(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

TYPICAL MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF GOD—(Continued).

SPECIAL TEXT: "I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith." Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Ch. i, 13.

NOTES.

1. Schleiermacher's Conception of God: Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, 1768; died at Berlin, 1834. The primary thought of God for Schleiermacher, is that of Feeling, which apprehends the unity of things in a single and immediate act of consciousness. "He regards the God-consciousness as immediate. The direct organ of the Knowledge of God is feeling." * * * * "The infinite is not outside the world of phenomena. On the contrary the latter exists within the 'Infinite One.' The 'Infinite One' is the completion of the series of conditioned existences, and not something separated from them. 'The Infinite exists in the finite.' The Infinite One 'is a living Spirituality, dynamically conceived, in which thought holds the primacy.'" (Modern Conception of God—Leighton—p. 93).

Schleiermacher is contrasted with Spinoza, by one author, in the following manner (For Spinoza views see note I, Lesson XXIX.):

"Spinoza's Absolute is the static indifference-point of an infinite number of attributes, of which two, thought and extension, are known to us. Moreover, Schleiermacher's most original and important philosophical doctrine, that of the worth of individuality, separated him from Spinoza. Whilst the latter holds that Body and Soul are related only in and through the Divine substance, Schleiermacher regards every human individual as a unique manifestation of the unity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being. Hence, human individuality is with him a sacred and significant manifestation of the Absolute." (Ibid, p. 94).

2. Hegel—Extreme Idealist: Born at Stuttgart, 1770. "Hegel gives to idealism its full systematic development" (Elmendorf). He conceives the Absolute "as wholly immanent in the temporal world of human experience. He labors to subjugate all spheres of existence, every phase of human experience to the dominion of the immanent Divine Reason" (Leighton, "Typical Modern Conceptions of God," Introduction). "A reason-derived Knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy." (Wallace, "The Logic of Hegel," p. 73). "God is for him [Hegel] the self-conditioning, self-centered totality of all that is, i. e., the ultimate unity" (Leighton, "Typical Conceptions of God," p. 35). "Truth, for him, is the agreement of a thought content with itself; i. e., self-consistency" (Ibid, p. 36). "Hegel analyzes the notion of self-consciousness, and puts it forward with courageous anthropomorphism as the ultimate explanation of the universe" (Ibid, p. 42). "The task of philosophy is to know God. * * * * Immediate Knowledge tells us that God is not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, He must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in His relation to them, He is the One Spirit Who pervades reality and thought. Hence, there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of Him and our mediate Knowledge of reality" (Ibid, pp. 46-47). "The three aspects of God are treated respectively under the realm of the Father; the realm of the Son; the realm of the Spirit; God is the absolute eternal Idea Who exists under these aspects" (Ibid, p. 50). "The question has been raised as to whether Hegel's God is not better described as a society than as a single person. Now, Hegel's God is certainly not an individual spirit, existing in single blessedness apart from all the contents of His universe. He therefore is not a single person in the sense in which we are individuals. But He is forever the unity of the society of individual finite spirits. In Him the scattered rays of light which issue from the multitude of finite selves, converge to a single point—to the unstained purity and translucency of an absolute self-consciousness. God, then, is the unity of spirits. The society of finite individuals exists as the object of his thought. Without them his life would be blind. Without Him they would be chaos, and anarchy, and naught."

In brief, "God," in Hegel's philosophy, "is the universal self-consciousness which comprehends within itself all concrete differences, men and things—'God is a spirit in His own concrete differences, of which every finite spirit is one.' Man truly knows God when he sees nature and himself as manifestations of God, and recognizes himself as the highest of these manifestations, capable of grasping in thought the whole of which he is a part.

"It has been doubted whether there is any place in Hegel's system for individuals. It seems to me that the most insistent note in Hegel's writings, is the emphasis on the concrete individual. He never wearies of attacking abstractions like 'being' and 'substance.' The movement of the 'Logic' is towards the category of individuality." (Modern Conceptions of God, pp. 65-66.)

