A Compendium of Christian Theology
By William Burt Pope, D.D.,
Volume One
Chapter 9
Creation
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GOD AND THE CREATURE. : GOD , OR COSMOGONY -BIBLICAL COSMOGONIES Cosmical and Organic Development Unity, and Antiquity on Earth; PROVIDENCE.
THE discussion of the Divine
Attributes has prepared us for a universe that is not God, but
brought into existence by His power, and the object of His
providential conservation,
care, and government. The two departments of our present subject
are, therefore, the
Creature and Providence. The former will include all the several
orders of created nature;
and the latter, the general principles which are revealed as
controlling their destiny: in
other words, the What and the Why of the universal Creation of
God.
THE CREATURE.
The creaturely universe, embracing immaterial intelligences or
angels, the world of
material elements, and man uniting the two in himself, owes its
being to the act of the
Triune God, Whose will called it into existence. The revelations
of Scripture on this
subject may be distributed under the two heads of the Creator in
regard to the act of
creation, and the several orders of the creatures as the result
of His creating act.
THE CREATOR.
Creation is in Scripture assigned to the One Almighty God, in
the Trinity of His essence:
the Son and the Holy Spirit having the same special relation to
the production of all
things which they afterwards bear to the redemption of the
world. The creating act
displays the glory of the Divine attributes, but freely as an
act of will, and with the
diffusion of happiness as one end attained by the resources of
infinite wisdom. Absolute
creation is the effect of omnipotence; but the origination of
creaturely existence is a
mystery which is revealed for adoration only, no other account
being given or possible
but the all-sufficiency of the Creator. Secondary creation, or
the Formation of the
material part of the universe into order, exhibits Divine wisdom
also and love as
preparing the scene of Providence for all living creatures, of
probation for all moral
intelligences, and of redemption for fallen man.
Allusion has been already made to the Redemptional Trinity as
the manifestation of the
Eternal Triune One in the salvation of man. Between these may be
interposed an
Economical Trinity, in some sense mediatorial, but not
redemptional: the revelation, that
is, of Three Persons after a special manner and order in the
production of the universe.
1. Each Person is in Scripture plainly connected with the act of
creation: plainly, that is,
according to the universal law of gradual development that has
been so often referred to.
The Old Testament dimly but not uncertainly gives its evidence,
when its words are
interpreted in the light of the New. My Father worketh hitherto,
These passages in their combination lead our minds to our Lord's
only other reference to
creation: Thou lovedst Me
before the foundation of the world.
2. But there is evidently an Economical Trinity here, the
foreshadowing of the
Redemptional. What man's word is to his act, the expression of
his will, the Eternal Word
was in creation: By Whom
also He made the worlds,
THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN CREATION.
We have already anticipated our present subject when considering
the Divine Attributes
in relation to the creature. It is enough to say here that the
omnipotence of God, as the
outward manifestation of His interior all-sufficiency, is enough
for the original
production of matter in what may be called absolute creation,
that His wisdom and power
are seen in the secondary creation or formation of matter into
worlds; and that the end of
all is the expression of the Divine perfections or their
reflection in the works of His
hands.
It is only in the Divine All-sufficiency that we can find the
ground of the origin of all
things that exist not being God Himself. In this we must be
content to seek the possibility
of all forms of being, spiritual or material; known to us or
unknown; our own universe, so
far as we may call it ours, and other universes that may be
behind it, with others that may
follow it. The utmost that human thought can rise to is this,
that with God all things are
possible:
1. Positively, the beginning of revelation asserts this: In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.
4:17;
2. Negatively, the Scripture precludes any other doctrine than
that of an absolute creation
of all things by the direct act of the Divine will. It omits any
allusion to pre-existing
forms of matter, animate or inanimate, out of which the present
universe was through
long periods developed. Physico-theological speculation may
interpose universe after
universe, or rather universe before universe, to carry up the
continuity of cause and effect
nearer to the final source; but at length it must come to the
unsearchable chasm between
phenomenal things and the eternal essence. Platonic ontology may
go farther and contrast
phenomena as they are made to appear with the eternal ideas
appearing only to God
Himself; but the kosmos
nohtos in the Divine mind is not creation, and it is of creation we
now speak The negative argument is found in all those many
passages which bring the
Jehovah-name into relation with created things. This is the
Scriptural method of
proclaiming the infinite and to us unthinkable chasm between
necessary being and
existence phenomenal. The Bible does not say, in philosophical
language, that the
Unconditioned One remains the Unconditioned while He creates the
conditioned, or that
the one Necessary Being cannot have other necessary existence,
co-eternal with Himself,
which He forms into the universe. But it simply says, in
Nehemiah's language, which is
the language also of psalm and prophet: Thou, even Thou,
The creation is referred to as its free exercise: all things
requiring God as their First
Cause, but the First Cause not requiring the creation by any
necessity of His nature.
Speculations as to the necessary connection of power and act in
the Immutable Being,
and therefore as to the necessity of an eternal
creation—speculations which forget the
difference between the Infinite and the finite, a difference
which is to us at once conceivable
and inconceivable—are utterly unknown in Scripture.
THEORIES CONTRADICTING THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION.
It is at this point that we are met by those hypotheses which
flatly contradict the doctrine
thus laid down as Scriptural, and as alone consistent with the
true notion of God and His
universe. These have been alluded to in their relation to the
doctrine of God Himself; but
briefly, as the present is their proper place. It may be boldly
asserted that Pantheism and
Materialism, with a third class of intermediate theories that
are composed of elements
derived from both, owe their origin not to an anti-Theistic
sentiment, but to the difficulty
of accepting God as the Creator, primarily and absolutely, of
anything that is not God.
What is here said about them will be confined to a brief
consideration of their bearing on
the subject of creation.
Many definitions may be given of this system of thought, which
has had the longest, the
most diversified, and the most persistent sway in the annals of
human error. But no
definition does justice to it which forgets that it is a theory
of the universe making God
supreme in it without being its Creator: identifying, in fact,
God with the universe, or the
universe with God: to par Theos esti. But there are two kinds of
Pantheism, which are not
perhaps distinguished as they should be in reviews of its
history. All Pantheism is not the
same Pantheism.
1. It cannot be said of the ancient Indian philosophies that
they made God and the
universe one. What to the Hondo in every age—as long before the
Christian era as
since—has been the Supreme God, or the abstract Brahm without
predicate, exists
without a necessary finite created system. This eternal,
infinite, immutable Being is
sublimely above all creaturely nature. When the repose of
incalculable ages is broken, He
or It comes as to the creature into existence, is developed to
creaturely thought in
manifold forms for long ages, and then withdraws into Himself or
Itself the whole
panorama of phenomenal being to be remembered in their forms no
more. Now in this
wonderful system of thought, the essential idea of creation
cannot be concealed or
suppressed. The Hondo Trinity itself, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
is only a representative
personification of the Supreme in acts which are not far wide of
the Scriptural ideas of
creation, preservation, and destruction, at least as far as the
two former are concerned; all
the phenomena of the universe, on the way to nothing, are surely
supposed to be brought
into separate existence that the Infinite may appear in them
before they go hence; and that
separate existence, as separate, they lose when they cease to
be. It is true that the entire
system may be called, in modern language, pantheistic. But there
is a vast difference
between its view of the supremacy of the Original of all things
which He again withdraws
from being and the pure Pantheism that identifies and makes one
whole God and the
universe.
2. No form of ancient Greek philosophy was Pantheistic in the
fullest and deepest sense
of the word. From Thales through Plato down to the last of the
Stoics the philosophers
were occupied with the origin of things. Some denied creation,
but they denied also God:
such were the earliest of the Ionic school, who strove to find
the unity of all phenomena,
whether in water, or in air, or in fire; but whatever they
called the soul of the world,
animating and controlling the endless flux of things, it was not
the god of Pantheism.
Their system was Materialism in disguise. Others, as those whose
names are the glory of
the Socratic school, laid too much stress on the supremacy of
the all-controlling mind to
be counted Pantheists: moreover, they were always haunted by the
notion of an eternal
húleen, or matter, as it were something mediatory between
matter, as we know it, and
pure spiritual being. What they called the Soul of the World,
the active principle, namely,
which frames and forms and fashions all things, could never be
detached from the Stoic
conception of matter, and so far their system might be called
Pantheistic But their Natura
naturans, or ho phusis
technikh, was, by the term, an operative mind, as Cicero says: "
Natura, non artificiosa solum, sed plane
3. Pure Pantheism, as an account of the existence of the
universe, assumed its final and
only consistent development in Christian times, and in a
philosophy that has been in
avowed opposition to Christianity from the beginning.
(1.) Its new foundations were laid in Neo-Platonism, an eclectic
system which strove to
combine all that had been taught in previous schools of
philosophy concerning the
relation of being to phenomena. It pronounced more boldly than
it had ever been
pronounced before, that one only indescribable Being exists Who
reveals Himself in all
things, in the soul of the world, in the universal reason, and
in the spirit of man: all
seemingly independent things being only transient phenomena, and
all personalities being
destined for reabsorption into God. While the Fathers of the
Christian Church were
establishing against early heresy the doctrine of the Trinity,
the Second Person being the
First begotten before every creature, and the Arche, or source of the creation brought
into
existence by the energy of the Third Person, Plotinus and
Porphyry and Proclus were
establishing another trinity: the One absolute, its
manifestation in the universe, and its
thinking itself in universal reason. Their ideas found their
best expositor in John Scotus
Erigena, the idealistic Pantheist of the ninth century. His book
"De Divisione Naturae "
was the first manifesto of the modern system. It makes God "
that which neither creates
nor is created." " With God being, thought, and creating are
identical" " In God it is one
and the same thing to know what He makes before it is made, and
to make what He
knows. Therefore to know and to do is one in Him." "Man is a
certain intellectual notion
in the Divine mind eternally created. This is his most approved
and most true definition:
and it is not so only of man, but of all things which, in the
Divine wisdom, were made.
The entire visible and invisible creature is a Theophany: it may
be called, that is, a Divine
apparition." According to this conception the thought must not
linger on the existence of
anything apart from God; for while we think of it has changed,
and of it at any moment
existence cannot be predicated. The spirit of man is on the same
phenomenal way to its
home. The tendency of this system, as of Pantheism in every
form, is to abolish sin and
responsibility. But that tendency took two directions. In the
one it degenerated into the
worst mystical antinomianism of the Middle Ages. In the other it
was counteracted by
better principles; and, with strange inconsistency, the men
whose theory made their soul
only a spark on its way to a necessary extinction in God were
absorbed in the most
strenuous endeavors by perfect self-renunciation to bring
themselves into a most blessed
union with their Maker. But we have here to do only with
theories of creation.
