(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

MEDIAEVAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.

SPECIAL TEXT: "And without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness." I. Tim. iii, 16.

NOTES.

1. The Mediaeval Period: The Patristic Period, according to our announced grouping of the Christian Fathers, extended to 750 A. D. and included in the enumeration of the fathers John of Damascus. The Mediaeval Period will extend from the above date to the middle of the sixteenth century, which brings us to the establishment of Protestantism, and the commencement, theologically, of the modern world. This gives us a period of eight hundred years. "Of this period," says Shedd, "not more than four centuries witnessed any great activity of the theological mind."

The "Orthodox Christian" doctrine of God for this period, and for matter of that, for all subsequent periods, was fixed by the Nicene Creed and the creed of St. Athanasius, quoted in Lesson 26. The effort of the Christian scholars of the Mediaeval Period was to maintain, first, the truthfulness of these creeds against skepticism and doubts within the Church itself; and, second, to reconcile the creeds with reason, and develop patristic philosophy into something like system (History of Philosophy—Elmendorf—p. 102). However, "As there is never a proper end to reasoning which proceeds on a false foundation," to quote Cicero, the efforts of the schoolmen were not very successful, and resulted in multiplying systems of philosophy, rather than in bringing the patristic doctrine into harmony with reason. The systems of thought developed by these efforts may be classed under three heads: Realism, Nominalism, and Mysticism. A brief definition of each will be necessary.

2. Definitions—"Realism:" Realism divides into two classes, extreme and moderate. (1) "Extreme realism taught that universals were substances or things, existing independently of and separate from particulars; this was the essence of Plato's ideas." (Cent. Dict.) The thinking process of the realist is admirably depicted in Note 5, Lesson xxvi, where St. Augustine describes his rise from the conception of the "changeable" to the "Unchangeable," and "thus with the flash of one trembling glance," arrived at the conception of "that which is"—to the real—to the universal—to the apprehension of "God."

"Moderate Realism also taught that universals were substances, but only as dependent upon and inseparable from individuals, in which each inhered; that is, each universal inhered in each of the particulars ranged under it. This was the theory of Aristotle, who held that the individual thing was the first essence, while universals were only second essences, real in a less complete sense than first essences. He thus reversed the Platonic doctrine, which attributed the fullest reality to universals only, and a participative reality to individuals." (Cent. Dict.)

Elmendorf represents moderate realism as recognizing that "the universal has objective reality, as to its contents, in individuals"—(i. e., the universal is expressed through individuals).

Nominalism: Nominalism also divides into two classes, extreme and moderate. "Extreme nominalism taught that universals had no substantive or objective existence at all, but were merely empty names or words. Moderate nominalism or 'conceptualism' taught that universals have no substantive existence at all, but yet are more than mere names signifying nothing; and that they exist really, though only subjectively, as concepts in the mind, of which names are the vocal symbols." (Cent. Dict.).

Mysticism: "Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly susceptible of exact definition. It appears in connection with the endeavor of the human mind to grasp the divine essence or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communication with the Highest. More specifically, a form of religious belief which is founded upon mysticism, spiritual experience, not discriminated or tested and systematized in thought. 'Mysticism and rationalism' represent opposite poles of theology, rationalism regarding the reason as the highest faculty of man and the sole arbiter in all matters of religious doctrine; mysticism, on the other hand, declaring that spiritual truth cannot be apprehended by the logical faculty, nor adequately expressed in terms of the understanding." (Cent. Dict.). Mysticism may also be regarded as the result of "a despair of reason, a refuge in higher intuitions." (Elmendorf.) These definitions may be regarded as difficult, but I know of no way by which the ideas considered can be more simply explained. The definitions should be discussed until mastered. Perhaps they will grow in clearness after considering the rest of the notes of this lesson.

3. Explanatory: Limiting our inquiry concerning the philosophy of this mediaeval period to the doctrine of God, and selecting an expression of that doctrine from an illustrious representative of each school of thought, may be of assistance in forming a clearer understanding of the definitions given in previous notes, and likewise represent the leading conceptions of God that obtained in the period under consideration.

4. John Scotus Erigena: Extreme realist, and something of a Mystic; "Man finds not God, but God finds himself in man," (Elmendorf) is the keynote of this philosopher's teaching. Erigena was born in Ireland, 800 A. D. Made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Plato and Aristotle A. D. 825; "and indulged the hope of uniting philosophy and religion in the manner proposed by the ecclesiastics who were studying in Spain."

