Fundamental questions

Preface

This volume aims to deal, in not too technical fashion, with some of the most fundamental questions, theoretical and practical, which are involved in the Christian view of God and the world. It is naturally intended, thus, both to answer difficulties and to suggest lines of thought which may help to confirm and to clarify Christian faith.

Its chapters take up in order the perennial problem for all ideal views, — the question of suffering and sin ; the difficulties for any religious view which gather around prayer, — the central relation of revelation and response between God and men ; the question of how we may best think of Christ, - — the central fact of the Christian religion ; and then, in the light of these conclusions, four large problems for Christian thought and life : the questions of life's fundamental decision, of life's fundamental paradox of liberty and law, of Christian unity, and of Christianity as a world religion.

VI

PREFACE

Each of the last four questions, as well as the first three, are truly fundamental and vital. The question of life's fundamental decision has to do with those basic will-attitudes which chiefly give to life its reality and meaning and value. The kinship of religion with all earnest living can be here discerned. The question of life's fundamental paradox of liberty and law is necessarily involved in man's use of his will, and its solution is requisite both for the satisfaction of man's reason, and for his ethical and religious freedom. Every life has this paradox constantly to face. The question of Christian unity refuses to be ignored, and probably no other generation has seen so much definite effort for the unification of Christianity. It concerns us all to estimate values and measures aright at this point. Moreover, the question of Christianity as a world religion, the Christian church must frankly face, both for the justification of its world-wide missionary endeavors, and to meet the demands made upon it by the complex modern world in this time of world-shaking war. There is a very real sense in which Christianity as a world religion is on trial.

Parts of this volume have been printed before, but nothing is included that is not believed to have vital connection with the theme. Thanks are due to The Biblical Worlds The Pilgrim Teacher^

PREFACE vii

The Constructive ^arterly. The International Review of Missions, and The Expositor, for permission to use material which has appeared in their

pages.

HENRY CHURCHILL KING.

Chapter I

THE QUESTION OF SUFFERING AND SIN— THE PERENNIAL PROBLEM FOR ALL IDEAL VIEWS

PAGE

I. Preliminary Considerations . . . . i

1 . The three realms of reality

2. The universality of the problem

3. Suffering in the animal world .

II. The Prerequisites of Moral Character

1 . Some genuine freedom of volition

2. Some power of accomplishment

3. An imperfect developing world .

4. That men should be members one of another

5 . A sphere of laws

6. Some element of struggle ....

III. Help from the Common Deeper Life of Men 23

1. The smallness of man's view . . . -25

2. Added light upon the trend of the world's devel-

opment ....

3. Man's faith in immortality

4. The four common views of suffering (i) Suffering as punishment for sin

(2) Suffering as discipline

(3) Suffering as necessary to save men from

simple prudential selfishness . . 38

(4) The majesty of God 41

5 7

13 16

17 18 20 21

29 31 34 35 36

X CONTENTS

PAGE

IV. The Christian Implications of Man's Nature . 43

1 . Man made for heroic achievement ... 45

2. Life deepens through opposition ... 46

3. Man made for personal relations ... 47

4. The joy of redeeming work .... 48

5. The greatest sufferers not the most unhappy 49

6. Growth of love through fellowship in suffering . 5 1

7. Suffering the key to life's most precious experi-

ences 51

V. Light from Christ 54

1. Christ's suffering has proved vicarious . . 55

2. This suggests that all suffering may be made

vicarious ....... 58

3. Suffering can be turned into voluntary sacrifice,

and so become an instrument of joy . ' . 59

4. The suffering of Christ, as a power against sin

also 61

5. The suffering death of Christ, a revelation of

the heart of God 63

Chapter II

THE QUESTION OF PRAYER— THE HEART OF RELIGION, DIFFICULTIES CONCERN- ING PRAYER

I. Difficulties Connected with a Supposed Scientific View-point ....

1 . No doubt of men's need of a sphere of law

2. But no eternally self-existing laws

3. No doubt of man's need of God

4. No compelling reason to deny access of God to

human minds .....

5. Man, as the goal of evolution

6. Prayer fits human nature ....

7. Are not narrowly to fix the scope of prayer

66 66 67 67

68 70 70 72

CONTENTS xi

II. Difficulties from a False Conception of Prayer

1 . The idea of a prayer gauge

2. God knows what I need ....

III. Difficulties from the Supposed Improba

BiLiTY OF Prayer .

1 . God is ; we are

2. We need God .

3. All men impelled to pray .

4. The example of the best .

5 . Christ's own practice, example, and urging

IV. Difficulty from the Lack of a Felt Pres-

ence and Response in Prayer .

