The Evolution of Theology: an Anthropological Study Part 3

Theirs was not an intellectual criticism, argued on strictly scientific grounds; the image-worshippers and the believers in the efficacy of sacrifices and ceremonies might logically have held their own against anything the prophets have to say; it was an ethical criticism. From the height of his moral intuition--that the whole duty of man is to do justice and to love mercy and to bear himself as humbly as befits his insignificance in face of the Infinite--the prophet simply laughs at the idolaters of stocks and stones and the idolaters of ritual. Idols of the first kind, in his experience, were inseparably united with the practice of immorality, and they were to be ruthlessly destroyed. As for sacrifices and ceremonies, whatever their intrinsic value might be, they might be tolerated on condition of ceasing to be idols; they might even be praiseworthy on condition of being made to subserve the worship of the true Jahveh--the moral ideal.

If the realm of David had remained undivided, if the a.s.syrian and the Chaldean and the Egyptian had left Israel to the ordinary course of development of an Oriental kingdom, it is possible that the effects of the reforming zeal of the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries might have been effaced by the growth, according to its inevitable tendencies, of the theology which they combated. But the captivity made the fortune of the ideas which it was the privilege of these men to launch upon an endless career. With the abolition of the Temple-services for more than half a century, the priest must have lost and the scribe gained influence. The puritanism of a vigorous minority among the Babylonian Jews rooted out polytheism from all its hiding-places in the theology which they had inherited; they created the first consistent, remorseless, naked monotheism, which, so far as history records, appeared in the world (for Zoroastrism is practically ditheism, and Buddhism any-theism or no-theism); and they inseparably united therewith an ethical code, which, for its purity and for its efficiency as a bond of social life, was and is, unsurpa.s.sed. So I think we must not judge Ezra and Nehemiah and their followers too hardly, if they exemplified the usual doom of poor humanity to escape from one error only to fall into another; if they failed to free themselves as completely from the idolatry of ritual as they had from that of images and dogmas; if they cherished the new fetters of the Levitical legislation which they had fitted upon themselves and their nation, as though such bonds had the sanct.i.ty of the obligations of morality; and if they led succeeding generations to spend their best energies in building that "hedge round the Torah" which was meant to preserve both ethics and theology, but which too often had the effect of pampering the latter and starving the former. The world being what it was, it is to be doubted whether Israel would have preserved intact the pure ore of religion, which the prophets had extracted for the use of mankind as well as for their nation, had not the leaders of the nation been zealous, even to death, for the dross of the law in which it was embedded. The struggle of the Jews, under the Maccabean house, against the Seleucidae was as important for mankind as that of the Greeks against the Persians. And, of all the strange ironies of history, perhaps the strangest is that "Pharisee" is current, as a term of reproach, among the theological descendants of that sect of Nazarenes who, without the martyr spirit of those primitive Puritans, would never have come into existence. They, like their historical successors, our own Puritans, have shared the general fate of the poor wise men who save cities.

A criticism of theology from the side of science is not thought of by the prophets, and is at most indicated in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in both of which the problem of vindicating the ways of G.o.d to man is given up, though on different grounds, as a hopeless one.

But with the extensive introduction of Greek thought among the Jews, which took place, not only during the domination of the Seleucidae in Palestine, but in the great Judaic colony which flourished in Egypt under the Ptolemies, criticism, on both ethical and scientific grounds, took a new departure.

