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COPYRIGHT, 1924, By ForDHAM UNIVERSITY FoRDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Printed in the United States of America. oa &§ in 2022 with funding from me ib sm ayy A \ se ‘ a ‘ A t & ; i 109 Ny 4 | wae es te Rel 4 ' Pa dee Nr 7 af at Xe ! ae ve ve my Ve it hy o j ; ; 3) » i t ei ¥ ff sae SPOS . , Ri ety ; + bp Uae rete is v ae { (< | eran wal RRA RRL ty ee i A igitized by the Internet Archive _ ibs a i Princeton Theological Seminary Library ae i y | t a RAS 4 Ten) bee a | ; hy a ¥ ‘ Eee frre k ae AV PVA thy Pen, cay aed vat ee CONTENTS INTRODUCTION, BIBLIOGRAPHY. ; ; ; NATURAL THEOLOGY, Definition; Importance; Relation to Dogmatic Theology; Division. q ’ : j ; : GENERAL PRENOTES, The name of God; The concept of God; Popular, Scientific; Other concepts Various opinions concerning God; htnetedt! Polythe- ism, Pantheism, Deism, Monotheism. Various erroneous opinions as to how man new God; The Ontological (a simultaneo) argument, Ontologism, Innate Idea, Traditionalism, Kantian Practical Reason, Sentimentalism, Blind Instinct of the Intellect, Modernistic Dain of Vital Imman- ence, Pragmatism. THESIS I. The source of our jaf ae of Goa is veither an ontological intuition of Him, nor an innate or divinely infused idea, nor any of the subjective mediums invented by the Kantians, Reidians, Senti- mentalists, Modernists or Pragmatists, nor is it necessarily revelation and a consequent tradition. Terms of the thesis explained; Adversaries (cf. above; Erroneous opinions); Proofs of the thesis; Difficulties and their solutions; attention to be di- rected specially to the difficulties drawn from, 1. Universal ideas; 2. Common consent of mankind, in admitting the existence of God; 3. Tendency of the will towards limitless good. : : Tuesis II. That God exists is a truth which is tiimediatoly evident in itself though not immediately evident to us. It can be proved neither a simultaneo nor a priori. Terms of the thesis explained; Adversaries; Proofs of the thesis; Scholion, giving the argument a simultaneo under three different forms, and cor- responding solutions. TuHeEsIs III. The existence of God, as Aas Rar oducedie cause of all things existing in the world, is proved from the fact that all existing beings cannot be produced beings. : General prenotes to the proofs for God’s existence; Terms and scope of the thesis explained; Adver- saries; Proof of the thesis; Difficulties, with refer- ences to, and extracts from the works of, modern authors who urge them; Solutions of difficulites; 1 PAGE 5-14 15-20 21-22 23-25 25-29 29-56 D7-63 64-69 attention be directed specially to Kant’s arguments founded on false notions concerning time and space, and to the Materialists’ unwarranted assumption that the ultimate source of all reality is eternal matter evolving itself from eternity. TuHesis IV. An unproduced cause exists of itself and en absolute necessity. Terms of the thesis explained; Adversaries; Proofs of the thesis; Corollary I, A necessary being is eternal; Corollary II, How it is that our proofs of God’s eternity and other perfections, derived from the concept of a necessary being, do not involve the fallacy of the ontological (a simultaneo) argument. Tuesis V. There exists, and can exist, only one absolutely THESIS necessary being; only one God. Brief summary of the method of argumentation used in developing our thesis, with a few words showing again the falsity of Kant’s assertion, so frequently repeated by his followers, namely, that in deriving God’s perfections from the concept of necessary being, we make use of the invalid onto- logical (a simultaneo) argument. Terms of the thesis explained; The difference, with regard to singularity, between the nature of a contingent and that of a necessary being, shown; Adversaries; Reason for the rise of Ditheism; False solutions of the “Problem of Evil;” The prevalence of Poly- theism, with reasons why too gloomy a view of it should not be taken; Prenotes to the proof of the thesis; Proof of the thesis; Scholion, The unicity of God and the Mystery of the most Blessed Trinity; Difficulties and their solutions; attention to be di- rected specially to the solution of the “Problem of Evil.” , VI. The unproduced, necessarily existing, first cause of all things produced, God, one and only one is an intelligent, personal being. A preliminary note about the principal argument we use in proving the intelligence of God, i.e., the teleological argument; also called the argument from design, from finality, from final causes; Order and its divisions; The teleological argument con- cludes from the presence in the world of finality materially taken to the presence there of finality formally taken; Various forms of the argument; The argument is conclusive even though it could be proved that nature is not orderly in all its works; The argument, as we develop it, is derived from the order of finality in the world, looked at in its entirety; Our main argument is not analogical; The argument from analogy is not invalid; Our argument, since it is to conclude directly from 2 PAGE 70-86 87-89 90-104 PAGE order, is drawn from an order which could not have been produced non-intelligently; The end or result of the action of an efficient cause considered as a final cause; How it can be known that an efficient cause acts for\ the accomplishment of an end; Chance, its nature, its properties; Scope of the teleological argument when combined with the cos- mological argument; when uncombined; Personal- ity defined; Adversaries; Proofs of the thesis; Scholion I, The existence of God, as popularly con- ceived, proved by the teleological argument apart from all other arguments; Scholion II, The teleo- logical argument as viewed by its enemies; Scholion III, The teleological argument and Evolution; Scholion IV, Examples showing design in nature,— The atmosphere, and plant and animal life; The human heart; the circulation of the blood; the blood; A bird and its flight; Instinct as shown in the case of the Sphex, Sitaris humeralis, Rhyncites pubescens, the Bee, the Spider, the building of birds’ nests; Difficulties; with references to some of the many modern authors who urge them; Solutions of these difficulties; with pertinent quotations from modern authors, some of them non-Catholics, who defend the argument from design; attention to be directed specially to the following difficulties, 1. That proposed by Kant, and reiterated ceaselessly by his followers, namely, that the teleological ar- gument involves the invalid ontological (a simul- taneo) argument; 2. Those based on the erroneous assumption that the teleological argument uncom- bined is used to prove that the intelligence govern- ing the world is one, creative, infinite; 3. That of the materialistic Monists; to the solution of which is added a denunciation of Haeckel, their latter-day leader, by Professor Dwight and Professor His; 4. That derived from the presence in the world of many so-called purposeless things, for example, seeds that never grow, and, in living beings, rudi- mentary organs and organs fully developed but functionless; 5. That the designs of God would have to descend to countless minute particulars; 5. That God would be responsible for the evil in the world. 105-180 THEsIS VII. The existence of God, as a being superior to the world, on whom the world and all its creatures, including man, depend, a being to be supplicated, propitiated, worshipped, is proved from the fact that mankind at all times has admitted the exist- ence of such a being. Introductory note; The common consent of mankind in acknowledging God’s existence; its nature, uni- versality and constancy; The fact, that both civil- 3 PAGE ized and uncivilized peoples, without exception, are as one in acknowledging God’s existence, estab- lished; The common consent of mankind as a source of certain knowledge; Adversaries; Proof of the thesis; The proof confirmed by a rejection of the puerile reasons given by our adversaries in ex- planation of the admitted fact that God’s existence is universally affirmed by mankind; Scholion I, A brief description of some of the erroneous, rela- tively primitive, religious beliefs; Scholion II, Examples of the religious beliefs of uncultured, relatively primitive haat Difficulties and their solutions. ; : ; . 181-205 ADDITIONAL ARGUMENTS MaThOT BERTIE the Pabriles i of God, 1. From motion; 2. From contingent being; 3. From the different degrees of perfections in creatures; 4. From mankind’s acknowledgement of moral obligation, i.e., of a law binding in conscience. 206-211 CONCLUSION, consisting principally of excerpts from the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, August 4, 1879, on The Study of Scholastic Phil- osophy according to the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas. i : . . 212-218 APPENDIX, explaining tuncertatione ee in hi ttette and solu- tions of difficulties. . : , ; . . : . 219-222 INDEX OF MATTER. ‘ : A 2 ; 4 : : ; . 2238-225 INDEX OF AUTHORS. : : , ; ; ; : : ; . 226-227 INTRODUCTION Modern philosophy has emphatically turned its face away from reason as a guide to man in any of the weightier in- terests of life. It boasts of its deliverance from the teachings of the “naive and pre-scientific believers of the primitive Chris- tian Gospel.” It will have nothing to do with a reason-proved, personal, infinite God, the Creator and Ruler of the physical and moral world. Make God anything else you please, even a symbol with a changing ideal value for your changing sub- jective moods, and modern philosophy will tolerate you. He who runs may read the message. It is written in no uncertain terms, as the following typical quotations, and others to be given later, will show. Hocking (Professor at Yale University when the work from which we cite was written, now at Harvard University), The Meaning of God in Human Experience, rejects a reason- proved God and tells us “that the original source of the knowledge of God is an experience of not being alone in knowing the world, and especially the world of nature... . God is known as that of which I am primarily certain; and being certain, am certain of self and of my world of men and men’s objects.” Pp. 236, 296. Professor Hocking appears to be an Ontologist. He has been said to be, and probably 1s, a Pantheist. Not only does he reject a reason-proved God, but, as we shall see later, he is in hearty agreement with the general tendency in modern philosophy to judge “of uncertain AVOT EMH rebireii'al haba ve the labors of reason in behalf of any of our weightier human interests.’ Not reasoned knowledge, then, but “faith-knowledge”’ makes God naturally known to us. What an unreasonable, unstable, subjective thing this experience-born faith-knowledge is Professor Hocking him- self ingenuously tells us. 6 GOD AND REASON “Ror it is not simply the case that these attributes which religion ascribes to reality (divinity, beneficence, soul-preserving or value-conserving properties) are invisible, spiritual, inaccessible to observation: it is the case that these ideas, so far as reasons go, are in apparent equilibrium—neither provable nor disprovable. The world would be consistent without God; it would also be consistent with God: whichever hypothesis a man adopts will fit experience equally well; neither one, so far as accounting for visible facts is concerned, works better than the other. I have often wondered whether in these supermundane matters the universe may not be so nicely adjusted (and withal so justly) that each man finds true the things he believes in and wills for; why should not man find hig religion true, in so far as he has indeed set his heart upon it and makes sacrifices for it? However this may be, the religious objects (the predicates given by religion to reality) stand at a pass of intellectual equipoise: it may well seem that some other faculty must enter in to give determination to reason at the point where reason halts, without deciding voice of its own. The birth of the idea of God in the mind—the judgment ‘Reality is living, divine, a God exists’—is so subtle, like the faintest breath of the spirit upon the face of the waters, that no look within can tell whether God is here revealing Himself to man, or man creating God. “It is because of this position of subtle equilibrium that the religious consciousness is evanescent; faith is unstable as empirical knowledge is not. Though at any time I find my world sacred, it only needs a touch of passivity on my part and it will again become secular: I cannot recover nor understand its former worth. My faith in God is subject to fluctuation as my faith in other objects is not, even though these other objects are equally inaccessible (as my faith in China or in the conservation of energy). And note- worthy about this fluctuation is that it passes from extreme to extreme . . .the existence of God is to me either wholly certain or wholly absurd. “Likewise of immortality: it seems to me at times that a man is a fool to believe it, at other times that a man is a fool not to believe it. . . . But alternations like these belong rather to the will or disposition of the spirit than to the estimating mind, And further, the one thing which is most sure to dispel faith and sub- stitute the secular world-picture is precisely intellectual scrutiny. Faith is not only difficult for reason; it is distinctly diffident towards reason. Its origin, then, and its firmness must be due to some other power, presumably to will . . . the thought of God comes and goes; it is often lost and often recovered, both in racial and in individual experience...” Pp. 148—145. James (Harvard University), The Varieties of Religious Experience, “Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds. . . .Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in the rationalistic system, . . INTRODUCTION 7 nevertheless, if we look on man’s whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow [James is speaking here principally of man’s religious lite], we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you ail the same, if your dumb intuitions [ ?] are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. . “This inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it. That vast literature of proofs for God’s exist- ence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than gather dust in our libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort of a being God may be, we know to-day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of ‘contrivances’ intended to make manifest his ‘glory’ in which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves... . “Can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity upon the religious man’s sense of the divine? . . . Religion, you expect to hear me conclude, is nothing but an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the reality of things unseen... In short, you suspect that I am planning to defend feeling, at the expense of reason . . . To a certain extent I have to admit you guess rightly. I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of Feveone. Gee ED 1G.) 14, 4002-401. In A Pluralistic Universe, he adds, “God in the religious life of ordinary men is the name only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a super-human person . . . The theological machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and eschatology, its relish for re- wards and punishments, its treatment of God as an external con- triver, an ‘intelligent and moral governor,’ sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagina- tion, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or obsolescent .., An external creator and his institutions may still be verbally confessed at church in formulas that linger by their mere jnertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the sincere heart of us is elsewhere.” Pp. 124, 29, 8 GOD AND REASON Blind sentiment, then, leads James to reject the reasoned » God our philosophy offers; we shall see farther on that for James it puts in His stead a god that may be anything you please, and gives birth to a faith that is a mere hypothesis, and to a creed that he who professes it may always doubt. Drake (Professor at Vassar College), Seekers after God, Harvard Theological Review, January, 1919, writing in full sympathy with the religious chaos to which modern philosophy has given birth, and of which this article is a sad object-lesson, tells us, “Ambiguous the word ‘God’ hopelessly is . . . However this may be, any conception which has had such a checkered history, might well suffer, one would suppose, a few ,‘more changes.” Pp. 80, 81. “It seems now rather needless to be an atheist. There are so many conceptions of God afloat that anyone at all widely read can scarcely fail to find one suited to his mental outlook and con- victions . . . One feels that the rejection of the orthodox conception leaves clear room for the preaching of the naturalistic God of con- temporary thought.” P. 69. “For certain types of mind pantheism will doubtless always be alluring . . . God seems [by others to be] relegated to the realm of the ideal . . . No one, except the uncritical adherents of tra- ditional dogma [and among these Professor Drake would most cer- tainly include Catholics] believes to-day in such a God as the ancient Jews worshipped; and it is doubtful if many really believe in the grim potter-God of Saint Paul. Mature thought . .. must put away childish things. It is impossible that the great truths which science has revealed in the past nineteen centuries should not have profoundly altered our views of the ultimate realities from that of the naive and pre-scientific believers of the primitive Christian gospel . . . Perhaps our modern God-ideas have realiy more of the spirit of the Master’s teaching than the Hellenic subtleties of the Nicene creed—or even of the Fourth Nid Fl Pp. Rhy Gd Oso es e “What matters, however, in the last analysis, is not how cloue our conception may approach, or how far it may veer from the thought of earlier days; or even whether we are to use the term ‘God’ or not; what is vital is that we should retain the sense of the worth and meaning of life which the sacred word connotes. Of the men of the future Mr. Lowes Dickinson writes, ‘It may be a personal God they conceive, it may be a tendency in the universe; it may be something which they prefer to call the ‘Earth’ or ‘Nature’; it may be an Absolute; but in any case, it is something not themselves and greater than themselves, something which . INTRODUCTION 9 concentrates and satisfies in itself those ideal impulses that other- wise would be tortured and broken about an imperfect self.” P. 82. “Are we going to abandon religion in the ardor of our new tasks? Are we to turn with renewed zeal to religion, but free it more and more from theolatry |i.e. God-worship|? Or are we per- haps at the verge of a great new vision of God, which shall lead us into ways that it hath not entered into our hearts to conceive?” Pyiss: An affirmative answer to either of the first two questions means no religion at all or a religion in which the worship of God is to be reduced to a vanishing-point. Either way spells Atheism. And “the new vision of God” looked for in the third question is certainly not one of “the God of orthodox dogma, with His omniscience, omnipotence, aseity [1.e., self-existence], and what not’, for Professor Drake insists that “the vast theological library”, which furnishes “supposed proofs” for the existence of such a God, “Is, for progressive thinkers, simply shelved. The question has become, not, can we believe in this cut-and dried conception of mediaeval and modern orthodoxy, but rather, is there any con- ception of God that we can accept? In other words, the God-idea has become fluid again, the God of the future is in the making” to be moulded “into a form more consonant with man’s maturer experience and more servicable for his spiritual life.’ Pp. 67, 68. It would appear that for these philosophers the eternal, changeless God has not the reality and stability even of a mortal, changeable man, but is a plaything for them, to be conceived and moulded in whatever fashion happens to suit their varying individual whims or fancies. Leuba (Professor at Bryn Mawr College), The Belief in God and Immortality, writes even more destructively, if that be possible, of religion and morality: “It hardly need be said here that the abandonment of the belief in a personal God and in personal immortality, though it involved the disappearance of the existing religions, need not bring to an end religious life. Religion is not to be identified with its present forms . . . The sources of the religious life, its funda- mental realities, lie deeper than the conceptional forms [one of which is the concept of a personal God] in which they find ex- pression.” Pp. X, XI. “It is, therefore, of the greatest practical importance that those who have become convinced of the absence of sufficient ground for these two beliefs [namely, in a personal God and personal 10 GOD AND REASON immortality] and of their apparent unavoidable disappearance if humanity continues in its present course, realize that morality is essentially independent of them. They must know with the clear- ness that brings persuasion that moral ideals and moral energy have their source in social life...” Pp. 821, 322. “We are now, fortunately, almost done with the absurd tradi- tion that formal religion is the essential means of moral education . . . Belief in transcendental objects [God is one of them], bearers of perfection, is of no greater value in artistic education than in ethical culture, it is . . . in the presence of noble characters and fine conduct that we learn to know and love the good. Those who exaggerate the usefulness of the beliefs in immortality, and in God conceived as the perfect embodiment of all the values discovered on earth, fail to realize the inherent disadvantages of these beliefs. The evils they breed may be called by the general name of ‘other- worldliness.’ It would be difficult to evaluate the harm done to humanity in the past by the conviction that the real destination of man is the world to come... I know religious life too favor- ably to insinuate that those who preach the Kingdom of Heaven are enemies of mankind, but I think that on the whole they would serve it better if they were able to forget not only hell but also heaven. There is always some discrepancy between that which is best for the God of the Christian worship and life in heaven, and that which is best for the individual and society on earth: one cannot serve perfectly man and the traditional God.” Pp. 327, 328, 329. “The conviction that we must know whence we come and whither we are going, and that we must possess the assurance of a complete realization of our ideals on earth or elsewhere in order to lead a contented and worthy existence, is childish and mischievous.” P, 3380. “Of the sense of a real, immediate dependence upon a per- sonal divinity, there remain in Christian states but a few pitiable remnants. In the United States the most conspicuous one is the yearly proclamation of a day of thanksgiving, by which the members of the nation are called upon to return thanks to God for the good that has fallen to their lot and that of the country during the year. From an expression of genuine belief, this custom has be- come an objectionable tradition, which the sooner it is abandoned, the better for those who keep it up and for those to whom it is addressed.” P. 324. A further insight into Leuba’s destructive views on religion is given us in the following passage from James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which contains an abridged quotation from an article published by Leuba, viz., The Contents of Re- ligious Consciousness, in The Monist, July, 1901. James writes, INTRODUCTION 11 “Taking creeds and faith-state together, as forming ‘religions,’ and treating these as purely subjective phenomena, without regard to the question of their ‘truth,’ we are obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence on action and endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions of mankind. Their stimulant and anaesthetic effect is so great that Professor Leuba in a recent article [mentioned above], goes so far as to say that as long as men can use their God, they care very little who he is, or even whether he is at all. ‘The truth of the matter can be put,’ says Leuba, ‘in this way: God is not known, he is not understood, he is used—sometimes as a meat-purveyor, sometimes as a moral support, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as an object of love. If he proves himself useful, the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. Does he exist? How does he exist? What is he? are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life is, in the last analysis, the end of religion.’” Pp. 506, 507. Could anything be conceived more subversive of true re- ligion and morality than the views expressed by these men? Nevertheless, this is the philosophy which is being taught to-day in non-Catholic colleges and universities, at home and abroad. It monopolizes the current non-Catholic philosophic magazines, it is reflected in our literature, our press, and the lives of the people. Its evil effect cannot be exaggerated. One would be led to surmise that the very chaos, intellectual, re- ligious and moral, into which it has plunged its followers, would be reason enough for.its rejection by them. But it is not; and for the simple fact, that having rejected reason as a guide, they have ceased to be reasonable, and have, as a con- sequence, no appreciation of the state of utter confusion in which they live. To help to counteract in some measure the deadly influence, especially on religion and morality, of this fundamentally false philosophy, the present work was planned. Its aim is to establish the existence of the reason-proved, personal God, who has been rejected with mockery by modern philosophy. This is accomplished, in the first place, negatively, that is, by refuting the principal erroneous opinions advanced by var- ious philosophic systems to explain how our first knowledge of God is acquired. It is to be noted, however, that as these 12 GOD AND REASON opinions, in as far as they touch our present subject-matter, namely, God, are, for the most part, but particular applications of general theories of knowledge, the falsity of which is sup- posed to have been fully exposed and demonstrated in previous parts of philosophy, our explanation and refutation of them will be brief. In the positive treatment of our subject, which follows, theses affirming the existence of God, as the first and unpro- duced, absolutely self-sufficient, necessarily existing cause of all other existing beings, together with the necessary oneness of His nature, His intelligence and His personality, are quite fully explained, proved, and defended against the objections of adversaries. As an aid to greater clearness the matter has been developed in thesis-form. For the same reason the syllogism has been generally employed in the proofs of theses and in the presenta- tion of difficulties; terms requiring definition have been form- ally and strictly defined; and in the solution of difficulties logical form has been everywhere employed. In this last case, however, where a surer grasp of the point at issue appeared to demand it, to these formal solutions informal explanations have been added. This severely Scholastic method of treat- ment was adopted not only because it seemed to make for greater clearness and more accurate thinking, but also because it was judged best suited to a book intended rather for class- room work or private study than for mere cursory reading. A not at all unimportant part of our work are the many quotations from more modern philosophical writers, furnish- ing as they do a fairly good idea of the attitude of; present-day philosophy towards God, and so giving a proper setting to our theses, and point to the difficulties urged against them. These quotations will be found to have been taken from articles and books offering brief and striking passages suitable for our purpose, and principally from those published in this country and of non-Catholic authorship. The reason for this choice was, that quotations from these writers, whilst making clear INTRODUCTION 13 how far contemporary philosophy has wandered from God, seemed, in addition, best fitted to bring home to us in this country the vital need we have of a thorough acquaintance with a sane, reason-proved Theodicy, and at the same time to give a guarantee that the picture we present of the deplorable state into which modern philosophy has sunk, in its estimation of God and His attributes, has not been overdrawn. It is scarcely necessary to add, in this matter of quotations, that, unless the contrary is clearly stated or clearly implied, neither approval nor disapproval of any author is to be con- sidered as applying in general to the doctrine taught by him, or in particular to any part of such doctrines other than that at the time referred to. It may be well, finally, to note just how far our defense of God takes us. The theses we present for development and demonstration are but the initial theses of Natural Theology. Many others, and very important ones, have been left prac- tically untouched; to be treated, perhaps, some future day. Notwithstanding this, however, by proving, as we do, the existence of God as the one, and only possible one, intelligent, personal, unproduced, and hence self-existing and necessarily existing, first cause of all other existing things, the ruler of the world and of man, we have excluded, as absolutely false, all kinds of Atheism, Polytheism and Pantheism. The exclusion of Pantheism is both explicit and implicit, Attention is called to the implicit exclusion. This is contained, and with immediate clearness, in the proved conclusion that God is an unproduced, necessarily existing being, for as such He can in no way be identified with the produced, contingent world. Deism also, with its exclusion of God from the world of His creation, is refuted by our theses, not explicitly though, but im- plicitly. This implication also is contained in the proved con- clusion that God is the unproduced, necessarily existing cause of the world, seeing that without the continued and intimate 14 GOD AND REASON presence and action in the world of its necessary cause, God, and without the direction of His all-wise providence, neither the ordered world could exist, nor could any single creature in it continue in existence or perform action of any kind. What is more, by proving that God exists by His very essence and with absolute necessity, we have established the fundamental or root perfection from which Natural Theology derives, either immediately or mediately, all the other great perfections of God which human reason left to itself is capable of knowing. Not a few of these will be found enumerated in the description which will be given later of the more fully developed scientific concept of God. It seems scarcely neces- sary to add that when this concept has been fully proved and defended, the falsity of Atheism, Polytheism, Pantheism, Deism and other erroneous opinions concerning God will be more clearly and completely evident. BIBLIOGRAPHY 15 BIBLIOGRAPHY? *AVELING, Rev., Francis, D.D., The God of Philosophy. st) Louis's) B. Herdera1 906: Batrour, Rt. Hon. ArtHurR JAMES, M.A., F.R.S., LL.D., D.C.L.,Theism and Humanism, Being the Gifford Lectures, 1914. London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. BECKWITH, CLARENCE AUGUSTINE, The Idea of God. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1922. *BOEDDER, BERNARD, S.J., Natural Theology. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1891. CaLxins, Mary WuitTon, The Persistent Problems of Phiil- osophy. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908. CHRISTLIEB, THEODORE, D.D., Modern Doubt and Christian Behef. Translated, with author’s sanction, chiefly by Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, Ph. D., Edited by Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. Agents in New York: Charles Scrib- ner’s Sons. Dian, J. Lewis, D.D., The Theistic Argument. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. *Donat, JosePH, S.J., D.D., The Freedom of Science. New York: Joseph F. Wagner. DrakE, Durant, Seekers after God, The Harvard Theological Review, January, 1919. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. *DRISCOLL, REv. Joun T., S.T.L., God. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1904. 1. Approval is given only to those books and articles marked with an asterisk. The others are listed in return for permission kindly granted to quote from them. The bibliography offered, though not complete, will be found sufficient; a complete one would include many other books and articles in English and in other languages. 16 GOD AND REASON *Dwicut, THomas, M.D., LL.D., Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911, *GANNON, P.J., S.J., Comparative Religion, The Irish The- ological Quarterly, October, 1916. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Co. *GERARD, JOHN, S.J., Science and Scientists. London: The Catholic Truth Society, 1889. *GiLL, H. V., S.J.,Lord Kelvin and the Existence of God. The Catholic Mind, January 8, 1909. New York: The America Press. HaAgcKEL, Ernest, The Riddle of the Universe, Translated by Joseph McCabe. London: Watts & Co., 1913. Hatt, Rev. Francis J., D.D., The Being and Attributes of God. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. *HAMMERSTEIN, L. von, S.J., Foundations of Faith; Part J, The Extstence of God, Translated from the German. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1897. Hockine, Witt1AM Ernest, Pu.D., The Meaning of God in Human Experience. New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1912. *HULL, Ernest R., S.J., God, Man and Religion. Bombay: The Examiner Press, 1914. James, WitiiaAmM, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Gifford Lectures, 1901, 1902. New York: Long- mans, Green & Co., 1912. James, WILLIAM, Pragmatism. New York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1907. JAMES, WiLLtAM, The Will to Believe and other Essays. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912. James, Witi1AM, 4 Pluralistic Universe. New York: Long-. mans, Green & Co., 1909. BIBLIOGRAPHY 17 *Joyce, GeorceE Haywarp, S.J., Principles of Natural The- ology. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1923. Kant, IMMANUEL, The Critique of Pure Reason, Translated into English by F. Max Miller. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1907. Knicut, WitiiamM, LL.D., Aspects of Theism. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1893. Lanc, AnprEw, M.A., LL.D., The Making of Religion. New York; Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. *Lemius, Rev. J. B., O.M.IL, A Catechism of Modernism founded on the Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, of His Holiness, Pope Pius X., Trans- lated from the French at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, N. Y. New York: Society for the Propagation of the Faith. *Lro XIII, Pore, Encychcal, Aeterni Patris, Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, as a Preface to Vol. I of their translation of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. London: Randel) Washbourne) Ltd) 1912: *Lro XIII, Pore, The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, Translations from approved sources, with a Preface by Rev. John J. Wynne, S.J. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903. *LeRoy, Most Rev. ALEXANDER, The Religion of the Primi- tives, Translated by Rev. Newton Thompson. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1922. *Lessius, VEN. LEONARD, S.J., The Names of God, Translated by T. J. Campbell, S.J. New York: The America ress mola Leusa, JAMES H., The Belief in God and Immortality. Boston: Sherman, French and Company, 1916. Present publishers: The Open Court Publishing Com- pany, Chicago. 18 GOD AND REASON MaRrTINEAU, JAMES, D.D., LL.D., A Study of Religion, 2 Vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1888. *Miits, Puito Laos, S.T.L., Prehistoric Religion. Wash- ington, D. C.: Capital Publishers, Inc., 1918. *MUCKERMANN, H., S.J., Attitude of Catholics towards Dar- winism and Evolution. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1906. *MuNtTScH, ALBERT, S.J., Evolution and Culture. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1923. PAULSEN, FRIEDRICH, Introduction to Philosophy, Second American from the third German edition, Trans- lated with the author’s sanction by Frank Thilly. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1907. PHIN, JoHN, The Evolution of the Atmosphere, as a proof of Design and Purpose in the Creation. New York: The Industrial Publication Company, 1908. *Prus X, Pope, Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Trans- lated in The American Catholic Quarterly Re- view, October, 1907. *RICKABY, JOSEPH, S.J., Studies on God and His Creatures. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1924. *RONAYNE, Maurice, S.J., God Known and Knowable. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1888. Royce, Jostan, PuH.D., The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Royce, JosAH, Pu.D., The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. SCHILLER, F.C.S., M.A., D.Sc., Riddles of the Sphinx. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910. *SHALLO, MicHagt, S.J., Scholastic Philosophy, Philadelphia : Peter Reilly, 1915. *SHARPE, Rey., A.B., M.A., The Principles of Christianity. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1906. SHEARMAN, J. N., The Natural Theology of Evolution. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1915. Agents in New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. BIBLIOGRAPHY 19 *THOMAS AQUINAS, SAINT, The Summa Contra Gentiles, Literally translated by the English Dominican Fathers from the latest Leonine Edition. Lon- don: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., 1923. *THOMAS AQUINAS, SAINT, The Summa Theologica, Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dom- inican Province. London: R. and T. Wash- bourne, Ltd., 1912. TIspALL, W. St. Crartr, D.D., Comparative Religion. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. TYRRELL, GEORGE, Through Scylla and Charybdis. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907. WALTER, JOHNSTON Estep, Kant’s Moral Theology, The Harvard Theological Review, July, 1917. Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press. Warp, JAMES, Sc.D., Hon. LL.D., Hon. D.Sc., The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism.. Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1912. Agents in New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. *WaARD, WILLIAM GEORGE, PH.D., Essays on the Philosophy of Theism, 2 Vols., Edited by Wilfrid Ward. Lon- don: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1884. WEBER, ALFRED, History of Philosophy, Authorized transla- tion from the Sixth French Edition by Frank hilly Amv he Phaby ) New! \Vork:)/:Charles Scribner’s Sons. *¥____________. Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XVI, Index and Reading Lists; Lists of Reading in Theodicy, Cosmology, Psychology, and the History of Phil- osophy. New York: The Encyclopedia Press, Ine, 4___________. Fncyclopedia Americana, Articles on The Blood; The Circulation of the Blood; The Heart. New York: Encyclopedia Americana Corpora- tion. 20 GOD AND REASON , Nature and her Author, The Month, August, 1910. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. , The Programme of Modernism, A reply to the Encyclical of Pius X, Pascendt Dominici Gregts (with text of the Encyclical in an English ver- sion), Translated from the Italian by Rev. Father George Tyrrell. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1908. NATURAL THEOLOGY DEFINED 21 GOD AND REASON SOME THESES FROM NATURAL THEOLOGY | NATURAL THEOLOGY—DEFINITION. Natural Theology (Theos, God; logos, reasonable ac- count) is a scientific, i.e, ordered, certain, reasoned, knowledge of God, acquired by unaided (and so differing from Dogmatic Theology) human reason It is called also Theodicy (Theos, God; diké, right; dikaiod, I set right, I justify), ie, a justification, for believers and against the attacks of unbelievers, of the existence, attributes and works of God. This name was first used by Leibnitz in the title “Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu” etc., under which he published a treatise in answer to Bayle and others, who impugned God’s existence because of the presence in the world of moral evil. It should be noted that Leibnitz held the erroneous opinion that the present world is absolutely the best world that could be made, even by God. II. IMPORTANCE. 1. It is the highest of the naturally acquired sciences. It treats of God. 2. It is the complement of other parts of Philosophy. Without it a. Cosmology cannot give a complete explanation of the origin and final cause of the world, the necessity of nature’s laws, miracles; b. Psychology finds it impossible to adequately explain the origin and immortality of the hu- man soul, the freedom of the human will; c. Ethics is without foundation. 3. It supplies the truths necessary as a basis for a reasonable supernatural faith. 22 GOD AND REASON III. RELATION TO DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. It is subordinate to Dogmatic Theology and subject to its negative direction, and this, because the word of God is an extrinsic norm to Natural Theology, and is absolutely infallible, whilst reason, which is its intrinsic norm, may fall into error. Hence, as reason may err, it is held to the truth by Revelation; negatively, however, not positively. It is told that it must not attempt to teach anything which goes counter to the word of God, or the teaching of His infallible Church. The great value of this negative direction of Dogmatic Theology will become apparent when we view the count- less errors concerning religion and morality to which misguided reason, unchecked by Divine Revelation, has given birth. Scarcely a page of the history of philosophy, ancient and especially modern, is free from them. IV. DIVISION. 1. The existence of God, one and personal. This part only is treated in the present volume. 2. The essence and attributes of God. 3. The action of God in the world. CONCEPT OF GOD 23 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, ONE AND PERSONAL GENERAL PRENOTES I. THE NAME OF GOD. Anglo-Saxon, God; German and Swiss, Gott; Dutch, Godt; Flemish, Goed; Danish and Swedish, Gude; the one invoked, the one to whom sacrifice is offered. From the Gothic root, gheu, to invoke, to sacrifice to. Akin to Hindu, Khooda, and Persian, Khoda. Latin, Deus; Sanskrit, Dyaus (gen. Divas); Indo- Iranian, Deva; Gallic, Diu; French, Dieu; Spanish, Dios; Portuguese, Deos; Italian, Dio; Irish and Gaelic, Dia; Greek, Zeus (gen. Dios) and Theos; Old Teutonic, Tiu (Tuesday). Probably from Indo-Germanic roots, div, to shine, to give light; and thes, in thessasthai, to implore. Hebrew, £/; Babylonian, //u; Arabic, [lah (Al-Ilah, Allah) ; the strong or mighty one. By the Hebrews God was also called Jahveh (the unutterable name), He who is; Adonai, Lord; Elohim, probably, the Almighty. II. THE CONCEPT OF GOD. Popular. This concept represents God, at least, as a supreme being, sttperior to the world and on whom the world depends; its ruler and the ruler of man, and the object of man’s prayer and veneration. It may, and does in many instances, represent additional perfections of God; at times, also, it is partially erroneous in represent- ing His nature, as, for instance, when it represents His nature as existing in many beings. This concept, which, morally speaking, all who have the use of their reason tenaciously possess, is derived, almost spontaneously and through an informal reasoning 24 GOD AND REASON process, from a consideration of ourselves and things round about us. Speaking of this concept of God, Fr. Kleutgen, S. J., Philosophie Scholastique, nn. 226 ff. (quoted by William George Ward, The Philosophy of Theism, Vol. 2, pp. 133 ff.), says, ; “In many places Scripture declares, in the most express manner, that even for those to whom God has not manifested Himself by His Prophets or by His Son, there exists a revela- tion of God in His works, and even within the mind of men, whereby they can without any difficulty cognize God, their Creator and Maker, as well as His sovereign law. “It is not necessary to point out that Scripture does not in this speak of any (supposable) first cause, but of the living and true God, who has created heaven and earth, and inscribed His law in the heart of man; and that, con- sequently, it speaks also of the moral order. “Now, it says in the same passages that men who do not thus cognize their God are without excuse; that they are insengate; that they deserve God’s wrath and all His chastise- ments. It necessarily follows, then, that this manifestation of God by His works is such, that man cannot fail by this means to cognize God with certitude, unless he commit a grave fault. “Assuredly this does not mean that it is philosophical researches, continued laboriously through obstacles and doubts, which can alone lead to knowledge of God. Very few men, in fact, are capable of these laborious researches; whereas Scrip- ture speaks of all the heathens in general; and in the Book of Wisdom it is said expressly (13:1), ‘All men are vanity who do not possess the knowledge of God.’.. . “It necessarily follows, therefore, that there is a knowledge of God different from philosophical knowledge; a knowledge so easy to acquire and so certain, that ignorance and doubt on that head cannot be explained, except either by culpable carelessness or proud obstinacy. Suchis also... the common doctrine of the holy Fathers: they distinguish that knowledge, of God which is obtained by philosopical research, from that which springs up spontaneously in every man at the very sight of creation. This latter kind of knowledge is called by them.. ‘an endowment of nature’. ..a knowledge which springs up in some sense of itself, in proportion as reason is developed. . . And when the Fathers of the Church declare unanimously on this head that this knowledge is really found and established in all men, the importance of their testimony is better under- stood by remembering that they lived in the midst of heathen populations. . . . Since that moral and religious life for which man was created is founded on a knowledge of the truths . whereof we speak, God watches over man, in order that reason, {II. 1b CONCEPT OF GOD 25 as it is developed, may come to know them with facility and certainty. Observe the question here is not of supernatural grace, but is of the natural order.” Scientific. This concept represents God as the unpro- duced first cause of the world, existing of Himself and with absolute necessity, one and, of necessity, only one, intelligent, and consequently a personal being. When more fully developed, it further shows God to be absolutely infinite, i. e., actually possessing all possible perfections limitlessly, absolutely simple, intrinsically immutable, immense, eternal, with an infinitely perfect knowledge from all eternity of absolutely everything knowable, even the free future acts of man, all holy, all merciful, all just, all mighty, the creator of the world, on whom all creatures absolutely depend for their coming into existence, and in every action they perform, whose wise providence continually governs all things and is in no way to be impugned because of the evils in the world, be they physical or moral. This concept is the fruit of careful analysis and formal, scientific demonstration. Other Concepts of God. Besides these two concepts of God which unaided reason derives through a posteriori demonstration from a consideration of the visible uni- verse, man knows God in two other ways; in this life, through Revelation; in the life to come, seeing God face to face in the Beatific Vision. These two concepts, how- ever, being supernatural, are outside the province of Nat- ural Theology. VARIOUS OPINIONS CONCERNING GOD. Atheist. One who, having the use of reason, does not admit the existence of God. Practical, One who lives as if there were no God, and so practically rejects Him. 26 GOD AND REASON Theoretical, One who intellectually does not admit God’s existence. Negative, When this non-admission is due to a want of all knowledge of God. Positive, When it is an explicit act. Agnostic, One who asserts that to man’s un- aided reason, God, the ultimate source of real- ity, must ever remain unknown. He is fre- quently called merely an Agnostic. Sceptic, One who positively doubts of God’s existence, Dogmatic, One who positively denies God’s existence. As a genuine concept of God must at least represent Him as a supreme being, superior to the world and on whom it depends, a being to be supplicated and venera- ted, we class as Atheists not only those just mentioned but also those who place God on a level with the world, or with any part of it. “No Theist” says Ward, J., Pluralism and Theism, p. 243, “can pretend that the world is co-ordinate with God; the divine transcendence is essential to the whole theistic position.” Hence Pantheists, as will appear below, are Atheists, and also many present day non-Catholic philosophers, who would resent the name of Atheist, but who admit at least that they have no knowledge of the actual exist- ence of the being called God, and some of whom make Him to be not a real being at all, but a shadowy some- thing, an ideal, an inspiration, “a symbol of our highest human values,” the “Common Will” of men, and the like. In this, they follow the lead of the father of modern philosophy, Kant, who, no matter what he called himself, was really an Atheist. From the viewpoint of his “pure reason,’ he was an Agnostic, and the god he ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 27 postulated, through his “practical reason,’ was really man himself. In a brief summary of his doctrine concerning God, to be given shortly, Kant’s Atheism will be clearly shown. Some idea of the atheistic trend of the philosophy of to-day, which even a casual reading will discover, may be gathered from two articles, and a lately published (1922) book, to which we refer: Seekers after God, by Durant Drake, Professor of Philosophy and Education, Vassar College, The Harvard Theological Review, January, 1919; The Theological Trend of Pragmatism, by A. Eustace Haydon, Chicago University, The American Journal of Theology (Chicago University), October, 1919; and The Idea of God, by Clarence A. Beckwith, Illinois Professor of Christian Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary. These three writers ’ seem to have minds elastic enough to tolerate any con- cept of God, except that offered by Scholastic Phil- osophy. And modern philosophy is almost at one with them in this tolerance. Some passages from Professor Drake’s article have already been cited in our intro- duction; other passages to be cited later will further emphasize present-day philosophy’s rejection of God. . Polytheist. One who admits the existence of many gods. Pantheist. One who either partially or wholly identifles God with the world. A Pantheist is really an Atheist. Not a few philosophers of the present day profess Pan- theism of the idealistic type. Deist. One who admits the existence of God but denies His providence over the world, either totally, or only His special providence, i.e., miracles and supernatural revela- tion. bo on GOD AND REASON Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, gives a brief but clear picture of the Deist and incidentally also of the Pantheist. “This [Deism] is in many respects the antithesis of Pan- theism. According to Pantheism, God exists only in the world as its soul; according to Deism, He exists only above the world as a personal spirit, who, after creating the world by His will, now acts towards it like an artificer with a finished machine, which mechanically pursues its natural course according to the laws laid down for it, and no longer requires the immediate assistance or interference of its maker. . “The being, personality and supramundane nature of the Deity, and the creation of the world by Him, are thus acknowledged; while, on the other hand, any continuous active presence of God in the world, and any living inter- position in its affairs are denied. The world has outgrown its leading-strings, and emancipated from divine control is now left to itself. There is no special providence; miracles are an impossibility. Everything takes place in harmonv with natural laws, which are implanted in the universe and suffer no alteration whatsoever. This is the chief character of the deistical theory. “Ror the Pantheist, God is too near to seem to be above him: for the Deist, too far off to be recognized as exercising any direct rule over the world which He has made. Rele- gating God, as it were. to the uttermost confines of heing. he seeks to keep Him off as far as possible, in order to follow the light of natural reason, unmolested by the cross lights of a higher revelation. “The first and immediate consequence of this is, that. every special manifestation of God. no matter what, must he denied, all supernatural elements in the Christian helief. even those involved in the person and work of Christ, must be excluded, and anything in Scripture, bearing on these points must be explained away by a reference to natural eauses. In all essentials, then, Deism coincides entirely with that which was formerly denominated Naturalism, for it pro- nounces the laws of nature to be adequate to the continuous existence of the world, and natural religion to he the only essential form of belief, even in connection with Christianity. Tt likewise agrees in princinle with Rationalism. the essence of which consists in the position that reason is not merely the formal but also the material princinle of religion. and sunreme arbiter over the whole substance of the Christian faith.” P. 191. Monotheist (Theist). One who admits the existence of only one God, the creator and ruler of the world, over IV. ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 29 which He exercises both general and special providence. The numerous erroneous views briefly stated above will be rejected later, either explicitly or implicitly. VARIOUS ERRONEOUS OPINIONS AS TO HOW MAN KNOWS GOD. Erring by Excess: holding that God’s existence is im- mediately evident to us. a. The Defenders of the Argument ‘A Simultaneo’ (though called also the Ontological argument, it is not the argument of the Ontologists), who hold that the proposition,—God, a being whose existence is absolutely necessary, exists,—is immediately evident to us, i. e., by analysis and comparison of its subject and predicate we come to a knowledge of God’s real and actual existence. St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure, Descartes and Leib- nitz, the two last holding the idea of God to be innate, used this argument. Some think, however, and with reason, that St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure presupposing God’s existence proved, and hence the idea of God a true one, used the argu- ment, not as a means of gaining a primary knowledge of God, but rather to show that one who conceives God through a concept known to be valid, must by that very fact know Him to exist. b. The Ontologists, who hold that the first knowledge man has, is a direct, immediate, though obscure, knowl- edge of God, and that in Him so known is known every- thing else that man knows. This vision of God is had through an immediate objective union with Him, and its initial obscurity is due to distractions arising in the imagination, and to the shackling of the soul to the body. It cannot be evolved or perfected independently of the concurrent action of the imagination, and inter- communication through speech with other intellects. 30 GOD AND REASON Hence this vision differs from that of the Blessed in heaven. There are four varieties of Ontologism: Pantheistic, Rationalistic, Malebranchian, Gjiobertian. Pantheistic Ontologism identifies our intellect with God; Rational- istic, claims that we have an immediate vision of the essence of God. Both of these forms of Ontologism explicitly go counter to our faith. What is more, each of the other two forms contains implicitly the same two errors. Both of them hold that we have a direct vision of God through some attribute; but God’s essence and attributes are identical in reality and also in concept; therefore he who has a vision of an attribute has a vision of the essence of God. Moreover, both of these opinions are pantheistic, inasmuch as they make the reality represented in our universal concepts a thing divine. But this reality is identified with creatures. Malebranche, Gioberti, Rosmini, and, at one time, Brownson were Ontologists. Ontologism was con- demned by a decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office, September 18, 1861. Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, etc., Ed. 1913, n. 1659. Rosmini’s opinions were condemned by the same Congregation, Dec. 14, 1887. Cf. Ibid., nn. 1891 ff., 1927. For more modern Ontologism, cf. Driscoll, God, p. 56. Some of the arguments for Ontologism will be an- swered at the end of Thesis I. c. The Defenders of Innate or Divinely Infused Ideas. Chief among these are Descartes, Leibnitz, both of whom advocate the argument a simultaneo, and Ros- mini, whose innate idea is an intuition of God. Descartes admitted three kinds of ideas: 1. Those formed by outside objects acting through the senses (adventitiae, adventitious); 2. Those fashioned by the intellect either arbitrarily or as the result of reasoning ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 31 (factitiae, made); 3. Innate ideas, which are created with the intellectual faculty. These are either actual cognitions which lie dormant or shine clear as attention is not, or is given; or an innate capacity of the mind for eliciting certain cognitions distinct from and causally independent of adventitious and factitious knowledge. Among other things, God is known in this way. Leibnitz held that at the creation of the soul, God gave it ideas of all things knowable in the world. These ideas, however, when given, are confused and involved, and become distinct and are evolved, according to a pre- established harmony, only when the body to which that soul is joined is acted upon. Rosmini asserted that in the intellect of man is an innate idea of being, at first indeterminate, through the application of which to objects perceived by the senses, generic and specific ideas of things are gradually formed. Gradually Rosmini drifted into Ontologism implicitly pantheistic, for in a work published after his death, he held that this innate idea represented intuitively some- thing of being, necessary, eternal, and the creative cause of things. Erring by Defect: holding that man’s intellect of itself is incapable of any evidential knowledge of God, either immediate, or mediate i. e., acquired by demonstration. a. The Traditionalists (Fideists), who say, in part, that man to know God, even obscurely, or, according to a milder form of the doctrine, to know God clearly and distinctly, has an absolute need of Revelation. Given in the beginning, this Revelation has been perpetuated by tradition. The intellect, therefore, if not taught from without, cannot come to a knowledge of God, or at least to a clear knowledge of Him. 32 GOD AND REASON Inventors of different forms of this error were De Bonald, Bonnety, Ventura. Traditionalism is con- demned by the Church. b. A Host of Modern Philosophers, more or less Kantian, and in the true sense of the word Agnostics, who teach, in part, that God’s existence in the actual world cannot be demonstrated, but that, through a nat- ural though blind instinct, an existence of some kind is to be accorded to Him. And this by: i. The Practical Reason. Kant is the father of the system which attributes, to what in that system 1s called the Practical Reason, whatever belief or faith man has in the existence of God, the freedom of the human will, and the immortality of the human soul. We say what- ever belief man has, for according to Kant, man neither has, nor can have any knowledge of these matters. Whatever else, then, may be said later on of Kant’s Practical Reason, this may be said now, that it is in no sense a cognitive faculty, but the Will of man, which acts independently of reason, and with absolutely no reasonable foundation. It is a blind guide, born of a system that is destructive of all truth, morality and religion. What follows will make this only too evident. It is not our intention, however, to give here a full explanation and refutation of Kant’s system. That is done elsewhere in philosophy. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to view it briefly in its bearing on God, morality and religion, noting in the meanwhile, a point well worthy of note, namely, that, though abound- ing in glaring inconsistencies,—‘‘glorious inconsistencies” one of his admirers calls them—the influence of Kant’s system on modern thought is almost beyond estimation. Modern philosophy has all but rejected reason univer- sally as a guide to God, or in any of the weightier interests of life, and to Kant as to an infallible teache> ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 33 it appeals for justification in this rejection. This is the destructive heritage that Kant has left to modern phil- osophy. Man’s knowledge according to Kant, is confined solely to phenomena, 1.e., to his own subjective sense experiences. He knows, and can know nothing out- side of them, nothing outside of himself. The Natural Sciences and Mathematics which have to do with phen- omena, either actual or possible, are real sciences. Meta- physics, on the contrary, as a science claiming to deal with extra-phenomenal reality, ie, with things-in- themselves, 1s useless. Cosmology, Psychology, Natural Theology, can know nothing of a world, a soul, a God, for these objects transcending man’s experience are alto- gether outside of his knowledge. True, the speculative reason, urged on by an uncontrollable impulse to seek for the unconditioned condition of all things conditioned, reaches out to the Being of beings, an infinite God; nevertheless, its labor is barren, for since it knows noth- ing, and can know nothing of a real God, it develops and can develop only an idea of God, to which corresponds no known or knowable reality. Kant’s speculative reason, then, as we noted before, brings man to agnostic Atheism. Kant’s system, however, does not stop here. The prime motive he had in destroying reason’s power to reach God, he tells us, was not to bring about Atheism, on the contrary, it was to protect God, religion and mor- ality from the many enemies who were making use of reason to destroy them. “T am not allowed, therefore,’ Kant says in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, “even to assume for the sake of the necessary practical employment of reason, God, freedom and immortality, if I cannot deprive speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights, because reason, in order to arrive at these, must use principles which are intended originally for objects of possible experience only, and which, if in spite of this, they are applied to what 34 GOD AND REASON cannot be an object of experience, really change this into a phenomenon, thus rendering all practical extension of pure reason impossible. J had therefore to remove knowledge to make room for belief. For the dogmatism of metaphysic, that is, the presumption that it is possible to achieve anything in metaphysic without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, which is always very dog- matical, and wars against all morality...” “The greatest benefit, however, [of the Critique of Pure Reason] will be, that such a work will enable us to put an end forever to all objections to morality and religion, accord- ing to the Socratic method, namely, by the clearest proof of the ignorance of our opponents. Some kind of metaphysic has always existed, and will always exist, and with a dla- lectic of pure reason, as being natural to it. Jt is therefore the first and most important task of philosophy to deprive metaphysic, once for all, of its pernicious influence, by closing up the sources of its errors.’ (Max Miiller’s Translation, 2nd edition, pp. 700, 701.) By removing, then, the fundamental truths of reit- gion and morality from the reach of reason, Kant wished to protect them, little seeing that such removal would necessarily destroy them. Heine saw with clear vision the result of Kant’s philosophy,—‘I can hear the bell. Kneel down. They are bringing the Sacraments to a dying God.” Having deprived speculative reason of the power to attack God, Kant now turns to his Practical Reason to bring God back again, to restore Him to His proper place in man’s life. How this is done, and what kind of god Kant has brought back, we shall now see. Man cannot know God, nevertheless man is a moral being, and the Practical Reason through the voice of conscience proclaiming the Categoric Imperative,—‘This must be done; this must be left undone,’—demands in- sistently man’s obedience. This obedience, however, cannot be justified, in other words, morality cannot be justified, unless the Practical Reason postulates the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will, i. e..—restricting our attention now merely to the postulate of God’s existence,—unless the ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 35 Practical Reason commands man to act on the hypo- thesis (Kant denies that it is an hypothesis) that there is a God, to act as if there were a God, the while his cognitive or speculative reason tells him that it knows nothing of a God, and can discover no reasonable grounds for asserting the existence of one. Donat in The Freedom of Science, p. 45, justly remarks, “This dualism of ‘faith’ and ‘knowledge’ is as untenable as it is common. It is a psychological impossibility as well as a sad degradation of religion. How can I seriously believe and seriously hold for true, a view of the world which I do not know to be really true, when the intellect unceasingly whispers in my ear: it is all imagination. As long as faith is a conviction so long must it be an activity of the intellect. With my feeling and will I may indeed wish that something be true; but to wish simply that there be a God is not to be convinced that there actually is a God. By merely longing and desiring, I can be as little convinced, as I can make progress in virtue by walking, or repent of sins by a tooth- ache.”’ Man, then, according to Kant, postulates the exist- ence of a god, capable of satisfying a need which man judges himself to have. As the nature of this postulated being is not determined by anything that man knows to be objectively true, then every individual man being the judge of his own needs may postulate a god to suit himself. Whether the god so postulated exists or not makes little or no difference. That this is the prac- tical outcome of Kant’s philosophy we shall show pres- ently. Before doing so, however, let us see what kind of god Kant postulated to explain the moral law. Time and again he insists that God is not the source of morality, that there is no eternal, divine law that man is bound to obey, that man is a law unto himself, and is bound to obey not God but himself. Man is morally autonomous, just as in Kant’s system he is intellecually autonomous, God’s existence, then, is postulated by Kant not because with- out Him, as man’s moral superior and the supreme law- giver, the moral order could not be explained, but because GOD AND REASON without Him, as ruler of physical nature, all-powerful to harmonize it with man’s moral endeavors, man could not hope to reach that happiness which he merits by obeying not God, but his own nature. Man, therefore, in the moral order, and in the religious order also,—for, accord- ing to Kant, religion and morality are one and the same thing—is not merely independent of God, but is His superior, for God is only an agent of man, postulated to give to man the happiness which man has deserved independently of Him. (Cf. Kant’s Theory of Ethics, Abbott's’ translation, 6 Ed., pp. 16,17, 18; Shee BOG Ce 2h tun od) eA Ott, } Johnston Estep Walter in an article on Kant’s Moral Theology, Harvard Theological Review, July, 1917, writes very clearly and forcibly on this point: | “The moral law [according to Kant] commands us to make the summum bonum the ultimate object of our en- deavors. The summum bonum consists of two elements, mor- ality or virtue and happiness. Virtue is the ‘first and princi- pal element’ (‘it is the worth of the person, and his worthiness to be happy’); happiness is the inferior element, it is con- ditioned by virtue . . . It should be attentively observed that Kant assumes the existence of God, not as necessary to the possibility of the whole of the summum bonum, but of only one of its elements, and that, the inferior element, namely, happiness. Kant never postulates a God as _ nec- essary to the ‘first and principal element’ of the summum bonum, virtue or morality. “More fully it should be noted, that he does not treat God as the author of the community of moral agents in the world, or as the supreme object of their moral reverence, or as the producer of moral law, or the inspirer of moral life, or as Himself having ordained that virtue shall be accom- nanied by proportionate happiness, or as having made it a duty to promote the summuim bonum; that is to say, he does not postulate a God as necessary for any of the greater objects and concerns of morality, but only, or primarily, as the agent of the rather subordinate office of securing for the virtuous the happiness which they think they ought to have. “Kant regards man as morally autonomous, ag giving moral law to himself and obeying it himself, as the sole author of his own virtue. To assume that men are dependent on God for the moral law and for virtue would be posulating a species of heteronomy to which Kant is always decidedly ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 37 opposed. He will not accept the moral law even from God; he firmly claims autonomy. The supreme moral object for men is the moral law, which they produce of themselves and impose upon themselves. In his moral theory the finite rational agent is greater than God.” Briefly, Kant’s Practical Reason,—which is not reason at all, but the Will demanding and commanding obedience to moral laws,—blindly postulates a god of a kind to render service to man such, that man may find it possible to obey laws which emanate from himself. It is an act of the will, then, setting up a god with a man-fashioned nature to serve a man-created desire. The intellect, therefore, no longer discovers a God exist- ing outside of man, whose existence and attributes are His by divine right, eternally and absolutely, on whom man utterly depends, whose supreme will man is bound to obey, who is to be reverenced, worshipped and adored ; but the will of man conjures up a god, whose existence is not known and cannot be known, and who cannot con- sequently be treated as a real being, and whose nature and attributes are fashioned by man to suit man’s self- made needs. Kant’s speculative reason makes of man an Agnostic, his practical reason goes further. When its work ts done, man no longer merely confesses ignorance of God, but to his ignorance he has added the insult of setting up in place of the true God, a postulated or supposititious god, man-made and man’s inferior. It will not sur- prise us, then, if, as the subjoined excerpts will show, we find religion a sham for Kant, and for the many present- day philosophers who, following his lead, reject a reason-proved God, and substitute a god of their own making, or choose one from the many man-made gods already fashioned. | Of Kant’s religion, Donat, The Freedom of Science, writes, citing in places Kant’s own words: “Kant himself the father of agnostic mysticism, has made it clear that his postulates of faith concerning the 38 GOD AND REASON existence of God and the immortality of the soul, have never taken in him the place of earnest conviction. Thus, in the first place, Kant holds that there are no duties towards God, since He is merely a creature of our mind. ‘Since this idea [of God] proceeds entirely from ourselves, and is a product of ours, we have here before us a postulated being towards whom we can have no obligation; for its reality would first have to be proved by experience, . . . to have religion is a duty man owes to himself.’ ‘Prayer, as an internal form of cult, and therefore, considered aS a means of grace, is a superstitious delusion . . . A disposition present in all our actions to perform them as if in the service of God, is a spirit of prayer that can and ought to be our perpetual guide . By this . . . spirit of prayer man seeks to influence only himself; by prayer, since man expresses himself in words, hence outwardly, he seeks to influence God. In the former sense a prayer can be made with all sincerity, though man does not pretend to assert the existence of God fully estab- lished; in the latter form, as an address, he assumes the highest Being is personally present, or at least pretends that he is convinced of his presence, in the belief, that even should he not be, it can do him no harm, on the contrary it may win him favor; hence in the latter form of actual prayer we shall not find the sincerity as perfect as in the former.’” P. 46. Kant’s followers are more outspoken and some even blasphemous in their rejection of God. It will be suffi- cient to cite a few. Kleinpeter, Kantstudien, VIII, p. 314, “It is important to hold fast to the idea that a self- existent, divine truth, independent of the subject, objectively binding, enthroned, so to say, above men and gods, is mean- ingless, . . . Such a Truth is nonsense.” (Cited by Donat, Le preb). Niebergall, Christliche Welt, 1909, p. 43, “The fundamental idea of religion can neither be created nor destroyed by teaching; it has its seat in sentiment, like —excuse the term—an insane idea.” (Cited by Donat, l.c., p. 45). E. Von Hartmann, “From the viewpoint of authority, autonomy does not mean anything else but that in ethical matters I am for my- self the highest court of appeal . . . The God, who in the beginning spoke to his children from a fiery cloud ... has descended into our bosom, and, transformed into our being, speaks out of us as a moral autonomy.” (Cited by Donat, lL.c., p. 250). “We cannot help attributing a religious character, as far as the animal is concerned, to the relation between the in- ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 39 telligent domestic animals and their master.” (Cited by Donat, l.c., p. 290). Plate, “The universe is the expression of a uniform, original principle, which may be termed God, Nature, primitive force, or anything else, . . . These fundamental ideas of monism are by no means atheistic.” (Cited by Donat, l.c., p. 287). Jodl, “As the realm of science is the real, and the realm of art the possible, so the realm of religion is the impossible.” (Cited by Donat, l.c., p. 290). Leuba, “The truth of the matter can be put in this way: Godt is not known, he is not understood; he is used—sometimes as a meat-purveyor, sometimes as a moral support, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as an object of love. If he proves himself useful the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. Does God really exist? What is he? are so many irrelevant questions.” (Cited by James, The Varieties of Religious Hxperience, p. 506. What James thought of God we have seen in our Introduction, and shall further see below, in the section entitled Pragmatism). W. Bender, “Not the question about God, and not the inquiry into the origin and purpose of the world is religion, but the question about man. All religious views of life are anthropo- centric.” (Cited by James, l.c., p. 507). Durant Drake, Seekers After God, Harvard Theo- logical Review, January, 1919, has already witnessed to the hopeless confusion concerning God into which mod- ern philosophy has been led by its Kantian rejection of reason as a guide in man’s search for Him. A few more confirmatory passages from the same article will close our present inquiry. “It now seems rather needless to be an atheist. There are so many conceptions of God afloat that anyone at all widely read can scarcely fail to find someone suited to his mental outlook and convictions.” P. 69. “For certain types of mind pantheism will always be alluring. . . . The veteran and beloved John Burroughs equates the terms ‘God’ and ‘Nature.’ ‘We must get rid of the great moral governor and head director. He is a fiction of our own brains. We must recognize only Nature, the All: call it God if we will . . .’ “Similarly ex-President Elliot, in his famous address on The Religion of the Future (Delivered at the Harvard 40) GOD AND REASON Summer School of Theology, 1909), declares that ‘the new thought of God will be its most characteristic element.’ ‘The Infinite Spirit pervades the universe, just as the spirit of man pervades his body, and acts consciously or unconsciously in every atom of it.’ It is ‘one, omnipotent, eternal Energy, in- forming and inspiring the whole creation at every instant of time and throughout the infinite spaces.’” P. 71. “In his last great work (The Problem of Christianity) Royce. . defined God, more in accord with the new dominant tendency, as ‘ the spirit of the beloved community.’” P. 72. “At last Mr. Wells.. has succeeded in forming his con- ception of God, . . . ‘He is the undying human memory, the increasing human will’ This is reminiscent of earlier expressions by a scholarly American writer (H, A. Overstreet, Hibbert » Journal, Vol. Spy 3947 Vols MITT. i.) bai defined ‘God’ as ‘our own ideal of life,’ ‘the finer life that lives potentially in ourselves, ‘the deeper, more comprehensive self in all men that is urging to realization.’ ... Is that the conception, so eloquently presented by F, H. Green (V'he Witness of God), of God, as ‘our unrealized ideal of a besi’? ‘The word God is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal-achieving capacity.’ (So Forster, The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence.) Pp. 74, 75, 76. “Mr. Bernard Shaw, who, in that delightful play, Andro- cles and the Lion, showed his ability to appreciate the Christian spirit, tells us in its preface that ‘Jesus declared that the reality behind the popular belief in God was a creative spirit in ourselves called by Him the Heavenly Father and by us Evolution, Blan Vital, Life Force, and other names.’” P. 79. ii. Sentiment, i.e., by a blind irresistible feeling of a faculty superior to the intellect. This faculty is called the divine sense, the religious sense. Jacobi, Schleier- macher, Gratry and many present-day philosophers hold this opinion. ui. A Blind Instinct of the Intellect, called the com- mon sense, the faculty of inspiration, of intuition. So think Reid, Oswald, Dugald Stewart and others. iv. The Principle of Vital Immanence. This prin- ciple is proposed by the Modernists as the source of man’s knowledge of God, and of religious truths in general. The system they have built up in support of it, philosophically, bristles with error; theologically, it has been rightly styled ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 41 in the Encyclical of Pius X, Pascendi Dominici gregts, Sept. 8, 1907, (Denzinger, op. c., nn. 2071 ff.) condemn- ing it, “a synthesis of all heresies.” Many of its errors, therefore, are in direct opposition to the revealed word of God, and have been condemned by not a few Councils of the Church. The above-mentioned Encyclical gives a very full exposition of its erroneous doctrines and its methods of propagandism, and points out the means to be taken to nullify its baneful influence. One of these means ts a solid grounding in Scholastic Philosophy. The following are some of the principal errors of Mod- ernism: a. Man by the natural light of human reason cannot come to a knowledge of God. Hence all proofs for God’s existence advanced in Natural Theology are worthless. Neither can the word of man, nor the teaching of man reveal God to us. God is the object of faith-knowledge, and as such is known only by a direct revelation made by God to each individual man. b. As God is not known previous to, or outside of the act of faith-knowledge, there can be no question of a revelation accepted on the word of an all-knowing, all- truthful God, hence this revelation of Himself which God makes to each individual man is not an objective or external revelation, i. e., one made transiently or from without, as, for example, when one man reveals some- thing to another, but a subjective revelation made by God immanent in the heart, i. e., the desires or affections of man, by which man has an actual vital experience of God working within him. This vital experience then, is not an intellectual vision of God as a being external to man, but a sense or emotional feeling which is produced in the heart, i.e., the affective faculty, without any pre- vious advertence of the mind, and possesses within itself, as its own object and as its imtrinsic cause, the reality of 42 GOD AND REASON the divine. In other words, man is emotionally conscious of God’s presence within him, God being the imtrinsic cause of this emotion, the intrinsic Revealer, and also the object revealed in it. Now as man can be conscious only of fis own vital acts, and of himself as the cause concretely revealed in them, it follows that if man is conscious of an emotion intrinsically caused by God, and revealing God, man’s vital act and God’s vital act are one and the same act; God and man are identified. This is pure Pantheism. In justification of these statements we cite a few pas- sages from [he Programme of Modernism (Translated by Tyrrell) and from Tyrrell, Through Scylla and Char- ybdis, at the same time calling attention to the panthe- istic implications involved in the supreme eminence in religious matters given by the Modernists to the indi- vidual and collective religious consciousness because of the immanence of God in that consciousness. The Programme of Modernism: “Religious knowledge is our actual experience of the divine which works in ourselves and in the whole world.” P. 596. “Religion is shown to be the spontaneous result of irre- pressible needs of man’s spirit which finds satisfaction in the inward and emotional experience of the presence of God within us.” P. 100. “Long years . . . have. . . driven us [Modernista) to adopt a new theory as to the development of dogma from the teaching of Christ, preferring to see everywhere the continual and secret workings of a divine indwelling spirit rather than contradict plain facts by admitting an abrupt and complete revelation which never took place.” P. 17. “That this revelation [ie., revelation as explained by the Modernists] can only be transmitted by external signs is beyond question. But this does not alter the fact that our adhesion to these supernatural realities, which are the theme and argument of the said revelation is a result of internal experience.” P. 109. “It cannot be denied that our [the Modernists’] postu- lates are inspired by the principles of immanentism, for they all assume that the subject is not purely passive in its pro- ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 43 cesses of knowledge and in its religious experiences, but brings forth from its own spiritual nature both the witness to a higher reality intuitively perceived and the abstract formulation of the same.” P. 99. “Modernists . . . examine them [the Scriptures] with two faculties: the scientific faculty . . . and the faculty of faith, or religious intuition, which strives by assimilation and self-adaptation to re-experience within itself that religi- ous experience of which the Bible is the written record.” P. 125: “According to this principle [the immanental], nothing can enter into and get hold of man’s spirit that does not spring from it and in some way correspond to its need of self-expansion. For there is no fixed truth, no unalterable principle, that is not in some way self-imposed and innate.”’ Peo 2: Through Scylla and Charybdis : “Revelation is not so much a representation of some- thing experienced, as one of the elements of a complex spiri- tual experience—an experience made up of feelings and impulses and imaginings; which reverberates in every corner of the soul and leaves its impress everywhere; in the mind no less than in the heart and will . . . It would be a mistake to regard these latter ag the exclusive substance and reality of the experience, or as the ‘content’ or significa- tion of that so-called ‘representation.’ It is as much a part of the experience as they are, . . . it is, together with them, the subject matter of a subsequent act of reflection which strives to understand the whole complex experience in the interests of theology and philosophy.” P. 283. “Revelation is not statement but experience . . . When, therefore, God reveals Himself to the spirit in an extra- ordinary way and degree, it is in the total experience that we are to look for the revelation and not merely in the mental element. In this total experience He is revealed, not as a fact is revealed in a statement, but as a cause is revealed in its effect . . . Revelation is not a statement, but a ‘showing.’ God speaks by deeds, not by words.” Pp. 285, 287. “On the ears of the hearer, prophetic utterances must fall dead, unless there be within him a capacity to be evoked and directed by the Divine Word, a spirit to answer the Spirit . . . In other words, the teaching from outside must evoke a revelation in us. It is to this evoked revelation that we answer by the act of Faith, recognizing it as God’s word in us from outside, it can be occasioned, but it cannot be caused, by instruction.” Pp. 304, 305, 306. “For us once freed from our imaginative representation of an external God, who works upon humanity from outside; 44 GOD AND REASON for us who recognize that the Divine Spirit is to be sought {fn the human spirit, where alone iit speaks to us and reveals itself, the question as to whether authority (civil or religious) is from heaven or of men assumes a new complexion, and needs a new formulation. . . “Tf then the community to be governed is a higher organ, a fuller manifestation of the immanent Deity than any of the laws, council or rulers, by which it is governed; if God {s never to be found by man so truly outside as inside humanity—in conscience, both individual and collective—there is no such thing as an authority for whose use or abuse its bearer is accountable solely to an absentee external God and to an indefinitely distant assize. He is accountable, in a sense, to God alone, but it is to God immanent in the collective mind and conscience of the community.” P. 370. “The priest is not only for the people but from the people; his baptism is indeed from Heaven, but it is also from men. ‘That it is from the Spirit, through the com- munity is inevitably implied in the practice of ceremonial ordination. That it is from the Spirit in the communty is only the rational interpretation of the symbolic and pictorial account which religion gives us. It is from Him Who dwells not in temples made with human hands, but in that human temple which His own hands have made. The priest stands above the layman solely as the representative of the whole organism of the Church of which he and the layman alike are constituent members. From that organism, as from God, all his spiritual powers are derived, and to it, as to God, he is responsible for their use or abuse.” P. 371. “The vital question is—Where is that God to whom alone both Pope and Council claim to be responsible? Is He im- manent in the whole Church where we can ultimately learn His mind and will, or is He away beyond the stars where we can know nothing of either .. . ? Bvyv what vehicle does He speak and communicate with us? By voices from the clouds or by the gradual evolution of His Mind and Will in the collective spirit of mankind?” P. 380. “It is said reforms must come from below. Let us rather say they must come from above, from God immanent in the entire community which stands above priesthood and in laity.” P. 385. What interpretation is to be put on these statements the Encyclical mentioned above tells us: “Concerning immanence it is not easy to determine what Modernists precisely mean by it, for their own opinions on the subject vary. Some understand it. . ., others, finally, explain it in a way which savors of Pantheism, and this, in truth, is the sense which best fits in with the rest of their doctrines . . . And to Pantheism pure and simple that other doctrine of the divine immanence leads directly. For this ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 45 is the question we ask: Does or does not this immanence leave God distinct from man? If it does, in what does it differ from the Catholic doctrine of external revelation? If it does not, it is Pantheism. Now the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation holds and professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man. The rigorous conclusion of this is the identity of man with God, which means Pantheism.”’ Furthermore, as this sentimental feeling of the divine is, and can be, preceded in man by no natural knowledge of God, and as it is the sole source of the only knowledge man can have of God, 1.e., faith-knowledge,—which really is not intellectual knowledge, since God, according to the Modernists, cannot be reached by man’s intellect,—it must be, as far as man is concerned, a blind emotional feeling for an intellectually unknown and unknowable object. The Encyclical continues: “The object of science they [the Modernists] say, is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now, what makes the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion with the in- telligible, a disproportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernists, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the philosopher. Therefore, if any religion at all is possible, it can only be the religion of an unknown reality.” c. This vital experience or sense of the divine reality. this subjective revelation of Himself is produced by the immanent God in the heart of man in answer to a longing, a desire for God initially hidden in man’s sub- consciousness. And how does this longing emerge into consciousness, satisfied by the vital experience of God’s presence, and how does that experience grow and de- velop? The occasion for all this, not in any sense the cause,—God vitally immanent in man is the cause,—is some event in man’s life, a sickness, maybe, or a reverse of fortune, or something he has read, or something he has heard, say, from a friend or in a sermon. What ts more, man’s daily experience may also furnish him with 46 GOD AND REASON objects on which faith-knowledge works, in which case, however, those objects are disfigured and transfigured by faith into something higher, and so removed into the realm of faith-knowledge. A notable example of this is had in the person of Christ. As an historic person- age Christ was a mere man, and not God. As such He was an object falling within the experience of His fellow-men. Faith, however, disfiguring and transfigur- ing the man Christ, sees in Him God. What the Mod- ernist means, when he professes a belief in the divinity of Christ, we shall see shortly. d. The work of the intellect and reason in the origin and growth of man’s faith-knowledge, is neither to discover God nor argumentatively to increase man’s knowledge of God, but merely to examine and analyze the initial revelation, the emotional sense of the divine, in which God discovers Himself to man; to represent intellectually and clearly God discovered there, and there- after systematically to arrange and express in intellect- ual formulas or categories the growing experiences of the divine which as time goes on are produced in man by the action of God vitally immanent in him. e. What the Modernist considers truth and knowledge in general to be, and what, in general, the work of the intellect and reason in man, will be best stated in their own words. Their views will be found to be subversive, utterly destructive of all knowledge. We quote from The Programme of Modernism: “First of all we distinguish different orders of knowledge, —phenomenal, scientific, philosophic, religious. Phenomenal embraces all sense-objects in their particularity; scientific knowledge applies its calculations to the various groupings of perceived phenomena, and gives expression to the constant laws of their changes; philosophical knowledge is the inter- pretation of the universe according to certain inborn cata- gories of the human mind, and having regard to the deep- seated, unchanging demands of life and action; religious ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 47 knowledge, in fine, is our actual experience of the divine which works in ourselves and in the whole world. “Naturally this does away with the old definitions, in- herited by scholasticism, . . . by which science wags con- ceived as ‘the knowledge of an object according to its causes —efficient, final, material, formal,’ and philosophy as ‘the knowledge of things human and divine in their ultimate causes.’ But it is not our fault ... if psychological analysis ... has shown the subjective and personal elements which con- tribute to the formation of abstract knowledge. So that to-day it is no longer possible to speak of a cognitive faculty which functions in complete independence of our subjective needs and interests and arrives at a certainty and a truth which is ‘an equation of thought to thing’ (adaequatio rei et intellectus.) “To-day speculation is recognized to be a sort of action, in the more general sense of the term, and to be subservient to action. ‘The act of knowledge is the result of a laborious effort of the spirit to dominate reality and turn it to its own service by aid of certain mental schemata, or plans, in which it represents the useful relations and connections of objects. “Such a conception is liberating in the broadest sense. Considering the cognitive faculty as a function of man’s whole inward life; always remembering the relation of strict solidarity between abstract thought and action; breaking down the fictitious barriers raised between thought and will by scholastic philosophy, we contrive to give an enormous expansion to the region of the knowable, and to show that man is able, although by forms of knowledge hitherto little appreciated, to attain to those higher realities, the intimate apprehension of which augments the value of life and enriches it with new possibilities.’ Pp. 96, 97, 98. “For us it matterg little to attain to God through the demonstrations of mediaeval metaphysics or through argu- ments from miracles and prophecies which offend rather than impress the modern mind, and evade the control of ex- DEPIeNee. wires, “The arguments for the existence of God, drawn by scholastic metaphysic from change and movement, from the finite and contingent nature of things, from the degrees of perfection, and from the design and purpose of the world have lost all value nowadays.” Pp. 98, 100. “It is impossible for us of to-day to conceive a purely intellectual and speculative faculty, immune from all in- fluences of the will and the emotions. To the latest psy- chology reason seems more and more to be a sort of instru- ment of formulation and definition which human nature has instinctively fashioned for itself, and which it uses uncon- sciously in order to arrange, express, and control the ex- periences of the more elementary faculties of will and feeling 48 GOD AND REASON CeO and external sensation . . . For us reason does not exist as something abstract and apart. It exists only as a function of the instinctive faculties whose wants and successes it registers and classifies for future use.” Pp. 107, 108. f. According to the Modernists, then, an act of knowl- edge, a judgment, may be true when the object whose actual existence is affirmed does not exist at all, for, as we have seen, they insist that truth does not consist in a correspondence or equation between the intellect judg- ing and the object of its judgment. What, then, is the truth-value of such a judgment? In reality it has no such value, for the Modernists have destroyed the notion of truth. They call it a true judgment, however, even though it in no way corresponds to reality, if it is use- ful or helpful to man intellectually, morally, religiously, etc. 7 hpi If you ask the Modernist, then: “Does God exist?” he will answer, speaking as a believer with the knowl- edge of faith: “Yes;” speaking from the knowledge that he has gathered from his reading even of the Scriptures, or from what other men have told him, or from his reasoning on the world round about him, he will an- swer: “I do not know. Neither science, nor philosophy, nor the word of man, nor his teaching can give me any certainty on that point.” If you ask him, further: “Is your faith-judgment, ‘God exists,’ a true judgment?” he should answer: “It is true, even though there be no person called God; it is true with a symbolic value, be- cause it voices in a concrete way a sentiment, a thought, an inspiration, which is useful, which satisfies my re- ligious yearnings and urges me on to action.” If you ask him further: “Is the judgment, ‘Christ is God’ a true judgment?” he will answer as a believer: “Yes;” as a reader of history he will answer: “No, the person Christ who lived many years ago in the flesh, was a mere man, and not God.” And so, in the same way, to the ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 49 questions: ‘Did Christ perform miracles?” “Yes’’ and No.) Was Christ) bornyot al virgin / Mother?” "Yes and “No,” “Did Christ rise from the dead?” “Yes” and “No,” etc. It may be well, however, to let the Modern- ists tell us all this in their own words. The Programme of Modernism: “It is certain, however, that faith-truth is not always historical truth, but often only historical fiction.” P. 64. “As the supernatural life of Christ in the faithful and in the church has been clothed in an historical form which has given birth to what we might somewhat loosely call the Christ of legend, so the same life has been submitted to a doctrinal elaboration which has given birth to the Christ of theology or dogma.” P. 70. “By means of history we see in him [Christ] a man who has taught us by word and example: by means of faith we experience in Him the Saviour whose death and resur- rection have given us a new life.” P. 73. “It matters little to faith whether or no criticism can prove the virgin-birth of Christ, His more strikiag miracles, or even His resurrection; whether or no it sanctions the attribution to Christ of certain dogmas, or of the direct institution of the Church. As ultra-phenomenal, these former facts evade the grasp of experimental and historical criticism, while of the /atter it finds, as a fact, no proof. But both these and those possess a reality for faith superior to that of physical and historical facts. Without them, without