Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

2. Those who assert that our idea of God rests solely on an historical or objective faith in testimony--the testimony of Scripture, which assures us that, in the course of history, God has manifested his existence in an objective manner to the senses, and given verbal communications of his character and will to men; human reason being utterly incapacitated by the fall, and the consequent depravity of man, to attain any knowledge of the unity, spirituality, and righteousness of God (e. g., Watson, and Dogmatic Theologians generally).

It will thus be manifest that the great question, the central and vital question which demands a thorough and searching consideration, is the following, to wit: Is God cognizable by human reason? Can man attain to a positive cognition of God--can he know God; or is all our supposed knowledge "a learned ignorance," [²¹⁰] an unreasoning faith? We venture to answer this question in the affirmative. Human reason is now adequate to the cognition of God; it is able, with the fullest confidence, to affirm the being of a God, and, in some degree, to determine his character. The parties and schools above referred to answer this question in the negative form. Whether Theologians or Atheists, they are singularly agreed in denying to human reason all possibility of knowing God.

[Footnote 210: ][ (return) ] Hamilton's "Philosophy," p. 512.

Before entering upon the discussion of the negative positions enumerated in the above classification, it may be important we should state our own position explicitly, and exhibit what we regard as the true doctrine of the genesis of the idea of God in the human intelligence. The real question at issue will then stand out in clear relief, and precision will be given to the entire discussion.

(i.) We hold that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelligence. It is found in all minds where reason has had its normal and healthy development; and no race of men has ever been found utterly destitute of the idea of God. The proof of this position has already been furnished in chap, ii., [²¹¹] and needs not be re-stated here. We have simply to remark that the appeal which is made by Locke and others of the sensational school to the experiences of infants, idiots, the deaf and dumb, or, indeed, any cases wherein the proper conditions for the normal development of reason are wanting, are utterly irrelevant to the question. The acorn contains within itself the rudimental germ of the future oak, but its mature and perfect development depends on the exterior conditions of moisture, light, and heat. By these exterior conditions it may be rendered luxuriant in its growth, or it may be stunted in its growth. It may barely exist under one class of conditions; it may be distorted and perverted, or it may perish utterly under another. And so in the idiotic mind the ideas of reason may be wanting, or they may be imprisoned by impervious walls of cerebral malformation. In the infant mind the development of reason is yet in an incipient stage. The idea of God is immanent to the infant thought, but the infant thought is not yet matured. The deaf and dumb are certainly not in that full and normal correlation to the world of sense which is a necessary condition of the development of reason. Language, the great vehiculum and instrument of thought, is wanting, and reason can not develop itself without words. "Words without thought are dead sounds, thoughts without words are nothing. The word is the thought incarnate." [²¹²] Under proper and normal conditions, the idea of God is the natural and necessary form in which human thought must be developed. And, with these explanations, we repeat our affirmation that the idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal human intelligence.

[Footnote 211: ][ (return) ] Pp. 89,90.

[Footnote 212: ][ (return) ] Müller, " Science of Language," p. 384.

(ii.) We do not hold that the idea of God, in its completeness, is a simple, direct, and immediate intuition of the reason alone, independent of all experience, and all knowledge of the external world. The idea of God is a complex idea, and not a simple idea. The affirmation, "God exists," is a synthetic and primitive judgment spontaneously developed in the mind, and developed, too, independent of all reflective reasoning. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the outer world of nature and the primary intuitions of the inner world of reason--a logical deduction from the self-evident truths given in sense, consciousness, and reason. "We do not perceive God, but we conceive Him upon the faith of this admirable world exposed to view, and upon the other world, more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves." [²¹³] Therefore we do not say that man is born with an "innate idea" of God, nor with the definite proposition, "there is a God," written upon his soul; but we do say that the mind is pregnant with certain natural principles, and governed, in its development, by certain necessary laws of thought, which determine it, by a spontaneous logic, to affirm the being of a God; and, furthermore, that this judgment may be called innate in the sense, that it is the primitive, universal, and necessary development of the human understanding which "is innate to itself and equal to itself in all men." [²¹⁴]

[Footnote 213: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "True, Beautiful and Good," p.102.

[Footnote 214: ][ (return) ] Leibnitz.