(2.) Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, carried the wavering
dialectics of his
predecessors to their legitimate conclusion. He made the
principle of Descartes, that the
consciousness of our existence is the first and only certainty,
his starting-point. But,
whereas the founder of Cartesianism argued to the real existence
of a universe and a God,
the founder of modern Pantheism argued in the opposite
direction. He fell back upon the
assured consciousness of one only substance, besides which there
could be nothing. That
substance may have attributes and modes; but the attributes and
modes of that infinite
substance, including the entire universe of mind and extension,
are not reality but
phenomena. Of these phenomena, including ourselves, we may
predicate attributes; but
not of the infinite All. According to the favorite adage of the
system, which is a profound
untruth, " Omnis determinatio est negatjo;" and to speak of the
Infinite as being this or
that, is to make Him less, or It less, than infinite. To assert
that God creates or is a
Creator is to deny Him His Deity: in diametrical opposition to
St. Paul's testimony that
phenomenal things from the creation of the world declare His
eternal power and
Godhead. What in the Christian teaching—and in the Christian
teaching alone—is
creation, is in Pantheism an eternal and necessary evolution of
the One Sum of things:
everything and every person is but a mode of the existence of
Being absolute; everything
in its manifestation, and every person in his act, is determined
by the necessity of the
Divine nature, if such a term may be used at all. "Without the
world no God; and no God
without the world." Spinoza's mathematically systematised
Pantheism has been idealised
in the philosophy of Germany, the keynote of which is that the
Infinite is for ever coming
to consciousness in the finite, the absolute which in itself is
nothing coming to true
objective existence in the creature, by an eternal movement
which the thinking mind of
man requires for the explanation of all being, and in which it
finds rest. God is not
Himself personal, but He is the sum of all personalities. This
system strives to make itself
Christian by terming Christ the mediator or reconciler of the
Infinite and the finite in
Whom God is the universe and the universe is God: the synthesis
of all possible
opposites.
(3.) With the endless evolutions of modern Pantheistic thought
we have not to do. Suffice
that it proves one thing most clearly, that the Christian
doctrine of creation lies at the
basis of all religion. Although the derivation of the word from
Religare, to bind to, or to
restrain from, be etymologically insecure, that idea is
nevertheless rooted in it; and the
terms Lex, or law, and Obligation are not far off. But Pantheism
knows no bond between
Creator and creature, because these terms are gone. Sin is no
longer sin: freedom has
eternally vanished from the whole economy of things. Immortality
is the loss of what
seemed personality, and absorption into the abyss of being,
without that consciousness of
absorption and rest which was the blissful dream of the best
mystics, whether in the East
or in the West. The universe is not the sphere in which a
Creator moves, but the form in
which He, by an eternal necessity, evolves Himself. The world of
man cannot be the
domain of Providence or redemption in which a personal God holds
fellowship with His
creatures. There are no creatures, nor is God He; for all the
terms of personality ought to
disappear, if they do not, from the system. Man is part of God's
existence —if we may
return to the name God, —but God is equally part of man's
existence. There is no preeminence
on His part, nor is there inferiority in His creature, if we may
call man such.
Spinoza says: "Hence it follows that the human mind is part of
the infinite intelligence of
God: and, forsooth, when we say that the mind of man perceives
this or that, we only say
no more than that God, not as He is infinite but as far as He is
unfolded by the nature of
man, or as far as He constitutes the essence of the human mind,
has this or that idea."
"Accordingly in the human mind there is no absolute or free
will. The mind is a sure and
determined method of thinking, and therefore cannot possibly be
the free cause of its own
actions," The only sin the system allows is imperfection on its
way to perfectness: it is the
loss of that which is the only good, that is, of being. In the
evolution of God there is a
struggle, and the transient survival of the fittest. " By how
much the more anyone can
preserve his share of being the greater is the virtue with which
he is endowed; conversely,
so far as anyone neglects to conserve his being he is impotent."
Spinoza, like many other
devout Pantheists, had exalted notions of the deification of man
in God as His transient
representative in the process of His eternal incarnation. But at
the point of his highest
elevation into union with the Deity, finite man is in this
system lost in the infinite. There
is no Christian glorification of the creature in God, but only
reabsorption into the source
whence his fleeting personality came. This is pure Pantheism,
creationless, and therefore
without a Creator. Man has no distinct existence for ever,
because he and his home, and
all that is his, must be drawn back again into the ocean that
other similar waves of existence
may follow. Ancient Hinduism went near to this; but it may be
doubted whether it
ever went so far. " I am Brahm," was the language that expressed
in it the highest
consummation of unity with Real Being; but still the I remained.
Pantheism proper has no
I, either for God or for man.
SUB-PANTHEISTIC SYSTEMS.
It cannot be said that all the errors of mankind as to the
created universe in its relation to
the Creator may be summed up as Pantheism and Materialism. These
are the extreme
poles, but there are zones between of great importance in which
we find the most
abundant development of human speculation and practice. These
can only be alluded to
here, and that for two reasons: first, they do not enter into
theology proper: and, secondly,
they are not now predominant errors against which theology as
such has to contend.
Holy Scripture, which is the revelation of the absolute
religion, does not trace the history
of man's descent from the worship of one God to the worship of
gods many: nor does it
shed much light upon the various forms which Polytheistic
idolatry has gradually
assumed. But there is nothing in the Word of God inconsistent
with the following two
truths: that Polytheism sprang out of a Pantheistic perversion
of the feeling of mankind
after one Supreme in nature and yet over nature; that it has
always coexisted with a more
or less indefinite sense of one Deity; and has in its best forms
worked towards the
absolute supremacy of the only and true God.
I. The modern Science of Religion aims to trace the development
of the instinct or faculty
in man for the infinite and eternal through all the records of
the races: starting generally
from the principle that began by investing the visible and
invisible forces of nature with
supernatural attributes, and then, as that religion became more
dialectic, gradually
emerging into Monotheism or Pantheism, in many cases drifting
into Atheism by the
way. Some of these teachers of Comparative Theology proceed on
the theory of
evolution. Taking man from the hands of the physical
evolutionist, as having been slowly
developed into a sentient, moral, and even religious creature,
they then carry onward the
principle into all the phenomena of what may be called the
spiritual history of mankind.
Others take up the theory without its tremendous preliminary
assumptions.
1. The testimony of Scripture is explicit here. We might infer
from its early records that
the successive heads of mankind, and founders of the nations,
carried everywhere with
them the knowledge or tradition of one Creator; and the tendency
of the whole of the
record supports that inference. But the New Testament, which in
the fullness of time
clears up the mysteries of earlier revelation, gives us a clear
account of the origin of
Polytheism and idolatry. St. Paul, directly dealing with this
subject, speaks of the heathen
as of men who hold the
truth in unrighteousness.
Amen.
2. The history of Polytheism confirms all this. Men early lost
the supremacy of faith and
were surrendered to sense. But the faith only lost its
supremacy, and sense was not
wholly sense. They never lost that within them which verified
three things, let modern
philosophy say what it will: the reality of their own dependent
existence; the reality of an
outer universe not themselves; and the reality of an Infinite
Something, Being or Person,
beyond that. But the distinctness of these was lost their
perfect confusion was pure
Pantheism; which, however, was the growth of later ages. At
first, the self was distinct;
but God and the creature were blended. The One Being was
everywhere felt and seen, but
not as one being: His energies were distributed, and Naturism,
or nature-worship, was the
result: the term worship being here conventionally used. The two
extremes lie before us
in the history of mankind. There is Fetichism, a term invented
in the last century to
describe the abject superstition which attaches to an endless
variety of objects a
mysterious connection with supernatural powers, making them
symbols of spiritual influences
haunting all nature. This takes its most grotesque form in
Western Africa, but has
pervaded all ages and races, from the Teraphim of Mesopotamia to
the Shamanism of
Tartary. At the opposite pole is the dread magnificence of the
Oriental Greek and
Scandinavian Mythologies, where Fetichism is expanded,
etherealised, and developed
into its grandest proportions. But everywhere, and in all its
forms, it is the idolatry of the
creature which loses the Creator: in multiplicity forgetting the
unity, though the unity was
never far off. From that mankind had wandered, and to that must
they, after long
wanderings, return.
II. The history of the religious beliefs of mankind bears
witness that there never was a
national or tribal Polytheism which did not, more or less,
consciously give the supremacy
to one, and only one being.
1. The most wonderful, certainly the earliest system of
mythology—if such a name may
be allowed—is that of the primitive Aryans, whose strong
religious feeling deified all the
forces of nature. Every object in which they felt the presence
of the invisible and the
infinite was raised into something supernatural, into a Deva,
bright being; Asura, a living
thing; and Amartya, an immortal. By degrees, the multitude of
gods approximated to a
deification of universal nature; but by degrees also the strong
tendency of the Indian
religion was to find its refuge in a kind of Atheism which was
really a protest in favor of
one God, or in aspirations after one God by name.
(1.) As the Aryan theology is the grandest outside of the
Bible—how entirely outside of it
we shall see—a few illustrations may be derived from it of the
principle we are
considering, that the One Creator has been always unconsciously
groped for in every
system. In the Indian religion we may see in epitome, though in
a vast epitome, the entire
evolution: so absolutely the entire evolution, that it may be
selected to represent the
whole. We cannot determine what thought concerning the Supreme
was behind the
earliest Vedic worship; it may have been that the early hymns to
Aditi, the boundless or
the infinite One, were remembrances of a primitive Monotheistic
religion. But certainly
in process of ages the whole tide of Hondo thought and feeling
set in towards One
Highest God, in the noblest, if not the most beautiful,
monarchical form of Polytheism.
The supreme sway of the Unknown God, however, was of no avail,
so long as He had
crowds of representatives nearer than He, The time of
reformation came: but it led: to a
philosophical Atheism, or to Buddhism and Pantheism. The only
religion that India never
knew until Christianity brought it near is Monotheism. To that
there has always, however,
been a steady tendency; though, neither in India, nor in any
part of the world, will
Polytheism give place to the worship of one God until that God
is accepted in the Holy
Trinity.