"From Eastern sources, John Erigena had learned the doctrines of the eternity of matter, and even of the creation, with which, indeed, he confounded the Deity Himself. He was therefore a Pantheist, accepting the Oriental ideas of emanation and absorption, not only as respects the soul of man, but likewise all material things. In his work 'On the Nature of things,' his doctrine is, 'That, as all things were originally contained in God, and proceeded from Him into the different classes by which they are now distinguished, so shall they finally return to Him, and be absorbed in the source from which they came; in other words, that as, before the world was created, there was no being but God, and the causes of all things were in Him, so after the end of the world, there will be no being but God, and the causes of all things in Him. This final resolution he denominated deification, or theosis. He even questioned the eternity of hell, saying, with the emphasis of a Saracen, 'There is nothing eternal but God.' It was impossible under such circumstances, that he should not fall under the rebuke of the Church." (Draper's "Intellectual Development," Vol II, p. 9.)

5. Roscelin of Compiegne: Extreme Nominalist. Sometimes credited with being the originator of the system; but he was "not the originator of the system," says Elmendorf, "but its clearest exponent and sharpest defender in the eleventh century." The same authority says that he regarded "universals" as "merely universal names." A title "for the totality of things. This be applied to the doctrine of the Trinity in the form of tritheism. There are three divine essences or substances, like one another; for only individuals have a real existence"—(Hist. of Philosophy—Elmendorf—pp. 105-6.) "Roscellinus taught that whatever exists as a real thing or substance, exists as one self-identical whole, and is not susceptible of division into parts. This was the part of his teaching which created so much scandal when applied to the doctrine of the Trinity. Roscellinus maintained that it is merely a habit of speech which prevents our speaking of the three persons as three substances, or three Gods. If it were otherwise, and the three persons were really one substance or thing, we should be forced to admit that the Father and the Holy Spirit became incarnate along with the Son. Roscellinus seems to have put forward this doctrine in perfect good faith, and to have claimed for it at first the authority of Lanfranc and Anselm. In 1092, however, a council convoked by the Archbishop of Rheims, condemned his interpretation, and Roscellinus, who was in danger of being lynched by the orthodox populace, recanted his error. As his enforced penitence did not prove lasting, his opinions were condemned by a second council (1094), and he himself fled to England. Forced by a fresh persecution to return to France at a later date, he taught at Tours and Loc-menach in Brittany (where he had Abelard as a pupil), and resided latterly as canon at Besancon." (Ency. Brit.).

6. St. Anselm, Realist: Born at or near Aosta, Italy, 1033, A. D.; died at Canterbury, 1109. Credited with being the founder of scholastic theology. He held that faith is not the pre-requisite, and the regulator of knowledge, but leads to it. Also that "God can be known through reason, attempts ontological, a priori proof, from the concept of the objective existence. That than which a greater cannot be conceived cannot exist in intellect alone; for then a greater can be conceived." His doctrine is set forth in detail by Shedd: "The human mind possesses the idea of the most perfect Being conceivable. But such a being is necessarily existent; because a being whose existence is contingent, who may or may not exist, is not the most perfect that we can conceive of. But a necessarily existent Being is one that cannot be conceived of as non-existent, and therefore is an actually existent Being. Necessary existence implies actual existence. In conceiving, therefore, of a being who is more perfect than all others, the mind inevitably conceives of a real, and not an imaginary, being; in the same manner as in conceiving of a figure having three sides, it inevitably conceives of a figure having three angles." (History of Christian Doctrine—Shedd—Vol. I, pp. 231-2.)

This argument of Anselm's was attacked by a Catholic Monk of the name of Gaunilo, whose main point is that the existence of an idea of a thing does not prove the existence of the thing itself. Shedd, in order to exhibit the strength of Anselm's argument, suggests throwing it into dialogue form, thus:

Anselm: "I have the idea of the most perfect being conceivable."

Guanilo: "True; but it is a mere idea, and there is no being corresponding to it."

