The problem of God

Front matter

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Contents

Per ON THMPORARY: DOUBTS 5 ois. ake hae gs 13 II, THE SUBSTITUTES FOR GOD..........200. 35 Pie LHW EXPANSION OF GOD... 0 ec. s cele soe 60 IV. THE CONTRACTION OF GOD.............. 86 V. THE RESULTANT IDBA OF GOD........... 107 Vi.- THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD. wi... eee eee 189 VII. Divinb DIGNITY AND HUMAN SUFFERING... 166 CPR Ba a ha cack nto Us eid’ a ak cua w Uh er ete, © 195

Preface

THE title of this book, THm PROBLEM OF GoD, is intended to convey a triple meaning: that God is a problem to us, that we are a problem to him, and (strange as it may sound) that God is a problem to himself. Such a book is written for those who have problems and who sympathize with the problems of others.

THH PROBLEM OF GoD has grown out of the conviction that the idea of God is in need of revision. Religious tradition and experience, philosophical thought, the events of history, and the growth of scientific knowledge, all contribute to our conception of the aspect of reality which men worship and which they call God. While knowledge and experience have been enlarging, until recent times the traditional idea of God as held by Christian theism has remained practically unchanged. The eternity of God has been confused with the eternity of a special idea about God. In the past few decades, however, there have arisen many doubts and new opinions about God. It is only natural that this should occur. Indeed, it is obvious that no idea ought to be believed if it can neither withstand criticism nor learn from its critics. Yet men greatly dislike to contemplate the possibility of change in their fundamental religious beliefs. It is, however, almost self-evident that the advance of knowledge must mean a change in our thought of God. Few beliefs are more absurd than the belief that man’s present ideas about God are incapable of improvement. This book is a sincere attempt to consider what improvement is possible.

¢ The view which I have come to hold is that of a

Ed

: \God who is creative, supreme, and personal, yet is genuinely limited within his own nature by “Given” experiences eternally present, which his will does not create, but which his will can control, no matter how refractory they may be. This view, explained especially in Chapters V and VII, seems closer to the empirical facts of evolution and daily life, more in harmony with the combinations of love and pain which experience reveals, and hence more satisfactory as a solution of the problem of evil than traditional theism.

It may be of interest to note the influences that have led my mind in this direction. I started with a theism substantially identical with Bowne’s. Then, first of all, I was stimulated by Frank H. Foster’s article on “Some Theistic Implications of Bergson’s Philosophy,” in The American Journal of Theology, 22 (1918), pp. 274-99, and by J. A. Leighton’s two articles on “Temporalism and the Christian Doctrine of God” in The Chronicle, 18 (1918), pp. 283-88, 339-44. I owe further suggestions to the whole litera- . ture on the finite God, especially to Bishop Francis J. McConnell’s book, Js God Limited? But the immediate occasion for the first formulation of my present view was an intensive study of evolution, and in particular of Edmund Noble’s book Purposive Evolution. Strange as it may seem, my view also owes much to recent studies of Hegel. With none of these writers do I agree entirely (although I am very close to Foster and Leighton); but to all of them I owe

’ PREFACE hy much. For the view defended I must, of course, accept personal responsibility.

It is not expected that every reader will agree with the view. A friend undertook to ascribe my insistence on suffering in God to my supposed Puritanical background (as Hocking would say, seeking for causes instead of reasons). But I do not believe that the Puritans invented suffering, nor do I see how anyone with a social conscience could overlook human wretchedness. One critic has said that I believe in a God who is not grown up; and my excellent barber, after hearing my view of God, remarked, “Then he ain’t supreme.” Frankly, I believe in a God who has more to do than he has yet done, and so is capable of growth; and in a God who is not the voluntary cause of all human misery, although he is supreme in the sense of being able to bring meaning and value out of all possible misery. If some agree with this view, I may be encouraged to believe that I am on the track of truth. If others disagree, as they doubtless will, I shall hope to learn from them wherein I am wrong and why. I invite criticism.

