Problems of Immanence Part 1

Problems of Immanence.

by J. Warschauer.

PREFACE

About a year ago certain tendencies in the popular discussion of the doctrine of Divine Immanence suggested to the present writer the idea of a brief sketch or article, to be published under the t.i.tle, "The Truth of Transcendence." On further reflection, however, a somewhat more extended treatment of so important a subject seemed desirable, and this has been attempted in the following chapters. When the doctrine of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be rea.s.serted in a somewhat p.r.o.nounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those antic.i.p.ations have been abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to these dangers and to bring out the distinction between the truth of immanence and what to the author seem perversions of that truth.

In the meantime, while these pages were pa.s.sing through the press, there has appeared a new work from the brilliant pen of Professor William James,[1] some sentences from which might to a large extent be taken as indicating {6} the standpoint of the volume now submitted to the reader:--

"G.o.d," in the religious life of ordinary men is the name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate in His purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When John Mill said that the notion of G.o.d's omnipotence must be given up, if G.o.d is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet, so prevalent is the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of G.o.d's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally treated as a paradox; G.o.d, it was said, _could_ not be finite. I believe that the only G.o.d worthy of the name _must_ be finite.

It is precisely the theory which identifies G.o.d with "the whole of things" which will be combated in the following discussions; it is precisely "the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of G.o.d's name"

to which they offer a plain and direct challenge. At the same time such a phrase as that in which Professor James speaks of G.o.d as working "in an external environment" would seem unduly to under-emphasise the fact of immanence; and it may be said at once that the theory of Divine finitude put forward by the present writer will be seen to differ from that of John Stuart Mill, as the idea of _self_-limitation differs from that of a limitation _ab extra_--in other words, as Theism differs from Deism.

It is perhaps a little remarkable that the fundamental antinomies which arise from the a.s.sumption of the actual infinity of G.o.d should not have been more frequently dealt with; or rather, that thinkers postulating that infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind to its logical implications. For if G.o.d is infinite, then He is all; and if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human initiative and responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in pa.s.sing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are well worth consideration to-day:--

"G.o.d is infinite." But in what sense? . . . Press the idea of the infinite to its utmost extent, till it is alone in the universe, or rather is the universe itself, in this heaven of abstraction, nevertheless, a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow over the formless void. Infinite is finite because it is infinite.

That is to say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable of creating what is external to itself. Deny infinity in this sense, and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power. _G.o.d is greater by being finite than by being infinite_ . . . Logic must admit that the infinite over-reaches itself by denying the existence of the finite, and that there are some "limitations," such as the impossibility of evil or falsehood, which are of the essence of the Divine nature.[2]

Where, of course, Divine immanence is held to mean the "allness"--which is the strict equivalent of the infinity--of G.o.d, evil in every shape and form will either have to be ascribed to the direct will and agency of G.o.d Himself, or for apologetic purposes to be reduced to a mere semblance, or "not-being." Thus we are told to-day in plain terms that "if G.o.d does not avert evil, it is because He requires it"; {8} that "what to us seems evil is ordained of G.o.d"; that--

"If prayers and earthquakes break not Heaven's design, How then a Borgia or a Catiline?"

But if evil be only apparent and not real, we shall surely, having gained this insight, be too wise to waste indignation upon the non-existent; if what we call misdeeds in reality fulfil G.o.d's own "requirements," a thoroughly enlightened public opinion will not seek to interfere with the sacred activities of the pick-pocket, the forger, the sweater, the _roue_, every one of whom may plead that he is but carrying out the Divine ordinances; if Alexander Borgia's perjuries, poisonings and debaucheries "break not Heaven's design," but are "ordained of G.o.d for some purpose," morality itself becomes an exploded anachronism.

It is because these and such as these are the results in the fields of religion and conduct which flow from certain errors in the field of speculation, that these chapters have been written, and are now sent forth. Belief in a personal G.o.d, personal freedom, personal immortality--these essentials of religion are one and all endangered where the doctrine of Divine immanence is presented in terms of a monistic philosophy; it has been the writer's object to safeguard and vindicate these truths anew in a volume which, though of necessity largely critical in method, he offers as wholly constructive in aim.