Anselm: "But if there is no being answering to my idea, then my idea of the most perfect being conceivable is that of an imaginary being; but an imaginary being is not the most perfect being that I can conceive of. The being who corresponds to my idea must be a real being. If, therefore, you grant me my postulate, namely, that I have the idea of the most perfect being conceivable, you concede the existence of an actual being correspondent to it." (History of Christian Doctrine—Shedd—Vol. I, p. 237.)

One feels, however, that this is but playing with and upon words, and is much of kith and kin with that other abstraction, that "the thought of God makes God." Maurice remarks upon this argument of Anselm's for the divine existence, as follows: "In the present day, when the arguments for the Divine existence from the constitution of the visible world have displaced all others in the minds of theological advocates, and when these are in their turn exposed to the severest criticism from philosophers, such a subtlety as this of Anselm's would be dismissed by both parties with indifference or scorn. Without participating in either feeling, or pre-judging the question whether the argument is tenable in itself, we may express our opinion, that in a time of clubs and newspapers, it would be a serious moral offense to introduce into discussion, upon a subject of the greatest interest to all men, that which must appear to nine out of ten a play upon words, or a conjurer's trick." (History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Vol. I, 524.)

7. Abelard, Peter: A moderate nominalist, and usually regarded as the founder of "Conceptualism." Born in Brittany, 1079. Moderate nominalist. "Inspired by Aristotle, he taught * * * * that nothing exists apart from the individual, and in it the individual only." (Elmendorf History of Philosophy, p. 108.) Abelard also held that there is "no believing antecedent to scientific understanding, and consequently that the degree of posterior faith depends upon the degree of anterior science." "Knowledge is prior to faith," was his dictum. (See Shedd, Vol. I, pp. 163, 186 et seq.)

8. St. Thomas Aquinas: Scholastic par-excellence. Born at Acquino, in the kingdom of Naples, 1225. His great effort was to reconcile faith and reason. Called the "Aristotle of the middle ages." His doctrine respecting God, condensed by Elmendorf, is:

"In God is no composition of matter or form, nor any other. He is pure actuality; for potentiality, in any sense, would imply an actuating cause.

"In Him essence and being are one.

"In Him is no imperfection, because no potentiality; all perfections which earthly things possess, being from Him, are in Him, one and indivisible.

"From God as Absolute Intelligence, follows, necessarily, the concept of God as Absolute Will. He wills what is not Himself freely, because it is not necessary to His perfection and beatitude. From this follows His Omnipotence.

"His Providence is the ordering of all things, both universal and singular, with reference to an end, for it extends as far as His knowledge and causality.

"The casual is with respect to a particular cause, not to the universal.

"Ills, corruptions, defects, are permitted in particular things, contributing to the greater good of the whole." (History of Philosophy—Elmendorf—p. 121.)

"The system of philosophical theology set forth in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, is of supreme importance in Ecclesiastical History, not only as intellectually perhaps the most perfect work of the Scholastic age, but because it has been adopted as the authoritative standard of doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church. Such pre-eminence is reported to have been assigned to Thomas by the saying of his great master, Albert, that he had "put an end to all labor even unto the world's end." * * *

"In the great controversy of the schools, Aquinas cannot be ranked strictly with either the Realists or the Nominalists; his position has been described as an Aristotelian Realist. Like the orthodox in general he ranged himself with the modern section of the Realists, who while holding that Universals—namely, genera and species—are more than mere mental abstractions, and have a real existence, yet limited them to an existence in the individual, and refused to attribute to them any antecedent or independent existence." * * * *

"In this work of buttressing authority by philosophy, and vindicating orthodoxy by the light of nature, as the way was led by Albert, so his greater pupil carried it on to perfection; and the consequence has been that the stately edifice of Systematic Theology, reared in the Church of the West by the labors of the Schools, repose on the foundation laid by the great luminary of Pagan Greece." (Smith's Students' Ecclesiastical History, Vol. II, pp. 512-515.)

Eckhart, Mystic: Born, it is thought, at Strasburg, 1250 A. D. Taught and preached through Germany. Follows to some extent Erigena, tending, unconsciously, to emanistic pantheism. "The inner ground of man's soul is Divine, a 'spark' of Deity; knowledge is a real union of subject and object. The soul's highest power is an immediate intuition of the 'Godhead' transcending the determinate.