such an expression of ultimate moral values, Christian experience would have lacked one of its most solid supports.” P. 112. “This way [the pragmatic] of conceiving the legitimacy of the development of Christianity is rebuked by the Encyc- lical as subjectivism and symbolism. But subjectivism and symbolism can no longer be reproaches. The latest criticism of the various knowledge-theories points to everything in the realm of knowledge—the laws of science and the theories of metaphysics—as being subjective and symbolic. But this does not hinder every such creation of the human spirit in the various departments of its activity from having an absolute value. Also the world constructed by faith has its life-giving value, and is therefore something absolute in its own kind. As for symbolism, a symbol no longer means a fictitious, and perhaps fraudulent, substitution connected with ignorant or erroneous beliefs. It too is a reality of its own peculiar kind whereon faith confers an inestimable value by which it becomes the real vehicle and beneficent occasion of an uplifting of the spirit and of a deeper religious insight. And since our own life is—for each one of us— something absolute, nay, the only absolute of our direct 50 GOD AND REASON experience, all that proceeds from it and returns to it, all that feeds it and expands it more fruitfully, has, in like manner, the value of something absolute.” P. 114. v. Pragmatism. Pragmatism rejects the definition of logical or intellectual truth as an equation, a correspond- ence, between the thinkirig intellect and the object of its thought, and calls that true which is useful, helpful, up- building. Logical truth, then, for the Pragmatist has no objective, absolute, permanent value, independent of the thinker, but a subjective, relative value; relative to the varying conditions of the thinker, and hence, which changes as they change. This system, therefore, in reality does away with the notion of truth altogether, and substitutes for it that of utility. Now, whilst truth may be very useful and have a practical value, never- theless truth is not utility. Many who are, strictly speaking, not Pragmatists, adopt this pragmatic norm of truth. The Modernists, for example, have done so, and with what results we have seen. Its use must lead to intellectual chaos, and countless other evils. For no matter how much its defenders may try to limit its application, it logically gives every individual the right to hold as true what- ever he considers helpful, and to act accordingly. What is true for me, then, may be false for you; what is true for me to-day may be false to-morrow; what is true for me according to faith-knowledge to-day, may, at the same time, be absolutely false, so the Modernists insist, as an historical fact. A man, then, who would use the pragmatic norm of truth, might assert the judgment, “God exists,’ to be a true judgment, giving it any meaning he pleased, even insisting that he had no knowledge of the objective existence of any being called God, provided he found such a judgment helpful to him. In fact, James has told us in A Pluralistic Universe, p. 124, that “God in the religious life of ordinary men is the name ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 51 . only of the ideal tendency of things, believed in as a isuper-human person.” All this, of course, is but making a mockery of truth and knowledge. A few examples will show this. The Pragmatic writer of the unsigned article on Polytheism in the Encyclopedia Americana gives this definition of Deity: “What one ought to mean by the truth or falsehood of the doctrine of Deity is not the reality or otherwise of any events which are associa- ted with its rise; but on the contrary, the adequacy of the idea to inspire just such feelings and to constrain to just such religious behavior as will give expression to a believer’s conscious relation to the ultimate grounds of existence, the abiding, in the measure that he knows them.” It may be well to note in passing that this whole article is very vague, and not free from errors which, from a Catholic viewpoint, make it dangerous. Kant, though not a Pragmatist, used, however, the pragmatic norm in the postulates of his Practical Rea- son—the existence of God, etc. And what kind of god did Kant fashion for himself? Kant tells us: ‘The righteous man may say: ‘I will that there be a god’.” Kant himself, therefore, said: “J will that there be a god,” and, as we saw above, this is the god he willed: “Since this idea [of god] proceeds entirely from our- selves, and is a product of ours, we have here before us a postulated being towards whom we cannot have an obligation, . . . to have religion is a duty man owes himself . . . Prayer as an internal form of cult, and, therefore, considered as a means of grace, is a super- stitious delusion.” Cf. Donat, Freedom of Science, p. 46. James tells us that _ “, , . anyone who insists that there is a designer [of the world] and who is sure [?] he is a divine one, gets a 52 GOD AND REASON certain pragmatic benefit from the term—the same, in fact, which we saw that the terms God, Spirit, or the Absolute yield. ‘Design,’ worthless though it be, as a mere ration- istic principle, set above or behind things for our admiration, becomes, if our faith concretes it into something theistic, a term of promise . . . Other than this practical significance, the words, God, free-will, design, etc., have none. Yet, dark though they be in themselves, or intellectualistically taken, when we bear them into life’s thicket with us, the darkness there grows light about us.” Pragmatism, pp. 114, 121. “Faith is synonomous with working hypothesis ; now in such questions as God, immortality, absolute morality and free will, no non-papal believer at the present day pre- tends his faith to be of an essentially different complexion; he can always doubt his creed.” The Will to Believe, P. 95. “Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of reli- gion seem to be sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a higher power which is friendly to him and to his ideals . anything larger will do, if it be only large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might even be a more Godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves . . . with no absolute unity realized in it at all. Thus would a sort of polytheism return upon us—a poly- theism which I do not on this occasion defend, for my only aim at present is to keep the testimony of religious experi- ence within its proper bounds.” The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 525, 526. In all these passages James, a thorough-going Prag- matist, speaks true to form. He realized that for a Prag- matist the name God may mean anything and everything, in other words, every man has a right to make a god to suit himself. And that every man has a right to make his own god, or to choose one from the many already made, Drake in the article previously cited, affirms in so many words,— “It now seems rather needless to be an atheist. There are s0 many conceptions of God afloat that anyone at all widely read can scarcely fail to find one suited to his mental outlook and convictions.” P. 69. Clarence A. Beckwith, Illinois Professor of Chris- tian Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary, is a Sentimentalist, a Pragmatist, and, though he calls him- ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 53 self an “ethical monotheist’”’, the doctrine he advances in The Idea of God, published in 1922, would seem to jus- tify one who would class him among the Pantheists. His initial idea of God he discovers in feeling and sentiment. The fuller meaning of that idea he strives to determine by endeavoring to find out not what God is, but what it pleases man to make Him to be. Truth, for Professor Beckwith, has no permanent worth; it is measured not by the object it should represent, but by what it suits man to think of that object, by man’s in- dividual experiences, views, theories, value-judgments, fancies, etc., which, under varying conditions, are ever shifting and changing, and are different for different men at the same time, and for the same men at different times. With this working principle of Pragmatism, Professor Beckwith judges that the God of the Nicene Creed does not suit the modern man at all. Hence he rejects Him absolutely and utterly, and if obliged to choose between Him and Atheism, he would take Atheism. He denies the Divinity of Christ, and rejects the doctrine of crea- tion and miracles, as “antiquated and indefensible’ and not “found either in the Old or New Testament”. He gives, however, a sympathetic hearing to the host of fanciful, false, and for the most part, crude concepts of God which modern philosophy has brought forth. The god, finally, who suits Professor Beckwith’s individual views of the universe, is one who is immanent in the world and yet transcends it. As immanent, he is not a changeless, eternal, substantial being, but ever-changing Energy, the Purposive Will or Creative Good Will, energizing the world from within; as transcendent, he is not real at all, but an ideal, a goal, towards which the - Purposive Will, which at no time is fully realized in the world, is ever pushing onward and upward. We give a 54 GOD AND REASON few brief, typical quotations from The Idea of God in confirmation. “We have never stopped to define what the idea [of God] means to us, but we have taken it for granted, as we take the air, friendship, education and democracy. We have shrunk from exact definition, since we preferred to leave it in the region of feeling; in its very vagueness lies much of its power to quicken reverence and awe and to appeal to simple trust: . . . Moreover there is the feeling that to drag this sentiment out from its reticent retreat and turn on it the cold light of reason, force it to give an account of itself and to justify its existence on pain of rejecting it, {s nothing less than the unpardonable sin” P. V. “This work aims at such a presentation of the idea of God as will enable it to function anew in the life of to-day.” Envi; “Since the idea of God is functional and conditions have arisen far different from those in the early centuries, we must expect a corresponding change in this idea . ... Meantime we must remind ourselves that an attempt so to define the idea of God as to keep it aloof from the modern view of the world is to place it in extreme jeopardy. All the sciences have been born since the fourth century, and have changed the meaning of the universe for all thoughtful men. The social order has undergone profound modification. The simple fact is that the Nicene idea of God does not interpret the world to the modern man; between that idea and the world of to-day is an impassable gulf. If the alternative is either that idea of God unmodified or none, then the conclusion must be—no God. Such an idea cast in irreformable dogma is the greatest possible encouragement to atheism.” P. 3. “The [modern] scientific spirit is marked by certain characteristic tendencies and habits . . . It relies upon in- ductive verification. All questions which involve human be- liefs, customs and ideals are subjected to historical inquiry . . The presumption is thus created that a doctrine such as the idea of God, which originated in modes of thought alien to the modern scientific spirit and world-view, requires restatement to become acceptable to the scientific temper and intelligence of to-day.” P. 6. “The naive notion of him [God] revealed in the beautiful story of the garden of Eden is unworkable and out of place in relation to conditions of civic and industrial communities.” be “Religious education is in exigent need of a restatement of the idea of God. . . . What is required is some conception of God which shall make him real, attractive and helpful . The historic creeds do not answer here. . . . We want no Deity who can be snugly imprisoned in cast-iron formulas and imposed by any body of men. Nor for religious education can we tolerate an idea of God [fi.e. the Nicene] which is ERRONEOUS VIEWS CONCERNING GOD 55 belied by the highest intelligence of the age, inconsistent with every or even any science, from which in later years, if one will think in terms of modern thought, one frees himself only by a violent wrench.” P. 382. “An idea of God which suffices for one people cannot answer for another people at the same time or at another age of the world, nor indeed for the same people at a further age in its own history..... Since all ideas are functional and no idea of God meets all the varied needs of all Christian peoples at a given time, there must be many variations of it to embody the requirements of the different groups. A cross-section of present-day religious thinking discloses a rather bewildering diversity of ideas of God, as these appear in Calvinism, Arminianism, Socinianism, monism, panlogism, voluntarism, vitalism, pluralistic pragmatism, and the New Realism,—each an attempt to solve the problem of existence from a particular point of view and in answer to a particular set of needs. Nor are we at the end of these endeavors, which should be welcomed by all who are in search of truth whose only function is to serve the well-being of man.” P. 17. “If we are to assign any meaning to [divine] transcendence we must avoid the assumption that God is independent of the universe, that his life would be complete without it and that he is in any degree separated from it. Apart from the uni- verse, God is inconceivable: no content can ‘be attributed to his being. . . . Moreover, we believe that there is no ‘beyond,’ no Epicurean heaven removed from the world, as a dwelling place.” P. 266. “God is immanent [in the universe] so far as he is the pervasive principle or energy by which the creative process is carried forward: he ig transcendent so far as there are infinite possibilities in the creative process which may be realized under temporal, spatial and conscious forms. The immanent God is ‘The God of things as they are’; the trans- cendent God is the God of things as they are to become. Since, however, being is ever passing into becoming, God as immanent is not static but dynamic; and because becoming riges out of and fulfils being, God as transcendent is not de- tached from the actual. If he is the changing, he is also the permanent, real One.” P. 269. “The being of God is not other than his will, and his will does not exist outside of a world of space and time and con- scious beings. Nowhere is God more real and never will he be more active than in the immediate circle of our conscious life. . . . With a world which transcends experience, and a conception of God which alleges something in him which is other than what is manifest in our world we can have no concern.” P. 134. “The One exists only in and through the many.” P, 381. All these views are a simple declaration of mental bank- ruptcy, and, in principle at least, of moral and religious bank- 56 GOD AND REASON ruptcy also. And all systems of philosophy that desert reason in their search for God, and in its place install some blind guide, must necessarily make this same declaration. How widespread to-day is that desertion may be gathered from the following passages taken from Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience. Professor Hocking is in full sym- pathy with the movement against reason. He writes: “The services of thought to religion nave been subject to a justified distrust. Of uncertain worth, especially of uncertain recoil, are the labors of reason in behalf of any of our weightier human interests. By right instinct has religion from the beginning looked elsewhere for the brunt of support—say to revelation, to faith, to feeling. A bad defense is a betrayal, and what human philosophy of religion can be better than a bad defense? Present-day philosophy seems notably inclined to take this view of itself. “Our current science of religion may now assume without too much discussion that the grounds of religion are supra-rational; and we find philosophy undertaking to define what those other-than- rational grounds are,—grounds moral, perhaps or psychological or social or historical: grounds pragmatic or even mystic. “Various and variously combined as are these several Philo- sophic trends they agree in accepting the judgment that religion lies close to the primitive moving force of life: deeper, then, than reason, or any work of reason. But a vague territory, still, is this Beyond-Reason or Deeper-than-Reason. Once singly named Faith, now it has many names,—instinct, the subconscious, the co-conscious, feeling, will, value judgment, social sense, intuition, mystic reasyu, perhaps ‘l’élan vital.’” P. V All the erroneous opinions above mentioned, excluding, however, that advancing the argument a simultaneo, are fully explained and refuted in previous parts of Philosophy, viz., in Criteriology and Rational Psychology. Still, as their rejection is necessary for a full treatment of our matter, they are given a passing mention here, and will be again refuted, but briefly. In the difficulties at the end of Thesis I, some of their main arguments will be answered. The argument a simultaneo, or Ontological argument, will be refuted in a separate thesis. ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 57 THESIS I. The source of our knowledge of God is neither an on- tological intuition of Him, nor an innate or divinely in- fused idea, nor any of the subjective mediums invented by Kantians, Reidians, Sentimentalists, Modernists or Prag- matists, nor is it necessarily revelation and a consequent tradition. be ee PRENOTES TO THE THESIS. A sufficient knowledge of the sense of the thesis and its adversaries may be gathered from the exposition given above of the opinions rejected in the thesis. As the false Theories of Knowledge advancing these opinions are fully and specifically refuted elsewhere in Philosophy, the proofs of our thesis, whilst amply suffi- cient, are brief, and general rather than specific. PROOF OF THE THESIS. Parts I and II. Ontological intuition, and innate or divinely infused idea of God rejected, 1. If God were so known, we should be conscious of the fact, especially on reflection, and we are not. 2. If God were so known, our concepts of God should express perfections (notes) derived directly from Him, and not, as is the case, directly from creatures, to be afterwards applied to Him, mutatis mutandis, 1.e., so changed as to imply no imperfection. 3. If God were so known, it is impossible to understand why a scientific knowledge of God is got with difficulty. 4, The law of parsimony prohibits recourse to an extra- ordinary medium of knowledge when, as in the present case, we have an ordinary one, i.e., our reason. 58 GOD AND REASON Part III. The opinions of the Kantians, Reidians, Senti- mentalists, Modernists rejected. 1. They all deny to reason the power to prove God’s existence, and falsely, as we shall show by proving His existence by a posteriori arguments. The substitutes they offer in reason’s stead can give no intellectual cer- tainty, for we know, that unless the assent of the in- tellect rest in some way on evidence, it must be doubtful. 