August 1st, 1909.

[1] _A Pluralistic Universe._

[2] _Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans_, vol. ii. pp. 388-9.

INTRODUCTION

DIVINE IMMANENCE

The doctrine of Divine immanence is in a very special and unmistakeable manner the re-discovery of the nineteenth century. Nothing could be more remote from fact than to call that doctrine a new--or even an old--heresy. Old it certainly is, but heretical in itself it as certainly is not; it can point to unquestionable warranty in Holy Scripture, where such is demanded, and it has never been repudiated by the Christian Church. But just as a law, without being repealed, may fall into desuetude, so a doctrine, without being repudiated, may for a time fade out of the Church's consciousness; and in the one case as in the other any attempt at revival will arouse a certain amount of distrust and opposition. There would no doubt be a measure of truth in the statement that the suspicion and antagonism with which the recent re-enunciation of this particular doctrine or idea was attended in some quarters, exemplified this general att.i.tude of the human mind towards the unaccustomed; and yet such a statement, made without qualification, {12} would be only a half-truth. The fact is, and it cannot be stated too soon or too clearly, that if the antagonism and suspicion exhibited have been exceptionally strong, there have been exceptional causes to justify both. Alarm, and that of a very legitimate nature, has been called forth by one-sided and extravagant statements of the idea of Divine immanence on the part of ill-balanced advocates; and in this book we shall be almost continually occupied with the task of disengaging the truth of immanence from what appear to us mischievous travesties of that truth. That such a task is a necessary one, we are firmly convinced; for if, as Princ.i.p.al Adeney says, "among all the changes in theology that have been witnessed during the last hundred years this"--_i.e._, the re-discovery of the principle of Divine immanence--"is the greatest, the most revolutionary," it must certainly be of paramount importance that we should understand and apply that principle aright. Confessedly, it denotes a great and far-reaching change; can we, then, in the first instance, briefly and plainly state what this change is from, what it involves, and in what respect it is supposed to help us in dealing with the problem of religion?

It has to be borne in mind, to begin with, that the very term "immanence" had for a long time ceased to be in current use, and had thus become strange to the average believer; it has equally to be remembered that in theology as {13} in other matters we have not yet altogether pa.s.sed the stage where _hostis_ means both "stranger" and "foe"--that, in fact, to many minds, the unfamiliar is, as we said, _eo ipso_ the suspect. But immanence means nothing more abstruse than "indwelling"; and the renewed emphasis which, from the time of Wordsworth onward, began to be laid upon the Divine indwelling, the presence of G.o.d in the Universe, represented in the first place the reaction of the human spirit against the cold and formal Deism of the eighteenth century, which thought of G.o.d as remote, external to the world, exclusively "transcendent." According to the deistic notion, G.o.d was known to man only by reason of a revelation He had given once and for all in the far-off past--a revelation which in its very nature excluded the idea of progress; as against this conception that of the immanence of G.o.d declares that He is not far from each one of us, that in Him we live and move and have our being, that He is over all and through all and in all--the Life of all life, the Energy behind all phenomena, the Presence from which there is no escaping, unceasingly and progressively--though by divers portions and in divers manners--revealed in the universe, in nature and in man.

Thus expressed, the doctrine of G.o.d's nearness and indwelling will probably commend itself to most thoughtful religious people; but in {14} re-emphasising an aspect of truth there is always the danger of over-emphasising it, of claiming it as the whole and sole truth--of falling, in a word, from one extreme into the other. To that rule the present case offers no exception; it is, on the contrary, very distinctly one of the pendulum swinging as far in one direction as it previously swung to the other. Let us then at once state the thesis which many of the following pages will serve to elaborate: when the _indwelling_ of G.o.d in the universe is interpreted as meaning His _ident.i.ty_ with the universe; when the _indwelling_ of G.o.d in man is taken to mean His _ident.i.ty_ with man, the whole structure of religion is gravely imperilled. For in the ident.i.ty of G.o.d with the world and with man--which is the root-tenet of Pantheism--there is inevitably involved the surrender of both the Divine and the human personality.