"The Absolute is impersonal, concealed even from thought; of the 'Godhead' no predicates may be used; it is hidden in eternal darkness. In the act of self-knowledge, God is developed as the Trinity, the form of 'Godhead' which beholds itself with love;—the subject is the Father, the object is the Son, the love is the Holy Spirit. * * * *

"God is the essence of all essences, which are ever in Him; in sending forth His Son, He sends forth all things (ideal world). In space and time, natura naturata, are the Three Persons of the Trinity, eternal as the world is, but in natura non naturata is only the 'Godhead.'

"Apart from God, the world is nonentity; God is in all things, and is all things, for creatures have no essence except God. Yet He is not nature, but above it, for the world of space and time is created out of nothing. The motive of God's goodness, which necessarily extends itself; and, by the same necessity, creation is continuous, eternal. Different from this, as the realizing of the ideal by the artist, is the creation out of nothing, in time." (History of Philosophy—Elmendorf—pp. 136-137.)

(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.

SPECIAL TEXT: "Gird up now thy loins like a man * * * and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereon are the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone thereof?" Job xxxviii.

NOTES.

1. The Period: The Modern period extends from the establishment of Protestantism, in the middle of the sixteenth century, until the present time. Necessarily the limits imposed upon our treatise can admit only of a very limited presentation of the conceptions of God during that important thought-revolutionary period, covering something over 250 years. In this period philosophy occupies a most independent position. It is no longer dominated by the Church; nor are its efforts consecrated to the advocacy of the defense of "orthodox Christian" dogma In fact, little is heard of that dogma. "Highest truths," writes Elmendorf in his "History of Philosophy," "were to be determined by reason alone; not even an appeal for verification to Christian revelation (was) recognized. Ancient systems were reconstructed without any reference to the teaching of the Church, or it was maintained that philosophic truth might be false according to faith and conversely. * * * * The sixteenth century was a period of transition, of confusion, without settled method or principle; there was no predominating school, no originality, but a vague following of every ancient school. Greek thinkers were now read in the original, and men, no longer scholastics, were Platonists, Peripatetics, etc.; but rather as scholars, classicists, than with any comprehensive or productive grasp of the principles which they professed.

"Without great names, there was a widening of the sphere of philosophy; it was popularized, but the influence of classicism made the culture of mere form as extreme as the neglect of it among the later schoolmen; but philosophy at the same time exerted, particularly through the 'humanists', a more manifest influence on general literature, science, and social life. * * * The invention of printing, together with the increase of wealth in the free cities, widened immensely the interest in philosophy, and brought it sensibly into general literary culture and political life." (History of Philosophy—Elmendorf—pp. 142-3.)

There was a reversion in Europe to the speculations of Plato and Aristotle, and the intellectual battles of the two Greeks were fought over again in Europe, with sometimes one and sometimes the other prevailing.

The effort of philosophical thinking, as already remarked, was not now to either sustain or disprove the Divine Existence or the mode of that existence, as expressed in the Orthodox Christian creeds; but its aim was more especially to set forth the modes of divine existence independent of theological conceptions. Is the Absolute to be apprehended as "Will," "finding its completion in the intuition of perfect attainment?" Or "Reason," "comprehending itself as the eternal process of the world and finding that all is Good?" Or "Feeling," "which apprehends the unity of things in a single and immediate act of self-consciousness?" Or merely "Blind Energy," "which seems in a cross-section of time, as viewed by the average spectator, to have a definite direction, but which in reality has neither a "whence nor whither;" and no other goal than the meaningless eternal oscillation between states of motion and states of rest." ("Typical Modern Conceptions of God"—by Joseph Alexander Leighton—1901—Introduction, p. 8.)

2. Modern Schools of Philosophy: So extensive is the period now under consideration, and so numerous the voices to be heard, that one cannot hope in three lessons—to which space it is necessary that we limit ourselves—to convey, even by quotation from typical philosophers of the period, an adequate idea of the conceptions of God that have obtained. It will be necessary for the individual student personally to take up the subject in private study if he feels the necessity of wide knowledge on the speculations of men on the Supreme Being and His modes of existence.

Meantime, the numerous teachers of this period may be grouped under general descriptive terms which relate either to their methods of thought or the result of their thinking, sometimes to both.

