Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, / 10th Edition, 1890

by Unknown

'The immediate operation of the Creator is closer to everything than the operation of any secondary cause,' says S. Thomas[208].

And Cornelius a Lapide, after comparing our dependence upon God to that of a ray on the sun, an embryo on the womb, a bird on the air, concludes with the words, 'Seeing then that we are thus united to God physically, we ought also to be united to Him morally[209].'

Here are three typical theologians, in three different ages, not one of them a mystic even, using as the language of sober theology words every whit as strong as any of the famous Pantheistic passages in our modern literature; and yet when met with in that literature they are commonly regarded as pleasing expressions of poetic dreams, very far away from, if not even inconsistent with what is thought to be dogmatic Christianity.

To sum up then, the reopening of the teleological question has not only led to its fuller and more final answer, but has incidentally contributed to revive among us an important aspect of the Theology of the Word.

The next point upon which the theory of evolution came in contact with received opinion, was its account of the origin of man. Man, it was maintained, in certain quarters, was only the latest and most complex product of a purely material process of development. His reason, with all its functions of imagination, conscience, will, was only a result of his sensibility, and that of his nervous tissue, and that again of matter less and less finely organized, till at last a primitive protoplasm was reached; while what had been called his fall was in reality his rise, being due to the fact that with the birth of reason came self-consciousness; or the feeling of a distinction between self and the outer world, ripening into a sense, and strictly speaking an illusory sense of discord between the two.

Theologians first thought it necessary to contest every detail of this development, beginning with the antiquity of man; and some are still inclined to intrench themselves in one or two positions which they think impregnable, such as the essential difference in kind between organized and inorganic matter, or again between animal instinct and the self-conscious reason of man: while others are content to assume a sceptical attitude and point to the disagreement between the men of science themselves, as sufficient evidence of their untruth. But none of these views are theologically needed. The first is certainly, the second possibly unsound, and the third, to say the least of it, unkind. It is quite true that the evolution of man is at present nothing more than an hypothesis, and an hypothesis open to very grave scientific objections. The attempts to analyse reason and conscience back into unconscious and unmoral elements, for all their unquestioned ingenuity, are still far from being conclusive; and then there is the geological admissibility of the time which it would require, and that is still a matter of hopeless controversy between scientific experts. And even if these and numerous kindred difficulties were to be removed in time to come, the hypothesis would still be no nearer demonstration; for the only evidence we can possibly obtain of prehistoric man is his handiwork of one kind or another, his implements or pictures, things implying the use of reason. In other words, we can only prove his existence through his rationality; through his having been, on the point in question, identical in kind with what now he is. And suspense of judgment therefore upon the whole controversy is, at present, the only scientific state of mind.

But there are facts upon the other side; the undoubted antiquity of the human race; the gradual growth which can be scientifically traced, in our thought and language and morality, and therefore, to the extent that functions react upon their faculties, even in our conscience and our reason too; and then the immense presumption from the gathering proofs of all other development, that man will be no exception to the universal law. All these positive indications at least suggest the possibility that the difficulties of the theory may one day vanish, and its widest chasms close. And we cannot therefore be too emphatic in asserting that theology would have nothing whatever to fear from such a result. When we see energy and atoms building up an harmonious order, we feel there is an inner secret in the energy and atoms, which we cannot hope to penetrate by merely watching them at work. And so, when we see human minds and wills weaving a veil over the universe, of thought and love and holiness, and are told that all these things are but higher modes of material nature, we only feel that the inner secret of material nature must be yet more wonderful than we supposed. But though our wonder may increase, our difficulties will not. If we believe, as we have seen that Christian Theology has always believed, in a Divine Creator not only present behind the beginning of matter but immanent in its every phase, and co-operating with its every phenomenon, the method of His working, though full of speculative interest, will be of no controversial importance. Time was when the different kinds of created things were thought to be severed by impassable barriers. But many of these barriers have already given way before science, and species are seen to be no more independent than the individuals that compose them. If the remaining barriers between unreason and reason, or between lifelessness and life should in like manner one day vanish, we shall need to readjust the focus of our spiritual eye to the enlarged vision, but nothing more. Our Creator will be known to have worked otherwise indeed than we had thought, but in a way quite as conceivable, and to the imagination more magnificent. And all is alike covered by the words 'without Him was not anything made that was made: and in Him was life.' In fact the evolutionary origin of man is a far less serious question than the attack upon final causes. Its biblical aspect has grown insignificant in proportion as we have learned to regard the Hebrew cosmology in a true light. And the popular outcry which it raised was largely due to sentiment, and sentiment not altogether untinged by human pride.

