The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 2/Chapter 1

by Theodore Parker

BOOK II.

“Reason is natural Revelation, whereby the eternal Father of Light and Fountain of all Knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural Reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries, communicated by God immediately, which Reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God. So that he that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation puts out the light of both, and does much what the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.”—Locke, Essay, Book IV. Chap. xix. § 4.

BOOK II.

THE RELATION OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT TO GOD, OR A DISCOURSE OF INSPIRATION.

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CHAPTER I.

THE IDEA AND CONCEPTION OF GOD.

Two things are necessary to render Religion possible; namely, a religious faculty in Man, and God out of Man as the object of that religious faculty. The existence of these two things admitted, Religion follows necessarily, as vision from the existence of a seeing faculty in Man, and that of light out of him. Now the existence of the religious element, as it was said before, implies its object. We have naturally a Sentiment of God. Reason gives us an Idea of Him. But to these we superadd a Conception of Him. Can this definite conception be adequate? Certainly not. The Idea of God, as the Infinite, may exhaust the most transcendent Imagination; it is the highest Idea of which Man is capable. But is God to be measured by our Idea? Shall the finite circumscribe the Infinite? The existence of God is so plainly and deeply writ, both in us and out of us, in what we are and what we experience, that the humblest and the loftiest minds may be satisfied of this reality, and may know that there is an absolute Cause; a Ground of all things; the Infinite of Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, whereon we may repose, wherein we may confide. This conclusion comes alike from the spontaneous Sentiment, and premeditated Reflection; from the intuition of Reason, and the process of Reasoning. This Idea of God is clear and distinct; not to be confounded with any other idea.

But when we attempt to go further, to give a logical description of Deity, its nature and essence; to define and classify its attributes; to make a definite Conception of God, as of the finite objects of the senses or the understanding, going into minute details, then we have nothing but our own subjective notions, which do not, of necessity, have an objective reality corresponding thereto. All men may know God as the Infinite. His nature and essence are past finding out. But we know God only in part—from the manifestations of divinity, seen in nature, felt in Man; manifestations of Matter and Spirit. Are these the whole of God; is Man his measure? Then is He exhausted, and not infinite. We affix the terms of human limitation to God, and speak of his Personality; some limiting it to one, others extending it to three, to seven, to thirty, or to many millions of persons. Can such terms apply to the Infinite? We talk of a personal God. If thereby we only deny that he has the limitations of unconscious Matter, no wrong is done. But our conception of Personality is that of finite personality; limited by human imperfections; hemmed in by Time and Space; restricted by partial emotions, displeasure, wrath, ignorance, caprice. Can this be said of God? If Matter were conscious, as Locke thinks it possible, it must predicate Materiality of God as persons predicate Personality of him. We apply the term impersonal. If it mean God has not the limitations of our personality it is well. But if it mean that he has those of unconscious Matter, it is worse than the other term. Can God be personal and conscious, as Joseph and Peter; unconscious and impersonal, as a moss or the celestial ether? No man will say it. Where then is the philosophic value of such terms?

The nature of God is past finding out. “There is no searching of his understanding.” As the Absolute Cause, God must contain in himself, potentially, the ground of consciousness, of personality—yes, of unconsciousness and impersonality. But to apply these terms to Him seems to me a vain attempt to fathom the abyss of the Godhead and report the soundings. Will our line reach to the bottom of God? There is nothing on Earth, or in Heaven, to which we can compare him; of course we can have no image of him in the mind.^[1]

There has been enough dogmatism respecting the nature, essence, and personality of God—respecting the Metaphysics of the Deity, and that by men who, perhaps, did not thoroughly understand all about the nature, essence, and metaphysics of Man. It avails nothing. Meanwhile the greatest religious souls that have ever been, are content to fall back on the Sentiment and the Idea of God, and confess that none by searching can perfectly find Him out. They can say, therefore, with an old Heathen, “Since he cannot be fully declared by any one name, though compounded of never so many, therefore is he rather to be called by every name, he being both one and all things; so that [to express the whole of God] either everything must be called by his name, or he by the name of everything.”^[2] “Call him, therefore,” says another Pagan, “by all names, for all can express but a whisper of Him; call him rather by no name, for none can declare his Power, Wisdom, and Goodness.”

