Читать книгу Systematic Theology (Vol. 1-3) - Augustus Hopkins Strong - Страница 41

Table of Contents

Our proof that the idea of God's existence is a rational intuition will not be complete, until we show that attempts to account in other ways for the origin of the idea are insufficient, and require as their presupposition the very intuition which they would supplant or reduce to a secondary place. We claim that it cannot be derived from any other source than an original cognitive power of the mind.

1. Not from external revelation—whether communicated (a) through the Scriptures, or (b)through tradition; for, unless man had from another source a previous knowledge of the existence of a God from whom such a revelation might come, the revelation itself could have no authority for him.

(a) See Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God, 10; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:117; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“A revelation takes for granted that he to whom it is made has some knowledge of God, though it may enlarge and purify that knowledge.” We cannot prove God from the authority of the Scriptures, and then also prove the Scriptures from the authority of God. The very idea of Scripture as a revelation presupposes belief in a God who can make it. Newman Smyth, in New Englander, 1878:355—We cannot derive from a sun-dial our knowledge of the existence of a sun. The sun-dial presupposes the sun, and cannot be understood without previous knowledge of the sun. Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:103—“The voice of the divine ego does not first come to the consciousness of the individual ego from without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already this inner one; there must echo out from within man something kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized and accepted as divine.”

Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 21, 22—“If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed ‘an original atheism of consciousness.’ Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man—it must be implanted from without.” Schurman, Belief in God, 78—“A primitive revelation of God could only mean that God had endowed man with the capacity of apprehending his divine original. This capacity, like every other, is innate, and like every other, it realizes itself only in the presence of appropriate conditions.”Clarke, Christian Theology, 112—“Revelation cannot demonstrate God's existence, for it must assume it; but it will manifest his existence and character to men, and will serve them as the chief source of certainty concerning him, for it will teach them what they could not know by other means.”

(b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for “tradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated” (Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies—that very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally from reasoning—an explanation which we consider further on. On the traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86–96; Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos., 312–322.

Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of man's belief in God: “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor”; Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible? What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships, merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it. There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact that belief in God's existence gets a wider hold upon the race with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear; indeed, “the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10).

2. Not from experience—whether this mean (a) the sense-perception and reflection of the individual (Locke), (b) the accumulated results of the sensations and associations of past generations of the race (Herbert Spencer), or (c) the actual contact of our sensitive nature with God, the supersensible reality, through the religious feeling (Newman Smyth).

The first form of this theory is inconsistent with the fact that the idea of God is not the idea of a sensible or material object, nor a combination of such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are direct opposites of the material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our idea of the former.

With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke's “tabula rasa” theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas for their cause. To his statement: “Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz replied: “Nisi intellectus ipse.”Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source of any other knowledge. The German Gottesbewusstsein = not “consciousness of God,” but “knowledge of God”; Bewusstsein here = not a “conknowing,”but a “beknowing”; see Porter, Human Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.

Fraser, Locke, 143–147—Sensations are the bricks, and association the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 47—“Develope language by allowing sounds to associate and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of sensation. … 52—One who does not know how to read would look in vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to help his failure by using strong spectacles.”Yet even if the idea of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 132—“There is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason; between those who attribute the development of the germ to mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that everything in nature is immediately intended rather than predetermined.” All these may be methods of the immanent God.

The second form of the theory is open to the objection that the very first experience of the first man, equally with man's latest experience, presupposes this intuition, as well as the other intuitions, and therefore cannot be the cause of it. Moreover, even though this theory of its origin were correct, it would still be impossible to think of the object of the intuition as not existing, and the intuition would still represent to us the highest measure of certitude at present attainable by man. If the evolution of ideas is toward truth instead of falsehood, it is the part of wisdom to act upon the hypothesis that our primitive belief is veracious.

Martineau, Study, 2:26—“Nature is as worthy of trust in her processes, as in her gifts.” Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163, 164—“Are we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all truth must be declared impossible.” See also Harris, Philos. Basis Theism, 137–142.

Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death, referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: “Can we trust to the convictions of a monkey's mind?” We may reply: “Can we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?” Bowne, Ethics, 3—“The genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in astrology. … 11—Even if man came from the ape, we need not tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any psychological theory. … 159—We must not appeal to savages and babies to find what is natural to the human mind. … In the case of anything that is under the law of development we can find its true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by studying the finished outcome.” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution, 13—“If the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere chance and unreason?” Even though man came from the ape, there is no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: “A man 's a man for a' that.”

We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes, Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth, Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals from the artist's sense of beauty to the child's. Higher mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was first felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things. … A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245—“Evolution simply gave man such height that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth which had previously been below the horizon. This is very different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted products of the experiences of utility. … The germ of the idea of God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon as he became man—the brute's gaining it turned him into man. Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.” Sir Charles Lyell: “The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great truth.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine: “Securus judicat orbis terrarum,”and tells us that the intellect is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103—“To Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural history, and force is supreme. To Christianity nature is only the beginning, and man the consummation. Which gives the higher revelation of the life of the tree—the seed, or the fruit?”

The third form of the theory seems to make God a sensuous object, to reverse the proper order of knowing and feeling, to ignore the fact that in all feeling there is at least some knowledge of an object, and to forget that the validity of this very feeling can be maintained only by previously assuming the existence of a rational Deity.

Newman Smyth tells us that feeling comes first; the idea is secondary. Intuitive ideas are not denied, but they are declared to be direct reflections, in thought, of the feelings. They are the mind's immediate perception of what it feels to exist. Direct knowledge of God by intuition is considered to be idealistic, reaching God by inference is regarded as rationalistic, in its tendency. See Smyth, The Religious Feeling; reviewed by Harris, in New Englander, Jan., 1878: reply by Smyth, in New Englander, May, 1878.