It may be added that this book is intended as a protest against an easy-going optimism, and the . sugary view of the fatherhood of God which leaves / out the iron of reality. Pantheism, Christian Science, ° traditional theism (to a certain extent), and antitraditional humanism (to a greater extent), all seem to me to lack the stern objective realism that is necessary when we face the facts. My conviction is that this realism can be reconciled with idealism; but any cheap reconciliation must be rejected.

The first six chapters of this book are based on the

Adams Lectures for 1930, although their printed form is fuller than the Lectures as delivered, and has been somewhat revised. Chapter VII is based on a Goldwin Smith Lecture delivered at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) in 1929. The Adams Foundation of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Bloomington, Indiana, Inc., has cooperated courteously with the author in every respect and he renders to the Foundation this grateful recognition. Special thanks are also due to Dean Albert C. Knudson for his kind and discriminating reading of the manuscript and for his suggestions. EDGAR SHEFFIELD BRIGHTMAN.

Newton Center, Massachusetts April 14, 1930.

Chapter I Contemporary Doubt

IN many groups the reality of a personal God is taken for granted. To doubt is regarded as unnatural or wicked. Indeed, this doubt raises the same suspicion of a person’s sanity as would doubt of the existence of society or nature. In many other groups the unreality of a personal God is taken just as much for granted. In these circles it is constantly assumed that no intelligent or honest person could suppose that the universe is due to the creative activity of a personal God.

These two sets of groups have much in common. Both sets are devoted to the criticism of the beliefs of others but to no criticism of their own. Both assume an attitude approaching contempt toward those who take the opposing position. Both classify the beliefs or doubts which they reject as unworthy of serious consideration. Both groups are unwise, unfair, and dogmatic. Indeed, it is no great exaggeration to say that the dogmatism of the unbelievers is a rather natural consequence by way of reaction against the dogmatism of believers.

We may be sure that both parties are wrong in what they have in common. It is always wrong to be dogmatic, especially so when the dogmatism is unfair. It is always dangerous to avoid facing issues that are being raised by large groups of human beings, dangerous both ideally and practically. The existence of groups whose minds are so far apart that they will not even consider the point of view of other groups is a social peril, an internal division in society. No belief held by a large group can be pushed aside as not worth looking into.

The impartial friend of humanity as well as the friend of truth will earnestly seek to understand the worth of the beliefs held by those who differ most radically from him and will try to profit by them. It is in this spirit that we shall investigate the idea of God in this book. We shall consider the doubts of those who reject it and the differences among those who accept it, with a view to coming nearer to a reasonable belief.

With this aim we have plenty to think about, more to-day than ever before in the history of the race. Brentano says that not only Aristotle but also Locke and Leibnitz were “of the opinion that the proof of God’s existence was easily comprehensible and perfectly sure.”* Doubt is no longer the rare exception; it is frequent and popular. Once doubt was cautious and urbane; now it is often truculent. So abundant and active are the skeptics that the magazines are written by a new crop of doubters every month, and no man’s memory can retain the list of the year’s skeptical books. It is unusual to find a group of advanced university students in which a majority believe in a personal God; and Mr. Lippmann has invaded even the Women’s Clubs. The rising tide of doubt is too evident to be ignored.

It is not to be supposed that doubt is entirely a modern invention. The first preface to morals was framed by that famous early doubter, Cain, when he asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yet his was a doubt about one particular point of conduct. He still addressed his queries to Jehovah. Not doubting God, he evaded the fundamental problem of life. The test of whether doubt is or is not thorough-going is to be found in the doubter’s attitude toward the most central beliefs of which he knows. Now everyone will admit that the idea of God is intended to be the highest and the deepest conception of which the human mind is capable. A civilization in which God is believed in is totally different from one in which he is not believed in. Literature, art, morals, religion, assume a different form and acquire a different content with changes in the attitude toward God. Our God-idea is the acid test of our valuation of life.

In our present investigation we are to consider what effects, if any, the deluge of doubt should reasonably be inferred to have exerted upon fundamental belief in God. Our pledge of impartiality means that we must grant that the idea of God is capable of change, perhaps of destruction. Hence we cannot at the start define an idea of God that we can expect to remain unchanged. Nevertheless, since we are facing the possibility of the total loss of any belief in God, it is well for us to state as clearly as we can just what it is that we should lose if we were to lose God.