3. Schelling Conceptions: Born in Wurtemburg, 1775; died 1854. The philosopher of "identity"—i. e., he identifies subject and object as one. Schelling is best understood by being placed in contrast with Fichte. I quote from Maurice: "Fichte, combining the enthusiasm of the French revolution with a cordial acceptance of the lessons he had learned in Konigsberg, was, from the beginning of his life to the end of it, asking what was needful to make him a free man—to enable him to do the work which he had to do—to be what he was meant to be. He was sure that he could find the answer to that question. He said boldly that neither he nor any man could find the answer to any other. What was not himself he must leave. It sounded like atheistical doctrine. People said it was atheistical doctrine. But in demanding what was needful to make him true, he found that he needed a true God. His rivals charged him with inconsistency. He had taken into his doctrine that which did not belong to it—he was borrowing from them. That did not signify. He must have what he required. That was his consistency. He was happy, not only in the nobleness of his life, but in the opportunity of his death. He died just as his country became free—before it was again reduced into slavery by monarchs and system-mongers. Schelling was the thinker who most denounced Fichte's methods and Fichte's departures from his own maxims. For he had been led to feel profoundly the worth of that which Fichte ignored—the worth of a method which he [Fichte] thought impossible. He [Schelling] could not start from that which he is, or thinks, or knows, or believes. He could not forget that a whole world is presented to us. He must proceed from that which is given; he must see how that affects the man, meets the demands of man, prevents him from losing himself in himself. He must have a nature-philosophy. That Schelling thinks, will include all things, be the end of all things. Is not that atheism? cry his opponents. Is not Nature taking the place of God? He replies to them vehemently, contemptuously. He does not want to make all the shifting forms of nature into God. There is a Being working through these, working behind them. To know that Being is what man requires. He must have an object for all his search. That Object cannot only be an Object. It must be a subject—thinking as well as thought of. In that confession of a Subject-Object is a depth which a Nature-philosophy might disclose, but which it could not contain. It must, as some of Schelling's critics said—at first exciting only his scorn by the remark—lie beyond the bounds of philosophy; it must be that which philosophy asks for. Perhaps Schelling may have discovered afterwards, or partly discovered, that they were right. If he did, it was by faithfully pursuing his inquiry as far as it would go, by holding fast to the thought that man's first demand is for a revelation of something. If of a Subject-Object, perhaps 'something' does not exactly meet the demand; perhaps the thing will not be able to reveal itself, or to make persons know what is revealed. We are not careful to inquire what the conclusions were at which Schelling ultimately arrived. He often angrily discouraged the attempts of his disciples and of his opponents to explain those conclusions; not unnaturally or unreasonably, it seems to us, if he felt that the explanations were to be fitted into a compact system, and if he knew that what he had done, supposing he had done anything, was to point to that which is, or to Him Who is, above all systems—to the only ground, as well as the only end, of knowledge.

"It is clear, at all events, that we are once more in that ocean of Being, which our guides of the eighteenth century were so anxious that we should avoid. Being and Not Being, Being and Becoming, are, as in the days of Plato, the watchwords which will be rung in our ears; to which we may shut our ears if we please, but which will encounter us when we least expect them." (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy—Maurice—Vol. II, pp. 655-6).

"God" for Schelling, says Elmendorf, "is the absolute indifference of contraries; the unity of being and thought, of subject and object, of ideal and real; this is the potentiality of the actual from which the two opposites differentiate themselves without losing their unity in the absolute." (History of Philosophy, p. 257).

4. Herbert Spencer: God unknown, and unknowable, would be the description of Spencer's conception of the "Absolute Being." "Spencer's primary doctrine is evolution, both in psychical and physical phenomenon"; evolution he describes as a change from 'an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity.'" "This principle is an induction from experience, of which no further account can be given, for the absolute in any form is unthinkable, although there is an ultimate reality in which subject and object coincide; yet our concept of the Absolute is positive though indefinite." (Elmendorf).

Spencer's own declarations of our inability to know the "unknowable," is as follows:

"Every religion, setting out, though it does, with the tacit assertion of a mystery; and so asserts that it is not a mystery passing human comprehension. But an examination of the solutions they severally propound, shows them to be uniformly invalid. The analysis of every possible hypothesis proves, not simply that no hypothesis is sufficient, but that no hypothesis is even thinkable. And thus the mystery which all religions recognize, turns out to be a far more transcendent mystery than any of them suspect—not a relative, but an absolute mystery.

