Belief in God

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IMPROVEMENT ERA. Vol. XIII. JANUARY, 1910. No 3.

Belief in God.* BY REV. J. R. DUMMELOW, M. A.

[The following article is published by permission of the MacMillan Company, Publishers, No. 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York. It is taken

from A Commentary on the Holy Bible, by various writers, edited by the Rev. J. R. Dummelow, M. A., Queen's College, Cambridge. The article, "Belief in God," is a number of times quoted by the editor and compiler of the Seventy's Year Book for 1910, Elder B. H. Roberts, who recom- mends the above named work to the Seventies as one of the best one- volume and up-to-date commentaries published. He was anxious that the following article should appear in full in the Era, and upon applica- tion being made to the above named publishers, who hold the copyright to the work, permission was given, and the valuable article accordingly is presented to our readers. Editors.]

The central subject of the Bible is God. The book opens with an account of his creation of the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1), and concludes with a description of the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21) — the ideal to which creation is moving, and wherein God himself shall be the immediate source of illumination and the object of worship. Throughout the Bible God is referred to as almighty, all-

• Copyright by the MacMillan Co., New York, 1908, 1909.

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wise, and all-holy, the eternal creator, sustainer, and moral governor of the universe. He is represented as entering into special rela- tions with his highest creature, man, who is created in his image, after his likeness (Gen. 1: 26, 27), to be his vicegerent upon earth (Gen. 1: 26-28), and to increase in sympathy and fellowship with himself. Man has, however, abused his highest gift of free-will, and so introduced sin into the world, a blot upon the fair creation, and a hereditary taint upon his own stock. Henceforth God's relation to man is changed. The glad love of pure beneficence becomes the wistful love of redemptive purpose. And in due time is chosen out for specially intimate relations with God, a single tribe — the "seed of Abraham." Israel is "elected," i. e., chosen out for special privilege and guidance, not from any motives of favoritism, but in order that he may be the vehicle of blessing to all mankind. To Israel — and through Israel to all men — is given an even deeper and clearer revelation of the character and will of God — that revelation which we see running through all the Old Testament, and reaching its climax in Jesus Christ (cp. Heb. 1: 1-

5f). Different misconceptions are successfully purged away as opportunity occurs. At Sinai any lingering taint of idolatry and crude anthropomorphism is purged by the revelation of the ten commandments, and the natural tendency to irreverent, easy- going approach to the Almighty is met by the elaborate system of strict ceremonial. The prophets of the eighth century B. C. point out the futility of ceremonial reformation apart from righteousness of character, and go far towards removing the still prevailing misconceptions by which the Lord was regarded as the tribal God of Israel, pledged to protect and support them, irre- spective of their deserts. The Lord is "exalted in judgment" (Isaiah 5: 16), and no respecter of persons. Special closeness involves special responsibility (Amos 3: 2). Side by side with this comes a universalizing tendency, a growing realization of the one God's equal rule and care of all mankind (Amos 9:7; Isaiah 2: 2, 3; 19: 18-25), which finds strong emphasis in some of the later Psalms (cp. e. g. Ps. 96, 100, 117), and in the book of Jonah. Meanwhile the discipline of perplexity, which had its effect upon the Hebrew people throughout their history, but most arkedly during the Babylonian exile, purified and spiritualized

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the conception of the meaning of religion and of life; carried for- ward the thoughts of the faithful more and more wistfully to a future life, in which righteousness should be vindicated and the balance of happiness redressed; and while it brought home to them the weakness and impurity of human nature, intensified the desire

for personal holiness and communion with God; and, finally, gave occasion for the portrayal of the "Suffering Servant of the Lord" (Isaiah 41-53) gathering up into himself at once human penitence and divine redemption — that most wonderful figure in all the Old Testament, which is strikingly typical of the central figure of the New Testament. The statements about God in holy scripture are uttered with an air of authority, dogmatically; not as the result of a long chain of reasoning: "The Lord said" this — "did" that or — more emphatically, in the form of a message, "Thus saith the Lord." The teaching of the Bible is not the result of deductive or induc- tive reasoning. No direct arguments are adduced to prove the existence of God— that is assumed throughout. His attributes may be the subject of argument; his existence, never. His just- ice, his wisdom, his power may be momentarily obscured by the