"In the wave of philosophical inquiry which swept over Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century, and is regarded as the beginning of a new, scientific age of the world, there were two controlling, but divergent forces, those, namely, represented by Bacon and Descartes, the first the founder of the experimental, and the latter the idealistic or dogmatic method of philosophizing. From the former (Bacon), we may trace a continuous influence through Locke, Berkeley, Hume down to Mill, Spencer, Darwin and Huxley; from the latter (Descartes), the development of the modern idealism represented by Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Lotze." (Introduction to the Works of Spinoza, p. 5.)

From this it will appear that our modern philosophers are mainly divided, as to their methods of thought, into Empirics and Idealists.

(a) Empiricism: "The empirical character, or method; reliance on direct, and especially individual, observation and experience, to the exclusion of theories or assumed principles, and sometimes of all reasoned processes, inductive or deductive. The doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses, or experience through the senses, or at least from the perception of simple historical fact; experientialism; opposed to intuitionalism. Empiricism, as its name imports, affirms that all our knowledge comes from experience, and is therefore subject to all the imperfections and limitations of experience." (Standard Dictionary.)

(b) Idealism: "Idealism—that explanation of the world which maintains that the only thing absolutely real is mind; that all material and all temporal existences take their being from mind, from consciousness that thinks and experiences; that out of consciousness they all issue, to consciousness are presented, and that presence to consciousness constitute their entire reality and entire existence." (Prof. Howison, Conceptions of God,—1902—p. 84.)

(c) Rationalism: In philosophy means, "the doctrine that reason furnishes certain elements that underlies experience, and without which experience is impossible; opposed to empiricism or experientialism." (Standard Dictionary.) "In metaphysics, the doctrine of a priori cognitions; the doctrine that knowledge is not all produced by the action of outward things upon themselves, but partly arises from the natural adaption of the mind to think things that are true.

"The form of Rationalism which is now in the ascendant, resembles the theory of natural evolution in this, that the latter finds the race more real than the individual, and the individual to exist only in the race; so the former looks upon the individual reason as but a finite manifestation of the universal reason." (Cent. Dict.)

(d) Rationalistic Elements and Methods: A fine description of rationalistic elements and method of philosophizing, is given in one of Ernest Haeckel's latest works.

"We must welcome as one of the most fortunate steps in the direction of a solution of the great cosmic problems, the fact that of recent years there is a growing tendency to recognize the two paths which alone lead thereto—experience and thought, or speculation—to be of equal value, and mutually complementary. Philosophers have come to see that pure speculation—such, for instance, as Plato and Hegel employed for the construction of their idealist systems—does not lead to knowledge of reality. On the other hand, scientists have been convinced that mere experience—such as Bacon and Mill, for example, made the basis of their realist systems—is insufficient of itself for a complete philosophy. * * *

"True knowledge is only acquired by combining the activity of the two. Nevertheless there are still many philosophers who would construct the world out of their own inner-consciousness, and who reject our empirical science precisely because they have no knowledge of the real world. On the other hand, there are many scientists who still contend that the sole object of science is 'the knowledge of facts, the objective investigation of isolated phenomena;' that 'the age of philosophy' is past, and science has taken its place. This one-sided over-estimation of experience is as dangerous an error as the converse exaggeration of the value of speculation." (Riddle of the Universe—1900—pp. 18-19.)

(e) Pantheism: "The metaphysical doctrine that God is the only substance, of which the material universe and man are only manifestations. It is accompanied with the denial of God's personality." (Cent. Dict.) God and the universe are identical—the universe is the only reality. (See also note 4, Lesson xx.)

(f) Materialism: "The metaphysical doctrine that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe. Philosophical materialism holds that matter and the motions of matter make up the sum total of existence, and that what we know as physical phenomena in man and other animals, are to be interpreted in an ultimate analysis as simply the peculiar aspect which is assumed by certain enormously complicated motions of matter." (Cent. Dict.)

(g) Monism: "The doctrine which considers mind and matter as neither separated nor as derived from each other, but as standing in an essential and inseparable connection." Any system of thought which seeks to deduce all the varied phenomena of both the physical and spiritual worlds from a single principle. (Standard Dictionary, F. W.)