Malebranche says, with as much philosophy as piety, “One ought not so much to call God a Spirit, in order to express positively what he is, as in order to signify that he is not Matter. He is a being infinitely perfect. Of this we cannot doubt. But in the same manner we ought not to imagine … that he is clothed with a human body … under colour that that figure was the most perfect of any; so neither ought we to imagine that the Spirit of God has human ideas, or bears any resemblance to our Spirit, under colour that we know nothing more perfect than the human mind. We ought rather to believe that as he comprehends the perfection of Matter, without being material, … so he comprehends also the perfections of created spirits without being Spirit, in the manner we conceive Spirit. That his true name is, He that is, or, in other words, Being without restriction, All Being, the Being Infinite and Universal.”^[3] Still we have a positive Idea of God. It is the most positive of all. It is implied logically in every idea that we form, so that as God himself is the being of all existence, the background and cause of all things that are, the reality of all appearance, so the Idea of God is the central truth, as it were, of all other ideas whatever. The objects of all other ideas are dependent, and not final; the object of this, independent and ultimate. This Idea of an Independent and Infinite Cause, therefore, is necessarily presupposed by the conception of any dependent and finite effect. For example, a man forms a notion of his own existence. This notion involves that of dependence, which conducts him back to that on which dependence rests. He has no complete notion of his own existence without the notion of dependence; nor of that without the object on which he depends. Take our stand where we may, and reason, we come back logically to this which is the primitive fact in all our intellectual conceptions, just as each point in the circumference of a circle is a point in the radius thereof, and this leads straightway to the Centre, whence they all proceed.^[4]

But the Idea of God as a Being of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Love,—in one Word, the Absolute,—does not satisfy. It seems cold; we call it abstract. We are not beings of Reason alone; so are not satisfied with mere Ideas. We have Imagination, Feelings, limited Affections, Understanding, Flesh and Blood. Therefore we want a Conception of God which shall answer to this complex nature of ours. Man may be said to live in the World of Eternity, or abstract truth; that of Time, or historical events; that of Space, or of concrete things. Some men want, therefore, not only an Idea for the first, but a Conception for the second, and a Form for the third. Accordingly the feelings, Fear, Reverence, Devotion, Love, naturally personify God, humanize the deity, and represent the Infinite under the limitations of a finite and imperfect being, whom we “can know all about.” He has the thoughts, feelings, passions, limitations of a man; is subject to time and space; sees, remembers, has a form. This is anthropomorphism. It is well in its place. Some rude men seem to require it. They must paint to themselves a deity with a form—the Ancient of days; a venerable monarch seated on a throne, surrounded by troops of followers. But it must be remembered all this is poetry; this personal and anthropomorphitic Conception is a phantom of the brain that has no existence independent of ourselves. A poet personifies a mountain or the moon; addresses it as if it wore the form of man, could see and feel, had human thoughts, sentiments, hopes, and pleasures, and expectations. What the poet's fancy does for the mountain, the feelings of reverence and devotion do for the Idea of God. They clothe it with a human personality, because that is the highest which is known to us. Men would comprehend the deity; they can only apprehend him. A Beaver, or a Reindeer, if possessed of religious faculties, would also conceive of the deity with the limitations of its own personality, as a Beaver or a Reindeer—whose faculties as such were perfect; but the Conception, like our own, must be only subjective, for even Man is no measure of God.^[5]

Now by reasoning we lay aside the disguises of the Deity, which the feelings have wrapped about the Idea of Him. We separate the substantial from the phenomenal elements in the Conception of God. We divest it of all particular form, all sensual or corporeal attributes, and have no image of God in the mind. He is Spirit,^[6] and therefore free from the limitations of Space. He is nowhere in particular, but everywhere in general, essentially and vitally omnipresent. Denying all particular form, we must affirm of him Universal Being.

The next step in the analysis is to lay aside all partial action of the Deity. He is equally the cause of the storm and the calm sunshine; of the fierceness of the Lion and the Lamb's gentleness, so long as both obey the laws they are made to keep. All the natural action in the material world is God's action, whether the wind blows a plank and the shipwrecked woman who grasps it to the shore, or scatters a fleet and sends families to the bottom. But Infinite Action or Causation must be attributed to Him.

Then all mental processes, like those of men, are separated from the Idea of Him. We cannot say he thinks, for that is to reason from the known to the unknown, which is impossible to the omniscient; nor that he plans or consults with himself, for that implies the infirmity of not seeing the best way all at once; nor that he remembers or foresees, for that implies a restriction in time, a past and a present, while the Infinite must fill Eternity, all time, as well as Immensity, all space. We cannot attribute to Him reflection, which is after-thought, nor imagination, which is fore-thought, since both imply limited faculties. Judgment, fancy, comparison, induction—these are the operations of finite minds. They are not to be applied to the divine Being except as figures of speech; then they merely represent an unknown emotion. We have got a name but no real thing. But Infinite Knowing must be his.

