The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 2/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE ANTI-RATIONALISTIC VIEW, OR SUPERNATURALISM.
This system differs in many respects from the other; but its philosophy is at bottom the same. It denies that by natural action there can be anything in Man which was not first in the senses; whatever transcends the senses can come to him only by a Miracle. And the Miracle is attended with phenomena obvious to the senses. Το develope the natural side of the theory it sets God on the one side and man on the other. However it admits the immanence of God in Matter, and talks very little about the laws of Matter, which it thinks require revision, amendment, and even repeal, as if the nature of things changed, or God grew wiser by experiment. It does not see that if God is always the same, and immanent in Nature, the laws of Nature can neither change nor be changed.[1] It limits the power of Man still further than the former theory. It denies that he can, of himself, discover the existence of God; or find out that it is better to love his brother than to hate him, to subject the Passions to Reason, Desire to Duty, rather than to subject Reason to Passion, Duty to Desire.[2] Man can find out all that is needed for his animal and intellectual welfare, with no miracle; but can learn nothing that is needed for his moral and religious welfare. He can invent the steam engine, and calculate the orbit of Halley's comet; but cannot tell Good from Evil, nor determine that there is a God. The Unnecessary is given him; the Indispensable he cannot get by nature. Man, therefore, is the veriest wretch in creation. His mind forces him to inquire on religious matters, but brings him into doubt, and leaves him in the very slough of Despond. He goes up and down sorrowing, seeking rest, but finding none. Nay; it goes further still, and declares that, by nature, all men's actions are sin, hateful to God.
On the other hand, it teaches that God works a miracle from time to time, and makes to men a positive revelation of moral and religious truth, which they could not otherwise gain. Its history of revelations is this: God revealed his own existence in a visible form to the first man; taught him religious and moral duties by words orally spoken. The first man communicated this knowledge to his descendants, from whom the tradition of the fact has spread over all the world. Men know there is a God, and a distinction between right and wrong, only by hearsay, as they know there was a Flood in the time of Noah, or Deucalion. The first man sinned, and fell from the state of frequent communion with God. Revelations have since become rare; exceptions in the history of men. However, as Man having no connection with the Infinite must soon perish, God continued to make miraculous revelations to one single people. To them he gave laws, religious and civil; made predictions, and accompanied each revelation by some miraculous sign, for without it none could distinguish the truth from a lie. Other nations received reflections of this light, which was directly imparted to the favoured people. At length he made a revelation of all religious and moral truth, by means of his Son, a divine and miraculous being, both God and Man, and confirmed the tidings by miracles the most surprising. As this revelation is to last for ever, it has been recorded miraculously, and preserved for all coming time. The persons who received direct communication miraculously from God, are of course mediators between Him and the human race.
Now to live as religious men, we must have a knowledge of religious truth; for this we must depend alone on these mediators. Without them we have no access to God. They have established a new relation between Man and God. But they are mortal, and have deceased. However, their sayings are recorded by miraculous aid. A knowledge of God's will, of Morality and Religion, therefcre, is only to be got at, by studying the documents which contain a record of their words and works, for the Word of God has become the letter of Scripture. We can know nothing of God, Religion, or Morals at first hand. God was but transiently present in a small number of the race, and has now left it altogether.
This theory forgets that a verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea, like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion, more than a word can give a deaf man an idea of sound. It makes inspiration a very rare miracle, confined to one nation, and to some scores of men in that nation, who stand between us and God. We cannot pray in our own name, but in that of the mediator, who hears the prayer, and makes intercession for us. It exalts certain miraculous persons, but degrades Man. In prophets and saints, in Moses and Jesus, it does not see the possibility of the race made real, but only the miraculous work of God. Our duty is not to inquire into the truth of their word. Reason is no judge of that. We must put faith in all which all of them tell us, though they contradict each other never so often. Thus it makes an antithesis between Faith and Knowledge, Reason and Revelation. It denies that common men, in the nineteenth century, can get at Truth, and God, as Paul and John in the first century. It sacrifices Reason, Conscience, and Love to the words of the miraculous men, and thus makes its mediator a tyrant, who rules over the soul by external authority, restricting Reason, Conscience, and Love; not a brother, who acts in the soul, by waking its dormant powers, disclosing truth, and leading others by a divine life to God, the Source of Light. It says the words of Jesus are true because he spoke them; not that he spoke them because true. It relies entirely on past times; does not give us the Absolute Religion, as it exists in Man's nature, and the Ideas of the Almighty, only a historical mode of worship, as lived out here or there. It says the canon of Revelation is closed; God will no longer act on men as heretofore. We have come at the end of the feast; are born in the latter days and dotage of mankind, and can only get light by raking amid the ashes of the past, and blowing its brands, now almost extinct. It denies that God is present and active in all spirit as in all space—thus it denies that he is Infinite. In the miraculous documents it gives us an objective standard, “the only infallible rule of religious faith and practice.” These mediators are greater than the soul; the Bible the master of Reason, Conscience, and the Religious Sentiment. They stand in the place of God.