In the hands of the Alexandrian Jews, as represented by Philo, the fundamental axiom of later Jewish, as of Christian monotheism, that the Deity is infinitely perfect and infinitely good, worked itself out into its logical consequence--agnostic theism. Philo will allow of no point of contact between G.o.d and a world in which evil exists. For him G.o.d has no relation to s.p.a.ce or to time, and, as infinite, suffers no predicate beyond that of existence. It is therefore absurd to ascribe to Him mental faculties and affections comparable in the remotest degree to those of men; He is in no way an object of cognition; He is [Greek] and [Greek] [33]--without quality and incomprehensible. That is to say the Alexandrian Jew of the first century had antic.i.p.ated the reasonings of Hamilton and Mansell in the nineteenth, and, for him, G.o.d is the Unknowable in the sense in which that term is used by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Moreover, Philo's definition of the Supreme Being would not be inconsistent with that "substantia constans infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit," given by another great Israelite, were it not that Spinoza's doctrine of the immanence of the Deity in the world puts him, at any rate formally, at the antipodes of theological speculation. But the conception of the essential incognoscibility of the Deity is the same in each case. However, Philo was too thorough an Israelite and too much the child of his time to be content with this agnostic position. With the help of the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, he constructed an apprehensible, if not comprehensible, quasi-deity out of the Logos; while other more or less personified divine powers, or attributes, bridged over the interval between G.o.d and man; between the sacred existence, too pure to be called by any name which implied a conceivable quality, and the gross and evil world of matter. In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill--the method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty "two-handed engine at the door" of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, "poetically" or, "in a spiritual sense," the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean. In Biblical phrase, Zeno (who probably had a strain of Semitic blood in him) was the "father of all such as reconcile." No doubt Philo and his followers were eminently religious men; but they did endless injury to the cause of religion by laying the foundations of a new theology, while equipping the defenders of it with the subtlest of all weapons of offence and defence, and with an inexhaustible store of sophistical arguments of the most plausible aspect.

The question of the real bearing upon theology of the influence exerted by the teaching of Philo's contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, is one upon which it is not germane to my present purpose to enter. I take it simply as an unquestionable fact that his immediate disciples, known to their countrymen as "Nazarenes," were regarded as, and considered themselves to be, perfectly orthodox Jews, belonging to the puritanic or pharisaic section of their people, and differing from the rest only in their belief that the Messiah had already come. Christianity, it is said, first became clearly differentiated at Antioch, and it separated itself from orthodox Judaism by denying the obligation of the rite of circ.u.mcision and of the food prohibitions, prescribed by the law.

Henceforward theology became relatively stationary among the Jews, [34]

and the history of its rapid progress in a new course of evolution is the history of the Christian Churches, orthodox and heterodox. The steps in this evolution are obvious. The first is the birth of a new theological scheme arising out of the union of elements derived from Greek philosophy with elements derived from Israelitic theology. In the fourth Gospel, the Logos, raised to a somewhat higher degree of personification than in the Alexandrian theosophy, is identified with Jesus of Nazareth. In the Epistles, especially the later of those attributed to Paul, the Israelitic ideas of the Messiah and of sacrificial atonement coalesce with one another and with the embodiment of the Logos in Jesus, until the apotheosis of the Son of man is almost, or quite, effected. The history of Christian dogma, from Justin to Athanasius, is a record of continual progress in the same direction, until the fair body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the prophets, is once more hidden under a new acc.u.mulation of dogmas and of ritual practices of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which he would probably have regarded as blasphemous if he could have been made to understand them.

As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under the disguise of Mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image-worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of the old fetish-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the l.u.s.tral fluid of paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A touching ceremony--the common meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved teacher--becomes metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute observance of ritual is raised to a degree of punctilious refinement which Levitical legislators might envy. And with the growth of this theology, grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal superst.i.tions than are recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century before it.

The greatest men of the Middle Ages are unable to escape the infection.

Dante's "Inferno" would be revolting if it were not so often sublime, so often exquisitely tender. The hideous pictures which cover a vast s.p.a.ce on the south wall of the Campo Santo of Pisa convey information, as terrible as it is indisputable, of the theological conceptions of Dante's countrymen in the fourteenth century, whose eyes were addressed by the painters of those disgusting scenes, and whose approbation they knew how to win. A candid Mexican of the time of Cortez, could he have seen this Christian burial-place, would have taken it for an appropriately adorned Teocalli. The professed disciple of the G.o.d of justice and of mercy might there gloat over the sufferings of his fellowmen depicted as undergoing every extremity of atrocious and sanguinary torture to all eternity, for theological errors no less than for moral delinquencies; while, in the central figure of Satan, [35]

occupied in champing up souls in his capacious and well-toothed jaws, to void them again for the purpose of undergoing fresh suffering, we have the counterpart of the strange Polynesian and Egyptian dogma that there were certain G.o.ds who employed themselves in devouring the ghostly flesh of the Spirits of the dead. But in justice to the Polynesians, it must be recollected that, after three such operations, they thought the soul was purified and happy. In the view of the Christian theologian the operation was only a preparation for new tortures continued for ever and aye.