1 . God known through his self-manifestations

2. Relation to spiritual world compared to relation

to physical world

3. Even in closest personal relations, no literal

transfer of thought ....

4. God, no mere occasional factor in life of men

5. God's relation to men should be unobtrusive

6. What kind of answers to prayer really to be

desired

V. The Difficulty of Intercessory Prayer

75 75

n

81 82 82 82 83 83

85 86

88 90 90

92 94

Chapter III

THE QUESTION OF CHRIST— THE CENTRAL FACT OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION: HOW ARE WE TO THINK ABOUT CHRIST?

I. The Best Life 97

II. The Best Ideals and Standards ... 98

III. The Best Insight into the Laws of Life . 99

IV. The Best Convictions loi

V. The Best Hopes 102 xii CONTENTS

PAGE

VI. The Best Dynamic for Living . . .103

VII. The Best Revelation of God . . .105

Chapter IV The Question Of Life's Fundamental Decision

I. Drifting or Steering in

II. Domination by Feeling or by Rational

Purpose 112

III. Loyalty or Disloyalty 113

IV. Following One's Conscience or Not . .114 V. The Surrender or Not, to the Scientific

Spirit 115

VI. The Larger Life or the Lesser Good . .116

VII. Wilful or Obedient 117

VIII. Following Duty or Pleasure. . .118

IX. Taking On or Refusing the Will of God . 119 X. Deep-going Ethical Decision, even without

Religious Faith 121

XI. The Love of the Father or the Love of

the World 123

XII. Selfish or Unselfish 128

XIII. Disciple of Christ or Not . . . .129

Chapter V

THE QUESTION OF LIFES FUNDAMENTAL PARADOX— THE QUESTION OF LIB- ERTY AND LA W : THE LA IV OF LIBERTY

I. The Fundamental Nature of the Problem. 133 II. Why this Problem Constantly Recurs . 137

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

III. The New Testament Solution of the Prob-

lem 144

IV. The Relation of the Christian Solution of

THE Paradox to Other Theories of Life 148

V. Modern Examples of the Paradox . -153

VI. The Achievement of True Freedom . .163

Chapter VI The Question Of Christian Unity -^ The Confession Of Christ

I. The One Uniting Word is Christian . .171 II. Temperamental Differences .... 174

III. A True Organic Unity 176

IV. Uniformity Not Desirable . . . .177 V. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Impossible . . . . . .180

VI. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Undesirable 183

VII. Our Real Unity in Our Common Life in

Christ 186

Chapter VII

THE QUESTION OF CHRISTIANITY AS A WORLD RELIGION I: CHRISTIANITY THE ONLY HOPEFUL BASIS FOR ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION

I. The Need of an Adequate Spiritual Basis

FOR Any Civilization 191

II. The Increasing Sense of Need of a New

Spiritual Basis for Oriental Civilization 194 xlv CONTENTS

PAGE

III. The Necessary Threefold Test of the Re-

ligious Basis of a Modern Civilization . 199

1. Neither the Emperor cult nor Shinto can meet

these tests 200

2. Nor can Buddhism or Confucianism . . 200

3. Nor a new religious syncretism . . . 202

IV. Only Christianity Can Meet These Tests,

and Furnish an Adequate Spiritual Basis for the Modern Civilization of the Orient 205

Chapter VIII

THE QUESTION OF CHRISTIANITY AS A WORLD RELIGION II: CITIZENS 01 A NEW CIVILIZATION

I. Faith in the Possibilities of a New Civilization 216

II. The Special Obligations Now Resting upon

America and Americans Youth . . .221

III. The Demands of the New Civilization . 224

1 . The inescapable grip of the laws of God in the

life of nations 224

2. The needed reinvigoration of the life of the

nations in its entire range .... 229

3. A new grasp upon the principle of the organic

view of truth and of human society . . 236

4. The new civilization must be frankly, definitely

Christian 239

(i) The sifting out of the true from the false

Christianity ..... 239

(2) The abandonment of the philosophy of the

state as above moral law . 242

(3) A league of nations to enforce peace . 247

(4) Further plans for a permanent peace . . 247

IV. The Appeal to American Youth . 249

Chapter I

THE QUESTION OF SUFFERING AND SIN — THE PERENNIAL PROBLEM FOR ALL IDEAL VIEWS

Preliminary Considerations

One questions hts right to take this theme at all, for two reasons : First, because only experience of life can fitly interpret it, and without some depth of experience discussion of this dark problem is little else than mockery. One doubts the adequacy of his experience, and his capacity to see and feel deeply enough to justify discussion. One would not further darken counsel on this subject by words without knowledge. The second reason for hesitation is just because the problem is so old. It is in truth man's perennially darkest problem — the question of the ages — that seems to confront him with the constant and often-stated dilemma : either God is good and not omnipotent, or he is omnipotent and not good. No one of us can escape this challenge. In some form it concerns us all, whether our primary interest is religious or scientific or practical. At some point we all need an assured conviction of the essential rationality of the world — that aims that compel our respect are ruling in the world. Is it at all worth while to discuss anew this age-long problem ?