In view of the facts of the history and psychology of religion, it is safe to say that when men have spoken of God they have usually meant a real being, other than their ideas and ideals, whom they regard as worthy of worship; this being is considered either as Creator of the universe, or at least as its Supreme

Being; he is a personal consciousness, the source of goodness, beauty, and truth. This definition leaves open many technical questions about the attributes of God and the relation of God to the world. It defines traits which are shared by the God of theism with the God of deism and of pantheism; Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism would agree with many philosophers on this conception of God. Can such a God be believed in by the modern man?

One type of doubt has been encouraged by the greatest religious leaders, namely, doubt about the adequacy of mere tradition as a basis of faith. Tradition is, to be sure, on the side of faith, and some writers affect to believe that it is the only source of faith. Yet the most spiritual figures of the past have been most reluctant to rely on tradition. They have made a sharp distinction between devotion to God and devotion to tradition. It would be an endless task to call the roll of men of faith who have doubted traditions about God. Let a few illustrious names suffice. Isaiah ridiculed a fear of God which “is a commandment of men which hath been taught them” (Isa. 29.13). Socrates was invited to drink the hemlock partly because he “did not worship the gods the state worships.” Plato, the great theist, would not allow the traditional “scriptures” of Greece in his ideal state because the gods of Homer were repre sented as morally inferior to the best men. The meek and lowly Jesus not only challenges “the traditions of men” but also rejects some of the principles of the law of Moses, the most sacred tradition of the age.

Faith in God has never been easy when men have made it genuinely their own and not merely accepted = it passively from tradition. But we may learn from the case of Cain that practical doubt arose long before theoretical doubt. Men for whom the existence of God was axiomatic found themselves doubting either how they should behave in order to please God or how God himself could be depended upon to behave. The wildest doubts of the author of the book of Job concerned only the goodness and justice of God, not his existence. Even pleasure-loving and materialistic hedonists among the Greeks and Romans, like Epicurus and Lucretius, doubted only the divine interest in human affairs, not the reality of the divine beings. Very orthodox believers, like Tertullian, found themselves doubting the reasonableness of God as judged by human standards (credo quia absurdum), but it did not remotely occur to them that this unsettled the foundations of belief. History records those who have been willing to risk their all on an appeal to powers that can outwit God; but the devil-worshipers, from primitive men down to Faust and his more modern successors, have usually assumed the existence of Deity, while questioning his practical supremacy in human affairs. These practical doubts, in the long run, could not help having far-reaching consequences.

Yet doubts about the very existence of God emerge more gradually and obscurely. Gorgias, for instance, and the Greek Skeptics, question the possibility of knowledge, yet one can scarcely find any explicit statement of the obvious conclusion that God cannot be known to exist, except perhaps in Plato’s Laws, early in Book X. Sextus Empiricus regarded God’s existence as incapable of proof, but he did not pretend to disprove it. The logic of philosophers like Hobbes and Hume would lead to atheism if it were carried out; but both of them assert their belief in God. It may be said that fear of the dominant system held men back from atheism until recently. Atheism was not conducive to life and liberty in the days of the Inquisition. Belief had survival value. Yet it is strange that the only really frank and thorough atheist before modern times was the gentle Buddha, who confronted a system if anything socially more powerful than Christianity. It is probable that the delay was, in the main, due to the fact that men were not really sure of their doubts.

The essential modernness of atheism is well illustrated by Fritz Mauthner’s Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande. In this four-volume work by an atheist, simon-pure atheism does not emerge until the treatment of the eighteenth century in France in the third volume. Yet, strangely, this propagandist author, who wishes to annihilate belief in God, pleads for a “godless mysticism” and desires “religious freedom,” not freedom from religion. He is not willing to surrender all that God meant! In his Phenomenology of the Spirit Hegel says that the belief that “God is dead” is one stage of “Enlightenment” through which every mind must pass, but which every thinking mind must overcome. Some seventy-five years later Nietzsche says that only a hermit living in the woods would fail to know that God is dead. Mauthner, in like vein, declares that “Great Pan is dead or lies dying.” Yet even Mauthner concedes that the idea of God is “the mightiest thought-product that has influenced humanity.’