Men ask of this system: How do you know there is in Man nothing but the product of sensation, or miraculous tradition; that he cannot approach God except by miracle; that these mediators received truth miraculously; taught all truth; nothing but the truth; that you have their words pure and unmixed in your Scriptures; that God has no further revelation to make? The answer is:—We find it convenient to assume all this, and accordingly have banished Reason from the premises, for she asked troublesome questions. We condescend to no proof of the facts. You must take our word for that. Thus the main doctrines of the theory rest on assumptions; on no-facts.
This system represents the despair of Man groping after God. The religious Element acts, but is crippled by a philosophy poor and sensual. Is Man nothing but a combination of five senses, and a thinking machine to grind up and bolter sensations, and learn of God only by hearsay? The God of Supernaturalism is a God afar off; its Religion worn-out and second-hand. We cannot meet God face to face. In one respect it is worse than naturalism; that sets great value on the faculties of Man, which this depreciates and profanes. But all systems rest on a truth, or they could not be; this on a great truth, or it could not prevail widely. It admits a qualified immanence of God in Nature, and declares, also, that mankind is dependent on Him, for religious and moral truth as for all things else; has a connection with God, who really guides, educates, and blesses the race, for he is transiently present therein. The doctrine of miraculous events, births, persons, deaths, and the like, this is the veil of Poetry drawn over the face of Fact. It has a truth not admitted by Naturalism. As only a few “thinking” men even in fancy can be satisfied without a connection with God, so Naturalism is always confined to a few reflective and cultivated persons; while the mass of men believe in the supernatural theory, at least, in the truth it covers up. Its truth is of great moment. Its vice is to make God transiently active in Man, not immanent in him; restrict the divine presence and action to times, places, and persons. It overlooks the fact that if religious truth be necessary for all, then it must either have been provided for and put in the reach of all, or else there is a fault in the divine plan. Then again, if God gives a natural supply for the lower wants, it is probable, to say the least, he will not neglect the higher. Now for the religious consciousness of Man, a knowledge of two great truths is indispensable: namely, a knowledge of the existence of the Infinite God, and of the duty we owe to Him, for a knowledge of these two is implied in all religious teaching and life. Now one of two things must be admitted, and a third is not possible: either Man can discover these two things by the light of Nature, or he cannot. If the latter be the case, then is he the most hopeless of all beings. Revelation of these truths is confined to a few; it is indispensably necessary to all. Accordingly the first hypothesis is generally admitted by the supernaturalists, in New England—though in spite of their philosophy—that these two things can be discovered by the light of Nature. Then if the two main points, the premises which involve the whole of Morals and Religion, lie within the reach of Man's natural powers, how is a miracle, or the tradition of a miracle, necessary to reveal the minor doctrines involved in the universal truth? Does not the faculty to discern the greater include the faculty to discern the less? What covers an acre will cover a yard. Where then is the use of the miraculous interposition?
Neither Naturalism nor Supernaturalism legitimates the fact of Man's religious consciousness. Both fail of satisfying the natural religions wants of the race. Each has merits and vices of its own. Neither gives for the Soul's wants a supply analogous to that so bountifully provided for the wants of the Body, or the Mind.
- ↑ Leibnitz, in a letter to the Princess of Wales, Opp. phil. ed. Erdmann, Berlin, 1840, p. 746-7, amuses himself with ridiculing this view, which he ascribes to Newton and his followers; “according to them,” says he, “God must wind up his watch from time to time or it would stop outright. He was not farsighted enough to make a perpetual motion.”
- ↑ Some Supernaturalists admit that Man by nature can find out the most important religious truths, in the way set down before, and some admit a moral sense in man. Others deny both. A recent writer denies that he can find by the light of Nature ANY THEOLOGICAL TRUTH. Natural theology is not possible. See Irons, On the whole Doctrine of Final Causes, Lond. 1836, p. 34, 129, and passim. His introductory chapter on modern Deism is very curious. He has some excellent remarks, for there are two kingdoms of philosophy in him, but wishes to advance what he calls revealed religion, at the expense of the foundation of all Religion. The Ottoman King never thinks himself secure on the throne till he has slain all his brothers.