If, in spite of this double misgiving, and with no feeling that I have new and startling light to shed upon it, I am undertaking once more a sober survey of this most difficult problem of human existence, it is simply because even the oldest questions inevitably change their form with changing times, and so need to be reconsidered again and again ; and because it is precisely in wrestling with our largest and darkest problems that our most fruitful insights are likely to come. A comprehensive, even if sober, resurvey of all that is involved in the problem of evil, natural and moral — in the question of suffering and sin — ought, then, to prove of some value, especially when this problem is being pressed on us all anew by the terror of the Great War. And this, in spite of the fact that one has no expectation of solving the problem. It probably was not intended that complete demonstration should be possible to us here. One can only hope to give a series of suggestions that may help to faith, suggestions which themselves can be of weight chiefly to those who can interpret them out of their own experience.

I. From the start it is well to remember that we can know beforehand that there can be no demonstration of the reasons for actual matter-of-fact existences. We cannot demonstrate mosquitoes or snakes or potato bugs. We cannot demonstrate the grass or the grub or the bird. The concrete facts can never be fully reached and the necessity of their existence shown by any philosophy or any summary of principles, however widely accepted. The most that we could do at this point would be to agree on certain great ends that ought to prevail in any universe; to infer from these the probability of some larger necessary laws (although many so-called laws, especially in the physical world, are doubtless not primal necessities at all, but only widely prevalent matters of fact) ; and then to show that the existence of various matters of fact is not inconsistent with these ends and laws.

It was long ago pointed out that reality has for all men three realms — the realms of the is, of the must, and of the ought; and we cannot have any hope of final unity in our thinking, except as we start from the ought. Quite aside from any ethical interest, the very meaning of these three realms of reality is such that we plainly cannot derive the ought from the is or the must. That a thing is does not prove that it ought to be. Nor even that a thing must be, does it follow that it ought to be. We might have to regard it as an evil necessity. We mean something quite different when we say a thing ought to be, from what we mean when we say it is or it must be. If we are to get any final unity in our three realms of reality, then, it can only be by starting from the ought, proceeding to the must, as involved in the ends contained in the ought, and accepting the is as merely actual, not demonstrable, but also not inconsistent with the ought and the must. Our metaphysics, thus, as Lotze and Paulsen and Wundt all contend, must root in our ethics if we are to be able at all to believe in the final unity of the world. This initial consideration — the necessary primacy of the ought for any unity in the world or in our own thinking — is itself good reason for faith that purposes of good do rule in the world, that there is love and not hate at the world's heart.

2. There is a further preliminary consideration that may give us hope as to the final issue of our problem. The very fact, as I have elsewhere pointed out, that all men, practically without exception, feel somewhere the problem of evil — the difficulty of the sufi*ering of the righteous, of the prosperity of the wicked, of much seemingly needless suffering — as well as the increasing sensitiveness at this point, itself shows that all men instinctively feel and make the universal assumption that a really rational world must be a world that is worth while, a world that can justify itself to a sensitive and enlightened conscience, a world that is not merely coldly logical but warmly loving. The fact that men so universally make this assumption is itself good evidence that we may believe that the world will finally justify that assumption.

For men are themselves a part, the last evolved part, and at least a very important part of that world which they are seeking to understand. They are, indeed, that part of the world in which the world itself has come to consciousness and to intelligent judgment. If their universal assumption is that this world must be a good world, as well as a logically consistent world, if it is to be truly rational and tolerable at all, then if that assumption is not justified, the world has contradicted and condemned itself in its own highest product, and there is an end of rational thinking. For you cannot rationally think through a world fundamentally irrational. In that case, the fact of the human mind and the fact of the rest of the world do not fit, and cannot be made to fit. You could then only accept the universe in its entirety as a self-contradictory and evil thing, and utterly abandon any attempt to think it into unity. That would mean an end of rational thinking and of all philosophy, to say nothing of religion. And such a futile and chaotic outcome is itself a reason for faith that the contrary view, the view that all men assume as essential to a rational world, is justified. In spite of seeming contradictions, the world probably bears true witness to itself in men's instinctive demand upon the world and upon life. A controlling love, we may believe, is at work in the world. There is, then, some initial rational presumption that our problem is not insoluble.

