Religion without God

Front matter

1 ey

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By the Same Author

Preface

RESENT-DAY religion is not in evolution, but in revolution. Evolution implies growth from a germ, revolution a rup-

ture with a principle; evolution has antecedents, revolution knows not its parentage. When we say that there is revolution in religion, we mean not merely a break with the past, but an abandonment as well of much that is best in the culture and heritage of tradition.

Until a generation ago religion was generally understood in terms of man’s attitude toward a Supreme and Perfect Being; today, it is understood in terms of man’s friendliness to the universe or as “faith in the conservation of human values.” The term “ God” is still retained by some thinkers, but it is emptied of all content and dissolved to fit every volatile idea and fleeting fancy. God has been dethroned, the heavens emptied and man has been exalted to His place in fulfillment of an evil prophecy that some day he would be like unto God. Problems which once centered about God now revolve about man, and those which were concerned with man are now fused with the universe. Theism is reduced to humanism and psychology to cosvu

Vili PREFACE mology, for there is no longer a distinction made between man and matter. God is humanized and man is naturalized. The science of physics and not the “‘ flower in the crannied wall” has come to tell us what God and man are.

No longer do men look to the past as to their Golden Age; no longer do they have a memory of a Garden wherein man walked with God in the cool breezes of evening. The Golden Age is now placed in the future, but not one wherein man refinds at the foot of a Tree the gifts he once lost there, thanks to a God-Man unfurled on it like a banner of salvation, but rather a future in which, due to a cosmic evolutionary urge, man not only makes but becomes God. Man in the supernatural state, it is said, needs no Redeemer as in the natural state he needs no God. As a result of this philosophy of self-sufficiency we have the queer modern phenomenon of a religion without God and a Christianity without Christ.

In these new terms religion remains the great concern of the modern mind. Never before has an irreligious world taken so much interest in religion. It is the one subject anyone may talk about, though scientists alone may speak of science and geographers alone of geography. The press is teeming with it and university professors are lecturing about it even when they lecture against it. But while it is true that there has never before been so much talking about religion, it is equally true that never before has there been so little walk-

PREFACE 1X ing in it. Religion today is only doctrinal, not practical — a concern of the Pure but not the Practical Reason. Its purpose seems to be to offer a consoling salve to erring consciences. Men first live and a doctrine is made to fit their living; bad thinking is flatteringly adjusted to bad living and thus phoenix-like a religion rises out of the ashes of irreligion.

Because of this new and revolutionary change in religion, the exponents of the traditional concept have lost the ear of the changing world. The terms “God” and “Religion ” are still used, but they mean different things. It is easier for a Frenchman to understand an Englishman, than for a believer in a Perfect God to understand the God of Professor Alexander, “ who in the strictest sense of the term is not a Creator but a creature.” The two schools are talking a different language and revolving about different poles of thought: the older school is proceeding from God to religion while the new proceeds from religion to God.

The task before the philosopher of religion whose reason commits him to a belief in God, the Alpha and Omega of all things, is not to state contradictory theses which have no common denominator nor multiple with those of his flesh and blood contemporaries. Rather his task is to analyze the assumptions behind the modern view to determine whether or not they are justified. It is the things that are taken for granted in their position that must be challenged, for it may well be that philox PREFACE sophical assumptions are mere lyrical gratuities and their philosophy but free-verse poetry.

It is to this labor of a calm and rational study of the assumptions behind the contemporary idea of religion that we have committed ourselves in writing this book. The method is threefold: expository, historical, and critical. First, we have aimed to give an unprejudiced outline of the modern position both in its negative and positive aspects, refraining from all criticism; secondly, to trace out its historical origins, not so much through persons, as Jacques Maritain has admirably done in his “ Les Trois Reformateurs,” to which we acknowledge indebtedness, but rather through philosophical principles and their evolution; thirdly, to analyze the assumptions underlying the contemporary philosophy of religion and to present in a constructive way the rational ground for all religion from the natural point of view.