Ernest Haeckel, Monism's most illustrious disciple, if not its founder thus defines it: "All the different philosophical tendencies may, from the point of view of modern science, be ranged in two antagonistic groups; they represent either a dualistic or a monistic interpretation of the cosmos. The former is usually bound up with teleological and idealistic dogmas, the latter with mechanical and realistic theories. Dualism, in the widest sense, breaks up the universe into two entirely distinct substances—the material world and an immaterial God, who is represented to be its creator, sustainer and ruler. Monism, on the contrary (likewise taken in its widest sense), recognizes one sole substance in the universe, which is at once "God and nature;" body and spirit (or matter and energy) it holds to be inseparable. The extra-mundane God of dualism leads necessarily to theism; and the intra-mundane God of the monist leads to pantheism.

"The different ideas of monism and materialism, and likewise the essentially distinct tendencies of theoretical and practical materialism, are still very frequently confused. As this and other similar cases of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial, and give rise to innumerable errors, we shall make the following brief observations, in order to prevent misunderstanding:

"1. Pure monism is identical neither with the theoretical materialism that denies the existence of a spirit, and dissolves the world into a heap of dead atoms, nor with the theoretical spiritualism (lately entitled 'energetic' spiritualism by Oswald) which rejects the notion of matter, and considers the world to be a specially arranged group of 'energies,' or immaterial natural forces.

"2. On the contrary, we hold, with Goethe, 'that matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit, nor spirit without matter.' We adhere firmly to the pure, unequivocal monism of Spinoza: Matter, or infinitely extended substance, and spirit (or energy), or sensitive and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes or principle properties of the all-embracing divine essence of the world, the universal substance." (Riddle of the Universe, pp. 20-21.)

(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

TYPICAL MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.

SPECIAL TEXT: For these philosophers one might say: "Oh that I might know where I might find Him! That I might come even to His seat * * * * * Behold I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; on the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him. He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him." Job xxiii.

NOTES.

1. Spinoza—Pantheist: Born in Amsterdam 1632, of Jewish parents, who were refuges from the Spanish persecution of that period. He states his conceptions of God in the following passages:

"By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.

"Explanation: I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind; for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation. * * * * * * "God is a being absolutely infinite, of whom no attribute that expresses the essence of substance can be denied, and he necessarily exists: If any substance besides God were granted, it would have to be explained by some attribute of God, and thus two substances with the same attribute would exist, which is absurd; therefore, besides God, no substance can be granted or consequently, be conceived. If it could be conceived, it would necessarily have to be conceived as existent; but this (by the first part of this proof) is absurd. Therefore, besides God, no substance can be granted or conceived.

"Some assert that God, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. How far such persons have strayed from the truth, is sufficiently evident from what has been said. But these I pass over. For all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature, deny that God has a body. Of this they find excellent proof in the fact, that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of God, a being absolutely infinite. But, meanwhile, by the other reasons with which they try to prove a point, they show that they think corporeal or extended substance wholly apart from the divine nature, and say it was created by God. Wherefrom the divine nature can have been created, they are wholly ignorant; thus they clearly show, that they do not know the meaning of their own words. I, myself, have proved sufficiently clearly, at any rate in my own judgment (Coroll. Prop. 6, and note 2, Prop. 8), that no substance can be produced or created by anything other than itself. Further, I showed (in Prop. 14) that besides God no substance can be granted or conceived. Hence, we drew the conclusion that extended substance is one of the infinite attributes of God."

2. Locke's View of God and Spirit: Locke regards God as an infinite, immaterial spirit, present in all duration and as filling immensity. Men derive their best knowledge of God, not by reason of innate ideas of Him, but by thought and meditation. "It seems to me plainly to prove the truest and best notions men had of God were not imprinted, but acquired by thought and meditation, and a right use of their faculties; since the wise and considerate men of the world, by a right and careful employment of their thoughts and reason, attained true notions in this, as well as other things; whilst the lazy and inconsiderate part of men, making far the greater number, took up their notions by chance, from common tradition and vulgar conceptions, without much beating their heads about them." * * * * "God, every one easily allows, fills eternity; and it is hard to find a reason why anyone should doubt that he likewise fills immensity. His infinite being is certainly as boundless one way as the other; and methinks it ascribes a little too much to matter to say, where there is no body there is nothing." * * * * "Motion cannot be attributed to God; not because he is an immaterial, but because he is an infinite spirit." (Locke's Works, Vol. I, pp. 195, 319.)