"Here, then, is an ultimate religious truth of the highest possible certainty—a truth in which religions in general are at one with each other, and with a philosophy antagonistic to their special dogmas. And this truth, respecting which there is a latent agreement among all mankind, from the fetish-worshipper to the most stoical critic of human creeds, must be the one we seek. If Religion and Science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts—that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." (First Principles, pp. 47-48).

On this passage from Spencer, Leighton justly remarks:

"This, certainly is a species of knowledge unique in kind. How can we know that we can know absolutely nothing about a conceivable object of knowledge? Mr. Spencer's knowledge of the unknowability of the ultimate reality is, so far as it goes, very positive. And, furthermore he knows that the Unknowable is a Power, "an infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. The certainty that such a power exists, while, on the other hand, its nature transcends intuition, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing. Furthermore, we know the modes in which this inscrutable Power manifests itself. 'The Power manifested throughout the universe distinguished as material, is the same Power, which in ourselves, wells up under the form of consciousness.' (Principles of Sociology, 3, p. 174). "Notwithstanding the antinomies which Mr. Spencer finds to be involved in thinking 'Infinite' and 'Eternal' and notwithstanding that the deepest nescience is the goal of human thought, he confidently asserts that 'amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain (to man) the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.'

"The positiveness of this conclusion, when compared with Mr. Spencer's declaration of the impotence of knowledge when it is confronted with ontological problems, is sufficient of itself to awaken doubts as to the legitimacy of his procedure." (Modern Conceptions of God, pp. 104-105).

5. John Fiske: I select John Fiske to represent what I take to be the most recent conception of God in the Ultra intellectual world; and it is to be noted that he marks a drift of thought (gradually being emphasized by more recent writers), from what I shall call ultra anti-anthropomorphic conceptions toward at least a thin anthropomorphism. His most definite conception of God is found in the following statement:

"We may hold that the world of phenomena is intelligible only when regarded as the multiform manifestation of an Omnipresent Energy that is in some way—albeit in a way quite above our finite comprehension—anthropomorphic or quasi-personal. There is a true objective reasonableness in the universe; its events have an orderly progression, and, so far as those events are brought sufficiently within our ken for us to generalize them exhaustively, their progression is toward a goal that is recognizable by human intelligence; 'the process of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty teleology, of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantiest rudiments' (Cosmic Philosophy, Part 3, ch. 2); it is, indeed, but imperfectly, that we can describe the dramatic tendency in the succession of events, but we can see enough to assure us of the fundamental fact that there is such a tendency; and this tendency is the objective aspect of that which, when regarded on its subjective side, we call Purpose. Such a theory of things is Theism. It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy, which is none other than the living God."

"It is this theistic doctrine which I hold myself, and which in the present essay I have sought to exhibit as the legitimate outcome of modern scientific thought." * * * * * * "As to the conception of Deity, in the shape impressed upon it by our modern knowledge, I believe I have now said enough to show that it is no empty formula or metaphysical abstraction which we would seek to substitute for the living God. The infinite and eternal Power that is manifested in every pulsation of the universe is none other than the living God. We may exhaust the resources of metaphysics in debating how far his nature may fitly be expressed in terms applicable to the psychical nature of Man; such vain attempts will only serve to show how we are dealing with a theme that must ever transcend our finite powers of conception. But of some things we may feel sure. Humanity is not a mere local incident in an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. The events of the universe are not the work of chance, neither are they the outcome of blind necessity. Practically there is a purpose in the world whereof it is our highest duty to learn the lesson, however well or ill we may fare in rendering a scientific account of it. When from the dawn of life we see all things working together toward the evolution of the highest spiritual attributes of Man, we know, however the words may stumble in which we try to say it, that God is in the deepest sense a moral Being. The everlasting source of phenomena is none other than the infinite Power that makes for righteousness. Thou canst not by searching find him out; yet put thy trust in Him, and against thee the gates of hell shall not prevail; for there is neither wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Eternal." ("Studies in Religion," pp. 93-94, 209).