Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

But total negation is not the result,—only nescience. Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism agree in one belief, namely, that of a problem to be solved. An unknown God is the highest result of theology and of philosophy. “If religion and science are to be reconciled, the basis of the reconciliation must be their deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts—that the power which the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable.”

Thus Mr. Spencer proposes to take back human thought eighteen centuries, and ignoring the conquests of Christian faith in civilization, theology, and morals, carries us to Athens, in the time of Paul, to worship at the altar of an unknown God. He makes a solitude in the soul, and calls it peace. He makes peace between religion and science, by commanding the first to surrender at discretion to the other. Science knows nothing of God; therefore theology must know nothing of God. But not so. Let each impart to the other that which it possesses, and which the other lacks. Let science enlarge theology with the idea of law, and theology inform science with the idea of a living God.

It is not difficult to detect the fallacies in this argument of Spencer for religious nescience. His notion of conception is that of a purely sensible image. He assumes that we have no knowledge but sensible knowledge, and then easily infers that we do not know [pg 443] God. We can conceive, he says, of a rock on which we are standing, but not of the whole earth. No great magnitudes, he declares, can be conceived. The conception of infinite time is, therefore, an impossibility.

But it is clear to any one, not bound hand and foot by the assumptions of sensationalism, that it is just as easy to conceive of the whole globe of earth, as of the piece of it which we see. We cannot have a visual image of the whole earth, indeed, but the mental conception of the globe is as distinct as that of the stone we throw from our hand. And so far from the conception of infinite duration being an impossibility, not to conceive of time and space as infinite is the impossibility. It is impossible to imagine or conceive of the beginning of time, or the commencement of space.

Looking at his trilemma concerning the universe, namely, that it was either, (1.) Self-existent, (2.) Self-created, or, (3.) Created by an external power, we say,—

1. The real objection to a self-existent universe, is not that we cannot conceive of existence without beginning. Nothing is easier than to conceive of an everlasting, unchanging universe, without beginning or end. It is not existence, but change, that suggests cause. Phenomena, events, require us to believe in some power which produces them. Now, the events which take place in the universe suggest an intelligent, absolute, and central cause, that is, a cause combining supreme wisdom, power, and goodness. A self-existent universe is not inconceivable, but it is incredible.

2. Self-creation, he objects, is Pantheism. But this is no reason for denying it, since Pantheism may, for all we see at this stage of the argument, be the true explanation of the universe. The real objection to the hypothesis of a self-created universe (or of a self-created God), is that it involves the contradiction of something which exists and which does not exist at the same moment; at the moment of self-creation, the universe must exist in order to create, but must be non-existent in order to be created. A self-created universe, then, is not incredible because it involves Pantheism, but because it involves a contradiction.

3. He objects to the Theistic hypothesis, that we cannot conceive of the production of matter (more strictly, of substance) out of nothing. He adds that no simile can enable us to imagine it.

But I can produce, out of nothing, something visible, tangible, and audible. There is no motion and no sound. I move my arm [pg 444] by the power of will, and I produce both sound and motion. The motion of a body in space is a material phenomenon; for whatever is perceived by the senses is material. We do then constantly perceive material phenomena created out of nothing, by human will.

His argument against the Theist, that space could not have been created by God, since its non-existence is inconceivable, is much more plausible. But suppose we grant that space, supposed to be a real existence, was not created in time. Does it follow from that, that it does not proceed from God? Not being an event in time, it does not require a cause; but being conceived of as a reality, it may have eternally proceeded from the divine will, and so not be independent of the Creator.