(2.) Professor Max Muller has invented a new word to express a
certain peculiarity, as he
deems it, in the evolution of Indian thought concerning God: his
own description will be
given, especially as it is almost applicable to all the more
enlightened nations of
heathenism. " If we must have a general name for the earliest
form of religion among the
Vedic Indians, it can be neither Monotheism, nor Polytheism, but
only Henotheism, that
is, a belief and worship of those single objects, whether
semi-tangible or intangible, in
which man first suspected the presence of the invisible and the
infinite, each of which as
we saw was raised into something more than finite, more than
natural, more than
conceivable." . . . "This is the peculiar character of the
ancient Vedic religion which I
have tried to characterize as
the expedient, adopted by the Greeks and Romans, of making one
of the gods supreme
above all the rest: thus satisfying the desire for a supreme
power, the eis koiranos esto,
and not breaking entirely with the traditions of the past, and
the worship paid to
individual manifestations of the divine in nature, such as were
Apollon and Athena, or
Poseidon and Hades, by the side of Zeus." . . . Here we have an
almost universal
phenomenon, and one that pays a deep homage to the truth of the
Scriptures, and the
revelation of the one only Creator: the peculiarity of the
homage being that every such
unconscious homage to the one Supreme was paid to Him as the
Originator of all things.
There was among the Vedic Aryans the same tendency to establish
supremacy among the
gods, a one Creating God, as we find in the mythologies not only
of Greece and of Rome,
but of Germany and Scandinavia. "There are a few hymns addressed
to Visvakarman, the
creator, and Pragapati, the lord, in which there are but small
traces left of the solar germ
from whence they sprang. Some of them remind us of the language
of the Psalms; and
one imagines that a deity such as Pragapati or Visvakarman would
really have satisfied
the monotheistic yearnings, and constituted the last goal in the
growth of the religious
sentiment of the ancient Aryans of Indra. But this, as we shall
see, was not to be." This
was not to be; because men having lost their faith in the one
supreme Creator could not
return to Him until they were taught to abandon their false
gods, forsake their Pantheon,
and give back to the True God the glory due to His name.
Meanwhile, in evidence that
Polytheism has always struggled unconsciously towards the truth,
we may quote the
Vedic hymn referred to: "He the One God, whose eyes are
everywhere, whose mouth,
whose arms, whose feet are everywhere; he, when producing heaven
and earth, forges
them together with his arms and with the wings." " Beyond the
sky, beyond the earth,
beyond the Devas and the Asuras, what was the first germ which
the waters bore,
wherein all gods were seen?" "You will never know him who
created these things;
something else stands between you and him. Enveloped in mist,
and with faltering voice,
the poets walk along rejoicing in life." There are a few such
tributes to the creator
dispersed in the Rig-Veda, which, notwithstanding that they are
addressed to different
beings, are proofs that the true God never left Himself without
a witness. To quote Max
Muller once more: " With such ideas as these springing up in the
minds of the Vedic
poets, we should have thought that the natural development of
their old religion would
have been towards Monotheism, towards the worship of one
personal God, and that thus
in Indra also the highest form would have been reached which man
feels inclined to give
to the Infinite, after all other forms and names have failed."
2. These extracts have been given as illustrating the most
interesting and affecting
phenomenon in the history of the race: its struggles to return
from its wanderings to God.
On a smaller scale the same evolution has been going on, and,
alas, is still going on,
throughout the earth. And the science which makes this history
the basis of some great
generalizations is called the Science of Religion or Comparative
Theology. The study is
of great importance, and yields great advantage to the Christian
Cause, though it is
generally prosecuted in a spirit of opposition to the exclusive
claims of Christianity.
(1.) It brings boundless evidence from every corner of the earth
and from every tribe of
humanity that it is of the very nature of man to inquire after
the Creator of the world he
lives in. The entire sphere of sensible objects around him, and
of perceptible forces
above him, have been deified only in the service of a higher and
nobler desire to
penetrate through all these to the One beyond: appealing to Him
always as Creator, or at
least thinking of Him and addressing Him as the Author and
Disposer of all things. As
the ancient Vedic poets perpetually uttered their protests
against the Devic idolatry, so all
the bards and prophets of every religion have shown their sense
of something behind the
crowded sphere of their lower divinities. Either as the Great
Spirit of the far West, or the
Aditi, the Infinite, of the far East or the Moira, Destiny, of
the Greeks, or the Jupiter
Optimus Maximus of the Romans, there is in every religion or
mythology some name
that stands as a symbol of the One Supreme as yet unknown. There
are thought to be a
few exceptions: in the early religion of the Chinese and of the
Germans it may be hard to
trace these tendencies to Monotheism. But this is mainly because
the archives are
wanting to complete the evidence. And certain it is that the
process of time and of
reformation has brought out the latent tendency. This last point
is of importance: almost
every ancient form of religion has had its eras of reform; and
most of those reforms have
been Monotheistic in the long run if not immediately so. China
might seem to deny this;
it was in the earliest ages more Pantheistic than any other
nation, and, after receiving the
reformation of Confucius, fell under the influence of Buddhism.
But through all Chinese
philosophy there runs the idea of the Primitive Force, Yang, and
primitive matter, Ju.
Ischuhi in due time rose above this dualism and regarded these
as the two faces of one
sole primitive being, Tai-Ky. This seems pure Pantheism; but
Pantheism, whether in East
or West, has been the refuge of the minds of men from many gods
in one Eternal Self of
the universe, its one Cause if not its Creator.
(2.) The study tends greatly to serve the cause of the Christian
religion by showing the
incomparable superiority of the records of revelation. The Bible
is the sole book of the
so-called sacred books of the world which contains one, and one
only, and one consistent
account of the origin of all things. The difference between that
account and every other
extant in literature is not simply one of degree: the degree
cannot be estimated. In every
other document, even the noblest fragments of the Veda not
excepted, the hints are
obscure and inconsistent, the tributes are paid to different
beings, or to the same being
under different names, and sometimes there are most incongruous
associations
introduced. But in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
there is one most
heavenly hymn to the Creator which has no single discordant note
from the first verse of
Genesis In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth
1
This generic word embraces all those systems of antiquity which
strove to explain the
contradictions manifest in the universe by tracing all things up
to two irreconcilable
principles; In respect to creation, it assigned to matter in
some form an eternal
independent existence, or, if not an existence independent, at
least an existence as
necessary to human thought as that of the Eternal Energy that
moulds it. This is its
differential element in relation to Pantheism. The one says that
God is in all things, or
that all things are God; the other says that God
1. There is a sense in which the notion of a perpetual conflict
pervaded all the religious
ideas of antiquity. The sovereignty of one God not being firmly
held, there was no settled
theory either as to creation or as to the supremacy of one Being
in the midst of its
disharmonies. Even in the best philosophies the world was the
theatre of a mysterious
struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, and the step
was easy from this to a
contest between powers above visible nature, and the evil that
was manifest in nature
itself. Running through all species of ancient Pantheism and
Polytheism there is a stream
of Dualism that cannot be hid, There is hardly a form of ancient
mythology which did
not, more or less distinctly, set over against each other two
opposite forces, and distribute
its higher powers accordingly; though sometimes introducing a
mysterious synthesis of
the two by a profound instinct of the truth. We may go farther,
and say that this idea
unconsciously plays its part in almost every system of thought,
Pantheistic or
Polytheistic, in ancient and modern times.
2. The most remarkable expression of the principle, in itself
the most elaborate and in its
influences the most lasting, was that of Zoroaster, the reformer
of Persian Dualism.
Before his time Iranian religion was Polytheistic, with a
tendency to divide all spiritual
powers into two conflicting orders, good and evil; his reform,
about twelve hundred years
3. Certainly the Dualism which we meet with in the Gnostic
heresies of the early
Christian ages was not more nearly related to Zoroastrianism
than to the later
speculations of Greek philosophy. From the former it derived the
idea of an eternal opposition
of light and darkness; and of the Divine operation conceived as
the emanation of
rays or aeons of existence decreasing in intensity until they
reach the darkness of matter,
where all evil is. From the latter it derived its philosophical
idea of matter, as a certain
indeterminate and undefinable principle, existent, and yet not
existing, having in it the
possibility of all things, not personal, without intelligence,
and the material out of which
phenomena are woven. The creation in the Gnostic systems was not
the work of the
Eternal God. Nor was it eternal in any sense, save as spiritual
existences for ever flow
from the source of light. As matter it was already eternal, in
the shape of the kenoma, or
empty void, outside of the
plhroma, constituting the perfect revelation of the God of true
existence. The bridge between the Abyss or buthos of substantial being and the material
visible world was the fall of the last of the emanations into
matter, and producing the
Demiurgus (or Earth-former), or soul of the world. The infinite
varieties of the Gnostic
systems were efforts to account for the contact between the
Eternal Spirit and matter, the
seal of all darkness and source of all evil. The result was a
Creator, who, first conceived
of as unconsciously carrying out the Divine purposes, is at last
made the diametrical
opposite of God. The history of Gnosticism, in which the Dualist
idea sought to
Christianize itself, but in. vain, which the Christian Church
cast out, stage after stage,
until its final overthrow as Manichaeism, is worthy of profound
study. But a few remarks
in relation to our present subject are all that is necessary
here.
(1.) The whole system was a vast and bewildering attempt to
bridge over the impassable
gulf between the Infinite and the finite. It was one
contribution towards solving a
problem that has taxed the human mind and baffled it from the
beginning. Starting from a
principle, the origin of which no man knows, that matter is
inherently evil, the question
was to account for its existence without disparaging the
Supreme. It was assumed that the
Eternal Being permitted an aeon from Himself to transgress the oros, or boundary of His
own essence, and produce from matter, either by creating it, as
some said, or quickening
it as others, all creaturely existence. In human souls good and
evil elements were mixed;
and to undo the work of the Demiurge or creator of this
confusion was the work of
redemption. The task of the Christ, a new aeon sent forth to
assume the docetic
semblance of matter, was to bring back the stray emanations that
had become imprisoned
in the world, to release man therefore from the body, his
resurrection being "past
already," and either to annihilate matter absolutely or to leave
it to its empty chaos. The
wildness of these systems was only equaled by their
inconsistency. They left the
impassable oros where
they found it. They sought to trace what, in modern times, would
be called the law of continuity from the creation upwards to the
Deity, or from the
Creator downwards to the creation. And they thought they found
it in the gradual
attenuation of the light emanations until they passed over the
boundary, and mixed with
the darkness of matter beyond. But they were for ever vexed by
two great anomalies.