God in relation to the anti-intellectual tendencies of the present day was examined in our previous work “ God and Intelligence,” of which this present volume is a continuation. The two are destined to be a complete philosophy of religion from both its formal and material angles.

In conclusion we wish to thank Dr. Leon Canon Noel of the University of Louvain and Dr. Gerald B. Phelan of the University of Toronto for their scholarly inspiration and valued assistance. Deepest thanks too are offered to Rt. Rev. Msgr. Edward A. Pace, Ph.D. and Rt. Rev. Msgr. James

PREFACE xi H. Ryan, Ph.D. of The Catholic University of

America for their learned and characteristically kind help, and to Professor A. J. McMullen of Harvard University for reading the book in manuscript and offering many valuable suggestions to make it more readable. For the tedious task of making the Index we are grateful to our friend,

Rev. Henry J. Gebhard, M.A.

Contents

PAR Tat (Contemporary Philosophy of Religion CHAPTER PAGE I. Mopern Re icion 1n Its NecaTive ASPEcT 3

II. Mopern Reticion 1n Its Positive Aspect 60

PART II The Historical Origins of the (ontemporary Idea of Religion

Ill. THe SprriruaL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE Evo- LUTION OF THE CONTEMPORARY IDEA OF

IV. Tue Puitosopuy or InpivipuaLisM ..... 102

Wowie: PHILOSOPHY OF FACT. 600000 0p003.8 Oke Rely,

Critical Appreciation of the (Contemporary Idea of ‘Religion in the Light of the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas

VII. Tue Fattacy or NomMINALISsM. .. 2... . 195 VIII. Toe Fattacy or THE Untrorm Mertruop or 7a) BE TSTRT SAU NO Ie Nog ARSC OA RE NO RN AAT 224

XIV CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1X. Tue Fauvacy or INVERTED RELATIONS .

X. RELIGION AND VALUES

XI. Tue PuitosopuHicaL BasIs OF Relen

Index

PAGE

259 292 320

PAR Tt

- Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

BART

Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

CHAPTERG1

MODERN RELIGION IN ITS NEGATIVE ASPECT

[T's scientific study of religion has undergone tremendous changes during the last four centuries, changes due in part to the modern mode of approaching problems, and in part to the universal adoption of the experimental method. This changed attitude towards the problems of religion has been marked with each succeeding century. The sixteenth century asked for a “new Church,” the eighteenth for a “new Christ,” the nineteenth for a “new God,” and the twentieth asks for a “new religion.” In response to these appeals and in the name of “progress,” “science” and “ liberty,” the Church became a sect, Christ but a moral teacher, God the symbol for the ideal tendency in things, and religion an attitude of friendliness to the universe. The new conception of religion is quite different from the old; it is different because it has as 3 its heritage a vast array of negations and as its promise rich hopes for the glorification of man and not God. All these have contributed their share to usher in the new idea of religion: new scientific formulas which ever seek to overflow into theology, an increasing impatience with the traditional and the dogmatic, a growing demand for a system flattering to new ways of living, and finally a desire to reduce everything to a single category. Professor H. W. Carr declares that science is the most important of these influences. “It is the progress of science,” he writes, “which has required philosophy from time to time to revise the concept of God. The great metaphysical task which confronts us today is to reform the notion of God which the mathematical philosophers of the seventeenth century have bequeathed to us, in order to bring it into accord with the new concepts of biological science.” *

And what is this new idea of religion? It is briefly a religion without God, that is, God as traditionally understood. Religion, according to the twentieth century philosophers and theologians, centres not about God but man. “It is man first and not God,” says one of the exponents of the new notion; “it is as much God only as man may seem to suggest or prove. Above all, it is God revealed by man and not man by God. Our revelation today is from earth to heaven, from clod to