We shall have occasion to see how much such a surrender signifies; for the moment it suffices to say plainly that Pantheism, the doctrine which denies the transcendence of G.o.d, is by no means the same as that which affirms His immanence, nor does it logically follow from that affirmation. The mistake so frequently made lies in regarding the Divine immanence and the Divine transcendence as mutually exclusive alternatives, whereas they are complementary to one another. A one-sided insistence on the immanence of G.o.d, to the exclusion of His transcendence, leads to {15} Pantheism, just as a one-sided insistence upon His transcendence, to the exclusion of His immanence, leads to Deism; it is the two taken together that result in, and are necessary to, Theism. Thus it cannot be too well understood, and it should be understood at the very outset, that we have not to make anything like a choice between immanence and transcendence--that these two can never be separated, but are related to each other as the less to the greater, as the part to the whole. One naturally shrinks from employing a diagram in dealing with such a topic as this; but perhaps recourse might without offence be had to this method--necessarily imperfect as it is--on account of its essential simplicity, and because it is calculated to remove misapprehensions. If we can think of a very large sphere, _A_, and, situated anywhere _within_ this, of a very small sphere, _a_--then the relation of the smaller to the greater will be that of the sphere of immanence to the sphere of transcendence. The two are not mutually separable, but the one has its being wholly within the other.

Nevertheless it is quite true that there has been within recent years a distinct shifting of the centre of gravity from the one doctrine to the other, a growing disposition to regard the immanence of G.o.d as the fundamental datum, the basis of the modern restatement of religious belief. How will this conception help us to {16} such an end? The answer to that question may be given in the words of Dr. Horton, who says, "The intellectual background of our time is Agnosticism, and _the reply which faith makes to Agnosticism is couched in terms of the immanence of G.o.d_." [1] Dr. Horton's meaning will grow clearer to us if we once more glance at our imaginary diagram, letting the smaller figure _a_, the sphere of immanence, stand for our universe. If the sphere of G.o.d's being lay altogether outside the universe, _i.e._, outside the radius of our knowledge--if He, in other words, were merely and altogether transcendent--He would also be merely and altogether unknowable, exactly as Agnosticism avers. His transcendent attributes, all that partakes of infinity, cannot--and that of necessity--become objects of immediate knowledge to finite minds; if He is to be known at all to us, He can only be so known by being manifested through His presence within, or action upon, the finite and comprehensible sphere.

In other words, _it is primarily as He is revealed in and through the finite world, that is to say as immanent, that G.o.d becomes knowable to us_; all that is included under His transcendence is of the very highest importance for us--religion would be utterly incomplete without it--but it is an inference we make from His immanence. It is, to give an obvious ill.u.s.tration, only to a transcendent G.o.d that we can offer prayer--G.o.d {17} over all whom the soul needs, to enter into relations withal; but it is also true that we gain the a.s.surance of His transcendence through His immanence, and that

The G.o.d without he findeth not, Who finds Him not within.

In a word, the Divine immanence is not the goal of our quest of G.o.d, but it is the indispensable starting-point.

A simple reflection will serve to place this beyond doubt. Against the old-fashioned Deism which continued to bear sway till far into the last century, the agnostic had an almost fatally easy case; he had but to reject the revelation alleged to have been given once for all in the dim past--to reject it on scientific or critical grounds--and who was to prove to him that the universe had been created a few thousand years ago by a remote and external Deity? As for him, he professed, and professed candidly enough, that he could see nothing in nature but the operation of impersonal forces; there was natural law, and there was the process of evolution, but beyond these----? Now the only really telling reply that can be made to those who argue in this fashion is that which reasons from the Divine immanence as its _terminus a quo_--the doctrine which beholds G.o.d first of all present and active _in_ the world, and sees in natural law not a possible subst.i.tute for Him, but the working of His sovereign Will. From this point of view, the orderliness of the cosmos, {18} the uniformity and regularity of nature, attest not the unconscious throbbing of a soulless engine, or a blind Power behind phenomena, but a directing Mind, a prevailing Will.