mystery of evil in the world — as in the book of Job. Incidentally we may get arguments dealing with the nature of the Deity, as e. g. the interesting a fortiori argument from creature to Creator in Ps. 94, "He that made the eye, shall he not see?" etc., which, logically carried out becomes an inference of Personality in God from man's personality - there are arguments such as these either stated or suggested in Holy Scripture, but the existence of God never comes within their scope. It lies behind all else; it is

the fundamental conception in the light of which all else is viewed. Not only in the Pentateuch and the Prophets and the Psalms, but in the historical 'narratives — in the brief and apparently barren records of the accession, regnal years, and death of the various kings, it is made clear that God's hand is at work throughout guiding the course of events, and that he is the ever-present Judge by whom the actions of king and subject alike are weighed Even in the book of Esther, in which the divine name never once occurs, no doubt is left upon the mind as to the providential over- ruling of events both great and small. Nay, in those books

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which are least formally theological —Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesi- astes, the work of the "wise men," the humanists or philosophers of Israel — the thought of God is present from first to last. They do not grope and search after him like the great pagan thinkers. They set out, not to discover, but to recognize him; to learn from his dealing with nature and human nature more about that divine personality who is the primary presupposition of all their sys- tem, and with whom their heart holds sacred communion even while the intellect stands baffled before the insoluble problems involved in his permission of evil in the world he rules. The Bible, as we have said, does not offer arguments to prove the existence of the Deity, but it offers something which is far

more valuable to most of us than any abstract proof. It gives us a concrete, experimental, descriptive theology. It shows us a pic-

ture of the world with God at work in it, which the devout, appre- ciative soul instinctively recognizes as true. It offers us, largely

in the concrete form of narrative and history, a theory of the uni-

verse which, rightly understood, is found to meet the demands of hearts and minds alike: revealing a God whose character is such and whose relation to man is such that in him both our needs and our aspirations find satisfaction. At the same time it inci- dentally provides a theory of human nature (see especially Gen. 1-3) that affords the only satisfactory key to the raison d'etre of those needs and aspirations — the explanation of man's actual littleness and his potential greatness. We will consider first the message of the Bible to man's heart, and then its message to his understanding. The needs and aspirations of heart and spirit can only be satisfied by personal communion with the Deity, such as the Psalter so wonderfully delineates, (see especially Ps. 16, 17, 63, 73,) a communion which attains its fullest expression in the religion of the New Testament. This heart-knowledge is after all, to each individual who has it, the most direct form of evidence for the existence of God — the personal intercourse with him of our personal spirit — the communion in virtue of which we can say, "I know that there is a God because I know him. I experience in prayer and sacrament and meditation a conviction of his reality and his presence which is quite as real to

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me as is the conviction that those things exist which I can touch and see. This conviction is clearest and strongest when I am at my best, and I attribute all that is best and highest in my character to such communion, as thousands have done before me." This is the kind of "knowledge of God" that cries aloud to us from the Psalms and Prophecies, and underlies the other writings of the Old Testament. And the perfection of this communion is to be found in Jesus Christ, as portrayed for us in the Synoptic Gos- pels (Luke 10: 22; cp. Mark 13: 22), but especially in St. John (5: 19f. 10: 15, 30; 14: 11, etc.), and reaches its climax in the great high priestly prayer of John 17. After our Lord's ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit, it takes the form, for Christ's members, of a fellowship with the blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (II Cor. 13: 14; cp. I John 1: 3). Being, however, in one sense, a purely personal and individual matter, this sense of communion is commonly thought to be too subjective to be adduced as an argument for the existence of God. It is always open to an objector to say, "You assert that you have this feeling; I am willing to admit your sincerity, but you may be the victim of illusion. All I can say is that I have no such feeling myself." To such an assertion it seems perhaps inadequate to reply, "If you will but assume first provisionally (as we have to assume many things in practical life) that existence which you can- not demonstrate, and then act upon the assumption, conviction will come with experience." Yet such a reply may be enforced and corroborated with all the weight of more than nineteen centuries of personal experience. Generation after generation of martyrs and Saints have testified in the strongest possible manner to their conviction that "God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Heb. 11: 6), and have been ready to seal the convic- tion with their life's blood. That such evidence is not without scientific value, is very strongly argued by no less a scientist than the late G. J. Romanes, who speaks of those who would ignore it as untrue to the principles of an impartial agnosticism. Still it fails to appeal to a large class of enquirers, who look for a more definitely intellectual proof and one less intimately associated with personal feeling and emotion.