Atheism, we see, struggles slowly and reluctantly to full self-consciousness. Genuine atheism asserts that there is no supreme being worthy of worship. It is easy to see that many so-called atheists have been half-hearted. Even the early Christians were dubbed atheists because they refused to practice the cult of emperor worship. Spinoza was called an atheist because the God of his worship was not the conventional God; but he is more truly described as “the God-intoxicated man.” Voltaire is often credited with an atheism which he did not hold on account of his attacks on the church. Frank atheism arose in the eighteenth century in France, in the writings of such men as Lamettrie and Holbach. When David Hume expressed doubt about the existence of a dogmatic atheist, his host, Baron d’Holbach, replied, “My dear sir, you are at this moment sitting at table with seventeen such persons.’

It is not necessary for our purpose to recount the spread of atheistic ideas in the nineteenth century. Suffice it to say that there has been an amazing increase in the number of those who openly avow or tacitly assume the nonexistence of God. Mauthner is doubtless as objectively erroneous as he is subjectively sincere when he says that “the literature of the present is in the main godless,’* yet there are many who agree with him, and there is no doubt about the existence of an extensive literature which is avowedly godless. Even a believer in God can write that “the majority have ceased to be interested in the existence of a Divine Being. This is true far more of educated than of uneducated people’ It may help us to face the facts if we select a few psychologists, philosophers, publicists, and men of letters to serve as representative spokesmen of the doubt of the present time.

It is well known that some psychologists are aggressively antitheistic. This is especially true of two very prominent psychologists who are founders of influential “schools.” I refer to Sigmund Freud and James B. Watson. Freud’s only book on religion is called The Future of an Illusion. Religion, he points out, is the product of our desires, and performs, indeed, a useful function in coercing the mintelligent minority, but nevertheless should be superseded by a nonreligious education.® Elsewhere he has dwelt on the supposed origin of the idea of God; according to psychoanalysis the idea of God originates in a father-complex formed in infancy. Religious experience is thus a reconciliation of the individual with his own subconscious father-image. Freud’s thought in this direction is expounded and interpreted in Everett Dean Martin’s The Mystery of Religion. Mr. Watson opposes psychoanalysis at almost every point except its denial of God, although he is considerably less ingenious than the psychoanalysts in assigning grounds for his disbelief. He wishes to do away with consciousness, and ascribes the origin of belief in consciousness to “a kind of subtle religious psychology.’’ Religious beliefs, in turn, arise from “the general laziness of mankind” and from “fear stimuli.” Thus the first two pages of one of his most popular books launch an attack on God. It is evident that Watson’s theory requires the suppression of God; for if there is no human consciousness, there cannot well be a divine consciousness.®

If we turn from the psychologists to the philosophers, we find that they arrive at the denial of God by many roads. Hans Vaihinger holds that belief in God is necessary for the ongoing of life, but that it is known to be a fiction. We must act “as if” there were a God, although we know there is none. Indeed, for him, all of the categories of thought are in this same situation: they are useful fictions. But Vaihinger concedes more to God than do most philosophical atheists. Bertrand Russell, for instance, finds no need either for the belief in God or for the religious attitude. His famous essay on “A Free Man’s Worship” is an assertion of moral idealism in a universe that is totally indifferent to moral ideals. He is so fully convinced of the error of belief in God that, so far as I know, he nowhere takes the pains to refute that belief in detail; his whole philosophy simply presupposes that there is no God. The thought of George Santayana, another brilliant doubter, is a reflection of the conflict between two selves within him, the poet and the skeptic. He solves the conflict : by assigning to the poet the realm of imagination, symbols and essences, and to the skeptic the realm of reality. Religion thus falls wholly within the poet’s domain and has only symbolic and imaginative value.®