With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning--it will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Even the most st.u.r.dy believers in the popular theory that the proper or t.i.tular names attached to the books of the Bible are those of their authors will hardly be prepared to maintain that Jephthah, Gideon, and their colleagues wrote the book of Judges. Nor is it easily admissible that Samuel wrote the two books which pa.s.s under his name, one of which deals entirely with events which took place after his death. In fact, no one knows who wrote either Judges or Samuel, nor when, within the range of 100 years, their present form was given to these books.]

[Footnote 2: My citations are taken from the Revised Version, but for Lord and G.o.d I have subst.i.tuted Jahveh and Elohim.]

[Footnote 3: I need hardly say that I depend upon authoritative Biblical critics, whenever a question of interpretation of the text arises. As Reuss appears to me to be one of the most learned, acute, and fair-minded of those whose works I have studied, I have made most use of the commentary and dissertations in his splendid French edition of the Bible. But I have also had recourse to the works of Dillman, Kalisch, Kuenen, Thenius, Tuch, and others, in cases in which another opinion seemed desirable.]

[Footnote 4: See "Divination," by Hazoral, _Journal of Anthropology,_ Bombay, vol. i. No. 1.]

[Footnote 5: See, for example, the message of Jephthah to the King of the Ammonites: "So now Jahveh, the Elohim of Israel, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess them?

Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh, thy Elohim, giveth thee to possess?" (Jud. xi. 23, 24). For Jephthah, Chemosh is obviously as real a personage as Jahveh.]

[Footnote 6: For example: "My oblation, my food for my offerings made by fire, of a sweet savour to me, shall ye observe to offer unto me in their due season" (Num. xxviii. 2).]

[Footnote 7: In 2 Samuel xv. 27 David says to Zadok the priest, "Art thou not a seer?" and Gad is called David's seer.]

[Footnote 8: This would at first appear to be inconsistent with the use of the word "prophetess" for Deborah. But it does not follow because the writer of Judges applies the name to Deborah that it was used in her day.]

[Footnote 9: Samuel tells the cook, "Bring the potion which I gave thee, of which I said to thee, Set it by thee." It was therefore Samuel's to give. "And the cook took up the thigh (or shoulder) and that which was upon it and set it before Saul." But, in the Levitical regulations, it is the thigh (or shoulder) which becomes the priest's own property. "And the right thigh (or shoulder) shall ye give unto the priest for an heave-offering," which is given along with the wave breast "unto Aaron the priest and unto his sons as a due for ever from the children of Israel" (Lev. vii. 31-34). Reuss writes on this pa.s.sage: "La cuisse n'est point agitee, mais simplement _prelevee_ sur ce que les convives mangeront."]

[Footnote 10: See, for example, Elkanah's sacrifice, 1 Sam. i. 3-9.]

[Footnote 11: The ghost was not supposed to be capable of devouring the gross material substance of the offering; but his vaporous body appropriated the smoke of the burnt sacrifice, the visible and odorous exhalations of other offerings. The blood of the victim was particularly useful because it was thought to be the special seat of its soul or life. A West African negro replied to an European sceptic: "Of course, the spirit cannot eat corporeal food, but he extracts its spiritual part, and, as we see, leaves the material part behind" (Lippert, _Seelencult,_ p. 16).]

[Footnote 12: It is further well worth consideration whether indications of former ancestor-worship are not to be found in the singular weight attached to the veneration of parents in the fourth commandment. It is the only positive commandment, in addition to those respecting the Deity and that concerning the Sabbath, and the penalties for infringing it were of the same character. In China, a corresponding reverence for parents is part and parcel of ancestor-worship; so in ancient Rome and in Greece (where parents were even called [secondary and earthly]).