The world, according to this conception, was not "made" once upon a time, like a piece of clockwork, and wound up to run without further a.s.sistance; it is not a mechanism, but an organism, thrilled and pervaded by an eternal Energy that "worketh even until now." In Sir Oliver Lodge's phrase, we must look for the action of Deity, if at all, then always; and this thought of the indwelling G.o.d, revealing Himself in the majestic course and order of nature, not only rebuts the a.s.saults of Agnosticism, but compels our worship. And as natural law speaks to us of the steadfastness and prevailing power of the Divine Will, so evolution speaks of the Divine Purpose, and proclaims that purpose "somehow good," since evolution means a steady reaching forward and upward, an unfolding and ascent from less to more.

We take a step higher up when we come to the further revelation of G.o.d as seen dwelling in man; a step higher up because on any sane view immanence is a fact admitting of very various degrees, so that G.o.d is more fully revealed in the organic than in the inorganic world, more in the conscious than in the unconscious, far more in man than in lower creatures. We speak of G.o.d's indwelling in man in the {19} same sense in which there is something of an earthly parent's very being in his children; indeed, rightly considered, the Divine Parenthood is the only rational guarantee of that human brotherhood which is being so strongly--or, at least, so loudly--insisted on to-day. Man, that is to say, is not identical with G.o.d, any more than a son is identical with his father; but man is consubstantial, h.o.m.ogeneous, with G.o.d, lit by a Divine spark within him, a partaker of the Divine substance. As in nature we discern G.o.d revealed as Power, Mind, Will, Purpose, so in man's moral nature, and his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction according as he does or does not approach a certain moral standard, we discern Him as Righteousness; and, more than all, since men, beings in whom "the Spirit of G.o.d dwelleth," are persons, it follows that G.o.d also is at least personal, since there can be nothing in an effect that is not in the cause producing it. Thus the doctrine of Divine immanence throws at least a ray of light upon one of the problems which press with peculiar weight upon many modern minds--and which we shall consider at greater length hereafter--_viz._, the Divine Personality.

There remains, however, a still further step to be taken along the line which we have been pursuing. We are not fully satisfied when we know G.o.d even as personal, even as righteous; the a.s.surance which alone will satisfy the awakened human spirit is that which tells us {20} that G.o.d is Love, and that His truest name is that of Father. How could such a culminating a.s.surance come to us? We conceive that this end could only be achieved through a complete manifestation of the Divine character on a finite scale, _i.e._, through His indwelling in an unparalleled measure in a unique and ethically perfect being; and such an event, we hold, has actually taken place in what is known as the Incarnation. In the words of Dr. Horton, "the doctrine of the immanence of G.o.d, the idea that G.o.d is in us all, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that 'G.o.d was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.'" "This argument," he says--_viz._, from Divine immanence--"becomes more and more favourable to the doctrine of Christ's Divinity." [2] The highest and truest knowledge of G.o.d, that which it most concerns us to possess, could have become ours only through One in whom the fulness of G.o.dhead dwelt bodily, in whom we saw Divinity in its essence and without alloy. To bring us this perfect revelation was, indeed, the very reason of Christ's advent. We come to the Father through the Son, because there is no other Way. We have seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of G.o.d in the face of Jesus Christ, the very Image of His Substance. Divine Love, mighty to save, full of redemptive power, longing for the soul with infinite affection--in fine, Fatherhood--this is what const.i.tutes {21} religion's ultimate; and this revelation we have in the Incarnate Son, in whom the Spirit dwelt without measure--who, _i.e._, stands forth as the supreme and unparalleled ill.u.s.tration of the Divine immanence.

