The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge - Fiske John

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to show the inadequacy of the Paley argument from design, and to point out the insuperable difficulties in which we are entangled by the conception of a Personal God as it is held by the great majority of modern theologians who have derived it from Plato and Augustine. In the succeeding chapters, however, it is expressly argued that the total elimination of anthropomorphism from the idea of God is impossible. There are some who, recognizing that the ideas of Personality and Infinity are unthinkable in combination, seek to escape the difficulty by speaking of God as the "Infinite Power;" that is, instead of a symbol derived from our notion of human consciousness, they employ a symbol derived from our notion of force in general. For many philosophic purposes the device is eminently useful; but it should not be forgotten that, while the form of our experience of Personality does not allow us to conceive it as infinite, it is equally true that the form of our experience of Force does not allow us to conceive it as infinite, since we know force only as antagonized by other force. Since, moreover, our notion of force is purely a generalization from our subjective sensations of effort overcoming resistance, there is scarcely less anthropomorphism lurking in the phrase "Infinite Power" than in the phrase "Infinite Person." Now in "Cosmic Philosophy" I argue that the presence of God is the one all-pervading fact of life, from which there is no escape; that while in the deepest sense the nature of Deity is unknowable by finite Man, nevertheless the exigencies of our thinking oblige us to symbolize that nature in some form that has a real meaning for us; and that we cannot symbolize that nature as in any wise physical, but are bound to symbolize it as in some way psychical. I do not here repeat the arguments, but simply state the conclusions. The final conclusion (vol. ii. p. 449) is that we must not say that "God is Force," since such a phrase inevitably calls up those pantheistic notions of blind necessity, which it is my express desire to avoid; but, always bearing in mind the symbolic character of the words, we may say that "God is Spirit." How my belief in the personality of God could be more strongly expressed without entirely deserting the language of modern philosophy and taking refuge in pure mythology, I am unable to see.

      There are two points in the present essay which I hope will serve to define more completely the kind of theism which I have tried to present as compatible with the doctrine of evolution. One is the historic contrast between anthropomorphic and cosmic theism regarded in their modes of genesis, and especially as exemplified within the Christian church in the very different methods and results of Augustine on the one hand and Athanasius on the other. The view which I have ventured to designate as "cosmic theism" is no invention of mine; in its most essential features it has been entertained by some of the profoundest thinkers of Christendom in ancient and modern times, from Clement of Alexandria to Lessing and Goethe and Schleiermacher. The other point is the teleological inference drawn from the argument of my first Concord address on "The Destiny of Man, viewed in the Light of his Origin."

      When that address was published, a year ago, I was surprised to find it quite commonly regarded as indicating some radical change of attitude on my part, – a "conversion," perhaps, from one set of opinions to another. Inasmuch as the argument in the "Destiny of Man" was based in every one of its parts upon arguments already published in "Cosmic Philosophy" (1874), and in the "Unseen World" (1876), I naturally could not understand why the later book should impress people so differently from the earlier ones. It presently appeared, however, that none of my friends who had studied the earlier books had detected any such change of attitude; it was only people who knew little or nothing about me, or else the newspapers. Whence the inference seemed obvious that many readers of the "Destiny of Man" must have contrasted it, not with my earlier books which they had not read, but with some vague and distorted notion about my views which had grown up (Heaven knows how or why!) through the medium of "the press;" and thus there might have been produced the impression that those views had undergone a radical change.

      It would be little to my credit, however, had my views of the doctrine of evolution and its implications undergone no development or enlargement since the publication of "Cosmic Philosophy." To carry such a subject about in one's mind for ten years, without having any new thoughts about it, would hardly be a proof of fitness for philosophizing. I have for some time been aware of a shortcoming in the earlier work, which it is the purpose of these two Concord addresses in some measure to remedy. That shortcoming was an imperfect appreciation of the goal toward which the process of evolution is tending, and a consequent failure to state adequately how the doctrine of evolution must affect our estimate of Man's place in Nature. Nothing of fundamental importance in "Cosmic Philosophy" needed changing, but a new chapter needed to be written, in order to show how the doctrine of evolution, by exhibiting the development of the highest spiritual human qualities as the goal toward which God's creative work has from the outset been tending, replaces Man in his old position of headship in the universe, even as in the days of Dante and Aquinas. That which the pre-Copernican astronomy naively thought to do by placing the home of Man in the centre of the physical universe, the Darwinian biology profoundly accomplishes by exhibiting Man as the terminal fact in that stupendous process of evolution whereby things have come to be what they are. In the deepest sense it is as true as it ever was held to be, that the world was made for Man, and that the bringing forth in him of those qualities which we call highest and holiest is the final cause of creation. The arguments upon which this conclusion rests, as they are set forth in the "Destiny of Man" and epitomized in the concluding section of the present essay, may all be found in "Cosmic Philosophy;" but I failed to sum them up there and indicate the conclusion, almost within reach, which I had not quite clearly seized. When, after long hovering in the background of consciousness, it suddenly flashed upon me two years ago, it came with such vividness as to seem like a revelation.

      This conclusion as to the implications of the doctrine of evolution concerning Man's place in Nature supplies the element wanting in the theistic theory set forth in "Cosmic Philosophy," – the teleological element. It is profoundly true that a theory of things may seem theistic or atheistic in virtue of what it says of Man, no less than in virtue of what it says of God. The craving for a final cause is so deeply rooted in human nature that no doctrine of theism which fails to satisfy it can seem other than lame and ineffective. In writing "Cosmic Philosophy" I fully realized this when, in the midst of the argument against Paley's form of theism, I said that "the process of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantiest rudiments." Nevertheless, while the whole momentum of my thought carried me to the conviction that it must be so, I was not yet able to indicate how it is so, and I accordingly left the subject with this brief and inadequate hint. Could the point have been worked out then and there, I think it would have left no doubt in the minds of "Physicus" and Mr. Pollock as to the true character of Cosmic Theism.

      But hold, cries the scientific inquirer, what in the world are you doing? Are we again to resuscitate the phantom Teleology, which we had supposed at last safely buried between cross-roads and pinned down with a stake? Was not Bacon right in characterizing "final causes" as vestal virgins, so barren has their study proved? And has not Huxley, with yet keener sarcasm, designated them the hetairæ of philosophy, so often have they led men astray? Very true. I do not wish to take back a single word of all that I have said in my chapter on "Anthropomorphic Theism" in condemnation of the teleological method and the peculiar theistic doctrines upon which it rests. As a means of investigation it is absolutely worthless. Nay, it is worse than worthless; it is treacherous, it is debauching to the intellect. But that is no reason why, when a distinct dramatic tendency in the events of the universe appears as the result of purely scientific investigation, we should refuse to recognize it. It is the object of the "Destiny of Man" to prove that there is such a dramatic tendency; and while such a tendency cannot be regarded as indicative of purpose in the limited anthropomorphic sense, it is still, as I said before, the objective aspect of that which, when regarded on its subjective side, we call Purpose. There is a reasonableness in the universe such as to indicate that the Infinite Power of which it is the multiform manifestation is psychical, though it is impossible to ascribe to Him any of the limited psychical attributes which we know, or to argue from the ways of Man to the ways of God. For, as St. Paul reminds us, "who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?"

      It is in this sense that I accept Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable. How far my interpretation agrees with his own I do not undertake to say. On such an abstruse matter it is best that one should simply speak for one's self. But in his recent essay

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