1 H. W. Carr, “ Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 1927) P. 74.

God — not vice versa as in the old days.”” “The scientific interpretation of natural phenomena,” says another, “has made the interest in God more remote, God’s existence more problematical, and even the idea of God unnecessary. Mathematics and physics are making it increasingly difficult to assign a place for God in our co-ordinations and constructions of the universe; and the necessity of positing a first cause or of conceiving a designer, a necessity which seemed prima facie obvious to a pre-scientific generation, does not exist for us.”° The word “God” may still be retained in this new idea of religion, but that word takes on an entirely new meaning; it may even reach such a volatile state as to become identified with almost anything from a psychical complex to an ideal. It may even be ignored altogether as it is, for example, by one for whom “new religion will be an outcome of the wants, the hopes and the aspirations of these our times and the near future.” *

When we speak of the “ modern” or the “contemporary” idea of religion we do not mean ““modern ” in the strict chronological sense of a definite period of time. Rather, we mean a “ spirit”? —a spirit which is so peculiar to contemporary ways of thinking and so different from the past that in contrast, the new outlook may be

2 John Haynes Holmes, The New Basis of Religion in “ Essays towards Truth,” 1924, p. 218.

8 H. W. Carr, “Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 1927, D. 74.

4 C, A. F. Rhys Davids, “ Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178.

called “modern.” The new attitude toward religion is different both in degree and kind from anything which might be called either traditional or orthodox. It is quite true that there are many notions of religion which do not fit in with the synthesis we are about to present. These notions and systems may be modern in the sense that they are presented in our own day but they are not modern in the sense that they represent the “ progressive and liberating spirit” of contemporary philosophers and theologians.

It is with this new idea of religion that this book is concerned;° special consideration should be given it for certainly there could be no question of greater importance or more fundamental than that of the relationship between God and man. Man is said to be “‘incurably religious,” and as nothing human was foreign to Terence so nothing religious can be foreign to man.

It is only fair to the protagonists of the new doctrines that they present their own case. For that reason we propose to divide the work into three sections. ‘The first section presents the new idea of religion sympathetically and uncritically; the second section traces out its historical origins ; and the third examines it critically in the light of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Every science has a double object: a material

5 The modern idea of God is treated expressly and in detail in “ God and Intelligence,” Fulton J. Sheen, London, 1925.

object which is the thing studied, for example, matter in physics; a formal object, which is the peculiar aspect or “angle” of the study, for example, in physics, matter again, inasmuch as it is in movement. A thorough-going study of modern religion will have to take account of both these objects. Not only that, it will also be obliged to consider the older and the more traditional ideas of religion, for every philosophical and theological movement is either a reaction or a departure from something which preceded it. This means that the modern idea of religion will have to be treated under both its negative and positive aspects; its negative aspect will be the criticism of the old notions it hopes to supplant, and its positive will be the expression of the new tenets it hopes to implant.

Although the following synthesis and summary of the contemporary idea of religion appears at the beginning of this study, in ordine inventionis it came only at the end. It has been extracted from the contemporaries themselves and is no a priori construction. It is not an architect’s plan of something which is to be constructed; rather it is an artist’s sketch of a reality already existing —an after-thought rather than an inspiration.

The Modern Idea of Religion

MATERIAL OBJECT FORMAL OBJECT Negative —noGod (astra- Negative — anti-intellectual. ditionally understood). Positive — Religious Expe-

Positive — Values. rience.