First, the Divine Pleroma was supposed to give out aeons urged
by love and desire which
degraded the eternal essence down to the point of lusting after
the material void. And,
secondly, they either regarded that material void as eternally
existing, or they supposed
that the Supreme permitted the Demiurge to create it as the
element of all future evil.
(2.) The sublime doctrine of the relation of the Eternal Son to
the creature is the only
secret of the continuity which is taught, the only bridge
between the Creator and the
creature. He is the Mediator—if such a use of the term may be
allowed—between the
Infinite and the finite, between God and the creature. With
their eyes on the rising
Gnosticism that was to disturb the Church St. Paul and St. John
often use expressions
which cannot be well understood but as laying down the truth
concerning the Son, as the
Archeegón teés Zooeés and the Archee tees ktiseos,
And He Who was the First
begotten before every creature,
At the opposite pole of Pantheism stands Materialism as the
philosophical or scientific
antagonist of the Scriptural doctrine of the Creator and
creation: opposite poles, however,
of one and the same sphere of thought. Pantheism gives the
notion of God the preeminence,
all things phenomenal being His eternal but ever-changing
vesture;
Materialism gives matter the pre-eminence, as the only substance
that is, and regards
what men call God as the unknown law by which that substance is
governed in all its
evolutions. Strictly speaking, Materialism proper has no place
here. It is simply a
question of science and scientific speculation; being, as
touching the created universe, a
pure negative, that can neither prove itself nor disprove
anything else.
COMMON PRINCIPLES.
Certain fundamental principles are common to the Materialism of
all ages. Denying the
distinction of matter and spirit it denies the existence of
spirit altogether; and soul or
spirit, being only one particular form of the existence or
function of matter, is immortal
only in the sense that matter is indestructible and in some form
or other will for ever go
on producing the same phenomena. Religion has no place in this
system. It makes that the
strange fantasy which it is the unaccountable habit of the brain
of man almost universally
to beget: all its hopes and fears and aspirations perish with
the organism that gave them
birth. Discarding religion, it nevertheless has always prided
itself on being a philosophy.
As such, it must of necessity investigate the origin of things.
One of the eccentricities of
what we call thought is that matter must seek to know its own
beginning, and the reason
of its existence. Its futile speculations perish, like its
religion, with every individual
thinker's brain; yet, like its religion, these are transmitted
from age to age. But its
questions are never answered. Thinking matter can only say of
itself that it must always
have existed since it now exists; that it knows nothing about
any power that could have
brought it into being; that it has no explanation whatever of
the difference between itself
as inanimate, and itself as endowed with life; and, in short,
that it can only say,
unconsciously echoing the eternal truth which it will not
receive, " I am that I am." If it is
not its own creator it at least will know of no other. But the
very word creation is
abhorrent to the system from beginning to end.
HISTORY OF MATERIALISM.
These fundamental principles, however, have been variously
molded, from generation to
generation. There is a history of Materialism as there is a
history of Pantheism and
Dualism. With that theology has nothing directly to do, but it
may be of indirect
advantage to indicate the lines of development as they have been
directed consciously or
unconsciously by opposition to revealed truth. All the
principles of Materialism were laid
down by ancient heathenism; they have been asserted in direct
opposition to Christianity
as a revelation of God; and, lastly, they are now sought to be
established in the interests
of pure science, which answers every Christian suggestion by
either perfect indifference
or an appeal to universal nescience. A few words on each of
these points in its order.
ANTIQUITY.
The Materialism of ancient times was atheistic; and, as such, in
professed antagonism to
the predominant schools of thought, Eastern and Western.
Epicurus, an Athenian
philosopher of the fourth century before Christ, is sometimes
regarded as its founder. .
From the remains handed down to us we gather that his system
contained most of the
ideas which rule modern thought on this question. He set out
with the principle which
Lucretius, his disciple, has thus formulated: Ex nihilo nihil,
in nihilum nil posse reverti.
The universe he regarded as infinite: infinite in the number of
bodies, infinite in the space
that holds them. The elements of which all bodies are
constituted are indivisible, atom,
and unchangeable,
ametablhtoa. These atoms, endowed from eternity with movement
which makes them meet, combine into aggregates, whether smaller
or larger as in the
celestial spaces. As to this world, to pan esti soma. What we know we know
through our
senses; and when the organs perish the functions perish.
Epicurus entirely dismissed the
idea of Providence. If he admitted the existence of gods, it was
only in the interest of
prudence, the one criterion of his morals. " All is false that
is commonly said about the
gods: there is no truth in the chastisements they are supposed
to inflict on men, nor in the
rewards they assign to the good." " There are gods, and the
knowledge we have of them
is certain; but they are not what the vulgar suppose. The
impious man is not he who
refuses to believe in the gods of the common people, but he who
accepts them as they
do." His was an Atheism disguised, as Cicero says: " Video
nonnullis videri Epicurum,
ne in offensionem Atheniensium caderet, verbis reliquisse deos,
re sustulisse." Thus
Epicurus gathered up the fragments of Leucippus and Democritus,
and gave them
through Lucretius a form ready for future science. And, as his
physical system anticipated
much that modern times have more fully formulated, so his moral
system was a favorable
sketch of the highest ethics of Materialism. With him virtue is
only the means, the
prudential means, to the end of peace and tranquility. While
Plato sought the sovereign
good in resemblance to God, and Zeno in conformity with
universal law, Epicurus went
no farther than the attainment of as near an approach as
possible to the tranquil rest of
nature, and the utmost enjoyment of life. Let us eat and drink, far to-morrow we die,
When we speak of Atheism proper, we speak of a phase of the
controversy touching a
great First Cause of creation, which has, for reasons hereafter
to be given, almost passed
away. The word is not in favor; it is renounced even by those
whose reasoning naturally
lead to it; let other terms be used and they have no objection
to a disguised god, either
nameless or with the name they prefer; but Atheism they reject
as unphilosophical. But,
before reaching this more modern phase of the scientific
Materialistic form of it, we must
make some remarks on Atheism proper, which has aimed to rid the
creation of a Creator
and of a God.
1. The question may be fairly asked, is blank Atheism or
Antitheism possible to the
human mind? And the answer must be finally given that it is not.
The appeal may be
made to Scripture: an appeal which ought to be allowed, whether
for the conclusion of all
strife or not, since it is undeniable that the Bible contains
the largest and noblest
collection of the world's religious thoughts. Throughout the
whole of this book, which
gives its testimony to the whole variety of human error, there
is no single allusion to men
from whose minds the thought of God is erased. The book
demonstrates everything about
the Deity but His existence: it never descends to argue with an
Atheist, for it never
supposes that it speaks to such a man. Besides the wicked who
say onto God, Depart
from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways,
And that is all our present argument requires.
2. Atheism proper, as distinguished from other forms of the
error that goes astray from
God, has mostly sprung from moral causes, and denotes therefore
a system of thought
which the healthiest instinct of mankind has always abhorred.
The early history of our
race bears witness that the Atheist was counted unworthy of any
respect. The denial of
the existence of the gods was proscribed and punished. Even
those systems of thought
which tended to the removal of faith were careful to disguise
their attack on the gods.
Epicurus in words acknowledged their possible existence. After
the appearance of our
Lord professed atheism was very rare, until the general
corruption of society in the last
century. And, in fact, the term in theology is reserved for a
state of feeling produced by
many diversified moral causes, which culminated in the excesses
of the French
Revolution.
3. Since that time Atheism has been scientific, philosophical,
and generally disguised
under the name of
4. There may be said to be a modern
1
If what has been said is true, then Materialism, makes matter
its god. There must be
absolute existence: matter is eternal, self-sufficient,
infinite, necessary, and the only
being. Scientific Materialism, strictly so called, is based upon
two principles which it
sometimes postulates, though unreasonably, and sometimes seeks
to prove, but
unsuccessfully. One of them is negative, that there is nothing
but matter in existence; and
the other is positive, that matter in its combinations and modes
of evolution is an
adequate cause of all phenomena. It may be objected that this is
inverting the order of
materialistic argument, which first proves that nothing but the
laws of matter are needed
to give a reason for all that exists, and then by the principle
of the "sufficient reason "
renounces all other existence. Yielding to this objection,
though denying its truth, let us
glance at the principles of the positive argument, and then at
the negative conclusion:
abstaining, however, from scientific controversy, which is
generally not within our
compass.
1. We need only mention two necessary demonstrations at which
Materialism aims, in
which, however, it signally fails: the correlation of physical
and vital forces, and the
correlation of these with mental and what we call spiritual
forces. Here are the stumblingblocks
of Materialism, over which it has hitherto fallen, and must for
ever fall. Until these
are established this system has no claim to be considered as
based on inductive science.
For simplification, we may drop the last link, that of the
mental forces; and then the
question becomes this: Is life one mode of the motion of that
force which is supposed to
be one, persistent and indestructible in the universe of
material atoms? Scientific
Materialism has at length, though not without diffidence and
many haltings, come to the
conclusion that it is so. Taking the material sun for its god—
for every theory, like every
man, must have a god—it finds in it the original force,
potential everywhere and kinetic
everywhere, of every movement in the sum of human things. Of the
power beyond that
made the sun what it is—the god behind the god— it has nothing
to say. Now, so long as
this law is limited to physical changes, it may be accepted: it
has to fight its own battle.
But when it carries the law into the sphere of life, it not only
denies the truth of Scripture,
but ceases to have even that measure of probability which the
theory of the
interchangeableness of physical forces has. For a considerable
time the argument from
analogy was relied on. It was thought unphilosophic to stop
short, after having discovered
the one secret up to the limits of vital force: at any rate, the
temptation was very strong to
include the forces of life and thought under the one law. But
the phenomena rebelled. It
has been found utterly impossible to carry it into this other
region. Life and thought have
never submitted to measurement and quantification. Dead matter
has never been changed
into living. It is idle to speak of the correlation of physical
and living or mental force,
until the latter can be measured by the same standard as the
former. The entrance of life
into the sphere of matter is the annihilation of Materialism. It
cannot explain that secret
whereby something in the individual appropriates dead matter,
suitable to its own type of
existence. Materialists themselves acknowledge that this secret
is hid from them; and
vainly disguise their impotence by adopting such terms as "
directive agency," or "
architectonic principle/' or " formative impulse." Whence comes
this principle of eternal
difference between dead and living matter? Though denying it in
words, Materialism
touches, nevertheless, in reality the interaction of another set
of forces besides those
which reign in physics. This it will be driven finally to
acknowledge. Materialists have
done service by fixing attention upon the deep truth that there
is a correlation between
these forces; a most mysterious and wonderful interaction
between the phenomena of
physical and spiritual life. Well for them if they would learn,
on their side, to distinguish
things that differ.
