As ages roll on, God’s attributes—or rather, we should say, the attributes given Him by man—are continually altering. All that the early gods demanded was fear and worship. Even the Jehovah of the Jews asked at first little else than this. Anthropomorphic conceptions of God are now admitted by the cultured to be a thing of the past. Do they not, however, still survive when human emotions, such as love and anger, happiness and sorrow, are attributed to the Deity? We acknowledge God to be infinite, and, consequently, incomprehensible by finite minds; yet we imagine and attempt to argue that He possesses the same qualities—those we most admire—as ourselves! “How can we believe in a personal God?” asks the Rationalist. “A person must have limitations, or he ceases to be a person.” However, we must not forget that in philosophy and theology the word “person” simply implies “a nature endowed with consciousness,” and does not involve limits. Demurring to this definition, there still remains another difficulty. In all our experience and knowledge, emotions and intelligence are connected with nerve structures; how, then, can we attribute these qualities to a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure? I know of no answer that could be called satisfactory from a Theistic standpoint.
In the previous section we considered the doctrine of final causes. This doctrine, as Spinoza points out,[17] “does away with the perfection of God; for, if God acts for an object, He necessarily desires something which He lacks.” The Theist goes a step further than the mere teleologist, and insists on a benevolent purpose throughout nature. Is he, then, oblivious to Spinoza’s objection? No, he is not; and therefore it is that he struggles to save his personal God by an infinite extension of the limits of His personality. In fine, Theism, in the hands of its modern advocates, and in spite of the seeming orthodoxy of the phrase, “Divine Immanence,” is often nothing less than another form of Pantheism.
DIVINE IMMANENCE IN NATURE.
The Church’s great philosopher to-day, the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, D.D., argues[18] that “Divine Immanence in Nature” excludes Pantheism—the belief that God is merely immanent in nature—as well as Deism and Monism, while it harmonises with Trinitarianism. We are to “conceive of God as at once transcending and immanent in nature.”[19] He admits that “this relationship may be incomprehensible,”[20] but states that “we know it in our own case to be a fact.”[21] Afterwards he puts the question, “Is the universe His body or His work?”[22] and proceeds to explain that the Trinitarian conception of God furnishes, or helps to furnish, an answer to this question. “It is,” he maintains, “intellectually the most satisfactory.”[23] It apparently is so to certain subtle and biassed intellects; but the question is, Is it so, will it ever be so, to the average mortal?
A FACT IN HISTORY.
In another place,[24] when speaking again of the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: “Men forget that it supports and is supported by the whole weight of a fact in history, with which nothing else in the wide world can even for a moment be compared. That fact is the age-long empire of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men.” This, then, is the final argument in support of the Christian dogmas, including this the most incomprehensible of them all. Why should not the Buddhist claim the same authority for the dogmas of his faith? The evidential value is precisely the same. Turn to any well-known work bearing on this phase of the question. Read, we will say, Edwin Arnold’s poem, The Light of Asia; or, better still, read Mr. Fielding’s books, The Soul of a People and The Hearts of Men, and hear the words of one who has lived for years among Buddhists and studied their hearts.
That an ideal should reign over the hearts of men is no new thing; much less is this a cause for marvel when “One has come, claiming to be God made manifest—manifest in order to attract our love.”[25] Christian apologists urge that He has not only attracted the hearts of men in the past, but still retains His hold upon their affections, and that therein lies an essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity, say they, in this respect at least, stands pre-eminently alone. Is not Buddhism, then, one of the great living religions of the present day? Has it not existed during twenty-four centuries? Does it not at the present time surpass, in the number of its followers and the area of its prevalence, any other form of creed? Is not Gautama Buddha worthy of men’s love, if we are to credit the best authenticated records of his life? “Discordant in frequent particulars,” writes[26] Sir Edwin Arnold, “and sorely overlaid by corruptions, inventions, and misconceptions, the Buddhistical books yet agree in the one point of recording nothing—no single act or word—which mars the perfect purity and tenderness of this Indian teacher, who united the truest princely qualities with the intellect of a sage and the passionate devotion of a martyr.” Loving disciples, living in an age of ignorance and superstition, piously ascribed to him divine powers, and, disobeying his mandate, gave him fervent worship. That worship, that adoration, still persists. So likewise the adoration of Jesus Christ still persists. This is certainly a fact in history; but can we safely build upon it the metaphysical theories of the Christian Faith?
THE PAST AND PRESENT POSITION OF THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT.
In my comments upon Dr. Illingworth’s views regarding “Divine Immanence” I fear I have digressed somewhat from the subject at present under consideration—the Theistic argument from a Beneficent Intelligence. “The ethical argument held a very subordinate place in the estimation of writers on natural theology until Kant rested on it almost the whole weight of Theism. It has ever since been prominent, and has been the argument most relied upon to produce practical conviction.”[27] What was once the weakest argument has now become the strongest. Why? Not, I take it, because anything has occurred to make the weaker any stronger, but because what was thought to be the strongest is now found to be weaker than the weakest! How can the ethical argument be maintained in face of objections which continue to become ever graver as our knowledge increases? Theists contend[28] that there must be a future life if only because the glaring wrongs of this world have to be righted. What is this but a naïve admission that the proofs of the Deity’s benevolence are sadly wanting?