God in evolution: a pragmatic study of theology

Front matter

Johnson, Francis Howe,

A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF THEOLOGY

BY \ V

Contents

PAGE

Evolution and the Doctrine of God's Benevolence 102

Analogy from the Nervous System .... 190

Chapter I

THEOLOGY has been, and must continue to be, implicated in the movements that take place in the cognate departments of science and philosophy. The three interpenetrate each other, and a living theology is at all times sensitive to changes of attitude in the other two. Not that it is derived from either, or both of them, or that it is, at any time, vitally dependent upon them. It grows out of and is rooted in the real experiences of men in their spiritual relations. It will continue to Hve and energize in the world even though science and philosophy should be arrayed against it.

But it is needless to say that under such circumstances it would be at a disadvantage. It would not exert its legitimate influence. The situation would be abnormal. The three should march together, be mutually supporting, restraining, inspiring. And if I am not mistaken, it is toward such a condition of things that the everturning wheels of evolution are carrying us.

Through our antagonisms, and even by means of them, we are fighting our way to a better understanding. Each department, by loyalty to its own aspect of the truth, has helped to work out the one great problem. Even controversy, which at times seems so barren, has helped to eliminate useless issues and clarify the medium of thought in which we move.

The present outlook is, from some points of view at least, most interesting and full of promise; for in each of the three departments there is a germinal movement, a new departure and, also discernible, a common centre toward which all three converge.

The situation is, in important respects, like that of the early Christian centuries, when old conservative rehgions of separate nations budded forth, each one with a new version of itself; and old philosophies enlarged and adapted themselves in obedience to new aspects of truth that had dawned upon the consciousness of the race. The ancient Persian faith gave birth to Mithraism; that of Egypt to the cult of Isis, and the grand old Hebrew religion, to Christianity; and, in all three, the new elements had much in common. So also with the old philosophies, the new versions moved toward one vaguely-defined goal, and also tended to assimilation with the new religions.

To-day, in science, in philosophy and in religion there are similar vigorous outgrowths, embodying a new way of looking at things. In science it is the gradual decay of the mechanical conception of the world, and the substitution for it of a psychological interpretation of its phenomena. In philosophy it is the protest on the part of a considerable body of concrete thinkers, who employ in their constructions a method that deals, to use Professor John Dewey's phrase, with whole, not half, ideas. Breaking with the abstractions and negations of the past, this school puts itself in communication with actual experience.

In rehgion, that is, in the statement of it which we call theology, there is a movement, not concerted, not clearly formulated, but with well-defined convergent tendencies. As in the elder day, so now, there is a common motive underlying views that, to some extent, are divergent. Then, the movement was away from polytheism and toward some form of monotheism; now, it is away from the thought of God as external to the universe, and toward some conception of Him as its living, in-dwelling principle.

Perhaps I am over-sanguine in my forecast of the outcome of these new departures in science, philosophy and theology, but it seems to me written in the very nature of the great process itself that it must be some harmonizing synthesis.

The httle world of the Ego, in which each one of us lives, has been built up gradually by adding concept to concept, and by the successive correlation of these additions, in progressively larger syntheses. In the course of growth, some of these additions have easily and naturally fitted in to what was previously organized; but, on the other hand, many of them have had to pass through much tribulation before they could be received. The highly-organized personality that every normally balanced adult has come to be, contains many elements that, originally heterogeneous and unassimilable, have come to be correlated parts of a conscious personality.

The same is true of the vastly comphcated social organism; and in its history we can trace the gradual amalgamation of families and tribes and nations, through long-drawn-out antagonisms, into larger and still larger organizations. And, in every case, these transformations have been brought about only in part and formally by the coercive power of external events, and essentially and intensively by internal growth changes, — expansions of thought and purpose, and wider outlooks. Except for these there would have been no real assimilation, no efficient unity.*

Over and over again this process has been repeated on life's stage; and we may as well doubt the continued revolution of the earth through space, as to doubt the continuance of the onward movement toward this enlargement and correlation of thought. We may not indeed

*A most valuable exposition of this process of mental organization is given in " Mind in Evolution " by L. T. Hobhouse, M.A., Chapter XIII.

dream of a total cessation of antagonism. When one set of contrarieties has been adjusted, another set, on a wider field, emerges. Were it not so, mental evolution would be arrested.