2. Meanwhile, the system is chargeable with the utmost possible
outrage upon the
rational convictions of mankind. It is essentially atheistic in
its tendency, if all who
espouse these principles are not Atheists. There is a large
number of those who bind up
with matter and molecular action all kinds of life and thought
while they admit the
possibility of an inscrutable force behind or above all this;
but they either deny the
possibility of knowing anything about this unknown power, or
they absolutely limit it to a
force which has no operation save through matter. It may be
safely affirmed that those
who adopt the leading principles of Materialism either are or
soon become Atheists. And,
renouncing God, everything that confers dignity on man or
worthiness on life is gone.
The system denies the existence of anything beyond matter: it
takes away from man his
spirit, his immortality, his all. It ought to deny him the
consciousness of personal identity;
its principles lead that way; for if man is only material, and
the particles of his physical
self are every moment changing, and undergo a total change in
the course of a few years,
what can be the substratum of his identity? It dares not take
that away; but it takes away
all that makes it important Materialism is the most irrational
error that ever misled the
human mind; and to the holder of it, if to any, applies the
Apostle's apostrophe, áfroon!
Positivism has been dignified by the name of a philosophy. Its
founder, Auguste Comte,
was a legacy of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth, and of
French Encyclopsedism
and St. Simonianism to modern science. The result of his labors
is a philosophy of the
physical sciences which is almost entirely limited to induction,
renouncing all thought of
the causes of things, tracing simply the sequences of nature,
and so ascertaining its laws,
with a professed rejection of everything that is merely
speculative or probable, and stern
limitation of knowledge to what can be demonstrated beyond
doubt, and is therefore
Positive. To construct such a philosophy certain fundamental
principles were adopted,
which, however, are far from being positively determined: such
as that nothing exists of
which our senses do not assure us; that there is nothing
existent but matter; that all
phenomena are subject to invariable laws which it is the
business of science to register,
and only to register; that these laws are simply relations of
succession and resemblance;
that in the cerebral phenomena of mind they are as absolutely
physical in their necessary
sequence as any other observed phenomena, only that they require
greater care in
observation; and that the highest aim of science should be to
forecast by scientific
prevision the certain future of human actions, just as the
courses of the planets may be
predicted. Hence the Positive Philosophy, interpreting the
possible future by the past, and
the necessary laws of human action which it has discovered,
exults in the ambition to
reduce the infinite complications of human freewill and
congregated action to the
exactness of a physical science. " I will venture to say that
sociological science, though
only established by this book, already rivals mathematical
science itself, not in precision
and fecundity, but in positivity and rationality." This
assertion of Comte was not empty
declamation. Both he and his followers have surveyed the history
of the world on this
principle, and are full of confidence that by mastering the laws
of human action they will
provide the ordained rulers of the world's social fabric. But
Sociology is never far from
Religion; and the Positive Philosophy is no exception to the
universal rule that every
system of thought that commands human attention must deserve it
by at least attempting
to account for the principles that men call their faith. What
then is the relation of this
philosophy to Religion?
1. First, Positivism has its method of accounting for the
religions that now are, before it
substitutes its own. It sets out with the broad generalization
that the human race passes
through three stages of intellectual evolution. First comes that
in which the supernatural
haunts the thought, seeking for causes of things, and inventing
a Deity with all His court
to account for them: this theological stage works itself slowly
upwards from abject superstition,
such as Fetichism, through the Polytheistic and Pantheistic '
systems, up to
Christianity. Secondly comes the Metaphysical stage, in effect
only a modification of the
first: that in which the ideas of abstract forces, or occult
powers, are introduced to
account for the phenomena of the universe by those who have
rejected the idea of a
Creator. Thirdly and lastly, comes the Positive stage, in which
the mind, ashamed of its
superstitions, and wearied of its ontological researches, limits
itself to the arrangement of
phenomena When this generalization is examined it explodes
immediately. It is not true
historically; nor has it any right to govern a philosophy of
history. It is undoubtedly
correct as an explanation of the career of many individual
minds, which have passed
through the phases of simple faith in God, and metaphysical,
pantheistic, or dualistic
subtitles that have been substituted for it, ending in a dreary
determination to accept only
what is, and to leave the rest to nescience. The celebrated
"three stages" have not the
slightest value, save as registering the progress of faith
through skepticism to unbelief.
2. The Positive Philosophy has its religion. For, in its
fidelity to the observation and
record of positive facts, it finds nothing more positive than
the universal aspiration of
mankind towards the unseen and the all but universal practice of
some kind of worship.
Now these facts must not be accounted for theologically or
metaphysically: that is to say,
there must be no God; nor must any force, making for what it
may, be substituted. It is a
positive fact which must be dealt with philosophically and
socially. But, looked at in
either light, the Positivist way of treating man's religion is a
gigantic inconsistency.
(1.) This last development of the scientific spirit refuses to
carry the inductive principle
into the region of the mental and emotional and active phenomena
of mankind. It
observes and notes these things; but with the foregone
conclusion that they are the result
of a certain combination of material atoms, and development of
these forces not yet
perfectly accounted for. Forced by its hypothesis to exclude all
metaphysical or occult
causes on the one hand, and swayed, on the other hand, by the
despotism of the desire to
find the unity of all things, it notes and registers all the
mental and spiritual phenomena
of mankind, the thoughts that penetrate the lowest depths, and
the aspirations that shrink
not from the highest heights, as so many new facts concerning
matter. Now here is the
deep inconsistency of the whole system. The innumerable
phenomena of thought, feeling,
and will are as much facts as gravitation, cohesion, and
molecular motion. The same
consciousness guarantees both: the one as referring to the self,
and the other as belonging
to not-self. The testimony of conscience asserts that the
continuity is broken between
these; that they go together up to a certain point, and then
separate; not taking two paths,
however, for there is an illimitable gulf between. The world of
concepts, imaginations,
feelings, and emotions, absolutely unallied with matter, is a
real world, and ought to be
dealt with as such. Positivism shuts its eyes to the positive
fact that this ideal world
governs the other material world, and is not governed by it.
(2.) Socially, Positivism uses, or would use, the religious
instincts—by whatever name
known—of mankind for the good of the body corporate. It must
have its objective creed;
and the only positive thing to believe in, venerate, and worship
is Humanity: " The Great
Collective Life of which human beings are the individuals. It
must be conceived as
having an existence apart from human beings, just as we conceive
each human being to
have an existence apart from, though dependent on, the
individual cells of which his
organism is composed. This Collective Life is, in Comte's
system, the Etre Supreme; the
only one we can know, therefore the only one we can worship."
This being the first
article of the New Creed, its last, as the substitute for
Resurrection and Immortality, is "
Living in the remembrance" of survivors. Here, it must strike
everyone, is another proof
of a fact that has forced itself upon us everywhere, that no
system is without its god: the
human mind can no more think without that condition than without
the conditions of time
and space. Positivism must have its something beyond, and above,
and surviving its
material nature. What is its abstract humanity but the creature
worshipped para ton
Ktisanta, instead of the Creator?
SECONDARY CREATION, OR COSMOGONY.
The Wisdom of God, accompanying His Power, presides over
Creation as secondary, that
is, as Formation. It is necessary to establish a distinction
between the first production of
matter and its subsequent elaboration, if such a term may be
used, into the Cosmos,
which brings us into the region of Cosmogony or Cosmology. It is
important to consider
whether the terms used by the inspired writer permit the
distinction. Generally, it may be
said that asah kara
and to in the Hebrew, are used
interchangeably for both, answering to
ktizo in the Greek, and that they do not distinguish between
the first creation and the
second each being equally the act of omnipotence. But the double
expression Created
and Made
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.
The authoritative account of Creation found in Genesis is not,
of course, what in modern
language would be called scientific. It is given in the form of
an express revelation from
God Himself, before man or his science existed; given as the
basis of all subsequent
revelation to Israel, for the Hebrew observance of the Sabbath
is essentially bound up
with it; but given also for all mankind, the Genesis out of
which all human history sprang.
Receiving it as such, we have first to consider its own
teaching: its relation to other
systems is a subordinate matter, but must be looked at also in
its place.
1. It is important to remember that it furnishes an account of
all creation, whether primary
or secondary; but with special reference to the latter, in the
preparation of the earth for
the history of man and redemption. Strictly speaking, there is
no distinction between
these; the six days' work, we are told subsequently, included
the universe: In six days the
Lord made heaven and the earth.
The record has not for its object the details of creation as
such; but only so far as they
concern the coming history of mankind. This is thought to be
obvious from the
distinction between heaven and earth in the first verse, and the
suppression of heaven in
the second. The silence that reigns after the first great
declaration is regarded as at once a
warning and an encouragement both to theology and to geology:
only there can the
reconciliation be sought, and there it may be found. But,
whatever of truth there may be
in this, it still remains that the six days' work of creation
blends the primary and
secondary in one: the sabbatic commandment in the Decalogue
being witness.
2. The interpretation of the days must conform to this truth.
Accordingly, we may
understand the sublime description to mean that the enormous
cycles of creative activity,
the epochs of God whose periods are not as ours, are presented
to us in our history as
human epochs. There is then a double series of days, an upper
and a lower, the one
corresponding to the other. The upper and heavenly are the great
cycles of creation which
ended in the sabbatic cycle of the reconstructed economy with
man at its head. The lower
and earthly are the form they take to us in the representation
of literal days, ending on the
seventh day, hallowed for ever: each of our working days being
used to symbolize its
own term in the secondary creation of God, and our literal
Sabbath His rest. The first day
is the most comprehensive, including all down to the production
of light: one period of
untold duration which it pleased God to call a human day, with
its evening and morning.
