with greater fervour the free offer of salvation. In his ethical teaching, at least, Paul is no determinist. Freedom is the distinctive note of his conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust committed to each by God, for the use or abuse of which every man will be called to account. His missionary zeal would have no meaning if he did not believe that men were free to accept or refuse his message. Paul's own example, indeed, is typical, and while he knew that he was 'called,' he knew, too, that it lay with him to yield himself and present his life as a living sacrifice to God. Jesus, too, throughout His ministry, assumed the ability of man freely to accept His call to righteousness, and though He speaks {95} of the change as a 'new birth,' a creation from above, beyond the strength of man to effect, He invariably makes His appeal to the will—'Follow Me,' 'Come unto Me.' He assumes in all His dealings with individuals that they have the power of decision. And so far from admitting that the past could not be undone, and no chain of habit broken, the whole purpose of His message and lifework was to proclaim the need and possibility of a radical change in life. So full of hope was He for man that He despaired of none, not even of those who had most grievously failed, or most utterly turned their back on purity. The parables in the Third Gospel of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son lay emphasis upon the possibility of recovery, and, in the case of the prodigal, specially on the ability to return for those who have gone astray.
The teaching of Scripture implies that while God is the source of all spiritual good, and divine grace must be present with and precede all rightful action of the human will, it rests with man to respond to the divine love. No human soul is left destitute of the visiting of God's spirit, and however rudimentary the moral life may be, no bounds can be set to the growth which may, and which God intends should, result wherever the human will is consentient. While, therefore, no man can claim merit in the sight of God, but must acknowledge his absolute dependency upon divine grace, no one can escape loss or blame if he wilfully frustrates God's design of mercy. Whatever mystery may attend the subject of God's sovereign grace, the Bible never presents it as negating the entire freedom of man to give or withhold response to the gift and leading of the divine spirit.
In the deepest New Testament sense to be free is to have the power of acting according to one's true nature. A man's ideal is his true self, and all short of that is for him a limitation of freedom. Inasmuch as no ideal is ever completely realised, true freedom is not so much a possession as a progressive appropriation. It is at once a gift and a task. It contains the twofold idea of emancipation {96} and submission. Mere deliverance from the lower self is not liberty. Freedom must be completed by the appropriation of the higher self and the acceptance of the obligations which that self involves. It is to be acquired through submission to the truth. 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' A man is never so free as when he is the bondsman of Christ. The saying of St. Paul sums up the secret and essence of all true freedom: 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.'
[1] Mach, Erkenntniss und Irrtum. Vorwort. See also Die Analyse der Empfindungen, p. 20. 'Das Sich ist unrettbar,' he says.
[2] Cf. W. Schmidt, Der Kampf um die Seele, p. 13.
[3] Cf. Eucken.
[4] Cf. Wallace, Logic of Hegel, Proleg., p. 233.
[5] Wallace, Idem, p. 235. Cf. Aristotle's wise man whose conduct is not kata logon but meta logon.
[6] Proleg., section 108.
[7] The Will to Believe, p. 154.
[8] The italics are ours.
[9] Creative Evolution (Eng. trans.), p. 252.
[10] Idem, p. 265.
[11] Cf. Morris, Lects. on Art, p. 195; Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesthetic, p. 445; also Individuality and Value, p. 166.
[12] Life's Basis and Life's Ideals, p. 181 f.
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SECTION C
CHARACTER
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CHAPTER VII
MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE
Bearing in mind the three fundamental ideas lying at the root of all ethical inquiry—End, Norm, and Motive—we have now to deal with the shaping forces of the Christian life, the making of character. In this section, therefore, we shall be engaged in a discussion of the ideals, laws, and springs of moral action. And first, What is the supreme good? What is the highest for which a man should live? This question determines the main problem of life. It forces itself irresistibly upon us to-day, and the answer to it is the test of every system of morals.
But before endeavouring to determine the distinctively Christian ideal, as presented in the teaching of Jesus and interpreted by the growing Christian consciousness of mankind, it may be well to review briefly some of the main theories of life which are pressing their claims upon our attention to-day. Many of these modern views have arisen as a reaction against traditional religion. From the seventeenth century onwards, and especially during the nineteenth, there has been a growing disposition to call in question the Christian conception of life. The antagonism reveals itself not only in a distrust of all forms of religion, but also in a craving for wider culture. The old certitudes fail to satisfy men who have acquired new habits of reflection, and there is a disinclination to accept a scheme of life which seems to narrow human interests and exclude such departments as science, art, and politics. One reason of this change is to be found in the wonderful advance of science during the last century. Men's minds, withdrawn {100} from primary, and fixed upon secondary causes, have refused to believe that the order of nature can be disturbed by supernatural intervention. Whether the modern antipathy to Christianity is justified is not the question at present before us. We may see in the movements of our day not so much a proof that the old faith is false, as an indication that if Christianity is to regain its power a radical re-statement of its truths, and a more comprehensive application of its principles to life as a whole must be undertaken.
In the endeavour to find an all-embracing ideal of life two possibilities present themselves, arising from two different ways of viewing man. Human life is in one aspect receptive; in another, active. It may be regarded as dependent upon nature for its maintenance, or as a creative power whose function is not merely to receive what nature supplies, but to re-shape nature's materials and create a new spiritual world. Receptivity and activity are inseparable, and form together the harmonious rhythm of life.
But there has ever been a tendency to emphasise one or other of these aspects. The question has constantly arisen, Which is the more important for life—what we receive or what we create? Accordingly two contrasted conceptions of life have appeared—a naturalistic and an idealistic. Under the first we understand those theories which place man in the realm of sense and explain life by material conditions; under the second we group such systems as give to life an independent creative power.