This book shall concern itself only with the material object of religion, the formal aspect having been already treated in God and Intelligence.°

The Material Object of Modern Religion Negatively Considered

God as the Supreme and Perfect Being 1s not the necessary object of religion. This statement represents the negative side of the modern idea of religion and its reaction to the traditional notion. This does not mean that the term God is no longer used in religion by our contemporaries. As a matter of fact, it is used, and used very often. But it is never taken to mean the Supreme Being of traditional thought. God may mean anything from a “harmonization of epochal occasions” to a “ projected libido.”” Here we are not asserting the logical superiority of the traditional over the contemporary idea; we are just asserting a fact — viz., God as traditionally understood is no longer accepted as the object of religion. And what is the tradi- ' tional conception of God? It is that of a Supreme and Perfect Being, the Alpha and the Omega of all things: the Alpha, for without Him there would never be things to progress or evolve; the Omega, for without Him there would never be a reason for their evolving. Perfect He is with the plentitude of Being with its transcendental proprieties of Unity, Truth and Goodness; not static, because Life itself;

6 The negative aspect, pp. 9-31; pp. 62-141. The positive aspect, PP.)'31747, 141-4278;

MODERN RELIGION —NEGATIVE — 9g not dynamic, because Perfect; not evolving, because the Intelligibility of Evolution. Because He is and because everything else is not but has being, there is a dependence of all that is not Him on Him, and this dependence is the foundation of all religion.

The reasons urged by contemporaries against the traditional concept of God may be reduced to three: the philosophical, the psychological and the sociological.

Philosophical Negations of the Traditional Object of Religion

Though William James no longer exerts a personal influence in the world of philosophy, it is nevertheless true that his works carry on the task which he left unfulfilled. Pragmatism as a method may be dead, but Pragmatism as a spirit is alive and palpitating. Professor Julius S. Bixler of Smith College, in his excellent presentation of ‘‘ Religion in the Philosophy of William James” has — stressed this point. “Pragmatism,” he writes, “will appeal to the coming generation because of its creative faith.... And James’ believing, achieving, creative individual will find a scope for his powers and an application for his ideals unparalleled in history.”* Out of that vast array of philosophical material he left behind there is only a small but yet very important part of it which interests us, namely, his idea of religion. The influ-

MeEOZ OS Ps BES.

ences which worked for his particular theory of religion were varied and complex. His Swedenborgian father and his empirical training in physiology and medicine equipped him to look upon physical results empirically. The anti-intellectualism of Bergson (the publication of whose “ Creative Evolution ” James regarded as one of the world’s most important events, because it “killed intellectualism absolutely dead”), the pluralism of Renouvier, the utilitarianism of Mill, the reaction to the absolutists of Oxford, all conspired to make him the author of a religion which might be called the religion of a romantic utilitarian.*

Did James believe in a Perfect and Supreme Being as the object of religion? ‘The answer is clearly in the negative. The best definition of religion he leaves us is to be found in his “ Varieties of Religious Experience,’ where he says: “Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine.” *® Quite naturally, the meaning of the word “ divine” must be the key to this notion, and we must go on to inquire what he means by it. Never is he clear in defining just what it is. “The word ‘divine,’” he writes later on in the same work, ‘‘as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and the enveloping and real. . . . The divine shall

8 René Berthelot, “ Un Romantisme Utilitaire,” 1922, Vol. 3. Poe Dict y mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.” *” The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions. “So a ‘god of battles’ must be allowed to be a god for one kind of person, a ‘ god of peace and heaven and home’ for another.”’** This power which is beyond us and from whom saving experiences come need not be infinite. “ All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite; it need only be solitary.” ”

In this work quite evidently God needs only to be a power, conscious like ourselves, but certainly not perfect. At one point James is logical with his pluralism and entertains the possibility of polytheism, in the sense of a union of these god-like selves.

