LECTURE III.

THE THEISTIC POSTULATE OF THE CHRISTIAN VIEW.

INTRODUCTORY--

IN entering on the task of unfolding the Christian view of the world under its positive aspects, and of considering its relations to modern thought, I begin where religion itself begins, with the existence of God. Christianity is a theistic system; this is the first postulate--the personal, ethical, self-revealing God.

Volkmar has remarked that of monotheistic religions there are only three in the world--the Israelitish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan; and the last-named is derived from the other two. "So," he adds, "is the 'Israel of God' the one truly religious, the religiously-elect, people of antiquity; and ancient Israel remains for each worshipper of the one, therefore of the true God, who alone is worthy of the name, the classical people. . . . Christianity is the blossom and fruit of the true worship of God in Israel, which has become such for all mankind."1 This limitation of Monotheism in religion to the peoples who have benefited by the Biblical teaching on this subject, suggests its origin from a higher than human source; and refutes the contention of those who would persuade us that the monotheistic idea is the result of a long process of development through which the race necessarily passes, beginning with Fetishism, or perhaps Ghost-worship, mounting to Polytheism, and ultimately subsuming the multitude of Divine powers under one all-controlling will. It will be time enough to accept this theory when, outside the line of the Biblical development, a single nation can be pointed to which has gone through these stages, and reached this goal.2

I should like further at the outset to direct attention to the fact that, in affirming the existence of God as Theism apprehends Him, we have already taken a great step into the supernatural, a step which should make many others easy. Many speak glibly of the denial of the supernatural, who never realise how much of the supernatural they have already admitted in affirming the existence of a personal, wise, holy, and beneficent Author of the universe. They may deny supernatural actions in the sense of miracles, but they have affirmed supernatural Being on a scale and in a degree which casts supernatural action quite into the shade. If God is a reality, the whole universe rests on a supernatural basis. A supernatural presence pervades it; a supernatural power sustains it; a supernatural will operates in its forces; a supernatural wisdom appoints its ends. The whole visible order of things rests on another, an unseen, spiritual, supernatural order,--and is the symbol, the manifestation, the revelation of it. It is therefore only to be expected that the feeling should grow increasingly in the minds of thoughtful men, float if this supernatural basis of the universe is to he acknowledged, a great deal more must be admitted besides. On the other hand, if the opposition to the supernatural is to be carried out to its logical issue, it must not stop with the denial of miracle, but must extend to the whole theistic conception. This is the secret of the intimate connection which I showed in last Lecture to exist between the idea of God and the idea of Revelation. A genuine Theism Can never long remain a bare Theism. At the height to which Christianity has raised our thoughts of God, it is becoming constantly more difficult for minds that reflect seriously to believe in a God who does not manifest Himself in word and deed. This is well brought out in a memorable conversation which Mr. Froude had with Mr. Carlyle in the last days of his life. "I once said to him," says Mr. Froude, "not long before his death, that I could only believe in a God which did something. With a cry of pain, which I shall never forget, he said, 'He does nothing.'"1 This simply means that if we are to retain the idea of a hiving God, we must be in earnest with it. We must believe in a God who expresses Himself in hiving deeds in the history of mankind, who has a word and message for mankind, who, having the power and the will to bless man kind, does it. Theism, as I contended before, needs Revelation to complete it.

Here, accordingly, it is that the Christian view of God has ifs strength against any conception of God based on mere grounds of natural theology. It hinds together, in the closest reciprocal relations, the two ideas of God and Revelation. The Christian doctrine, while including all thief the word Theism ordinarily covers, is much more than a doctrine of simple Theism. God, in the Christian view, is a Being who enters into the history of the world in the most hiving way. He is not only actively present in the material universe,--ordering, guiding, controlling it.--but He enters also in the most direct way into the course of human history, working in it in His general and special providence, and by a gradual and progressive Revelation, which is, at flue same time, practical discipline and education, giving to man that knowledge of Himself by which he is enabled to attain the highest ends of his own existence, and to co-operate freely in the carrying out of Divine ends; above all, discovering Himself as the God of Redemption, who, full of long-suffering and mercy, executes in loving deeds, and at infinite sacrifice, His gracious purpose for the salvation of mankind. The Christian view of God is thus bound up with all the remaining elements of the Christian system,--with the idea of Revelation in Christ, with a kingdom of God to be realised through Christ, with Redemption from sin in Christ,--and it is inseparable from them. It is through these elements--not in its abstract character as Theism--that it takes the held it does on the living convictions of men, and is felt by them to be something real. If I undertake to defend Theism, it is not Theism in dissociation from Revelation, but Theism as completed in the entire Christian view.