We grant that, even in the case of unregenerate men, great peril, great joy, great sin often turn the rational intuition of God into a presentative intuition. The presentative intuition, however, cannot be affirmed to be common to all men. It does not furnish the foundation or explanation of a universal capacity for religion. Without the rational intuition, the presentative would not be possible, since it is only the rational that enables man to receive and to interpret the presentative. The very trust that we put in feeling presupposes an intuitive belief in a true and good God. Tennyson said in 1869: “Yes, it is true that there are moments when the flesh is nothing to me; when I know and feel the flesh to be the vision; God and the spiritual is the real; it belongs to me more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence—I could believe you; but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal Reality, and that the spiritual is not the real and true part of me.”

3. Not from reasoning—because

(a) The actual rise of this knowledge in the great majority of minds is not the result of any conscious process of reasoning. On the other hand, upon occurrence of the proper conditions, it flashes upon the soul with the quickness and force of an immediate revelation.

(b) The strength of men's faith in God's existence is not proportioned to the strength of the reasoning faculty. On the other hand, men of greatest logical power are often inveterate sceptics, while men of unwavering faith are found among those who cannot even understand the arguments for God's existence.

(c) There is more in this knowledge than reasoning could ever have furnished. Men do not limit their belief in God to the just conclusions of argument. The arguments for the divine existence, valuable as they are for purposes to be shown hereafter, are not sufficient by themselves to warrant our conviction that there exists an infinite and absolute Being. It will appear upon examination that the a priori argument is capable of proving only an abstract and ideal proposition, but can never conduct us to the existence of a real Being. It will appear that the a posteriori arguments, from merely finite existence, can never demonstrate the existence of the infinite. In the words of Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions, 23)—“A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically absurd, as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is not distributed in the premises”—in short, from finite premises we cannot draw an infinite conclusion.

Whately, Logic, 290–292; Jevons, Lessons in Logic, 81; Thompson, Outline Laws of Thought, sections 82–92; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 60–69, and Moral Philosophy, 238; Turnbull, in Bap. Quarterly, July, 1872:271; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 239; Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 21. Sir Wm. Hamilton: “Departing from the particular, we admit that we cannot, in our highest generalizations, rise above the finite.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The human mind turns out larger grists than are ever put in at the hopper.”There is more in the idea of God than could have come out so small a knot-hole as human reasoning. A single word, a chance remark, or an attitude of prayer, suggests the idea to a child. Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that there was a God, but that she had not known his name. Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 119—“It is a foolish assumption that nothing can be certainly known unless it be reached as the result of a conscious syllogistic process, or that the more complicated and subtle this process is, the more sure is the conclusion. Inferential knowledge is always dependent upon the superior certainty of immediate knowledge.”George M. Duncan, in Memorial of Noah Porter, 246—“All deduction rests either on the previous process of induction, or on the intuitions of time and space which involve the Infinite and Absolute.”

(d) Neither do men arrive at the knowledge of God's existence by inference; for inference is condensed syllogism, and, as a form of reasoning, is equally open to the objection just mentioned. We have seen, moreover, that all logical processes are based upon the assumption of God's existence. Evidently that which is presupposed in all reasoning cannot itself be proved by reasoning.

By inference, we of course mean mediate inference, for in immediate inference (e.g., “All good rulers are just; therefore no unjust rulers are good”) there is no reasoning, and no progress in thought. Mediate inference is reasoning—is condensed syllogism; and what is so condensed may be expanded into regular logical form. Deductive inference: “A negro is a fellow-creature; therefore he who strikes a negro strikes a fellow-creature.”Inductive inference: “The first finger is before the second; therefore it is before the third.” On inference, see Martineau, Essays, 1:105–108; Porter, Human Intellect, 444–448; Jevons, Principles of Science, 1:14, 136–139, 168, 262.

Flint, in his Theism, 77, and Herbert, in his Mod. Realism Examined, would reach the knowledge of God's existence by inference. The latter says God is not demonstrable, but his existence is inferred, like the existence of our fellow men. But we reply that in this last case we infer only the finite from the finite, while the difficulty in the case of God is in inferring the infinite from the finite. This very process of reasoning, moreover, presupposes the existence of God as the absolute Reason, in the way already indicated.

Substantially the same error is committed by H. B. Smith, Introd. to Chr. Theol., 84–133, and by Diman, Theistic Argument, 316, 364, both of whom grant an intuitive element, but use it only to eke out the insufficiency of reasoning. They consider that the intuition gives us only an abstract idea, which contains in itself no voucher for the existence of an actual being corresponding to the idea, and that we reach real being only by inference from the facts of our own spiritual natures and of the outward world. But we reply, in the words of McCosh, that “the intuitions are primarily directed to individual objects.” We know, not the infinite in the abstract, but infinite space and time, and the infinite God. See McCosh, Intuitions, 26, 199, who, however, holds the view here combated.

Schurman, Belief in God, 43—“I am unable to assign to our belief in God a higher certainty than that possessed by the working hypotheses of science. … 57—The nearest approach made by science to our hypothesis of the existence of God lies in the assertion of the universality of law … based on the conviction of the unity and systematic connection of all reality. … 64—This unity can be found only in self-conscious spirit.” The fault of this reasoning is that it gives us nothing necessary or absolute. Instances of working hypotheses are the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the law of gravitation, the atomic theory in chemistry, the principle of evolution. No one of these is logically independent or prior. Each of them is provisional, and each may be superseded by new discovery. Not so with the idea of God. This idea is presupposed by all the others, as the condition of every mental process and the guarantee of its validity.