The fifth commandment, as it stands, would be an excellent compromise between ancestor-worship and monotheism. The larger hereditary share allotted by Israelitic law to the eldest son reminds one of the privileges attached to primogeniture in ancient Rome, which were closely connected with ancestor-worship. There is a good deal to be said in favour of the speculation that the ark of the covenant may have been a relic of ancestor-worship; but that topic is too large to be dealt with incidentally in this place]

[Footnote 13: "The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," _Fortnightly Review,_ 1869, republished in _Lay Sermons._]

[Footnote 14: OEuvres de Bossuet, ed. 1808, t. x.x.xv. p. 282.]

[Footnote 15: I should like further to add the expression of my indebtedness to two works by Herr Julius Lippert, _Der Seelencult in seinen Beziehungen zur alt-hebraischen Religion_ and _Die Religionen der europaischen Culturvolker,_ both pubished in 1881. I have found them full of valuable suggestions.]

[Footnote 16: See among others the remarkable work of Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cite antique,_ in which the social importance of the old Roman ancestor-worship is brought out with great clearness.]

[Footnote 17: Supposed to be "the finer or more aeriform part of the body,"

standing in "the same relation to the body as the perfume and the more essential qualities of a flower do to the more solid substances"

(Mariner, vol. ii. p. 127).]

[Footnote 18: A kind of "clients" in the Roman sense.]

[Footnote 19: It is worthy of remark that [Greek] among the Greeks, and _Deus_ among the Romans, had the same wide signification. The _dii manes_ were ghosts of ancestors=Atuas of the family.]

[Footnote 20: _Voyages aux iles du Grand Ocean,_ t. i. p. 482.]

[Footnote 21: _Te Ika a Maui: New Zealand and its Inhabitants,_ p. 72.]

[Footnote 22: Compare: "And Samuel said unto Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me?"

(I Sam. xxviii. l5)]

[Footnote 23: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia,_ p. 238.]

[Footnote 24: See Lippert's excellent remarks on this subject, _Der Seelencult,_ p. 89.]

[Footnote 25: _Sciography_ has the authority of Cudworth, _Intellectual System,_ vol. ii. p. 836. Sciomancy [Greek], which, in the sense of divination by ghosts, may be found in Bailey's _Dictionary_ (1751: also furnishes a precedent for my coinage.]

[Footnote 26: "Kami" is used in the sense of Elohim; and is also, like our word "Lord," employed as a t.i.tle of respect among men, as indeed Elohim was.]

[Footnote 27: [The a.s.syrians thus raised a.s.sur to a position of pre-eminence.]]

[Footnote 28: I refer those who wish to know the reasons which lead me to take up this position to the works of Reuss and Wellhausen, [and especially to Stade's _Geschichte des Volkes Israel._]]

[Footnote 29: Bunsen. _Egypt's Place,_ vol. v. p.129, note.]

[Footnote 30: See Birch, in _Egypt's Place,_ vol. v; and Brugsch, _History of Egypt._]

[Footnote 31: Even by Graetz, who, though a fair enough historian, cannot be accused of any desire to over-estimate the importance of Egyptian influence upon his people.]

[Footnote 32: Graetz, _Geschichte der Juden,_ Bd. i. p. 370.]

[Footnote 33: See the careful a.n.a.lsyis of the work of the Alexandrian philosopher and theologian (who, it should be remembered, was a most devout Jew, held in the highest esteem by his countrymen) in Siegfried's _Philo von Alexandrien,_ 1875. (Also Dr. J. Drummond's _Philo Judaeus,_ 1888.)]

[Footnote 34: I am not unaware of the existence of many and widely divergent sects and schools among the Jews at all periods of their history, since the dispersion. But I imagine that orthodox Judaism is now pretty much what it was in Philo's time; while Peter and Paul, if they could return to life, would certainly have to learn the catechism of either the Roman, Greek, or Anglican Churches, if they desired to be considered orthodox Christians.]