In discussing the nature of man's spirit, Locke had not excluded the idea of its being a thinking, material substance. Whereupon the Bishop of Worcester took him to task about it; to which Locke said in his own defense—and in his reply something further may be learned in relation to his idea of God:

"Perhaps my using the word spirit for a thinking substance, without excluding materiality out of it, will be thought too great a liberty, and such as deserves censure, because I leave immateriality out of the idea I make it a sign of. I readily own, that words should be sparingly ventured on in a sense wholly new, and nothing but absolute necessity can excuse the boldness of using any term in a sense whereof we can produce no example. But in the present case, I think I have great authorities to justify me. The soul is agreed, on all hands, to be that in us which thinks. And he that will look into the first book of Cicero's 'Tusculan Questions,' and into the sixth book of Virgil's 'Aeneid,' will find that these two great men, who, of all the Romans, best understood philosophy, thought, or at least did not deny, the soul to be a subtle matter, which might come under the name of aura, or ignis, or ether, and this soul they both of them called spiritus; in the notion of which, it is plain, they included only thought and active motion, without the total exclusion of matter. Whether they thought right in this I do not say—that is not the question; but whether they spoke properly, when they called an active, thinking, subtle substance, out of which they excluded only gross and palpable matter, spiritus, spirit? * * * * * I would not be thought hereby to say, that spirit never does signify a purely immaterial substance. In that sense the Scripture, I take it, speaks, when it says 'God is a spirit'; and in that sense I have used it, and in that sense I have proved from my principles that there is a spiritual substance, and am certain that there is a spiritual, immaterial substance; which is, I humbly conceive, a direct answer to your lordship's question in the beginning of this argument, viz: 'How we come to be certain that there are spiritual substances supposing this principle to be true, that the simple ideas, by sensation and reflection, are the soul-matter and foundation of all our reasoning?' But this hinders not, but that if God, that infinite, omnipotent, and perfectly immaterial spirit, should please to give a system of very subtle matter, sense and motion, it might with propriety of speech be called spirit, though materiality were not excluded out of its complex idea. Your lordship proceeds: 'It is said, indeed, elsewhere, that it is repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it would put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge.' But this doth not reach the present case, which is not what matter can do of itself, but what matter prepared by an Omnipotent hand can do. And what certainty can we have that He hath not done it? We can have none from the ideas, for those are given up in this case, and consequently we can have no certainty, upon these principles, whether we have any spiritual substance within us or not." (Works, Vol. II, pp. 388-9).

3. Berkley's Views of the Doctrine of Diety: George Berkley was born at Killkrin, Ireland, 1684; died at Oxford, 1753. I follow Locke with Berkley because he stands somewhat in contrast with him, although he was, like Locke, an experimentalist in method; but he regarded Locke as a materialist, and he runs to the opposite extreme, as will appear in what follows:

"Locke had allowed to pass the hypothesis that matter can think. Berkley justly argued that if this were allowed, we could not affirm the immateriality and perpetuity of the thinking principle in man. For, with the disintegration of the matter there must be an end to the individual. If it be allowed that matter can think, then, as Locke offers no proof to the contrary, it might be inferred that our thinking principle, the substratum of our thoughts, is but matter. This, Berkeley undertook to combat. But how did he do so? By trying to establish that there is no matter, that we can not affirm its existence; and, hence, as something at least, is, as we do exist, that the thinking principle in us, the soul, must be immaterial." (Truth of Thought—Poland—pp. 24, 25).

"To counteract the influence of Locke's quasi-materialism, Berkley crossed to the other extreme, in the exaltation of spirit which, of course, he held to be immaterial. "The possibility that hereafter this exaltation of spirit might lead to a denial of any Being higher than man—that the universe might appear to him his own creation—scarcely presented itself to the mind of Berkley. It was not the peril of his time. A creator was not denied by any of the minute philosophers with whom Berkeley contended. What he desired to impress them with was, the belief that the Being who made the outward world was a Spirit, who took cognizance of the thoughts and intents of the heart; that the words to the poor woman who drew water at the well ascended above the philosophy of the eighteenth century; that they were real and scientific, that it was conversant with phantasies and shadows." (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy—Maurice—Vol. II, p. 457).