Among American philosophers only a few need be mentioned. The learned and liberal Morris R. Cohen openly proclaimed himself an atheist at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, adding that he supposed he was the only person present who would call himself such. R. W. Sellars, one of the most prolific writers among our philosophers, is an ardent, sincere, and able opponent of theism. In his recent book, Religion Coming of Age, he devoted two chapters to answering in the negative the question: “Has man a cosmic companion?” It is not surprising to find a certain amount of atheism among secular philosophers in this day and age. But it is surprising to read a book on Religion and the Modern World by a genuinely religious personality like John Herman Randall (collaborating with his son), in which it is said that “‘there is no room for a God save in the aspirations and imagination of men.’ This amounts to much the same as Santayana’s view.

If we consult publicists, it is not difficult to find a considerable array of disbelievers in God. Clarence Darrow has traveled up and down the land debating with every comer against the soul and in favor of mechanism. He has recently joined with Wallace Rice in editing a book called Infidels and Heretics, which is described as an anthology for agnostics. William Kay Wallace, in The Scientific World View, sets forth efficiency as a substitute for God. No list of leading atheists would be complete without mention of the indefatigable Harry Elmer Barnes. Lecture halls and current magazines are frequent witnesses of his activities; and his book, The Twilight. of Christianity, has been much discussed." He thinks that the enormous advances in astrophysics make the old faith in God impossible. In Current History for March, 1929, Professor Barnes and Bishop Francis J. McConnell debated the question, “Does Science Require a New Conception of God?” The Professor sustained the affirmative and the Bishop the negative. But the Professor would have been more ingenuous had he defended the thesis that he required no idea of God at all! The specific arguments which he advances will not be considered in this chapter but will be evaluated in principle in later discussions. The most brilliant antitheistic writer of recent times, at once the fairest, the most intelligent, and the most influential, is Walter Lippmann, of the New York World. His attack on theism is more insidious than those of most writers, for he bases his doubt in his A Preface to Morals on no direct arguments whatever. He does not try to disprove the idea of God. He simply assumes the existence of a large number of people in the modern world who have abandoned theistic faith, and then proceeds to offer this unbelieving flock such spiritual and moral nourishment as it is capable of assimilating. No one can deny him his premise. There are probably more educated persons to-day who are either unable to believe in a God or are indifferent to his existence than has ever been the case in history. The book, however, assumes without argument that these doubters are right. Mr. Lippmann ranges himself among them with the avowal that “in this book I take the humanistic view because, in the kind of world I happen to live in, I can do no other.”’” The logical weakness of his book is this assumption that a fashionable tendency of the times compels acceptance. The strength of the book is the utter frankness with which he describes the spiritual state of contemporary doubters, among whom he finds many “brave and

. ence reer, brilliant atheists who have defied the Methodist God, and have become very nervous.””?

Yet, along with his frankness and his proposals for spiritual amelioration (which we shall discuss in the next chapter), Lippmann makes many statements which are dubious. One, which bears on our problem, may be taken as illustrative. He asserts that “without complete certainty religion does not offer complete consolation.’’** Now it is evident that if belief in God is religiously empty unless it is completely certain, we may as well give up all talk about belief in

' God. Complete proof of God would require complete

- knowledge of the universe, together with the certainty that God was the best possible explanation of the existence of the universe. Complete proof, therefore, can never be found. The only question which confronts us is whether we can find a satisfactory working hypothesis. But Mr. Lippmann (and not a few religious believers agree with him) holds that the most satisfactory working hypothesis is bound to be religiously unsatisfactory because religion demands

‘certainty. But this protest against the hypothetical character of our knowledge of God is contrary both to the well-known fact that religious faith has never been taken to be identical with or to rest on a complete logical demonstration, and also to the equally well-known fact that many of the greatest religious personalities have had to struggle against depression and doubt, and that even Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” If we are to say that religious experience is defective or lacks consoling power whenever it falls short of complete certainty, we fly in the face of the facts of religious history. Consolation occurs precisely in doubt, in despair.