We may pass on therefore from the evolution of man and his mind in general, to his various modes of mental activity in science and philosophy and art. Here the Christian doctrine is twofold: first, that all the objects of our thought, mathematical relations, scientific laws, social systems, ideals of art, are ideas of the Divine Wisdom, the Logos, written upon the pages of the world; and secondly, that our power of reading them, our thinking faculty acts and only can act rightly by Divine assistance; that the same 'motion and power that impels' 'all objects of all thought' impels also 'all thinking things.' And both these statements are met by objection. In the first place, it is urged, there is no fixity in the universe, and it cannot therefore be the embodiment of Divine ideas. All things live and move under our eyes. Species bear no evidence of having been created in their completeness; on the contrary they are perpetually undergoing transmutation, and cannot therefore represent ideas, cannot have been created on a plan. For ideas, in proportion to their perfection, must be definite, clean-cut, clear. The answer to this objection is contained in what has been already said upon the subject of organic teleology. But an analogy drawn from human thinking may illustrate it further. It is in reality the ideas which our mind has done with, its dead ideas which are clean-cut and definite and fixed. The ideas which at any moment go to form our mental life are quick and active and full of movement, and melt into each other and are ever developing anew. A book is no sooner finished and done with, than it strikes its author as inadequate. It becomes antiquated as soon as its ideas have been assimilated by the public mind. And that because the thought of author and public alike is alive, and ever moving onward; incapable of being chained to any one mode of expression; incapable of being stereotyped. The highest notion we can frame therefore of a mind greater than our own is of one that has no dead ideas, no abstract or antiquated formulae, but whose whole content is entirely, essentially alive. And the perpetual development which we are learning to trace throughout the universe around us would be the natural expression therefore of that Logos Who is the Life.

But when we turn from the objective to the subjective side of knowledge, we are met with a second objection. The doctrine that the Divine Logos co-operates with the human reason, is supposed to be inconsistent with the undoubted fact that many earnest and successful thinkers have been if not atheistic, at least agnostic; unable, that is, to attain to the very knowledge to which, as it would seem on the Christian hypothesis, all intellectual effort should inevitably lead. But this difficulty is only superficial. When we say that the Divine reason assists, we do not mean that it supersedes the human. An initiative still lies with man; and he must choose of his own accord the particular field of his intellectual pursuit. When he has chosen his line of study, and followed it with the requisite devotion, he will arrive at the kind of truth to which that particular study leads, the physicist at laws of nature, the philosopher at laws of thought, the artist at ideal beauty, the moralist at ethical truth: and in each case, as we believe, by Divine assistance, his discoveries being in fact revelations. But the method, the education, the experience involved in different studies are so distinct, that few in a lifetime can reach the eminence that teaches with authority, or even the intelligence that thoroughly appreciates, more than one department of the complex world of thought. And if a man wanders from his own province into unfamiliar regions, he naturally meets with failure in proportion to his hardihood. In the case of the special sciences this is universally recognised. No astronomer would think of dogmatizing on a question of geology, nor a biologist on the details of chemistry or physics. But when it is a question between science and philosophy, the rule is often forgotten; and the spectacle of scientific specialists blundering about in metaphysics is painfully common in the present day: while strange to say, in the case of theology this forgetfulness reaches a climax, and men claim casually to have an opinion upon transcendent mysteries, without any of the preparation which they would be the first to declare needful for success in the smallest subsection of any one of the branches of science.

Nor is preparation all that is wanted. Science is impossible without experiment, and experiment is the lower analogue of what in religion is called experience. As experiment alone gives certainty in the one case, so does experience alone in the other. And it is only the man who has undergone such experience, with all its imperative demands upon his whole character and life, that can justly expect satisfaction of his religious doubts and needs; while only those who, like S. Paul or S. Augustine, have experienced it in an exceptional degree, are entitled to speak with authority upon the things to which it leads. Here again a human analogy may help us. For in studying a human character there are different planes upon which we may approach it. There are the external aspects of the man, the fashion of his garments, the routine of his life, the regulation of his time, his official habits; all which, it may be noted in passing, in the case of a great character, are uniform, not because they were not once the free creation of his will, but because he knows the practical value of uniformity in all such things; and all these externals are open to the observation even of a stranger. Then there are the man's thoughts, which may be withheld or revealed at his pleasure; and these can only be understood by kindred minds, who have been trained to understand them. Lastly, there are his will and affections, the region of his motives, the secret chamber in which his real personality resides; and these are only known to those intimate friends and associates whose intuition is quickened by the sympathy of love. Now all these stages are gone through in the formation of a friendship. First we are struck by a man's appearance, and so led to listen to his conversation, and thence to make his acquaintance, and at last to become his friend. And so with the knowledge of God. The man of science, as such, can discover the uniformities of His action in external nature. The moral philosopher will further see that these actions 'make for righteousness' and that there is a moral law. But it is only to the spiritual yearning of our whole personality that He reveals Himself as a person. This analogy will make the Christian position intelligible; but for Christians it is more than an analogy. It is simply a statement of facts. For, to Christians, the Incarnation is the final sanction of 'anthropomorphism,' revealing the Eternal Word as strictly a Person, in the ordinary sense and with all the attributes which we commonly attach to the name[210].