3. One subordinate aspect of the problem of suffering — the suffering in the animal world — has been much accentuated in our modern time, for two reasons : first, because with the progress of Christian civilization the sensitiveness to all suffering, even animal suffering, has greatly increased. And, secondly, because the tendency of the Darwinian theory of evolution was to formulate all development in terms of "the struggle for existence," and so to seem to most minds to involve a terrible severity in the conditions under which life evolved, and a ceaseless preying of animals upon one another.

As to this whole question of animal suffering, it seems clear to me, in the first place, that, even if the Darwinian theory of evolution be fully accepted, the facts would by no means warrant many of the statements made concerning the cruelty and pain of the struggle. The word struggle itself — as applied to the whole biological field — tends to mislead. Surely we may well give heed at this point to the testimony of Darwin and Wallace themselves, as quoted by Drummond. Darwin says :

When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.

And Wallace expresses himself even more explicitly :

On the whole, the popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain in the animal world is the very reverse of the truth. What it really brings about is the maximum of life and of the enjoyment of life, with the minimum of suffering and pain. Given the necessity of death and reproduction — and without these there could have been no progressive development of the organic world — and it is diflicult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of happiness could have been secured.

Moreover, with continued study of the problem of evolution on the part of men of all schools, it is significant that there has been a marked recognition that there can be no such exclusive emphasis upon the struggle for existence, but that other factors have a large part to play. Thus, scientists are themselves insisting, to a larger extent than when John Fiske wrote the words, that ^'other agencies are at work besides natural selection, and the story of the struggle for existence is far from being the whole story." And the recognition of ^^ these other agencies'' greatly modifies the former impression, itself unjustified, of a pitiless and bloody warfare involving exquisite animal anguish at every step. In the words of Thomson and Geddes :

There is no doubt that the general tone and treatment of Darwinism, even hitherto, has been deeply coloured by the acute individualism of Darwin's and the preceding age. We may therefore restate here the concluding thesis of our own Evolution of Sex (1889), since elaborated in various ways by Drummond, by Kropotkin and others. It is that the general progress both of the plant and the animal world, and notably the great uplifts, must be viewed not simply as individual but very largely in terms of sex and parenthood, of family and association ; and hence of gregarious flocks and herds, of co-operative packs, of evolving tribes, and thus ultimately of civilized societies — above all, therefore, of the city. Huxley's tragic vision of "Nature as a gladiatorial show," and consequently of ethical life and progress as merely superposed by man, as therefore an interference with the normal order of Nature, is still far too dominant among us.

There is, indeed, every reason to believe that the method of animal development lO FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

chosen, costly as it undoubtedly is, was the least costly in pain ; and that, in any case, the goal was worth the price paid. We have small reason to doubt that life itself for the animal involves general pleasure; and the aim in creation seems to have been, as Lotze has pointed out, to crowd each least cranny of the world with life and the joy of life.

The naturally growing sensitiveness to suffering has been further accentuated in our time, I must believe, by a falsely sentimental view of the animal world, that has led us to attribute to them sufferings that they pretty certainly do not have. There has been much exaggeration at this point. Men have naturally enough made themselves the standard for judging of suffering, and so have forgotten that even the highest animals have quite certainly a less sensitive nervous system than we, while the lower animal forms are almost out of comparison with men in this respect.

Still less may we attribute to the animal world our mental sufferings and anxieties. Lacking all clear self-consciousness, animals suffer neither from memory nor from anticipation as do men. The popular animal stories have here much to answer for. One

THE QUESTION OF SUFFERING AND SIN ii

feels indignant at the amount of entirely groundless suffering that has thus been caused many persons by the assumption that there must be transferred to the animal world suffering that is to be found only among human beings. There is suffering enough among men in any case. Gratuitously to increase it is inexcusable. And men need not carry the load that comes from the thought of constant mental anguish among animals.

Moreover, one may well protest against such false animal psychology — glad as he may be to help every movement to relieve physical pain among animals — because the ascription of mental suffering to animals tends to draw attention away from the undoubted and far greater suffering of men, due to remediable conditions. In general, there is surely good reason to believe that pleasure in the animal world far outweighs pain ; and that the organic world below man certainly holds no presumption that a cruel, heedless power is dominating the processes of evolution.