The last day is the long sabbatic rest with God, with man it is
the hallowed day of rest. It
is quite consistent with this that the record of the first day
is left in such obscurity. It is in
harmony with the simplicity of the early record to leave the
unwritten history of the
primitive earth to the researches of science, for which the
Spirit of revelation has reserved
this honor; and to regard the narrative as specially limiting
the
3. The glory of the Mosaic Cosmogony is its testimony to God,
Who reigns supreme in it
from beginning to end, whether as the Elohim of the first
chapter, or the Jehovah-Elohim
of the second. He is the Absolute Creator of a universe which is
not Himself, evolved
according to laws which in this record are exhibited as
successively communicated by a
series of fiats or impulses. The beginning of each great
development is marked, and
nothing more. So long as we hold fast this principle we shall
find the original document
unassailable: if we attempt to harmonies the order of the days
with the exact results of
scientific discovery we undertake a needless and a doubtful
task. Science has nothing to
object against a Creator of matter and of life: it knows no
other origin of existence
phenomenal. Whether, and at what points, the creating impulse
infused new energies into
the order of nature, science is utterly powerless to say. But
the Bible distinctly, most
distinctly, gives its answer: what science may call permanent
causes were necessarily
introduced: no induction has ever proved the contrary, however
sometimes longing to do
so. The reign of law is a favorite scientific notion: the
adaptation of everything to its
specific function, and the invariable submission of all things
to its rule. The Scripture is
no less precise: He
commanded and they were created; He hath also stablished them for
ever and ever; He hath made a decree which shall not pass.
THE ORDER OF THE MOSAIC CREATION.
1. The record of Genesis divides the creation into two parts:
the inorganic and the
organic. Each begins by the creation of light: on the first day,
light cosmical, the radiating
force of light and heat, with its medium of ether; on the fourth
day, light as connected for
man with visible light-bearers. No valid objection arises here:
science knows nothing of
the amazing quantity of light which is dispersed from the son
and stars, an infinitesimal
portion only of which is intercepted by attendant planets; nor
can it give any account of
the origination of light and heat in the sun. On the second day,
the earth was
individualized as such, by the creation of its atmosphere;
against this also there is no
scientific argument. On the third day the earth's surface was
constituted, and vegetation
began. The Biblical relation of land to sea is in harmony with
geological conclusions. But
the question is, whether all the previous conditions of the
terrestrial economy were
sufficient to bring plants into existence without a creative
fiat. Science admits a
With the fifth day animal life began, for which the partial
organic life of the vegetable
prepared the way; and on the sixth day the inhabitants of the
earth were formed, including
man, but created according to a larger variety of types. The
whole account is in the
simplest form of words; but bears witness to a profound method.
Each era preludes that
which follows; each day is prophetic of the next; and while man
is included among the
mammalia his pre-eminence is asserted, as we shall hereafter
see. The whole bears
precisely the relation to science which we should expect in a
record dated before science
was known: giving the great outline which He alone could furnish
Who was there from
the beginning, and which He gave to a chosen people to be the
first fragment of
revelation.
2. He alone was there from the beginning; but as the days moved
on in their slow
procession His works were watched by other intelligences whose
creation belonged to the
first day; though of that the record gives no distinct account,
being intended for man
alone. What the book of Genesis may be in other worlds we know
not. Our record is
limited to ourselves. But we mark the chasms in it which we
cannot supply: or which we
can supply only by dangerous speculation. The great convulsion
in the spiritual world is
omitted: the fall of the angels, and its possible connection
with the destiny of our earth. It
has been a favorite hypothesis to assume that between the first
verse and the second there
is a break; that the words
the earth was without form and void
In almost all the religious annals of mankind there are to be
found traditions of the
creation, which, for the most part, are entirely independent of
the Hebrew Scriptures as to
their origin, while their form is often strikingly parallel with
the Mosaic account They are
found among nations to which the Hebrew Scriptures could never
have penetrated, from
the ancient Aryan tribes to the islands of the Pacific. Yet a
few points, common to all,
seem to indicate one primeval Cosmogony, of which, as we
believe, the Biblical is the
genuine text. In the Indian Vedas the Eternal One thought " I
will create worlds," and
water came into existence, with the germs of all life; but we
read of the original chaos,
the formless mist, in which being was mirrored, and the creative
word. In the Persian
Zendavesta, Ormuzd, the god of light, as well as Ahriman, the
god of darkness, arose out
of the abyss of primitive being; the former fashioned the world
in six long successive
periods, a remarkable parallel with the account in Genesis. With
this agrees most
strangely the Etruscan cosmogony from quite a different quarter.
In the Egyptian, as
handed down by Diodorus Siculus, the moving wind separated
heaven and earth out of
chaos, and the successive periods of formation followed. In the
Phoenician the origin of
all was a dark, windy chaos, on which the Spirit rested;
producing the original matter of
creation. Hesiod's Theogony begins with the universal void, and
goes on with an order of
production that strangely agrees with our record, though many of
the details are inverted.
Not unlike this is the Latin, according to Ovid's version. In
all these the chaos, the
brooding spirit, and the successive separations and creations of
Genesis, appear in some
form or other. But there the parallel mostly ends. The grotesque
and utterly extravagant
conceits from which every instinct recoils, and of which the
imagination is ashamed, —
the " world-egg " playing a prominent part from China to the
South Seas—place a great
gulf between all the cosmogonies of the world and the sublime
simplicity of the record in
which faith hears the voice of God and nought beside.
With the modern, or rather the revived, theories of Evolution,
the Cosmogony of science,
we have nothing to do save as they are related to theology. They
are considered at this
point, because they are not necessarily to be placed among
Pantheistic, Dualistic, or
Materialist errors. Undoubtedly, they are propounded by many in
these three several
interests, or rather in the interests of the first and last of
the three. But it cannot be too
distinctly remembered that their entire terminology, almost from
beginning to end,
implies that they are describing the production of all things
phenomenal out of things that
do not appear through the operation of some laws which
necessarily connote a power
guiding the law. Evolution is either the law by which that power
constructs the inorganic
universe, or that by which it orders the development of life in
all its manifestations.
Bold hypothesis, sustained by mathematical science, has assumed
that elementary matter
existed in a highly attenuated state, for the expression of
which every material word is too
gross. This nebula, fire-mist, or dust of creation had in it or
received all the powers and
potentialities of the vast future. Some flash of energy threw
this silent depository of all
known laws into eternal activity. Rotation, radiation, cooling,
produce centrifugal force
which detaches the nucleus of future planets, and these by known
laws necessarily
seeking their origin again are thrown into orbits, meanwhile
throwing off in their turn,
during the process, attendants of their own. On the vastest
scale this is the universe; on a
smaller scale the solar system; on the smallest scale our little
earth with its endless
molecular, chemical, and dynamical laws. But the central fires
are not lighted to burn for
ever. The dissipation of heat must sometime bring all motion to
a standstill; for that heat,
so far as science knows, does not return to its place. Systems
must therefore collapse, to
engender heat for other great evolutions into system. But this
cannot go on for ever. The
beginning of any system can be calculated; so can its end. This
rough sketch of the
Nebular Hypothesis gives us a Cosmogony which is not
inconsistent with the Scriptural
Genesis as to its beginning; nor is it inconsistent with the
prophecies of Scripture, as to its
end. But the gigantic fallacy is that such mathematicians as
Laplace should think that
they have no need of the hypothesis of a God; and that such
philosophers as Hegel should
say that the final cause of the universe is only its inward
nature. Whence the forces
residing in matter? Whence the beautiful order into which it
falls? Whence the variety of
elementary substances with all their endowments of gravitation,
chemical affinity, and
magnetic attraction? And how could these evolve the minds that
make them all objective,
and, by becoming their historians, show that they are themselves
of another and a higher
order?
ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT.
One of the most remarkable evolutions of modern science is the
attempt to account for
the phenomena by assuming the principle that from one primordial
germ all the infinite
varieties of organic life have been developed through a very
long series of ages. Perhaps,
it would be more fair to say that students of natural history
have thought themselves
justified, by a great number of observations, in supposing this
to be the law of the living
universe. But whether they work downwards from a bold
hypothesis, or work upwards by
bold generalizations, the fact remains the same, that this is
what the theory known as the
Darwinian aims at. If, however, the law is not absolute, if
there are exceptions anywhere,
the simplicity of their cosmogony is gone, and the principle of
the Mosaic creation must
be conceded. The theory is most exacting. It is held by
pantheistic Positivists, who
imagine they believe in immanent final causes, and undirected
evolution; it is held also
by the Agnostic thinkers, who muse over the unknowable force
that displays such
cunning; and it is held by men who assume that the Eternal
Creator simply appointed this
method of evolving His universe. These last believe that
Heredity, the inscrutable power
of transmitting peculiarities; Natural Selection, or the
survival of nature's best types; and,
lastly, a Law Unknown in human knowledge, conduct the great
development under the
eye of the Eternal Whose rest, as the Creator of all, began not
on the seventh day but on
the first.
1. The continuity of this development suffers a fatal breach at
the outset: it has no link
between the inorganic and the organic worlds. The Mosaic Genesis
has that link; it tells
us that the Creator has prepared the material world by
progressive stages to be the
habitation of life. And the New-Testament Genesis tells us that
the development is yet
proceeding towards a consummation when all things will again be
made new. The
modern hypothesis desires that this should be left an open
question: it may hereafter
appear that under certain conditions inorganic matter may be
formed into cells containing
the germ of life, in which case the continuity would be
complete. Meanwhile, the
doctrine of Biogenesis, that all life comes from life, holds the
field against all experiment,
or rather in the strength of all experiment. Spontaneous
generation has never yet been
attested. But that is not the only gap. The genesis of a new
species of any kind, whether
of plant or animal, has never been observed by man: has the
universe come to its
consummation, and reached its sabbatic rest? Again, it is the
opinion of the majority of
those competent to speak that there are absolute limits to the
variability of species; that
many fossil transitional forms are utterly and most
conspicuously absent. And, most fatal
gap of all, the leap from the highest approximate to the
appearance of man himself is one
over a great gulf as fixed as that between Paradise and the
lower Hades. But of Man we
must speak hereafter.