4. Fichte's Conception of God—God as Will: Born 1762; died 1814. There seems to be something of a distinction between Fichte's earlier and later views. In his earlier writings he appears to hold to the doctrine that God was manifest in "Will" alone, which was the cause of the moral order. "The living and working moral order is God himself, and we can conceive no other." He quotes with approval a passage from Schiller, saying that it expressed his own views:

  "And God is!—a holy Will that abides,
  Though the human will may falter;
  High over both Space and Time it rides,
  The high Thought that will never alter;
  And while all things in change eternal roll,
  It endures, through change, a motionless soul."

For these views Fichte was charged with atheism, which he resented: "He contends," says Leighton, "that his opponents regard God as a particular substance. Substance means with them 'a sensible being existing in time and space.' This God, extended in time and space, they deduce from the sense-world. Fitche claims that extension or corporeality cannot be predicated of the Diety. The sensuous world is only the reappearance of the supersensuous, or moral world, through our attempt to grasp the latter by means of our sensuous faculty of presentation. The sensuous, is mere appearance, and can furnish no ground for the existence of God. The Diety is not to be understood as the underlying ground of phenomena, for, so conceived, he is made a corporeal substrate. He is an order of events, not a substance. The sensuous predicate of existence is not to be applied to Him, for the supersensuous God alone is. He is not dead Being, but rather pure action, the life and principle of the supersensuous World-Order. * * * * * To characterize God as a spirit, is of negative value in distinguishing Him from things material. It gives us no positive information, for we know as little wherein the being of a spirit consists as wherein the being of God consists. Inasmuch as all our thinking is limited, God is inconceivable. To determine him is to make him finite. If personality and consciousness are to be denied of God, it is only in the sense in which we conceive ourselves as personal and conscious. God is wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit."

In his later views he seems to add "Intelligence" to his "will," or moral order. Leighton, summing up both the earlier and later views of the philosopher, says: "When we put together what Fichte said at different times and from various points of view, his doctrine becomes a unity, and his thought exhibits a consistent development. He always conceived God as immanent in the moral universe—the only universe which he recognized. He consistently held that the human mind could not conceive God in His transcendence. But he did not deny that transcendence; and, indeed, in his later writings he emphasized it by his doctrine of the 'Absolute Being.' While in his innermost nature he [God] is beyond the reach of thought, God manifests Himself eternally as active intelligence or Will, and by the free act of his own intelligence, man can rise to an intuitive knowledge of God and enter into union with Him. In the earlier form of the 'Science of Knowledge', the Absolute I is the expression of God. In the final form which his philosophy assumes, Fichte emphasizes the doctrine that God is more than the Absolute I. The idea of God is more fully defined. Beyond His manifestation of Himself, He exists as Absolute Being. He alone is. But this Being is not an abstract motionless One. Fichte says again and again, in the 'Way to the Blessed Life,' that the nature of Being is to manifest itself, that it is ever-active, ever-living and loving. 'Being and Life are one and the same.' 'The Divine is thinking and living in one organic unity.' Being becomes conscious of itself in Existence. The universal form in which the Divine Essence appears, is 'Knowing, the Concept, Freedom,' and these are all equivalent expressions. Knowing is the first image or scheme of the Divine Being. We have not yet reached self-consciousness. But free Knowing, or the Concept, understands or becomes conscious of itself in life, and Life appears in the Multiplicity of finite, self-conscious individuals." (Conceptions of God—Leighton—pp. 27-28).

5. Kant: Born at Konigsburg, 1724; died 1804. It is said that Kant's influence in the world of thought is second only, if second, to Aristotle's (Elmendorf).

"Kant's Organon—[a code of rules or principles for scientific investigation—Kant uses the term to denote the particular rules for acquiring the Knowledge of a given class of objects.—Cent. Dict.] is immeasurably more severe than Aristotle's or than Bacon's. At times, everything which we think we have gained when we entered upon this division of our subject, appears again to be slipping from us. God—Immortality, Freedom—these we find to be the ideas or postulates of the reason. We have them; they are with us. But what are they? Can we proceed to reason from them, to build any conclusions upon the fact that such ideas are? If we do, we at once involve ourselves in contradictions. They are ideas assuredly—fundamental principles; but they cannot be treated as realities external to the mind. They are only within it. If the Atheist, or the denier of immortality, begins to dispute with me, I can defy him to prove a negative. But I can go no further. I cannot make that into an object which exists in me, the subject. If I do, I shall invest it with some of the conditions and limitations of my own nature, or I shall call in experience to represent to me that which is above experience.

(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).