But, for the immediate outlook, I think we may say that science, philosophy and theology, that have for a long time been passing through the phase of separation, and sometimes of antagonism, are now, in the light of wider concepts, drawing together. The lines of demarcation are fading out, the larger view is at hand. Our science becomes philosophical and our philosophy becomes scientific; and both lead up to, and imply, theology. Some of the best intellects are working synthetically; not confining themselves exclusively to the one aspect of truth represented in a department, but reaching out to find the truest expression of the reality underlying all.

This movement has given us such men as the late WilHam James, and the French philosopher, Henri Bergson. In each separate department, also, it has brought forth those who, without venturing beyond their own chosen fine of work, have, within that sphere, so reconstructed its speculative outlooks as to strengthen the thought that is being worked out elsewhere : — such men as the embryologist, Hans Driesch, w^ho, beginning his career with the acceptance of the purely mechanical view of organic development, was carried by his studies to the necessity of assuming an undefined influence, guiding the mechanical forces toward the realization of ends. Such men also as Reinke, and the physiologist Bunge, who advocates seeking a knowledge of the creative impulse by using what we know of causation in the internal world of our own consciousness, for the interpretation of that which transpires in the external world of material organization.

We must not allow the significance of this movement to be obscured by the names that are given to its different developments with the word neo prefixed. The labels "neo-Lamarckism" or " neo- vitalism " may serve a useful purpose as indicating a certain relatedness between the present and the past of speculative thought; but when these are used to identify in any measure the old form with the new, when the new is called a "recurrence to mediaeval mysticism," or a "pseudo-metaphysical theory of life," they are misleading. Such a treatment of recurrent phases of thought is not in the interest of light-bearing but of obscuration.

We recognize, as those of an elder day often did not, that human thought ascends as a spiral, and that each new turn introduces hypotheses that, more or less, resemble phases of speculation abandoned on a lower plane. They are, in some respects, the same, but essentially different in that, through the removal of limitations in some directions and the positive enlargement of thought in others, they are so modified and reset as to be completely transformed. The psychological explanations of evolution that are today labelled neo-Lamarckism are no more than a reminder of the hypothesis of the eminent naturalist of a century and a half ago ; and the comparison of the vitahsm of to-day with that of Aristotle borders on the grotesque.

In the department of theolog}% while there is a strong and sustained unanimity of dissent from certain phases of inherited belief, and while there are, as we have said, marked convergent tendencies in the transformation of thought, and much enthusiasm also on the part of individuals and groups of individuals for newly-apprehended aspects of the truth, there is, as yet, no pronounced principle of solidarity binding the positive aspects of the work together, nothing of that commanding power that emanates from the assent of a multitude, or even of a select few whom men have learned to trust. At the same time, there exists a profound and growing conviction that such a solidarity, such a preponderating weight of agreement, is not only possible but, that it ought to be realized. There is no department of Ufe in which certitude is more ardently, or reasonably, longed for. But, the very growth process that stimulates religious thinking seems to be the natural and unavoidable enemy of certitude.

How then is confidence to be restored without going back to the policy of a fixed immovable theology? Can anything be substituted for the divine authority of the church? Within the Roman church, the Modernist movement accentuates this issue, though the problem to be solved is not essentially different from that of Protestantism.

The difference in the two situations is that the latter, having lived through three centuries of denominational antagonism, is, in some sort, inured to its disabilities, — has, so to speak, adjusted itself to a modus Vivendi, though deeply conscious of its unsatisf actoriness : while Modernism, viewing this same experience from without, sees in its outcome an object-lesson, a terrible warning. Hence a dilemma; the substance of which is stated by Father Tyrrell in the following words: — ''Taught by history, God's great logicmill, which has worked out both these sixteenth century solutions, the solution of unfettered authority and the solution of unfettered liberty to their impossible results, he (the modernist), will see the necessity of going back to the point of divergence." *

The modernist, in other words, is in search of some new way, that shall work experimentally, and, at the same time, yield the advantages of authority and liberty.

The possibility that naturally suggests itself is that of combination, — the adoption of a method that shall associate the two desirable

* " Passing Protestantism and coming Catholicism," by Newman Smyth, p. 182.

elements in such manner that neither shall override the other, but that each shall exercise a restraining and supporting power. Such a method ought to be found, because all the movements of the world are organized on a similar plan. The great upward creative process which we call evolution is the outcome of antagonistic forces that act and react upon each other after just such a fashion.