2. As held by its best advocates this theory pays a high tribute
to the truth against which it
seems to contend. No writings have done so much, certainly none
have done more, to
open men's eyes to the infinite variety, and beauty, and
wonderfulness of the adjustments
of the vegetable and animal worlds, than those which are written
in opposition to the
doctrine of occasional Divine interventions in the economy of
things. Moreover, they
have called attention to some truths that are too generally
neglected as to the degree in
which it has pleased the Creator to use the principle which they
so much dishonor by
exaggeration. He has committed much to development. Within
certain limits the fauna
and the flora of our earth are replenished and beautified by
manifold variations, through
which, however, His original types are clearly seen by every
unbiased eye. They have
also taught us to appreciate the wonderful relation in which man
is placed to the creatures
whose all is bound up with the earth; that, as created out of
the dust, he is a development
of older physical types, a final development on which evolution
has spent itself, found
worthy at last to be the receptacle of an immortal spirit By
tracing so elaborately the dim
and impersonal reflections of our mental and moral
characteristics in the lower creatures,
it has read us some important lessons: pre-eminently, the
necessity of accurately
distinguishing between instinct and reason; between the only "
unconscious cerebration "
of which we ought to speak and the thought of a personal
thinker; between the animal
soul, which, using a physical brain, may have its resemblances
in the brutes that have
brains also, and the immortal spirit whose consciousness and
conscience and feeling for
the infinite can have nothing resembling them in the lower
economy. But, when this
theory of long, slow, cyclical development is burdened with the
production of all things,
the growth of moral and spiritual sentiments included, it has
two unrelenting opponents:
Science cannot allow time enough since the calculated beginning
of the solar system; and
Religion protests in the name of God, and for the honor of His
incarnate Son, and for the
dignity of man himself; the descendant of Adam, [Which was] the son of God.
1
THE MOTIVE AND END OF THE CREATION.
Supposing the Scriptural doctrine of creation established
against Pantheism, Dualism, and
Materialism, and as the free act of an Infinite Spirit, it
remains to ask concerning the
purpose of God in the production of finite nature. As soon as we
are disencumbered of
the pantheistic and materialistic notion of an immanent
necessity of all things being as
they are, and separate the finite from the Infinite, we are
compelled by the constitution of
our nature to ask the Why of creaturely existence. We must seek
and cannot rest till we
find a cause of all things before they are, and a reason of all
things when they are. The
question of the final cause is as urgent in the human spirit as
the question of the
originating cause. The latter is easily answered, and we have
been satisfied as to that. But
the former, the final cause of all things, is not so easily
answered. It might be reserved for
the doctrine of Providence, to which it strictly belongs. But it
cannot be altogether
omitted here. To the humble reader of Scripture nothing seems
more obvious than at once
to answer: The universe was brought into being for the display
of the Divine glory in the
diffusion of His communicative goodness. But, simple as this
solution seems, each
branch of it is burdened with difficulties, and the whole must
be supplemented by another
clause: according to a design the issues of which are to human
reason now, and possibly
may be for ever, unfathomable.
1. No reverent mind can doubt that the manifestation of the
Divine glory is a worthy end
of all things. But it must be remembered that the Scriptures,
our only guide, do not make
this the only end: they speak of the glory of God as being
proclaimed, and of all creatures
as brought into being for His pleasure, and for Himself; but
they do not, in express terms,
assert that the final cause of creaturely existence is the
display of the Divine attributes.
We can hardly sever from such a thought the idea of a necessary
manifestation: His glory
must be revealed, and ought not to be made subject even in
appearance to the law of
design and final causes. And, to speak with reverence, it is
difficult to avoid the
conclusion, that, if the manifestation of Deity is the final end
of creation, creation must be
made eternal. But the free determination of a personal Spirit to
bring a universe into
being must have some place in its design for that love which
neither in God nor in man
seeks only its own things. Hence the true heart of all catholic
theology has added the
second clause: in the diffusion of His communicative goodness.
2. On the other hand, while a motive of creation was undoubtedly
the communicative
goodness of God, which brought numberless beings into existence
to rejoice in them and
make them blessed, the mind cannot rest satisfied in this alone;
for the world was created
in the foreknowledge of its evil. Men who make Divine
benevolence the supreme motive
in the creation are tempted to reduce the evil of sin by making
this, as Leibnitz did, the
best possible world, on the whole, for the ultimate diffusion of
happiness. This is termed
3. The only sufficient answer, therefore, is that the ultimate
final cause of creation is
unfathomable. The supreme design is a secret not yet unveiled.
When our Lord said, in
reply to a question which closely bordered on the origin of
evil, that the works of God
should be made manifest,
Sundry comprehensive terms are used in Scripture to embrace and
describe the sum of
creaturely existence. The most convenient theological
distribution of the entire Creation
for our present purpose is that which divides it into the
Spiritual World, the Material
Universe, and Man as uniting both in himself.
The Old Testament begins its announcement of the creation of all
things by saying that
God created
Revelation gives a large place to an order of intelligences
higher than man: the history of
creation, the records of providence, and the economy of
redemption, connect them with
mankind in various ways. We now consider them simply as part of
the creation of God,
and as to their place in the economy of things. They are
everywhere designated Spirits
and Angels. Being Spirits they are represented as, to a certain
extent, independent of
matter; highly exalted in their faculties; diversified in their
range of existence; under a
law of probation; and, as a result of that probation,
distributed into two classes of good
and evil. As Angels, they are represented as attendants on the
Supreme, employed in the
service of His providence; and especially as connected for good
or evil with the history of
the Divine purpose in redemption, from its origin upon earth
throughout all its processes
to its close at the final judgment.
SPIRITS.
The name Spirits is given to these creatures of God to denote
their specific nature,
concerning which we are of necessity shut up entirely to the
teaching of Holy Scripture.
1. They occupy a sphere of existence less closely connected with
the material universe
than that of man in his present estate. Their spirituality,
however, must not be
misunderstood. It seems to be synonymous with invisibility in
the only passage which
directly links them with the creaturely universe, or records
their creation: by Christ were
all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth,
visible and invisible.
2. All spirits were created in the image of God: and their
first estate was probationary:
this law of the moral government of the Most High seems to be
universal. In the
constitution of their nature lay the possibility of falling from
their allegiance. The issue of
probation was the fall of a portion of these spirits, with One
as their head. These, sharing
his rebellion, were condemned with him. We read once of the condemnation of the devil:
Hence, they are also termed Saints: He came with ten thousands of saints.
3. While the good and unfallen spirits are generally the Holy
Angels, and the evil spirits
of Scripture are not generally termed by that name, yet these
are also represented as
subserving the purposes of the Supreme. Even if they are the
servants of their prince,
both they and he alike must directly or indirectly, by command
or by permission, do the
behest of the only Supreme Will. In the mystery of that will
they are left in the free
restraint or the restrained freedom of the sphere of the
redeeming economy. Satan is the
prince of the power of the air,
ANGELS.
The denomination Angels, which runs through the Scriptures as
pervadingly as the name
of God Himself, before Whom they stand, is used with reference
to their ministerial
service; as the Hebrew
mal'ak and the Greek aggelos
signify. With the exception of some
few passages, such as the
Devil and his angels;
1. There can be no higher description of them than that they
wait upon God. The Lord is
the Lord of hosts,
2. They are called
ministering spirits, leitourgiká pneúmata:
First Michael,
Their angels are not the guardians of children individually,
any more than Peter's angel
1
HISTORICAL.
Whatever else of theological interest belongs to Angelology may
be touched upon in a
brief notice of its historical aspects: with reference, first to
Superstition, and secondly to
Infidelity.
1. The Jewish and the Christian Churches have their respective
developments of
superstition on this subject, the former being the basis of the
latter. After the Captivity,
Jewish theology betrayed to some extent the infection of its
contact with foreign
speculations, especially in Persia: the Apocrypha abounds with
evidences of a departure
from the simple teaching of the Old Testament, as that takes its
last form in Daniel.
During the interval before the final settlement of the
New-Testament canon there appears
a tendency in the Christian Church to honor the angels unduly.
The seventh Ecumenical
Council at Nicaea, A.D. 787, concedes to them proskuneései, though not the Divine
latreúoo. The Nicene Creed, issuing from an earlier and
better Council, had declared that
they were created; and Irenaeus had protested against invocation
of angels. But the evil
made steady progress in the general corruption of Christian
doctrine, and received its
final confirmation at Trent. There is no error more distinctly
guarded against in Scripture:
Hóra meé, See thou do it not . . . worship God.
2. But infidelity sweeps away, not only the superstitious
appendages of the revealed truth
concerning angels, but the revealed truth itself. In its more
reckless form it has renounced
the whole economy of the angel world. Though the Biblical
revelation only confirms the
inferences of analogical reasoning and the universal instinct of
mankind, skepticism not
only doubts but denies the existence of beings superior to man:
thus rejecting in fact the
whole Bible with the very fabric of which this revelation is
interwoven. It specially
argues against the personality of Satan: either returning to the
Manichsean delusion of an
independent power
autothuhs and agennhtos, or
making him merely the personification
of evil which undeniably exists. But here Rationalistic
Christian theology joins the
infidel. It is enough to say that the person of the Enemy of
Christ is as distinctly presented
in the history of revelation, though not so fully described, nor
so constantly
present, as the Person of the Lord Himself. There is nothing
more remarkable, nothing
more worthy of study, than the parallel development of the
representative of sin and the
Redeemer from sin throughout the Bible. In the same way the
argument against
demoniacal possession may be met. Though Scripture allows that
suffering, as part of the
penalty of sin, is, like death itself, in some respect in the
ministry of Satan, it makes a
distinction between all trouble or wickedness arising from
within, and the torment
inflicted by evil spirits from without. There are in the New
Testament daimonizouenio,
persons demonized, who, in body and soul, if not in spirit, are
under the special influence
of daemons. That this was a reality, and not a style of language
accommodated to Jewish
notions, is evident from the combination of healing diseases and
casting out devils in the
Savior’s commission, as also from His habitually addressing
Himself to personal beings
when He cast them out. There is a grand consistency in the
Scriptural revelation on this
subject. The Old Testament gives some distant indications of
such possession; when our
Lord appears there is an outbreak of these powers on earth: but
the chief enemy is always
pre-eminent, as appears in the fact that the last Evangelist
withdraws his attention from
all besides him, never mentioning the daemons. And it is an
illustration of the same
consistency that their full force in human affairs has never
been felt since the Conqueror
said: Now shall the
prince of this world be cast out.
3. This last observation will apply to the whole topic which is
here closed: the angels
have retreated from their high preeminence. The doctrine
concerning them belongs to the
entire scheme of revelation, as in course of delivery, and
pervades every part of it. The
angel world is around us everywhere in Biblical theology, and we
must prepare ourselves
by a firm faith at the outset for the reappearance of its
representatives as we proceed
through the several doctrines. It has been viewed here only or
chiefly in its relation to the
universe as created, but at every stage in our future course it
will meet us again.
