Part 14 (2/2)

He argues that if the Trinity be the ultimate truth, the Unitarian suppositions and conclusions of the ”natural theologian” are bound to lead to antinomies and confusions; and he sees in those harmonious interferences and variations of universal import (which are no less an essential factor in the evolution of the world than the groundwork of uniformity and law), evidence of a multi-personal Divine government, of a division of labour between co-operant agencies. This, of course, goes beyond the doctrine of ”appropriation;” and amounts to a denial of the singleness of the Divine operation _ad extra_. It seems, in short, to imply a diversity of nature in each of the persons, over and above the principle of personal distinctness. Indeed, while it offers a plausible solution of some minor perplexities, it rather weakens the value of the general argument. For the notion of a superpersonal unity is needed chiefly as suggesting a mode in which many mutually exclusive personalities or ”spheres of experience” or lives, may be welded together into a coherent whole. Even could I reproduce most exactly in myself the thoughts and feelings of another, it were but a reproduction or similarity. I can know and feel the like; but I cannot know his knowing and feel his feeling; for this were to be that other and not myself.

That G.o.d's knowledge of our thoughts and feelings should be of this external, inferential kind is as intolerable to our mental needs of unification as it is to our religious sense, our hope, our confidence, our love. In Him we live and move and think and feel; and He in us. That we can say this of no other personality is what const.i.tutes the burden of our separateness and loneliness. Our experience exists for no other; but at least it is in some mysterious way shared by That which lies behind all otherness, not destroying, but fulfilling. ”We know not why it is,” says St. Catherine of Genoa, ”we feel an internal necessity of using the plural p.r.o.noun instead of the singular.” Perhaps it was that she saw in a purer and clearer light what we only half feel in the obscurity of our grosser hearts.

But if G.o.d knows our knowing, and feels our feeling, not merely by a similitude but in itself, it is not because He is transcendent and ”personal,” as we understand the word, because He is immanent and ”superpersonal,” whatever that may mean. But it is just because revelation tells us that in G.o.d there are three selves or Egos, for each of whom the experience (i.e., the thought, love, and action) of the other two exists, not merely similar, but one and the same--the same thinking, loving, and doing, no less than the same thought, love, and deed--that we can believe in the possibility of our personal separateness being at once preserved and overcome in that mysterious unity.

That G.o.d is love; and that love, which as an affection, produces an affective unity between separate persons, can as the subsistent and primal unity produce a substantial and ineffable union of which the other is a shadow, is a view towards which revelation points. That the mere affection of love, the moral union of wills, is an insufficient unification of personalities is implied by the fact that love always tends to some sort of real union and communication; and still more, that it springs from a sense of inexplicable ident.i.ty.

It is almost a crime in criticism to deal with such a mult.i.tude of deep problems in so brief and hasty an essay. But if we have roughly indicated the main outlines of the author's position, we shall have done as much as can be reasonably expected of us; though it is with great reluctance that we pa.s.s over many points, and even whole chapters, bristling with interest.

Perhaps the most important feature of the book is the prominence it gives to the difficulties and insufficiencies of idealism. With those of realism we are all familiar enough, but so far, idealism has been looked at one-sidedly as evading, if not solving, some of the antinomies of the earlier philosophy, while its own embarra.s.sments have been condoned in hopes of future solution. The solution has not come, and now the hopes are dead or dying. What we need is a higher synthesis, if such be possible for the human mind, or else a frank admission that faith, in some sense or other, is a necessary complement of every philosophy. One thing is clear, that reconciliation can be effected, if at all, only by a fair-minded admission of difficulties inseparable from either system, and by a conscientious criticism of presuppositions. No one can deal effectually with the idealist position to whom it is simply ”absurd” or ”ridiculous;” who has not been to some degree intellectually entangled in it; whose realism is not more or less of an effort. Else he is dealing with some man of straw of his own fancy, and will be found, as so often happens, a.s.suming the truth of realism in every argument he brings forward. Plainly the best minds of modern times have not been victimized by a fallacy within the competence of a school-boy. And a like intellectual self-denial is needed on the part of the idealist, who is apt to dismiss all realism as crude, uncritical, or barbaric. We have all our antinomies, our blind alleys, our crudities; and we have all to fill up awkward interstices with a.s.sumptions and postulates.

However much we may dissent from Mr. D'Arcy's theology in certain details; however little we personally may labour under the difficulties of idealism, we cannot too strongly commend the endeavour to meet the modern mind on its own platform; to speak to the cultivated in their own language. Belief is caused by the wish to believe; but it is conditioned by the removal of intellectual obstacles, different for different grades of intelligence and education. To create the ”wish to believe” is largely a matter of example, of letting Christianity appear attractive and desirable, and correspondent to the deeper needs of the soul. It is also to some extent a work of exposition. But when this all-important wish has been created, the intellect can hinder its effect. It is much to know and feel that Christianity is good and useful and beautiful; ”But some time or other the question must be asked: _Is it true_?” And to liberate the will by satisfying the intellect is work of what alone is properly called apologetic. Unless we fall back into quietism which would tell us to read a Kempis and say our prayers and wait, we must address ourselves first of all to making Christianity attractive; and then to making it intelligible. And if we do not find it against Gospel simplicity to address ourselves, as we continually do, to the intelligence of the semi-educated, we cannot allege that scruple as a reason why we should not address ourselves to the fully educated,--to those who eventually form and guide the opinions of the many.

_Feb. 1901_.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: _Idealism and Theology_. By Charles D'Arcy, B.D. Hodder and Stoughton, 1900.]

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