But the achievement of such a method is not so simple a matter as it might at first seem, not so simple as it actually did seem in the earlydays of the great secession from Rome. For while Protestantism leads logically to what Father TjTrill calls unfettered liberty, it has, as matter of fact, been striving all through the years to reach just such a combination as that contemplated. And the great question of to-day is, can we go any farther in this direction? Does the experience of the past encourage the hope, long deferred, that this desideratum will be supplied? Is there, at the present day, any emergence of new elements that may render practicable a combination that has not been a success hitherto, and that is working more and more limpingly as time goes on?

The impression prevails in some quarters that the Modernist movement may somehow bring to Protestantism a kind of authority, tempered by liberty, which will prove the very thing which it long has sought, and that the Christian church as a whole may thus reahze a stable, and, at the same time, a living and growing unity.

To many others, however, this hope seems to lack foundation, because the kind of authority thus provided differs in no respect from that to which so long a trial has been given: and a radically different way of surmounting the difficulty is proposed : — the substitution, that is, of another kind of authority. The gist of their argument may, I think, be stated somewhat as follows. The effort to combine ecclesiastical authority and liberty has failed to work, because it is an attempt to unite in action two motives that are not of the same order, two mutually irreconcilable elements. Liberty of thought is a living, growing, aggressive principle. Divinely appointed, ecclesiastical authority is a static, immovable, inelastic principle; one that does not simply restrain liberty, but abolishes it. It is yoking together the dead and the living. One, or the other, of these must, in the long run, triumph and reign supreme. But, what alternative is there?

In the April, 1911, number of the ''Hibbert Journal" there is an appeal from the side of science to theology entitled, "Can Theology become Scientific?"* in which the following questions are put to theologians: — "Are they willing to regard religious facts as the primal realities wherewith they are concerned, and theological

*By M. M. Pattison Muir, M.A.

theories as instruments for acquiring rationalized knowledge of these facts, not as answers to enigmas in which they can rest ? Are they willing to measure the truthfulness of theological ideas by their values as aids to religious life, and by their relations to other truths which also must be preserved by men? Theologians speak of theology as a science: are they willing to advance their science by using the scientific method?"

After outlining what is meant by the scientific method, the same article makes the following hypothetical forecast.

"Let us suppose, for a moment, that theology were to adopt and use this method. Theology would then be a systematic attempt to co-ordinate the facts of man's religious life; to express the points of agreement between groups of these facts by means of general formulas, in other words to find the laws of religious experiences; to try the hypotheses which have been made, for the purpose of bringing order into sections of religious facts, by inquiring how these hypotheses have worked; to test the truth of the theories which have claimed, and of those which now claim, to explain the facts of religious experience, by inquiring into their fruitfulness, their vivifying influence, their power of bringing the realities with which they are concerned into reconciling contact with other truths of which human intelligence demands the preservation."

The method here suggested is the outcome of a principle of far wider scope than the realm of physical science. It is called scientific, simply because it has been conspicuously used in the practical part of scientific procedure. Pragmatic is the word that, in its very modern signification, stands for the larger transforming principle that is bringing the antagonistic aspects of our thought together. I have used the word pragmatic and said nothing of pragmatism, because it seems to me that the two words may be used for effecting a very necessary discrimination.

If the former is used solely to designate method, and the latter solely a system of philosophy, that has sprung up as one application of that method, much confusion may be avoided. The method, which has endless applications, is easily understood, and is illustrated so abundantly and clearly in life that he who runs may read. As Prof. Wilham James has said: "There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method," but "not until our own time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny."

Between this method and the derived system of philosophy the same writer draws a sharp line of demarcation. As a method, it stands for no special results, it is rather an attitude of orientation. As a system of philosophy, on the other hand, it is applied to the working out of a "theory of truth," This latter, however ably it may be conducted and however useful it may, in the long run, prove to be, is an entirely different matter: and the failure to note this difference has given rise to many damaging misconceptions and much unwarrantable prejudice against the method. For, in the development of such a philosophy and in its controversial defence, many words and expressions are used that have a purely technical significance, and statements are sometimes made that, taken out of their controversial setting, give the impression of opposing the very truths they are advocating.

It is with the method alone that we are concerned; and we shall hope to make the nature of its working understood, not by definitions, but by illustrations: for a method that deals with concrete ideas can be best explained concretely, that is, by the exhibition of its actual working. It will, however, be worth while to carry along with us and keep continually in sight Professor Schiller's Protagorean formula — "man is the MEASURE* OF ALL THINGS." It may also be helpful to outline some of the probable results of its adoption.