If, then, we are to make an attempt to reconsider the idea of God, we decline to be forced into the position of finding either a God whose existence is completely certain or no God at all. Every fundamental interpretation of life is an hypothesis that is incompletely established and is subject to further correction. Accordingly, we shall refrain from the Quixotic enterprise of undertaking to meet Mr. Lippmann’s need for perfect consolation through perfect certainty. As Professor John Dewey has shown in his Gifford Lectures, “the quest for certainty” has led the human race into many blind alleys. A reasonable belief in God will not be an absolutely demonstrated and final certainty. It will be, if it can be found, a rational working hypothesis. We must concede that Carneades and Bishop Butler were right in — holding that “probability is the guide of life” No \ human insight is ultimate. Only the Absolute is absolute. There is an element of faith and of logical incompleteness in all human knowledge.

The greatest contemporary publicist who has avowed atheism is the late Georges Clémenceau, the famous French statesman, better known as “the Tiger.” In his book, In the Evening of My Thought (1929), he expresses himself in masterly style and with much learning, yet less fair-mindedly than Mr. Lippmann. His aim is to banish from human thought, as far as he can, at least two ancestral misconceptions, as he calls them, namely, faith in a personal God and in personal immortality. His is an aggressive unbelief. He summons his qualities as Tiger into the fight. He cries exultantly: “At last we are drawing near the day when the God who so long has been the absolute master of prostrate man, will crumble before the cross-examination of erect man, and will leave behind only the ephemeral remains of a name without substance.”’® The utterances of Clémenceau have no particular logical force, but they are weighty additional evidence for the existence of a skeptical mood among representative men of our times.

If we turn from publicists to men of letters, we find a large number who give expression to a revulsion of thought and feeling against theism. It would be futile to attempt to list all of the men and movements that illustrate this fact. Two or three instances will suffice. Julian S. Huxley, grandson of the famous Thomas Huxley, embodies in himself the same traits which made his grandfather one of the leading figures of the nineteenth century, namely, scientific scholarship and literary skill. Likewise, the two Huxleys resemble each other in being profoundly interested in religion, although profoundly dissatisfied with its traditional forms. The younger Huxley has written a book called Religion Without Revelation. In it he not only rejects belief in God but also argues that this rejection is a religious gain. In his own words, “The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.’’!®

As a representative of the literature of doubt among American writers, we may select Joseph Wood Krutch, whose contributions to the best current magazines have made him well known. Mr. Krutch’s book, The Modern Temper (1929), carries the mood of doubt to its ultimate conclusion. The rejection of God is only his starting point, his major premise. He recognizes, as does Mr. Lippmann, that the whole moral organization of life is shattered when the faith around which it was built is destroyed. Mr. Lippmann believes that a new ethical idealism can be saved from the wreck. Mr. Krutch is under no such illusions. He is convinced that the modern scientific world view not only destroys God but also destroys the basis of any kind of moral idealism. The certitudes of science leave him in a universe in which there is no joy, light, or peace. ‘We have grown used ... to a Godless universe, but we are not yet accustomed to one which is loveless as well, and only when we have so become shall we realize what atheism really means.’ He finds no basis in experience for altruism or unselfish love. In short, he is hopeless about all the higher aspirations of men. It is easy to criticize Mr. Krutch and to point out that his conception of science, which excludes all value, is absolutely correct as a technique for physics and chemistry, yet is absolutely defective for discovering the truth about values and so about reality. Values are real and imperative, we may rightly urge against Mr. Krutch, whether there is a God or not, and whether the descriptive methods of natural science allow us to discover values or not. Ifa method begins by refusing to look for values, the fact that it never finds any can scarcely be used as a disproof of their existence. Everyone knows that strictly scientific method abstracts from personality and value, that is, it agrees to forget them. The discovery that the world for science is impersonal and valueless is not startling. But the obvious fallacy in Mr. Krutch’s reasoning should not blind us to the significance of his doubt as a symptom of the state of the modern mind. The doubt that prevails is not wholly or chiefly a rational doubt; to a large extent it is emotional and self-contradictory, even when couched in impeccable English and supported by appeals to science. Such doubt is no logical refutation of belief in God. But it is part of the evil of life which the believer in God must somehow explain if he is to defend his faith.