2. Again, the conscious contact with God, of whatever kind it may be, which is supposed to be made through these mediums, should be immediate, nevertheless, even after most careful reflection, it is impossible to discover any consciousness of such contact with an actually exist- ing being who is God. Part IV. The opinion of the Pragmatists rejected. The Pragmatists have rejected all objective knowledge. The measure of truth they offer is not an object to which the intellect must conform, but subjective utility. But what I judge useful to me, my neighbor may judge harm- ful to him. So the same judgment may be true for him, false for me, and there is no possibility of an absolute norm. What is true today, may be false tomorrow. Nay, even for the same person and at the same time, the same judgment may be true and false. The Modernists, who, in this regard follow the Pragmatists, tell us how. The belief, for example, that Christ 1s God, that Christ worked miracles, is true, in the world of faith, but in the world of fact, of history, in the actual order, these assertions are absolutetly false. It is quite evident that on pragmatic grounds Atheism, Pantheism, Deism, Polytheism, and a Monotheism that makes of God any kind of being we please,—‘‘anything larger will do if it be only large enough to trust for the next step—a larger and more God-like self,’ as James says, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 525,—may ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 59 all be justified. In other words there is no such thing as truth. Part V. The opinion of the Traditionalists rejected. Independently of revelation and tradition, we can ac- quire, by a posteriori demonstration, a certain, clear knowledge of God. Therefore, revelation and tradition are not necessarily the source of such knowledge. It is to be noted, however, that revelation is morally necessary that man, generally speaking, may acquire a fuller knowledge of God expeditiously, without error and surely. In other words, the difficulties to be over- come in acquiring expeditiously a sure, and accurate fuller knowledge of God are such that, though man has the physical power to surmount them, and though some men would actually and successfully use that power, still the general run of men would not do so. To give man, there- fore, a knowledge of God which he could acquire, but which, for one reason or other, in by far the greater number of instances he would not acquire, revelation is necessary. How true it is, that human reason, as we find it, when not held in check by the absolutely infallible guide of revelation would fall into many and grievous errors con- cerning God, is only too convincingly shown in the re- ligious beliefs and philosophical systems of those who have rejected the revealed word of God explicitly, or im- plicitly, that is, by rejecting its living infallible guardian, and interpreter, the Catholic Church. DIFFICULTIES 1. We have an idea of the infinite. This cannot be derived by reason from things finite. Therefore its origin may be possibly either an intuition of God, or an innate idea of Him. 60 GOD AND REASON D. Maj. We have an idea of the infinite, wholly positive and derived through an intuition or an innate idea of God, N.; not wholly negative, i.e. not represent- ing God as a limitless blank, nor wholly positive, as it should be if we knew God immediately, but negativo- positive, e.g., representing God as a non-finite being, 1.e., a being possessing reality without limit, which idea is derived from finite things indirectly, C. . Cd. Min. True knowledge is the agreement of mind with the ob- ject known. Therefore as God is first in the order of ' reality, if my knowledge is tobe true, He must be known first. Therefore Ontologism is to be admitted. D, Ant. The agreement required by truth is that, as far as the act of knowledge goes, it must represent things as they are, C.; it also requires that the genesis of my acts of knowledge follow the order of the genesis of things, NV. N. Con. I may truly know an effect before I know its causes; I may derive a knowledge of the existence of the cause from the effect. God is a being more intelligible than any other being, and closer to my intellect than any other being. There- fore He should be known first and intuitively. Hence Ontologism is true. D. Ant. God is in Himself and to Himself most intelligible; He is also in the physical order closer to me than any other being, and that, in virtue of His immens- ity, and His activity in creating and continuing in existence myself and all my faculties, and in concurring with me in all my actions, C.; God is more intelligible to me, i.e., closer to me in the intellectual order, than any other being, N. NieGan. My intellectual knowledge is derived directly through sense knowledge, rising above it, first, in those universal ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 61 concepts which represent the essences of things sensible, and thereafter, by demonstration, coming to know things spiritual and even God Himself. Our universal concepts, formed prior to reasoning, repre- sent something which is necessary, immutable, eternal, in- finite. Such a thing, however, is divine and, as it is known prior to reasoning, these concepts must result from a direct knowledge or vision of God. Therefore Ontolo- gism is to be admitted. D. Maj. My universal concept represents something which, considered as it exists in the actual order, is an absolutely necessary and immutable being, who is in the strict sense eternal and possesses all perfections, who 1s God, N.; it represents something which, considered only as it exists objectively in the intellect, is not singular but universal, which, as such, cannot exist actually, and which may be said to be necessary, immutable, eternal, infinite, but not at all in the sense God is said to be, C. Cd. Min. My universal concept represents no singular, actual be- ing with such perfections. It is derived by an act of spontaneous or natural abstraction from a sensible ob- ject, representing only the nature which that object has in common with others, neglecting that which is proper to it as an individual. That which it represents may be looked at in two ways: as it exists in the object, and, as such, it is found in the actual order, singular, contingent, changeable, temporal, finite; or as it exists shorn of its individuating perfections, and, as such, it exists as a universal, not in the actual order but only objectively in the intellect, in which state only it may be said to be, in a very restricted sense, and in no way as God is said to be, necessary, immutable, eternal, in- finite. For example, the essence which is represented in the universal concept man, is necessary and immutable in the sense that every individual who is a man must of 62 GOD AND REASON necessity have and without any change the notes that con- stitute that essence, viz., animality and rationality; it is eternal and infinite in the sense that it is intrinsically possible for it to exist at any point of time and in any number of individuals. The admission of the existence of God, conceived at least as a being ruling the world and on whom man physically and morally depends, is so universal among races, nations, tribes and individuals, that it must be said to be natural to man. It can be explained only on the supposition that man has an innate knowledge of God. What is more, some of the Fathers of the Church admit such a knowl- edge. We grant the truth of the assertion, but deny its ex- planation, if it contends that man is born with an actual knowledge of God, or with a capacity for knowing Him directly and immediately. We deny also that any of the Fathers of the Church have so spoken. In fact, those who touch this question, substantially agree with the explanation we subjoin. Man is made for God. The natural and final end of his endeavors in this life is to give God reverence and service, and this presupposes a knowledge of Him. Until this knowledge is acquired, man is uneasy. He is conscious that what he as yet knows, does not satisfy, and by his nature he is impelled to seek for further enlightenment. An immediate evidence of God‘s existence is not granted him, but an intellect has been given him, so fashioned that, if mediate evidence of that existence be granted, it will discover it with ease and tenaciously cling to it; and this, because the discovery of that truth satis- fies a vital need of man’s nature. And this mediate evidence is bounteously given. For just as the ultimate and chiefest end of man in this life ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 63 is to know God, in order that he may reverence and serve Him, so the ultimate end of all visible nature is to make God known to man. ‘The heavens, the earth, and all things in them show forth the glory of God. Hence, that universal, constant knowledge of God in all races, nations, tribes and individuals; not scientifically and laboriously worked out, but drawn from God's visible creation by a process of spontaneous reasoning, in many instances hard to analyze, in many instances erring as to the nature of God, but ever acknowledging _ His supremacy over the world, and the world’s physical and moral dependence on Him. (Cf. Kleutgen, cited above, under Popular Concept of God.) Man naturally seeks for the greatest good. But the greatest good is God. Therefore man naturally seeks God. Hence he has a natural, an innate knowledge of God. D. Maj. Man’s whole nature, by the very fact that it is made for God, tends towards the greatest good, which tendency therefore is independent of, and prior to all knowledge, C.; man in his actions naturally seeks the greatest good, Subd., as the aspect, under which the will seeks its object in all its actions, is that of goodness with no admixture of badness, so man may be said in all his actions naturally to tend towards the greatest good in the abstract, C.; man in his actions naturally tends towards that being in whom concretely is found all good, i.e., towards God, Subd., man in all his actions tends toward God, N.; in those actions in which he seeks his last end either immediately or mediately, and which actions in no way presuppose an innate knowledge of (odin G. Cd. Min. DACon: 64 GOD AND REASON THESIS II. That God exists is a truth which is immediately evident in itself though not immediately evident to us. It can be proved neither a simultaneo nor a priori, PRENOTES TO THE THESIS. A truth immediately evident in itself is one contained in an analytical proposition, the necessary nexus between the subject and predicate of which is objectively or in itself immediate. In itself, therefore, this nexus is knowable immediately ; hence an intellect sufficiently per- fect could so know it. A truth immediately evident to us is one contained in an analytical proposition, the necessary nexus between the subject and predicate of which is not only objectively or in itself immediate, but also immediately knowableé to the human intellect. The human intellect, therefore, by a mere analysis and comparison of the subject and predi- cate of such a proposition, and hence without recourse to any middle term, could clearly see the necessary nexus between them. The argument a simultaneo essays to derive merely from the concept we have of God, e.g., as a being who is con- ceived as necessarily existing, the knowledge on our part of His actual existence. A priori proof draws its conclusion from a truth which in the real order, i.e., in the nature of things, is prior to that contained in the conclusion. We so argue when we derive from the existence and nature of a cause the existence and nature of its effects. A posteriori proof draws its conclusion from a truth which in the real order is posterior, i.e., subsequent, to ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 65 that contained in the conclusion. In this way, as will be seen below, we argue from the existence and nature of things in the world to the existence of a first, unproduced, self-existing cause of them—God. ADVERSARIES. The first part of the thesis has no adversaries. As those who defend the argument a simultaneo really hold that the existence of God is a truth immediately evident to us they may be classed as adversaries to the second and third parts of the thesis. PROOF OF THE THHESIS. Part I. That God exists is a truth which is immediately evident in itself, In the proposition, God is existing, the predicate, as will appear below, is of the very essence of the subject, le., objectively the nexus between them is immediate. Therefore one who would fully understand the nature of the subject would also immediately see this necessary nexus, Part II. That God exists is not a truth which is immedi- ately evident to us. u Our consciousness testifies that by merely conceiving a being whose existence is essential to it, and actual existence, and comparing the two conceived objects, we are not forced to affirm that being’s actual existence. If our intellects were thus forced to affirm that be- ing’s existence, no one, after merely forming a con- cept of a being whose existence is essential to it, could doubt of that being’s actual existence. As a fact, however, there are many who after forming such a concept either doubt of God’s existence or embrace Agnosticism. 66 GOD AND REASON It is a law of logic that those perfections which are found after analysis to belong to any subject, can rightly be predicated of that subject only in the order in which it is found. But in the present instance the subject, as far as our knowledge yet goes, exists only objectively in concept, therefore the only judg- ment I can make with regard to its existence is this: a being, conceived as existing by its essence, must necessarily be conceived as actually existing. If. however, it be objected that, at least in the case of a subject whose essence is to exist, we may pass from the ideal to the actual order, for if that being did not exist, a concept of him would be im- possible, and yet we have a concept of him,—we answer (and this answer shows the fallacy in the argument a simultaneo ), that since the proofs we have given above are valid, and hence since the mere con- cept of a necessarily existing being does not give us a knowledge of his actual existence, that concept, as far as our knowledge goes, may, or may not, be a self contradictory one. In other words, the concept we have of a necessarily existing being, prior to, or prescinding from, a posteriori proof of that being’s actual existence, represents that being as one whom we merely do not see to be impossible and not as one whom we see not to be impossible, i.e., whom we see to be possible. Part III. The argument a simultaneo is invalid. If the concept we have of God prior to an a posteriori proof of His existence, may or may not, as far as our knowledge goes, represent an impossible being, the argu- ment a simultaneo is invalid. But the condition is true. Therefore, etc. Maj. Min. Partly: ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 67 If, as far as our knowledge goes, the concept may or may not represent an impossible being, we certainly cannot get from it certain knowledge that he is a possible being, and hence that he exists. In that hypothesis, therefore, the argument a simul- taneo is invalid. That the concept we have of a necessarily exist- ing being, independent of all proof of that being’s existence, may, as far as our knowledge goes, repre- sent an impossible being, has been shown in the proofs of Part II. The existence of God cannot be proved a priori. There is nothing in the real order prior to God, He, as will be proved later, being the self existing first cause of all things. And even when in concept we distinguish, for our better understanding of Him, perfections in God, His existence is necessarily conceived as fundamental. Hence there is nothing in concept prior to it from which it may be derived. Therefore the existence of God cannot be proved a priors. Scholion. The argument a simultaneo is presented under several forms. We give the three best known with their solutions. As was stated above, it is not certain that St. Anselm or St. Bonaventure used it strictly. —— St. Anselm. If a being who is conceived as the great- est being thinkable does not exist, he is not the greatest being thinkable. But the being who is conceived as the greatest being thinkable, is the greatest being thinkable. Therefore he exists, 68 GOD AND REASON D. Maj. And the concept we have of such a being, in-. dependent of a posteriori proof of his existence, represents him as one who, as far as our knowledge goes, may or may not be impossible, C.; it shows him as a being known to us to be possible, hence actually existing, N, Cd. Min. And the concept I have of him indepen- dent of a posteriori proof of his existence represents him to me as a being who is known to me to exist, V.; who as far as my knowledge goes, may or may not be existing, C. Descartes. Whatever is contained in a clear and dis- tinct idea of any object must be affirmed of that object. But existence is contained in a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely perfect being. | Therefore existence must be affirmed of him. D. Maj. If the idea is known to represent a possible being, C.; if it may or may not, as far as our know- ledge goes, represent an impossible being, N. Cd. Min. Which idea, as far as our knowledge goes, may or may not represent an impossible being, C.; is known to represent a possible and hence an existing being, Subd., after a posteriori proof, C-; before, N. D. Con. After'a posteriori proof, C.; before, N. Leibnitz. If God is possible, He exists. But He is possible. Therefore He exists. D. Maj. If God is known to me to be a possible being I must affirm His existence, C.; if He is known to me as a being who may or may not be possible, I must affirm, etc., NV. Cd. Min. God is known to me as a being who may or may not be possible, C.; He is known to me as a ERRONEOUS VIEWS REJECTED 69 being who is possible, Subd., after a posteriori proof of His existence, C.; before, N. D. Con. I must affirm His existence after a posteriori proof of it, C-; before, N. 70 GOD AND REASON THESIS III. The existence of God, as the unproduced cause of all things existing in the world,,is proved from the fact that all existing beings cannot be produced beings. GENERAL PRENOTES TO THE PROOFS FOR GOD‘S EXISTENCE. . All our proofs of God’s existence are a posteriori. From a consideration, under different aspects, of the creatures that God has made, we demonstrate His existence under different aspects. sas These proofs are grouped under three general heads; Metaphysical, Physical, Moral. Metaphysical proofs draw their conclusion from the consideration of objective reasons which are derived from this sensible (physical) world, but which in themselves, and as used, are not restricted to, i.e., prescind from, its sensible or physical aspect, and so are universally applicable to any being in the world. Hence they are called metaphysical. For example, though our knowl- edge of produced being is acquired through a knowledge of the sensible, i.e., physical world about us, from the fact that even one such being exists, whether that being be sensible or not, the metaphysical argument proves the existence of a first unproduced cause. Physical proofs draw their conclusion from the con- sideration of some sensible (physical) aspect of the vis- ible world. For example, from the order we see in the universe. Moral proofs draw their conclusion from some com- mon, habitual, customary (mores, customs) way or man- COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 71 ner of thinking or acting among men, te., from those judgments or actions of men which, from their univer- sality and constancy, which true knowledge has ever in- creased, may be said to spring from human nature itself, so that one who would go counter to them would be judged not-natural, i.e., unnatural, abnormal. Such an argument is that derived from the universal belief of mankind in the existence of a being or beings superior to the world, and on whom the world depends not only physically but morally and religiously. Of these proofs by far the most important are the meta- physical, for through them we derive the knowledge of the existence of God as an unproduced first cause, who exists of Himself and with absolute necessity. This con- cept having been established, through it we deduce His infinity and all those other perfections which are found in the fully developed, scientific concept of God, mentioned above. These arguments give us the seed-thought from which is developed the science of Natural Theology. The other arguments, however, are not by any means useless. That derived from the order of the universe, for example, proves emphatically the great intelligence of the First Cause, while the moral arguments present the testimony of the whole human race to the fact that a supreme being exists, We shall select one argument from each of these di- visions for full development; the more important of those which remain will be explained briefly later on. PRENOTES TO THE THESIS. 