In the first place, it would necessarily banish to the limbo of disused instrumentalities the kind of authority that has for centuries held sway : — the authority, that is, that takes its stand on a unique, divine revelation granted to a specially appointed group of men, who act as its guardians and interpreters. In the second

*The analogical and intensive measure.

place, it would set up another kind of authority in the place of that which it deposed : — the authority of human experience. Far from delivering theology over to unfettered liberty it would simply transfer all its problems to another tribunal, — to the tribunal that adjudicates all questions that arise in every department of science. In it we have a kind of authority that can work with liberty, because it is a living, growing and adjustable principle, because it takes account of all the new elements that find a place in our ever-widening experience; in short, because it is of the same elastic nature as the liberty with which it has to co-operate.

It is no less strong for resistance because of its expansiveness. It gives, but it does not give way. It yields and reconstructs, but it does not break and disappear. In the long run it is a far more sure reliance, and, in its progress, irresistible.

Third, as related to other departments of constructive thought the change would be a very radical one. It would put an end to the remote separateness of theology, to its superior-cast pretentions, and bring it into accord with the community of interests that jointly affect the welfare of man. It would bring it completely under the influence of the method that has transformed and is still transforming the outlooks of theoretical science; — a transformation that makes it possible for theology and science to perfectly assimilate their working principles without the surrender of anything that is vital.

It is into a very real and comprehensive world that this pragmatic method carries us. It calls our attention, not to some special phases of reality alone, but to every aspect of it. Its theology will therefore be one that roots itself in and grows strong on every department of human thought and activity, that draws inspiration from every kind of emotion, that turns its back on nothing, despises nothing. It must be a theology that studies reverently the deep things of God, not alone in the utterances of seers through whom He has unmistakably spoken, not alone in the contributions of science, but also in the common wisdom that has been wrought out and compacted in the upward travail of the race. As Maeterhnck has said: — "The thinker continues to think justly, only when he does not lose contact with those who do not think."

Again, in such a theology, the great creative process of the world will be studied as a sacred revelation of its Author. Humanity, in learning through evolution how it has come to be what it is, has entered upon a new phase of self-knowledge, and upon new outlooks of what lies before it. But it is not alone, or most vitally as a matter of knowledge, that this affects us: for knowledge, standing by itself, is Httle more than material, or instrumentality to be used. It is pre-eminently in the power that knowledge generates that the hope of the future Hes.

Bergson's conception of the whole great movement of creation as a struggle upward on the part of the creature, an overcoming, a triumphing over difficulties, in which every individual has an honourable place, an opportunity of contributing to the great advancing organization something new and precious, is a creative impulse in itself. And James' proclamation of " the WILL TO believe" translates itself into the will and the power to dare and to conquer.

There is no lack of inspiration in this new movement. Like an older evangel, it proclaims, — "The kingdom of God is within you." The power that works and overcomes through the whole realm of nature, it seems to say, works in you and with you. Eucken touches a profound and most important principle of life when he says: — "Spiritual truth cannot attract us unless it come before us as our own and not as something alien to us. In order to make effective appeal it must have its roots in our own nature, and subserve the development of this nature."*

We are made very familiar in these days with the word collapse. On this side and on that, we are told that it is taking place among the old structures that we have inherited and also among the new that have been hastily run up as substitutes; so that we seem, at times, to be living

* " The Meaning and Value of Life," p. 88.

in an atmosphere of demolition, breathing Umedust, and bewildered with the crash of falUng walls. But, it is possible for most of us to get out of this, leaving it to the wreckers w^hose business it is, while we escape to the open places of thought w^here hve things are growdng.

But this is anticipating. Our present business is to test the theological value of the pragmatic method, not to praise it. A change from the old method is not to be lightly undertaken : for it is not a surface adjustment that we are considering. It goes indeed to the very roots of things, and our investigation of it must be on the lines of experience. What does the past testify as to the working in theology and rehgion of the established method? and what measure of success, on the other hand, has attended the working of the pragmatic method in the departments of human activity to which it has been applied?

Chapter II

TO say that Protestantism is to-day labouring on through a stress of great complications without a method, might, in view of all the evidences of continuity and growth that we see about us, seem captious. But if one were to try to define what that method is, the above statement might not seem so very far amiss.