It is scarcely necessary that I should prove that Christ's teaching about God embraces all the affirmations commonly understood to be implied in a complete Theism. Christ's doctrine of the Father is, indeed, entirely unmetaphysical. We meet with no terms such as absolute, infinite, unconditioned, first cause, etc., with which the student of philosophy is familiar. Yet all that these terms imply is undeniably recognised by Jesus in His teaching about God. He takes up into His teaching--as the apostles likewise do--all the natural truth about God; He takes up all the truth about God's being, character, perfections, and relations to the world and man, already given in the Old Testament. God, with Jesus, is unquestionably the sole and supreme source of existence; He by whom all things were created, and on whom all things depend; the Lord of heaven and earth, whose power and rule embrace the smallest as well as the greatest events of life; the Eternal One, who sees the end from the beginning, and whose vast counsels hold in their grasp the issues of all things. The attributes of God are similarly dealt with. They are never made by Christ the subject of formal discourse, are never treated of for their own sakes, or in their metaphysical relations. They come into view solely in their religious relations. Yet no one will dispute that all the attributes involved in the highest theistic conception--eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and the like--are implied in His teaching. God, in Christ's view, is the all-wise, all-present, all-powerful Being, at once infinitely exalted above the world, and active in every part of it, from whose eyes, seeing in secret, nothing can be hid, laying His plans in eternity, and unerringly carrying them out. It is the peculiarity of Christ's teaching, however, that the natural attributes are always viewed in subordination to the moral. In respect of these, Christ's view of God resembles that of the Old Testament in its union of the two ideas of God's unapproachable majesty and elevation above the world as the infinitely Holy One; and of His condescending grace and continued action in history for the salvation and good of men. The two poles in the ethical perfection of God's character are with Him, as with the prophets of the old covenant, righteousness and love--the former embracing His truth, faithfulness, and justice; the latter His beneficence, compassion, long suffering, and mercy. Ritschl, indeed, in his treatment of this subject, will recognise no attribute but love, and makes all the others, even the so-called physical attributes, but aspects of love. Righteousness, e.g., is but the self-consistency of God in carrying out His purposes of love, and connotes nothing judicial.1 Righteousness, however, has its relatively independent place as an attribute of God in both Old and New Testaments, and cannot thins be set aside. It has reference to indefeasible distinctions of right and wrong--to moral norms, which even love must respect. Out of righteousness and love in the character of God, again, issues wrath--another idea which modern thought tries to weaken, but which unquestionably holds an important place in the view of God given us by Christ. By wrath is meant the intense moral displeasure with which God regards sin--His holy abhorrence of it---and the punitive energy of His nature which He puts forth against it. So regarded, it is not opposed to love, but, on the contrary, derives its chief intensity from the presence of love, and is a necessary element in the character of an ethically perfect Being.1 While, however, Christ's teaching about the character of God is grounded on that of the Old Testament, yet in the purity and perfection with which He apprehends this ethical perfection of God,--above all, in the new light in which He places it by His transforming conception of the Divine Fatherhood, we feel that we are carried far beyond the stage of the Old Testament. God, as ethical Personality, is viewed by Christ, first, as in Himself the absolutely Good One--"There is none good but one, that is, God";2 second, as the perfect Archetype of goodness for man a imitation--"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect";3 third, as the moral Will binding the universe together, and proscribing the law of conduct--"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven";4 but, fourth, pre-eminently as the Father. It is in the name Father, as expressive of a special loving and gracious relation to the individual members of His kingdom, that Christ's doctrine of God specially sums itself up. The Old Testament knew God as tire Father of the nation; Christ knew Him as tire Father of the individual soul, begotten by Him to a new life, and standing to Him in a new moral and spiritual relation, as a member of the kingdom of His Son.

This, then, without further delineation in detail, is the first postulate of Christianity--a God living, personal, ethnical, self-revealing, infinite. We have new to ask--How does this postulate of the Christian view stand related to modern thought, and no the general religious consciousness of mankind? How far is it corroborated or negated by modern thought? What is the nature of the corroboration, and what the worth of the negation? I shall consider the negation first.