Here, then, we have a first, preliminary survey of the meaning of this much-discussed, much-misunderstood term--a mere outline sketch which, needless to say, requires a great deal of filling in, such as will be attempted in subsequent pages of this book. So much should be clear from what has been said, that the nineteenth century, in practically restoring this fruitful and far-reaching conception to a Church which had largely forgotten it, made a contribution of the utmost importance to theology and religion; indeed, the value of that contribution could hardly be more strongly stated than in the utterances of Dr. Horton which we have quoted above. Such a factor, however, cannot be introduced, or re-introduced, into our theological thinking without necessitating a good deal of revision, nor without causing a certain measure of temporary confusion and dislocation; it will accordingly be the princ.i.p.al object of the following chapters to clear up misapprehensions which have arisen in connection with the idea of immanence, to a.s.sign to it its approximately proper place in Christian thought, and to safeguard an important truth against the injury done to it--and {22} so to all truth--by a zeal that is not according to knowledge. _Corruptio optimi pessima_: in unskilled hands this doctrine is certainly apt to become a danger to religion itself; nevertheless, rightly applied, there is probably no more potent instrument than this to help us in that reconstruction of belief which is admittedly the urgent business of our age. It is true, as Raymond Brucker said, that "the answer to the riddle of the universe is G.o.d--the answer to the riddle of G.o.d is Christ"; but it is also true, we hold, that the most effective key for the unlocking of the riddle is the idea of Divine immanence.

[1] _My Belief_, p. 107.

[2] _Op. cit._; pp. 108, 109.

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CHAPTER I

SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE

It used to be said of a famous volume of apologetics--with what justification this is not the place to discuss--that it raised more difficulties than it professed to settle; and a somewhat similar charge has more than once been brought against the doctrine of Divine immanence, _viz._, that if it succeeded in throwing light upon some problems, it created new ones of a particularly insoluble character.

The old deistic notion which interposed a distance between the Creator and His creation, and in particular represented G.o.d as _there_ and man as _here_, might be untenable in philosophy, but it was at least intelligible and practically helpful to ordinary minds; but does not the idea of G.o.d's immanence in the world and in man tend to efface that distinction, and thus to introduce confusion where confusion is least to be desired?

In the present chapter we shall attempt to glance at some of the main questions which arise in connection with this doctrine; and, to begin with, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier than to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a manner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply meaningless--in any case repulsive from the religious point of view.

This, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when G.o.d's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is _de facto_ one with his Maker. What could the general reader think when he was told with vehemence, "You are yourself the infinite"--"You are yourself G.o.d; you never were anything else"? If that reader was lacking in mental balance, he was likely to be swept off his feet by such a declaration, and to accept, with all its implications, a view so flattering to human vanity; if, on the other hand, he was a person of soberly religious outlook and experience, he inquired what was the doctrine in whose name such a proposition was offered to him for acceptance--and on learning that the name of that doctrine was the unfamiliar one of "immanence," straightway set it down as the worst of brain-sick heresies. Thus, not for the first time, has a cause or truth been wounded and discredited by injudicious advocacy.

For the purpose which we have in view we cannot do better than state what we consider the fundamental misinterpretation of this doctrine in the considered words of one of its most popular exponents, who expresses it as follows: "G.o.d _in_ man is G.o.d _as_ man. _There is no real Divine Immanence which does not imply the {25} allness of G.o.d._"

[1] It is not too much to say that this brief statement contains the _fons et origo_ of all the misunderstandings with which the re-enunciation of this idea has been attended; it is this a.s.sumption of the allness of G.o.d which underlies and colours quite a number of modern movements, and will be seen to lead those who accept it into endless and inextricable tangles.

If G.o.d is all, _then what are we_? Granted the basal axiom of this type of immanentism, it follows with irresistible cogency that our separate existence, consciousness, volitions and so forth are merely illusions. We can be "ourselves G.o.d" only in the sense that we are individually nothing; the contrary impression is simply an error, which we shall have to recognise as such, and to get rid of with what speed and thoroughness we can. This, it is true, is more easily said than done, for our whole life both of thought and action bears incessant witness to the opposite; there are, however, those to whose temperament such a complete contradiction, so far from being distressing, is positively grateful because of its suggestion of mystery and mysticism.

Sometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty defiantly--_certum est quia impossibile est_; but more often perhaps the same position {26} is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's well-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate theme:--