II The Prerequisites of Moral Character

Passing, now, to our main problem — that of suffering and sin among men — it seems clear that any discussion of this question is useless that does not, first of all, make plain the prerequisites of moral character, the inevitable prerequisites that the world may be a sphere for moral training and action. For our whole problem is an ethical one. It is for moral reasons that we feel its pressure. The point of our doubt, indeed, is simply whether the world can meet the demands of a sensitive and enlightened conscience. Our very problem assumes, then, the final and intrinsic value of moral ends. We must ask from the world that it make character and growth in character at least possible. We can only play with our problem, therefore, if we are unwilling to make explicit to ourselves those prerequisites that must be fulfilled if the world is to be a sphere for moral training and action.

I can only answer, of course, for myself. These necessary prerequisites seem to me to be six : ^ some genuine freedom of volition on

^ Cf. Theology and the Social Consciousness^ pp. 30-32.

man's part ; some power of accomplishment in the direction of the volition ; an imperfect developing environment ; a sphere of laws ; that men should be members one of another; and that there should be struggle against resistance. Now every one of these six prerequisites, it should be noted, involves the possibility of resulting suffering, and most of them, the possibility of sin. It is this paradox, therefore, which confronts us : That the world may be one that we can approve, it must contain conditions that involve the possibility at least of suffering and sin that we cannot approve. Character is an immensely costly product. We are not able even to imagine any way by which it can be cheaply produced. The degree of final satisfaction as to the solution of the problem of evil, therefore, will probably depend upon how deeply valuable character seems to us to be. If it seems to us of infinite worth, we shall not grudge the cost, but justify the process.

I. Let us look, then, at these prerequisites, if the world is to be a sphere of moral training and action. And, first, there must be, for the very possibility of character in man, some genuine freedom of volition on man's part. I do not purpose to reargue the old question of freedom. The will seems to me not comparable with anything else. I only have to say for myself that I share James's feeling, that if there be no power of genuine initiative in man, however limited in scope (as in unforced direction of attention, or in retaining of the passing thought for an instant, or in simple approval or disapproval), life would be like "the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.'' I find myself unable to conceive of character as a reality, or as in any vital sense uniquely man's own and not a mechanical product of outside, wholly unmoral forces, unless there be this incomparable power of freedom. Eucken's and Bergson's new emphasis on the will seems to me, therefore, a sane reaction from a too prevalent necessitarianism. I cannot see that character and moral problems have any meaning as such, without a clear recognition of freedom. One cannot have both mechanical explanation and moral freedom at the same time and at the same point. He must pay the price of a freedom that is not a play-freedom but real through and through. That there might be character at all, then, in the world, men must be not only self-conscious, but have the power of moral initiative. And for God this meant a certain divine self-limitation, and for men the possibility of choosing against God — the possibility of sin. This terrible possibility is the necessary price of free sons of God, who were free to choose to do his will.

I see no conceivable way of accounting for error and for sin in the world without making God directly responsible for both, if genuine creative freedom is not assigned to man. We must be dead in earnest as to man's real initiative, if we are to solve the problem of suifering and sin. As Bowne says, concerning error, "every system of philosophy must invoke freedom for the solution of the problem of error or make shipwreck of reason itself.'' ^ James vividly sets forth the same difficulty as to sin : ^

When, for example, I imagine such carrion as the Brockton murder, I cannot conceive it as an act by which the universe, as a whole, logically and necessarily expresses its nature without shrinking from complicity with such a whole. And I deliberately refuse to keep on terms of loyalty with the universe by saying blankly that the murder, since it does flow from the nature of

^ Theory of Thought and Knowledge^ p. 244. 2 The Will to Believe, p. 177.

the whole, is not carrion. There are some instinctive reactions which I, for one, will not tamper with.

On the completely deterministic theory, every fact, however horrible, must be regarded as a necessary step in the development of the universe ; in other words, from the religious point of view, God is absolutely and directly responsible. If, then, we are to be able to keep our faith at all in the broad rationality of the universe, we must assume man's real freedom.

2. Nor could there be denied to man, with volition, some power of accomplishment in the direction of his volition ; though this involves the possibility of suffering on his own part and on that of others. This power of accomplishment may be decidedly limited, but it must be there. To grant man a mere resultless volition must be felt to be, as Lotze suggests, ''sophistical." Some results of our volition are needed to make our act real and to reveal the character of it even to ourselves and to others. Man's whole being calls for such expressive activity, if there is to be any ''realizing sense" of the meaning of inner states. This, then, is one answer to the natural question. Why was not the world so made that only good designs could be carried out, or that evil volitions would be at once frustrated ? The volition is truly revealed only in the light of its logical consequences, and the worst of these are in the realm of personal relations. A world in which that was impossible would seem, then, to be no fit world for the moral training of a finite developing creation. Ethical considerations must decide here. Life cannot be a play. It can certainly be no farce. Both God and man must be in dead earnest with the fact of freedom.