17 The argument developed in the present thesis is called the Cosmological (cosmos, the world; logos, a rational ex- planation) argument. It gives the final answer to the question: Whence come those countless produced beings, substantial and accidental, through whose springing into T2 GOD AND REASON existence, the world is continually renewed and perpet- uated? We take for granted, therefore, and from internal and external experience it is self-evident, that in this world things are being continually produced: new combinations, both substantial and accidental, of the elements, new plants, new animals, new men, new thoughts, new de- sires, and all the wonderful effects of man’s endeavors. It is well to note, however, that if we knew of the existence of only one produced being, we could demon- state the existence of an unproduced first cause. Our proof draws all its force from the principles of causality and sufficient reason. The principle of causality is an analytical principle; one, namely, expressed in a judgment, between the sub- ject and the predicate of which exists an absolutely necessary nexus. It may be enunciated as follows: Whatever does not exist of absolute necessity, cannot exist without a pro- portionate physical efficient cause. Another form, which shows clearly that the principle of causality is but the principle of sufficient reason restricted to contingent be- ings, is: The only sufficient reason for the existence of a being whose existence is not absolutely necessary is a proportionate physical efficient cause. Since God, as will be shown, is an absolute necessary being, the principle of causality cannot be applied to Him. The truth and analytical character of the principle of causality may be briefly shown as follows: A being whose existence is not absolutely necessary,— and all change- able beings are such,—has the sufficient reason for its existence in itself, or in some other being. It cannot however, have such reason in itself. If it had, it would be either, a. because existence is essential to it, which is impossible, seeing that its existence is not absolutely COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 73 necessary to it, or b. because it caused its own existence, which is also impossible, for to cause its own existence, it would have to exist before it existed. Therefore the reason for its existence must be found in some other be- ing. That being is its efficient cause. The principle of sufficient reason, also analytical, is absolutely universal in its application, not excluding even God. It states: Whatever is, must have a sufficient reason for being what it is. The sufficient reason assigned for the existence of a produced, 1.e., a contingent being, which is found in an efficient cause, may be adequate or inadequate. An adequately sufficient reason is one that fully satis- fies, and, beyond which no other reason can be given. An inadequately or partially sufficient reason is one which partially satisfies, and hence beyond which, or outside of which, some other must be given. In our thesis we contend, that although a partially sufficient reason for the existence of a produced being may be found in another produced being which is its proximate efficient cause, still a full and adequate reason for its existence can never be found, unless we admit the existence of an ultimate unproduced first cause. In our proof we prescind from the question of the im. possibility of an infinite series of actual, successively pro- duced beings. Hence even though its possibility were admitted, our proof would still be valid. Our aim in so doing is to make our proof, as far as possible, indepen- dent of the discussion of a question, which even some Catholic philosophers consider debatable. As a matter of fact, we hold that an infinite series, which is actual, of successively produced and producing beings is impossible. Indeed St. Thomas’ argument for the existence of an unproduced first cause of things produced is drawn from this impossibility. GOD AND REASON The scope of the thesis. It is true that the existence of an unproduced being having once been demonstrated, we can derive from the knowledge thus gained, His self-sufficiency, absolutely necessary existence, unicity, etc., still these conclusions are outside the scope of the present thesis. They will be proved later. Now we only wish to establish the existence of an unproduced being. ADVERSARIES. Atheists, Pantheists, Materialists, and an innumerable multitude of others who admit God’s existence, but who deny that it can be demonstrated. In this denial, and in particular in their attacks on this argument, many of our present day adversaries follow the lead of Kant, and most of them blindly. The mere fact that Kant has spoken is enough for them. Among these may be mentioned, the Modernists, Weber (Prof. of Phil., U. of Strasburg), James (Harvard U.) Bergson, Corrance, Loisy, Calkins (Wellesley C.), Conybeare (Oxford U.), Hoffding (Copenhagen U.), James Ward (Cambridge U.), Hocking (Harvard U.), Stewart (Prof. Phil., Dalhousie U., Halifax, N.S.), Miller (Prof. Biblical Instruction, Princeton U.), Troeltch (Heidel- berg U.), Youtz (Auburn Theol. Seminary), Royce (Harvard U.), Knight (Prof. Moral Phil., U. of St. Andrew), Mallock, Drake (Prof. Phil. and Education, Vassar C.), Johnson (Lincoln U.), Overstreet (N. Y. City C.), Paulsen (U. of Berlin), Schiller (Oxford U.), Herbert, Sabatier. The difficulties which Kant and others urge against our argument will be answered below. PROOF OF THE THESIS. There exist in this visible world produced beings. But the existence of even one produced being necessarily implies the existence of an unproduced first cause. Therefore such a cause exists. Maj. Min. COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 75 The Major is evident from internal and ex- ternal experience. The cause of the being in question is either un- produced or produced. If unproduced, our conclusion stands. If produced, then the question recurs: Whence its producer? And the question, if further continued will finally stop at a first unproduced cause, and again our conclusion stands, or— We must admit an infinite series of successively produced causes which is dependent for its exist- ence on an unproduced cause, or which exists with- out such cause. If it depends for its existence on an unproduced cause, again our conclusion stands. If. however, it is asserted that such a series can exist without an unproduced cause, to finally es- tablish our conclusion, we must prove this assertion false. We must prove, then, that— An infinite series of successively produced causes without an unproduced cause of it is absolutely impossible. It is impossible if nowhere in it can be found an adequately sufficient reason for the existence of any one member of it. But nowhere in it can such a reason be found. It cannot be found in the being itself, which for the sake of clearness we shall call 4, for if left to itself A, being a produced being, would never have existed. Nor can it be found in any prior cause. For if the adequately sufficient reason for A’s existence could be found in such cause, I might consider, for the purposes of my investigation, all the causes in the series prior to this cause as non-existing, as I should 6 GOD AND REASON have an adequate reason for A’s existence without them. But if I consider any cause in the series as non- existing, I am forced to consider all that follow it in the series as non-existing, and hence 4 as non- existing. Hence the hypothesis, that any cause in the series can give me an adequately sufficient reason for A’s existence, results in the absurd conclusion that 4 cannot be existing. An example will make this last part, the vital part, of our argument clear. I see a chain hanging in the air. Whence it comes I know not as its upper- most links are lost to vision in the distant sky. If you ask me why the lowest link hangs in the air, evidently I give a reason if I answer, that it is suported by the link above. And just as evidently my reason is not adequately sufficient, for till I know what supports the link above I do not fully know what supports the lowest one. And so mount- ing higher and higher I shall never get an adequately sufficient answer till I reach something which has not the fatal essential weakness of the links of the chain, i. e., till I reach something supporting but not supported. As such a thing can never be found in the chain, I may imagine the chain any length I please, even infinite, if such be possible, and I shall never find in it an adequate reason for the suspension in the air of the lowest, or of any link. Or this way may be clearer,—The lowest link of the chain is not self-supporting; no link of the chain is self-supporting. If, then, no link is self- supporting, no link in itself explains how it sup- ports those hanging from it. Therefore, nowhere i COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 77 in the chain can I find an adequately sufficient reason for the suspension of any one of its links. Or this way,—lf in any link of the chain I could find an adequate reason for the support of the links below it, the links above could be done away with, and it and the links below it should still re- main hanging. But this is manifestly ridiculous. DIFFICULTIES a. The Cosmological argument extends invalidly the principle of causality beyond the phenomenal order. b. As it is of the essence of a cause that it be a produced being, the argument draws an impos- sible conclusion, viz., the existence of an unpro- duced cause. c. The Cosmological argument either leaves us with the knowledge of a “blank essence” which certainly is not a knowledge of God, or, if it attempts to fill out the concept of “unproduced being,’ and prove that being to be a person, infinitely intelli- gent, infinitely perfect, it necessarily makes use of the Ontological (a simultaneo) argument, which is invalid. Therefore the Cosmological argument fails to prove the existence of an unproduced cause of the universe, who is God. These are Kant’s arguments against our proof. They are repeated today, more or less blindly, by a host of Kantians, many of whom consider the very fact that Kant has spoken reason enough to satisfy anyone. It may be well to hear a few words from Kant and some of his followers. Kant, Pure Reason, (Max Miller, 2nd Ed., Mac- millan, 1907). Cl 8 GOD AND REASON “The whole conclusive strength of the so-called cos- mological proof rests therefore in reality on the onto- logical proof from mere concepts, while the appeal to experience is quite superfluous, and, though it may lead us on to the concept of absolute necessity, it cannot demonstrate it with any definite object.” P. 489. “The principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion of its use except in the world of sense [i.e., the world of subjective experience], while here [in the cosmological proof] we extend the principle beyond experience.” P. 491. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, “Now, says Kant, both the cosmological and the physico-theological [teleological] proofs depend ulti- mately on the ontological, and the ontological simply begs the question ... With regard to the cosmological it must be pointed out that until it has been connected with the ontological proofs, it does not specify what the ‘absolutely necessary being’ is, nor exclude the possibility of its being the world as a whole, or a Spencerian ‘Unknowable’ instead of a God.” P. 40. Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, “The absolute self simply does not cause the world. The very idea of causation belongs to things of finite experience.” P. 348. James, Varietics of Religious Experience, “The bare fact that all idealists since Kant have felt entitled to scout or neglect them [i.e., all our proofs for God’s existence] shows that they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s all-sufficient foundation. ... Causation indeed is too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of theology.” P. 437. “The fact is that these arguments prove nothing rigor- ously.” INDEX OF MATTER A Simultaneo, Argument, cf. Onto- logical argument Aesthetic order, 106 Analogy in argument from Design, 112, 166 Animism, 184, 195 Arguments, a priori, 64, 67 a simultaneo (ontological), 29, 64, 66 ff., 89, 90, 166 from common consent, 181 ff. from conscience, 208 ff. from contingency, 207 from design (teleological) 105 ff. from motion, 206 f. from perfections, 207 f. from produced being logical), 70 ff. Atheism, 25 ff., 74, 129, 184, 204 f. Atmosphere and Life, 145 ff. (cosmo- Beauty, Order of, 106 Bee, Instinct of, 164 Being, Bternal, 81 ff., 88 Necessary, 87 ff. Self-Existing, 81 f., 87 ff. Belief of mankind, Religious, 185 ff., 196 ff. Bird, its flight, 157 ff. its nest, 165 Blood, circulation of, 153 ff. composition of, 156 Brahmanism, 205 Buddhism, 204 Carbon dioxide, 148 Causality, Principle of, 72, Cause, final, 116 ff. unproduced, 70 ff. Chance, nature of, 119 properties of, 121 ff. Church, Fathers of, qi: on spontaneous knowledge of God, 24, 62 Concept of God, popular, 23 ff, scientific, 25 other concepts, 25 Conscience, Argument from, 208 ff. Consent of Mankind, Argument from, 181 ff. Contingency, Argument from, 207 Cosmological argument, 70 ff. Darwinism, 148, 171, 1738, 176 Deism, 13, 27 f. Ditheism, 92 f. Dogmatic Theology, relation to Natural Theology, 22 End, as cause, 116 ff. Essence, 98 Evil, Problem of, 101 ff., 176 Evolution, 118, 1438, 167 ff., 169 f., LTD TSA sf: Existence of God, wrong sources of knowledge of, 29. ff. Faith, Primitive, 96 ff., 184 ff, “FWaith-knowledge,” 5 Fathers of the Church, on spontaneous knowledge of God, 24, 62 Fetichism, 184, 195 Final cause, 116 ff. Final causes, Argument from, 105 ff. Finite and Infinite, 79 ff. Ghosts, 194 ff. Good, Search for greatest, 63 Heart, Human, 152 ff. Ideas, Universal, 61 ff. Ignorance, and origin of religion, 194 Infinite, Idea of, 59 f. 223 Infinite and Finite, 79 ff. Infinite series, 73 Innate ideas, 30 f. Instinct, 159 ff., 177 Intelligence of God, 105 ff. Intelligibility of God, 60 f. Intrinsic impulse, 177 Knowledge, Truth of, 60 Mankind, consent of, 181 ff. errors of, 205 Materialism, 74, 84 ff., 129, 167 ff. Matter, Eternal, 86 Metaphysical argument, 70 ff. Modernism, 40 ff., 74, 129 Modernism, Programme of, 42 ff., 46 ff., 49 Monism, 84 ff., 167 ff. Monotheism, 28, 90 ff., 96, 184 Moral argument, 70, 181 ff. Motion, Argument from, 206 ff. Name of God, 23 Natural Theology, and Dogmatic Theology, 22 definition of, 21 division of, 22 importance of, 21 Naturalism, 184, 195 Necessary Being, 87 ff. Oneness of God, 90 ff., 179 f. Only one, Definition of, 91 Ontological argument, 29, 64, 66 ff., 89, 166 Ontologism, 5, 29 f., 57, 60 ff. Opinions about God, Atheistic, 25 ff. Deistic, 27 f. Ditheistic, 92 Kantian, 32 ff. Modernistic, 40 ff. Monistic (materialistic) 74, 84 ff; 129, 4167 care Monotheistic, 28, 90 ff. Ontologistic, 5, 29 f., 57, 60 ff. Pantheistic, 27 Polytheistic, 27, 94 ff. Pragmatistic, 50 ff. Traditionalistic, 29, 59 Tritheistic, 93 224 Order, Argument from, 105 ff., es- pecially 130 ff., 139 f. ; of beauty (aesthetic) 106 of finality (teleological) 106 ff, 130 ff. Oxygen, 147 Pantheism, 5, 18, 27, 28, 42 ff., 74, 129, 205 Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Encyclical, 41, 44 Perfections, Argument from, 207 f. Person, definition of, 126 ff. God, a person, 137 ff. Philosophy, modern, 5 ff., 32 ff. Scholastic, 212 ff. Physical argument, 70, 105 ff. Polytheism, 27, 94 ff., 184, 202 ff. Positivism, 192 Pragmatism, 50 ff., 58 ; Priests, Origin of religion attributed to vena], 193 Primitive faith, 96 ff., 184 ff. Primitive people, 196 ff. Problem of evil, 101 ff., 176 Produced beings, Argument from, 70 iit 194, Reason, Principle of Sufficient, 73 Religion, Origin of, 184 ff., 193 ff. Religious belief of mankind, 62 f., 181 ff., 196 ff. Rhynchites pubescens, 161 ff. Scholasticism and God, 212 ff. Self-existence, 81 f., 87 ff. Sentimentalism, 40 Series, Infinite, 73 Singularity, 98 Singularity of God, 90 ff. Sitaris humeralis, 160 f. Space, 83 f. Sphex, 160 Spider, 164 f. Spirits, 194 ff. Stomach, 164 Sufficient Reason, Principle of, 73 Teleological argument, 105 ff. Tritheism, 93 f. development of, 180 ff., 189 f. Truth, Evident, 64 ff. different forms of, 125 f., 189 f. Truth of knowledge, 60 enemies of, 141 ff. Evolution and, 143 ff. i d : ‘ examples showing design for, en coon Ol aaa Nia Universal ideas and Ontologism, 61 f. 145 ff. scope of, 124 ff. ; Teleological order, 106 ff., 130 ff. Vital immanence, Principle of, 40 ff. Theodicy, 21 Time, 82 f. Totemism, 184, 196, 200 ff. Water vapor, 145 ff. Traditionalism, 29, 59 World-order, 105 ff., especially 130 ff., Trinity, Blessed, 100 139 f. 225 INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED Ankermann, 199 Anselm, St., 29, 67 f. Balfour, 129 f. Bayle, 21 Beckwith, 27, 52 ff. Bender, 39 Bergson, 74 Boedder, 172, 175 f. Bonaventure, St., 29, 67, 217 Bonnety, 32 Breuil, 198 Brownson, 30 Biichner, 84 Burroughs, 39 Caird, 177 Calkins, 74, 85 Cartaillac, 198 Christlieb, 28, 185 Conybeare, 74 Corrance, 74, 80 Darmesteter, 96 Darwin, 171, 173, 176 De Bonald, 32 D’Harlez, 96 Denzinger, 80, 41 De Rouge, 96 De San, 210 Descartes, 29 f., 68 Diman, 110, 118, 133 f., 144, 168 ff. Donat, 37 ff., 51 Drake, 8 ff., 27,39 f., 52, 93 Driscoll, 80, 96, 114, 117, 186 ff. Dunn, 188 Dwight, 168 f. Ebrard, 96 Egedi, 198 Ebrenreich, 199 Elliott, 39 f. Fairbairn, 183 Foy, 199 Frazer, 192, 199 Gannon, 185 Gerard, 118 f., 160, 169 Gioberti, 30 Graebner, 199 Gratry, 40 Gray, 119 Haeckel, 84 ff., 167 ff. Hall, 144 Haydon, 27 Hestermann, 198 Hettinger, 1387 His, 168 Hocking, 6 f., 56, 74, 95 f. Hoffding, 74 Hontheim, 191 Howitt, 199 Hume, 179 f. Jacobi, 40 James, 6 f., 10 f., 50 ff., 58 f., 74, 78, 143 Jodl, 39 Johnson, 74 Kant, 32 ff., 51, 58, 74, 77 ff, 84, 88 ff., 129, 166 Kellog, 96 King, 192 Kingsley, 197 Kleinpeter, 38 Kleutgen, 24, 63 Knight, 74, 90, 108 f., 129, 141 f., 166 f., 170, 173 Lang, 186, 196 ff. Lange, 173 Legge, 96 Leibnitz, 21, 30 f., 68 f. Leo XIII, Pope, 212 ff. Le Roy, 198 f. Leuba, 9 ff., 39 Ling-Roth, 199 Loisy, 74 Lubbock, 192 226 oe gs ae ee gf! ee ee ee be st pel ; Malebranche, 30 Sarasin, 199 Mallock, 74 Schiffini, 209 Marett, 192 Schiller, 74, 78, 80, 92,128, 144, 170 Martin, 199 Schleirmacher, 40 Martineau, 110, 143 f., 157 ff, 174 £. | Schmidt, 198 Meyer, 198 f. Schneider, 198 Mill, 86, 170 Schopenhauer, 85 Mills, 186, 196 ff. Seligman, 199 Milne-Edwards, 165 Shallo, 137 Montano, 199 Shaw, 40 Muckermann, 111, 160, 170 Shearman, 118 f., 123, 161 Miller, 96 Skeat, 199 Smith, Robertson, 96 Spencer, 81, 192 Newman, Card., 209 Spinoza, 178 Niebergall, 38 Stewart, 40 Obermaier, 198 ‘ Oswald, 40 Thomas, 199 Overstreet, 40, 74 Thomas Aquinas, St., 73, 108, 140, 478,206 ff, 212; 217 Tiele, 96, 192 Park, 197 Tisdall, 96 f. Parker, 199 Troeltch, 74 Paulsen, 74, 128 Tylor, 192, 199 Phillips, 96 Tyrrell, 42 ff. Phin, 146 ff. Piette, 198 Pius X, Pope, 41, 44 f. Vaughan-Stevens, 199 Plate, 39 Ventura, 32 Plutarch, 187 Von den Steinen, 199 Portman, 199 Von Hammerstein, 122 f., 161 ff., 174 Von Hartmann, 38, 177 f., 192 Rawling, 199 Rawlinson, 96 Walter, 36 f Reed, 199 ; Reid, 40, 58 Ward, J., 26, 74, 92 Renouf, 96 Ward, W. G., 24 Rosmini, 30 f. Weber, 74, 143 Ronayne, 157 ff. Wells, 40 Royce, 40, 74, 143 Williamson, 199 Sabatier, 74 Youtz, 74 227 | Date Due | cf > ae @ vr 4 _ . 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