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There are such arguments for the being and character of God, and some of them have come down to us from very ancient times. It may be admitted that they do not — either singly or even in combination —amount to demonstrative proof; yet they form, as we shall see, a very strong presumption in favor of belief in just such a God as the Bible claims to reveal. We will now briefly sketch the more important of these types of argument, and then we may be better able to estimate the extent to which the Biblical revelation corresponds to, and com- pletes,man's intellectual search after God. We must remember, however, at the outset that these traditional arguments are not the originating cause of man's belief, even where belief is found outside the influence of revelation, rather, they represent an intel- lectual analysis or justification of a belief already existing. As far back as Cicero in the first century B. C., or even earlier, pagan thinkers had observed that religion in some form or other is a universal trait in human nature. And though in modern days apparent exception of "atheistical tribes" have been adduced to prove the contrary, the trend of anthropological science may be said on the whole to support the judgment of antiquity. There may indeed be savages (though the point has not been proved) among whom no definite trace of religious observance can be dis- cerned; but are they normal representatives even of undeveloped humanity? Is there no such thing as degradation? And have not even these poor savages some vestige at least of the religious faculty? For that is all our argument really requires. The world- wide progress of Christian missions to the heathen seems to testify quite triumphantly that no race or tribe of men, however de- graded and apparently atheistic, lacks that spark of religious capacity which may be fanned and fed into a mighty flame. Granted, then, that the religious faculty is practically uni- versal among mankind, what is the significance of this fact? From ancient times it has been regarded as an argument— often (wrongly) as a proof— that God exists. It is called the argu- ment "from the general consent of mankind" in Latin, argumen- tum e consensu gentium. The whole world, it is urged, must surely be right— securus judical orbisterrarum. Of a truth it is exceedingly unlikely, if (as we must presume)

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the world is rational, that a phenomenon so universal as religion, so intimately and intricately interwoven with the central facts of human life and progress, should be founded on illusion. But the outward expression of the religious principle in different ages and

climes exhibits so much variety, inconsistency, and vagueness, that we ought not perhaps to speak of this argument (at least in this its broader and vaguer form) as directly evidencing the existence and

character of God. What it really amounts to is, as has been well said, "an evidence that there are evidences." If the religious instinct is observed to be practically universal, it will be worth while to see whether it is not essential to human nature. And this quest leads us to the formal arguments for God's existence. The grounds of this religious instinct will be found to lie partly in man's relation to the external world, partly in the constitution of human nature itself.

The consideration of the external world around him, even in its broadest aspect, leads man up to the thought of an Eternal Cause; the study of its phenomena in detail with its marvoleus intricacy of harmonious intersection produces the impression of design, and leads to the thought of a Designer i. e, of an Eternal Cause that is intelligent and free. Reflection on his own con- sciousness and the fact that the external world corresponds in a mysterious way to his own thought leads to the idea of primal and Universal Consciousness embracing all reality and forming, as it were, a meeting place between Thought and Things. Lastly his own moral nature-conscience, with its authoritative voice, clear- ly distinguishable from mere wish, taste, desire, and self-interest