I

As matter of fact, Protestantism has, from the outset of its career, tried to solve the problems of religion by the use of a mixed method in which two most divergent principles offset each other. The Church of Rome had, and still has, a well-defined method to which it adheres with great rigidity. It hinges upon the assumption of special and absolute divine sanction. Its claim is that the knowledge of God and of His relations to men is a matter confided to a chosen few, who are divinely commissioned to communicate and administer it to the mass of mankind with absolute authority. This is an easily understood method, strong in its simpUcity and its finaUty.

CONXERNING METHOD 19

It is a method calculated to keep men united and ID hold them with a grip of iron during periods of intellectual stagnation.

But Protestantism was the child of a great intellectual awakening. Liberty of thought, under the guidance of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, was its underlying motive. The privilege of the individual to approach God on his own account and to adjust the matters of his soul with Him at first hand was the very breath of its existence. Clearly, here was a great gain to the individual, a great stimulus to his spiritual and intellectual vitality. But what was to become of corporate religion? Was there to be no church? no consensus of faith, no unity of doctrine, no authority to withstand the vagaries of the individual? The sacred writings, even if held to be verbally inspired by God, could not hold men together unless some authoritative interpretation of them were formulated to be accepted by all. So, over against liberty of thought and freedom of access to God, the system of doctrine that had grown up under the old church was retained, with the stamp of divine authority attached to it, as heretofore, though somewhat more loosely.

But at the same time the principle of hberty of thought, striking its root deep, grew apace and brought forth dissension and sectarianism. Both methods were retained; not alone because men were habituated to them, but because each met, in its way, an ineradicable want of their nature; and they adjusted themselves now to the one and now to the other, as cu-- cumstances dictated. The two principles were the contradiction of each other; but having been once developed and wrought into life, neither could be dropped. Corporate religion insisted on the retention of the old method. Personal, growing religion found the new indispensable. Wherever men thought and studied and confronted the newer aspects of the world, the old method was summarily set aside. When the guardians of the church thought they saw it about to be torn asunder by the influx of new and unassimilable material, they fell back on the authority of the past, hoping to stay the tide of change.

Under this dual regime religion has lived. It has to some extent held men together, and within the church much growth has been tolerated and indirectly encouraged, but not, for the most part, officially endorsed. But the weakness engendered by the continuance of this state of things is most evident. Each of the two principles, it is true, has met a religious want and, separately, they have been serviceable; but their reactions upon each other have worked much mischief. The schisms created by liberty have been intensified and fixed by the principle of final authority; for each new form of faith carried with it something of the claim to divine sanction. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon this; for wherever the representatives of Protestant communions meet in conclave, the divisions in the church are deplored, the wickedness of them is confessed, and measures for overcoming them are discussed. But the difficulties in the way continue to seem insuperable. And so long as the old method continues to be recognized, they are insuperable.

If the particular tenets which divide the different communions are each and every one held to be parts of an order definitely estabhshed by God, essential constituents of "the faith once delivered to the saints," the modification of them would be impious. That which bears the stamp of a divine command cannot be surrendered. Each one is wilhng and desirous that all the others should confess the error of their ways and become reconciled to the one and only true faith, which is its own. But each of the others can make but one reply, 'Won possumus."

If the divisions in the Protestant Church are ever to become merged in a common and united faith, it must be through the mediation of a method differing radically from institutionahsm, on the one hand, and individualism on the other; but at the same time, it must be one that shall meet in a legitimate way the two above-mentioned necessities of the religious life. It must yield a corporate faith that can be always referred to as the support and the rectifier of that of the individual, but which is also open to modification and growth. It is the beUef of the writer that the pragmatic method called in the history of science the inductive method, can be so applied to theology as to meet both these requirements.

II

The first thing we have to say about this method is that it is, in no sense, new. It is not a doctrinaire method; it is not an impracticable dream; it is not revolutionary; it is a method that has long been in satisfactory use, has been thoroughly tested in a great department of constructive thought, has yielded results that men could live by and around which they could rally in a united support. It is called the inductive method, not because it is opposed to, or exclusive of, the deductive, but because it abstains from making deductions until, by the collocation and classification of facts, it has a deposit of reality from which to deduce. Thus the word inductive was used to distinguish it from that method which assumed the grounds from which deductions were to be made by a sort of right of eminent domain, employing abstractions, the fragmentary products of analytic thought, as if they were the fundamental and indubitable realities of the world.