We go still further in this analysis of the conception of God, and all partial feeling must be denied. We cannot say that he hates; is angry, or grieved; repents; is moved by the special prayer of James and John; that he is sad to-day and to-morrow joyful; all these are human, limitations of our personality, and are no more to be ascribed to God than the form of the Reindeer, or the shrewdness of the Beaver. But Love implies no finiteness. This we conceive as Infinite.

At the end of the Analysis, what is left? Being, Cause, Knowledge, Love, each with no conceivable limitation. To express it in a word, a being of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Holiness, Fidelity to himself. Thus by an analysis of the conception of God, we find in fact, or by implication, just what was given synthetically by the intuition of Reason. But do these qualities exhaust the Deity? Surely not. They only form our Idea of Him. It is idle, impious in men to say, the finite creature of yesterday can measure Him who is the All in All, the True, the Holy, the Good, the Altogether-beautiful. Let a man look into the Milky-way, and strive to conceive of the Mind that is the Cause, the Will, of all those centres to unknown worlds, and ask, What can I know of Him? Nay, let a man turn over in his hand a single crystal of snow, and consider its elements, their history, transformation, influence, and try to grasp up the philosophy of this little atom of matter, and he will learn to bow before the thought of Him, and say there is no searching of his understanding. If there are other orders of beings higher than ourselves, their idea of God must include elements above our reach. The finite approximates, but cannot reach the Infinite.

In criticizing the conception of God, I would not attempt the fool's task, to define and describe God's nature, but to separate our Idea of Him from all other ideas; not to tell all in God that answers to the Idea in Man,—that of course is impossible,—but to separate the eternal Idea from the transient conception; to declare the positive and necessary existence of this Idea in Man, of its Object out of Man, while I deny the existence of any limitations of human personality, or of our anthropomorphitic consciousness in the Deity.

1. There has been some controversy on this question of the personality of God in modern times. The writings of Spinoza, both now and formerly, have caused much discussion of this point. The capital maxim of Spinoza on this head is, all attempts to determine the nature of God are a negation of him. Determinatio negatio est. See Ep. 50, p. 634, ed. Paulus. He thinks God has self-conscious personality only in self-conscious persons, i. e. men. Ethic. II. Prop. 11, and Coroll.

   Some have thought to help the matter by the Trinitarian hypothesis. If there were but one man in the universe, he could not indeed, it is said, have our conception of personality, which demands other persons. This condition is fulfilled for the divine Being soon as we admit a trinity in unity. Mystical writers have always inclined to a denial of the personality of God. Thus Plotinus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckart, Tauler, and Böhme, to mention no more, deny it. On this subject see Hegel, Lectures on the proofs of the existence of God, at the end of Philosophie der Religion; Encyclopädie, § 562, et seq., 2nd ed. See the subject touched upon by Strauss, Glaubenslehre, § 33. See also Nitzsch’s review of Strauss in Studien und Kritiken for Jan. 1, 1842; Sengler, ubi sup., B. I. p. Abs. II.-IV.

   In reference to Spinoza, see the controversial writings of Messrs Norton and Ripley, above referred to.

2. See the Asclepian Dialogue, and also the passages from Seneca and Julian, cited in Cudworth, Vol. II. p. 679, et seq., Ch. IV. § 32.
3. Recherches de la Vérité, Liv. III. Ch. ix., as cited in Hume, Dialogues concerning Nat. Rel. Vol. II. p. 469. See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 441-540, 7th ed.; Weisse, Die Idee der Gottheit, 1833. Some have been unwilling to attribute being to the Deity, since we have no conception nor knowledge of being in itself, still less of infinite being. Our knowledge of being is only of being this and that, a conditioned being, which is not predicable of God.
4. This is not the place to attempt a proof of God's existence. In Book I. Ch. ii. I could only hint at the sources of argument. See in Weisse, Kant, and Strauss, a criticism on the various means of proof resorted to by different Philosophers. Weisse divides these proofs into three classes. I. The Ontological argument, which leads to Pantheism; II. The Cosmological, which leads to Deism; and III. The Theological, which leads to pure Theism. See Leibnitz, Théodicée, Pt. I. § 7, p. 506, ed. Erdmann, 1840, and his Epist. ad Bierlingium, in his Epp. ad div. Ed. Kortholt, Vol. IV. p. 21 (cited by Strauss, ubi sup.).
5. See Xenophanes as cited above by Eusebius, P. E. XIII. 13. See Karsten, ubi sup., Vol. I. p. 35, et seq. The passage from Seneca, De Superstitione, preserved by Augustine, Civ. Dei, Lib. VI. C. 10; Seneca, Opp. ed. Paris, 1829, IV. p. 39, et seq.
6. I use the term Spirit simply as a negation of the limitations of matter. We cannot tell the essence of God.