But in order to make more clear the object of religion as understood by James, it is well to ask if the Absolute will do for religion, and then if the Scholastic notion of God will do. The Absolute can be dismissed at once. It has no religious values, being fit only to give us a “‘ moral holiday.” ** He scandalized his hearers at Oxford by telling them: ‘ Let the Absolute bury the Absolute.” While he did not go so far as to believe that all Hegelians were prigs, he did say that he somehow felt, that “all prigs ought to end, if developed, by becoming Hegelians.” ** But if the Absolute will not serve as the object of religion, will not God as conceived by the Scholastics do? James would not admit this either. First of all, the existence of God cannot be proved, and here, strange to say, James offers no other argument than the argument of authority: “that all idealists since Kant have felt entitled either to scout or neglect them (proofs) shows that they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s allsufficient foundation. . . . Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of theology.” ** Secondly, the attributes of God, as conceived by Scholastics are too barren and meaningless for this life; they are only the * shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary adjectives, aloof from morals, aloof from human needs, something that might be worked out from the mere word ‘God’ by one of these logical machines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived as well as by a man of flesh and blood.” **

What then will the object of religion be, and what will be the meaning of the word “divine” ? In his latest work James declares himself in favor of the finite God. “I believe that the only God worthy of the name must be finite.”** “And He is

14 « Essays in Radical Empiricism,” p. 276, ff. ‘ Pluralistic Universe,” pp. /TisT ere, pp. A974 8.

15 “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 437.

17 “ Pluralistic Universe,” pp. 124, 125.

finite either in power or in knowledge or in both.” * Ultimately, however, and to be logical with his Pragmatism, James would have to admit that any God which you could use would be the object of your religion, and if you could not use one in your religion then for you he would not exist. “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the term, it is true.” *° If He does exist, He is to be conceived more as a co-worker than a sovereign. “ He works in an external environment, has limits and has enemies.” *” We can even help Him “to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks.” “God Himself in short may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity.” ” (

While it is not so much to our point to decide definitely just what kind of God James did believe in, it suffices to know that religion for him demanded no perfect Supreme Being. God as traditionally understood certainly is not the God-concept of William James, for whom God was “more a powerful ally of ideals” rather than a “ real existent Being.” ?* A God who is “ only the ideal tendency in things” ** is a God already in a state of

18 [bid., p. 311. Among other philosophers holding to the finite God may be mentioned: F. C. S. Schiller, “ Riddles of the Sphinx ”; James Ward, “ Realm of Ends”; H. G. Wells, “God the Invisible King,” and J. C. McTaggart, R. H. Rashdall, R. H. Dotterer, and G. H. Howison.

19 “ Pragmatism,” p. 299.

20 “ Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124.

21 “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 517.

22 « The Will to Believe,” p. 61.

24 “ Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124.

philosophical decomposition. Here is the suggestion of what becomes clearer in more recent philosophers; namely, religion which brings man into more increasing prominence. From a notion of a finite God whom we help in His tasks, or an “ ideal tendency in things” to the notion of a God whom we not only help in tasks, but help to create is only a step. Huxley described the religion of Comte as “Catholicism without Christianity,” and M. Berthelot continues the figure by saying that the “religion of William James is a Protestantism without Christianity.”” In a certain sense it may be justly described as a religion without God, for God to him means only what each individual takes as the divine. It is a great departure from the traditional notion and a bold assertion of what was implied in the philosophy of Mill. With James’ successors it takes on a physical or a mathematical turn but always retains the aseity of the individual in the face of a Perfect and Supreme Being whom thinkers of a different school looked upon as the source and foundation of all religion.

Religion according to Professor Alexander

This distinguished professor of Manchester University has given to the modern world a notion of religion which is quite unlike that of many of his contemporaries and yet has something in common with them; namely, its rejection of a Perfect and Supreme Being as the object of religion.

His notion of religion can only be understood in relation to his whole philosophy of Space-Time. The stuff of which this universe is made and the matrix whence all things come, is spatio-temporal. This means that the universe is essentially a universe of motion, and of continuous redistribution of instants of Time among points of Space.