— speaks to him of a Universal Lawgiver, supreme and perfect, to whom alone the "categorical imperative" of the inner monitor can be adequately referred. The Eternal Cause is thus found to be endowed with all the attributes characteristic of personality as seen in man. Of the first of these arguments little further need be said. Man finds in himself a principle of causality in the light of which he interprets the external world. He cannot help regarding the succession of phenomena which he observes as effects — attributing each to some cause. When he examines that again he discovers it to be no true or absolute cause, but itself the effect of some-

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thing further back, and so on. He finds in himself the nearest approach to vera causa: yet he would recognize the absurdity of calling himself self -caused. And the mind cannot rest in an end- less chain of cause-effects. There must be, it feels, if you go far enough back, a real Cause, akin, in someway, to man's own power of origination, yet transcending it — a cause that owns no cause no source of being — but itself. And to this Eternal Cause all

things, including man himself, must be ultimately referable. The third argument, again, in favor of a Universal Conscious- ness, which has several different forms, is too abstruse for the ordinary reader, requiring for its appreciation some degree of metaphysical training. The second and the fourth the "Design" — and "Conscience" arguments — demand a somewhat fuller treat- ment here, being specially important in view of the light thrown on them by recent scientific theory. The Design-argument is perhaps the most ancient and the most popular of all. It is never actually formulated in the Bible, for the Bible, as we have seen, never treats God's existence as the subject of argument. But its basis, the marvelous harmony of the created world, is the theme of more than one of the Psalms (cp. e. g. Ps. 19, 104, 147, 148); and St. Paul comes very near to stating the argument in so many words, when he says (Rom. 1: 20) in depreciation of pagan superstitions and immorality, that the "everlasting power and divinity" of the Creator are clearly discernible from his works. Granted that the very existence of the world implies an Eternal Cause, what can we learn about that Cause? The nearest thing to a true first Cause of which I have experience, is my own personality: hence there is a presumption that the world's first

Cause will be at least what we know as personal. But that pre- sumption is not all we have to go upon. There are definite indi-

cations in nature, when more closely observed, that make it im- possible to regard the Eternal Cause as a merely mechanical originator of the world process, that stamp it — or rather him — as intelligent and free, a nature like my own rational nature, only far above and beyond it. Everywhere in nature we see the teleological principle (as it is work, i. e. we see means adapted to ends, and the called) at

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present subordinated to the future. This adaptation of means to ends manifests itself in a bewilderingly complex way — in each individual member of the great organism, in the lesser and greater groups, and in the whole. Everywhere, in fact, I see traces of purpose and design — for such adaptation speaks to me irresistibly

of these. My only direct experience of like phenomena is my own personality, and so I am led to infer a Designer. Some, however, have thought that this inference is invali-

dated by a closer scrutiny of those means by which the evolution of physical organisms is effected, according to modern scientific theory. Evolution, they say, has upset the Design-argument altogether. The marvelously adjusted interaction of forces and interests which we observe in nature is not, as we have hitherto supposed, a perfect piece of elaborate machinery fresh from the Designer's hand. It has a history behind it, and a history which we have only just begun to trace aright. The present state of things is not the result of a serene and orderly procession wherein ervey member has found its due and rightful place. On the con- trary, it is the result in every department of a struggle for exist- ence fierce and unintermitted, in which only a small portion — "the fittest" — have survived. Nature's waste products, far outweighing her successes — how do they affect the Design-argument? Again, we can see in part the actual -means by which this relative progress in evolution has been made. On the one hand, that is the principle of Variation, whereby the offspring always varies in some degree from the parent, and, on the other hand, that of Natural Selection, which results in the survival of the type best fitted to survive. Where, then, is there room for Design and a Designer? The answer seems to be that the origin or root-principle of evolution has not yet been disclosed. What is it that produces the Variation which Natural Selection fixes and makes the basis of an upward step? The choice seems to lie between God and chance. — That chance, or some non-rational force, could work on such definitely "teleological" lines, could produce such ordered and systematic results, is a theory harder to believe than the theistic theory. And the difficulty of it is rather enhanced than otherwise by recent scientific discovery. For if a mechanically regular world in which neither failure nor waste