Characteristic of the universe of Space-Time is its constant differentiation into higher and higher complexes, a tendency constituting a nisus towards deity, for deity is the upward urge of evolution. Within the all-embracing stuff of Space-Time the universe exhibits, in its emergence in time, successive levels of finite existence, each with its own characteristic empirical quality. At one end of the scale it is undifferentiated Space-Time; at the other end progressive value. Among the three principal qualities, the highest known to us at present is mind or consciousness. Now, deity is always the next higher empirical quality to the one presently evolved. This is true throughout all the levels of existence. When, therefore, the “ growing world” was nothing more than empirical configurations of Space-Time, Deity, which by definition is the next quality to the one presently evolved, was matter. When the growing world reached the level matter, deity was at the stage of life. When the world evolved to life, deity was at mind. We are now at the mind stage, and deity is the stage above us, always marching ahead of us very tantalizingly. When we evolve to the stage where deity is now, that stage will be the stage of angels and deity will move up a peg. Deity is therefore “a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it.” ** In brief, “God as actually possessing deity does not exist, but is an ideal, tending toward deity which does exist... . As an actual existent, God is the infinite world with its nisus towards deity.” ”

What is religion according to such a notion? Religion is communion with this future quality of deity. It is “the sense of outgoing to the whole universe in its process towards the quality of deity.” ** But, it may be asked, how can this future quality of deity affect us and be an object of religion? Professor Alexander recognizes the difhculty and attempts to answer it by saying that what acts upon us is what brings forth deity, namely the actual world. It contains deity in germ inasmuch -as the actual is the seed of the future, and the future

26 “Tt is clear that, while for us men deity is the next higher empirical quality to mind, the description of deity is perfectly general. For any level of existence, deity is the next higher empirical quality. It is therefore a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it. On each level a new quality looms ahead, awfully, which plays to it the part of deity. For us who live upon the level of mind deity is, we can but say, deity. To creatures upon the level of life deity is still the quality in front, but to us who come later this quality has been revealed as mind. For creatures who possessed only the primary qualities — mere empirical configurations of space-time — deity was afterwards what appeared as materiality, and their God was matter, for I am supposing that there is no level of existence nearer to the spatio-temporal than matter. On each level of finite creatures deity is for them some ‘unknown’ (though not ‘ unexperienced’) quality in front, the real nature of which is enjoyed by the creatures of the next level.” “‘ Space, Time and Deity,” 1922, Vol. 2, p. 348.

is previsible in so far as we can forecast it in spatio-temporal terms. Just as clairvoyants may see the future, so too, he says, “ we may suppose that in religious experience the vague future quality of deity is felt, not in its quality, for that cannot be known, but as giving flavor to the experience of the whole world which it does not possess as merely an object of sense or thought.” ”

There is no further elaboration needed to show that the centre of religion, as understood by this philosopher, is not the God of a Leibnitz nor an Aquinas, but an entirely new concept born of a new science and a new physics. The difference is not merely that his notion of God is one in pursuit of deity, while the traditional notion of God is one who does not pursue but possesses; there is the added difference of our relation to God. Here it is that Professor Alexander separates his notion of religion most widely from all notions which may be classed as traditional. God, according to his opinion, is sustained and helped by us. “ We also help,” he writes, “to maintain and sustain the nature of God and are not merely his subjects. . . . God himself is involved in our acts and their issues, or as it was put above, not only does he matter to us, but we matter to him,” * because he is “in the strictest sense not a creator but a creature.’** Quite naturally, if we are not God-made but God-makers, then in virtue of this new relation religion will have an entirely different meaning. Religion will not be something which “commands us to perform our duties with the consciousness that they are the commands of God.” Rather “it is religion to do our duty with the consciousness of helping to create his deity.” Once it is allowed that “ deity owes its being to pre-existing finites with their empirical qualities, and is their outcome,” *”’ then religion will become co-operation with God instead of service of God. It will be something adventurous, something in which man takes a hand, and man instead of being just a puppet dependent on a Perfect Being will have as his sublime vocation the duty of contributing to the deity of God, by his life and actions. Such an idea of religion, Professor Alexander believes, makes “our human position more serious, but frees it from the reproach of subjection to arbitrary providence.” *