Meanwhile, it may be well to observe at this point that the
The material universe as such occupies a considerable place in
revelation, which
establishes a few cardinal principles of great importance to
theology. Matter is declared
to have been created by God, though no name is given to it;
fashioned into the orderly
arrangement of systems, it is the Kosmos; these are the result
of successive creations,
which are indicated by the term worlds. We are taught that the
universe of matter was
ordained to be the scene of life, passing through its several
stages up to life spiritual; but
the inhabitation of other worlds, and their relations to
redemption, are questions which
have little light thrown upon them in the Word of God. Lastly,
as the revelation of
Scripture concerns only that part of the universe which belongs
to man, we cannot draw
any certain conclusion as to the final destiny of the universe
of matter from the testimony
of prophecy concerning the end of our heaven and earth: we are
left to the inferences of
analogy. These general principles may be usefully applied to
many current theories and
cosmical speculations.
Matter, or ulh, has
no name in Scripture: it is indicated there generally as having been at
first without form and void, diffused, unorganized, and
lifeless. Science is left free to
discover and give its own names to the primary elements. The
atoms of the universe and
their molecular arrangements are never once alluded to: they are
left to man's discovery.
But the same God Who is the Father of spirits was the Creator of
pure matter. He impressed
their unchangeable properties upon all the particles of the
universe, created, in
their number and potentialities, like the angels, at once.
Before this truth Materialism,
ancient and modern, in its variety of forms as a theory,
vanishes. In ancient philosophy it
was the anima mundi, or soul of the world, or natura naturans that took the place of God.
Modern Materialism, through all its phases down to Positivism,
makes everything,
including the phenomena of mind, physical; and, while
acknowledging that it is as yet far
from being able to account for the facts, and that the molecular
laws of mind, feeling, and
will are perhaps undiscoverable, it nevertheless asserts that
they are the results of changes
in matter and governed by invariable laws, directed by something
inscrutable and
unknowable behind. Materialism has been the same in every age:
modern science has not
advanced one step beyond ancient philosophy; except in this,
that it gives up that vestige
of instinct towards God that Pantheism exhibited. The ancient
theorists thought of a
plastic soul in things: pan-Theism. The modern theorists think
only of matter as the
vehicle of energy: pan-Materialism. One of its tendencies is to
resolve matter into a
congregation of forces; by which it unconsciously argues itself
in a circle back to God.
Scripture, which asserts that the beginning of the living
creature was a new Divine act,
vindicates the reality of matter from the philosophy which would
resolve it into nothing.
Idealism and Realism preside over the whole range of speculation
on this subject
respectively. The former as represented by Berkeley denies the
existence, or the
possibility of proving the existence, of any substance behind
the phenomena which affect
our senses: these senses being ordained to see either in God
Himself, or according to
some unknown laws, what seems to be matter. But, however that
notion may be qualified,
it falls before the early testimony which tells us that the
material universe was formed
before there were any creatures to receive its impressions. So
all the more recent theories
of force which would annihilate objective substance as the
vehicle of energy must yield
to the evidence of a creation which preceded all life. This
hypothesis seems to breathe
into the inorganic universe a kind of life, called force, which
preceded its organic forms;
but it has no support It would seem, like Berkeley's theory, to
be a useful ally of the
theologian, in as far as it saves us from the necessity of
believing in a creation apart from
God; but the testimony of Genesis confirms the universal
realistic instinct of man, that
there is a substance behind the phenomena of matter. As it
regards the scientific theories
of the persistence of force, the conservation of energy, and the
correlation of its physical
manifestations, they do not in the slightest degree affect
theology, until they penetrate the
region of life. When it is affirmed that physical and vital
forces are correlated and
convertible—in other words, that all the phenomena of thought,
and feeling, and will, are
only transformed forces of matter—sound reasoning is violated as
well as Scripture. It
may be said that the material basis of animal and vegetable life
is something in the
molecular arrangement of its particles; and this may be called
protoplasm. But it cannot
be shown that anything but living matter communicates or feeds
life. Spontaneous generation
is a figment that Materialists have made their as yet unknown
God. The true God
giveth life, and breath,
and all things.
OTHER WORLDS.
The testimony of Revelation to the universe of other worlds than
ours is limited. But what
we have is consistent with every discovery and every rational
hypothesis of modern
science. The heavens have their host: to us an ambiguous word,
which refers either to the
worlds or to the inhabitants of those worlds, but is in the
Scripture limited to the physical
universe. As ordered in systems the universe is a kosmos, as in our Lord's words, before
the foundation of the world:
"We can interpret our meaning, at least, into those passages
which so often bid the
children of the earth to lift up their eyes and behold the
innumerable hosts of heaven.
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
THEIR COMPARATIVE INSIGNIFICANCE.
There is no grander truth revealed than the comparative
insignificance of the creature as
material. All the constellations of systems in the universe—or,
as the Scripture says, the
heavens —are the work of the Divine hand, which shall roll them up as a garment, and
they shall be changed.
Man, or mankind, occupies the noblest and most ample section in
the history of creation
as revealed in Scripture. This is in harmony with the central
place which he occupies in
Divine revelation generally, as the object around whom all
revolves. His pre-eminence as
a creature is noted in the circumstantials of dignity attending
his origin; and in the
relations he bears to the other orders of the creature. But it
is chiefly seen in the
constituent elements of his nature, reflecting the Divine Image
in which he was formed.
this being the basis of his dignity and prerogatives as the head
of the earthly creation; in
the organic unity of man as constituting one species; and the
connection between the
original estate, fall, and redemption of mankind as he was a
probationary creature.
This department is sometimes called
THE NATURE OF MAN.
The Divine record represents to us our first father, Adam, as
the end and consummation
of all creating acts, and gives his twofold nature a peculiar
relation to both the spiritual
and the material worlds. In the unity of body and soul, the one
taken from the earth and
the other breathed into him by his Maker, he is the link between
these two great spheres.
1. The bringing of man into the world is in Genesis the result
of a special design. And
God said, Let Us make man:
1
2. This gives breath of
lives a higher meaning: there is a
spirit in man,
Paul adopts that distinction for practical purposes: when he
does so, the soul and spirit
are distinguished as one the immaterial principle in relation to
the world of sense and the
other in relation to a world of spiritual realities; just as the
flesh as the material and the
body as the organization are distinguished when occasion
demands.
The Image of God is made the first note and attribute of human
nature: the first revealed
truth concerning our race declares the peculiarity of man as a
new thing in creation to be
this, that he should bear in himself the likeness of his
Creator. It was the Divine purpose,
spoken before the creating fiat was executed, that this should
be his distinction from
every other creature. Hence this image must belong to his inmost
creaturely constitution.
As such it was Essential and Indestructible: the self-conscious
and self-determining
personality of man, as a spirit bearing the stamp of likeness to
God and capable of
immortality, was the reflection in the creature of the Divine
nature. While all creatures up
to man reflect the perfections of their Creator, it is man's
distinction, made emphatic in
the act of his creation, that he alone should bear His image.
This therefore is the ground
of his dignity, and, while that dignity belongs to his nature as
a whole, it necessarily is
found in that part of his nature which is not material, and
therefore imperishable. From
beginning to end the holy record regards this image as uneffaced
and ineffaceable, and
still existing in every human being. But it also speaks of the
renewal or restoration of that
image in its moral lineaments. There is a sense then in which it
was also Accidental and
Amissible: the free spirit of man reflected the Divine holiness
in a perfect conformity of
mind, feeling, and will, which was lost through sin: not utterly
lost only because
redemption intervened. The Image of God was, according to the
sacred narrative,
concreated in man: it was in his nature, and no part of it was
super-added after his
creation. Finally, as the Eternal Son is, in the supremest
sense, Himself the Image of God,
Adam as the representative of mankind was created in or after
that Image. And, thus in
his creation related to the Second Person of the Trinity, he was
also united to the Triune
by the gift of the Holy Ghost, that breath of God which gave him
life eternal.
1. It is usual to distinguish between the Natural or permanent
and the Moral or accidental
image of God in man; it must be remembered, however, that the
moral image in a true
sense was also natural, and that in the creation there could be
no distinction. But the
distinction between the image that was indestructible and that
which might be lost has an
unqualified and necessary truth. It lies in the very notion of a
created free personality: the
freedom of the created spirit is the purest reflection of the
Divine nature, but that same
freedom involves the possibility of its excellence being lost.
That which is its highest
glory contains the secret of the possibility of its deepest
degradation. Theology cannot
take a second step unless this is admitted in its full force.
2. The distinction runs through the entire fabric of Scripture.
It is in the New Testament,
however, that we find the elements of the complete doctrine on
this subject as on every
other connected with the original and the restored condition of
mankind. It speaks of the
renewal of the regenerate into the image of the Creator as that
consisted in Original
Righteousness, or the moral image. The two cardinal passages
which must regulate our
views are in the Epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians.
In the former the Apostle
speaks of believers as having put on the new man, which is renewed (or in
process of
renewal) unto knowledge
after the image of Him that created him.
They both distinguish between the first creation and the second
in Christ, between the
ktísantos and the
ananeoústhai. The latter verb refers to the restoration of what the former
describes as originally given but lost. Both passages make the
knowledge of God—that
is, the spiritual knowledge of God—the object of the
restoration. This the latter and more
amplified passage unfolds as righteousness and holiness: the
first man knew the Creator's
law, his will was conformed to it, and he was righteous in
principle; he knew the
Creator's holiness, loved Him as holy, and was holy himself in
principle. Thus the moral
image of the Creator lost in the Fall is restored through the
putting on of the same image
as presented in Jesus Christ, the eternal Image of God
manifested in human nature. Each
of the passages speaks of putting off the old man, which is the
fallen and corrupt nature
as derived from Adam. In the former, the process is regarded as
gradual; in the latter, the
new image was stamped upon the soul in its regeneration. But the
second passage adds
what the former omits, that the Holy Spirit Who was the
conservator of the holy image in
Paradise is the agent of its renewal in redemption: be renewed
in the Spirit, the seat of
whose working is in the mind. Hence the New Testament never
speaks of a renewal of
the Divine image in man's nature as he is man: only in his
fallen nature. The
indestructible image is in both Testaments always referred to as
existing still in man
universal. Men which are
made after the similitude of God
And St. Paul, referring to the heathen, and quoting the
testimony of their own poets with
approval, For we are also
his offspring,
3. It is of great importance to remember that whatever is meant
by the image of God was
at once concreated in man. In the Middle Ages a distinction was
established between the
Image and the Likeness, between the two Hebrew terms btsalmeenuw and
kidmuwteenuw. This was formulated by the catechism of the
Council of Trent thus: Tum
originalis justitiae donum addidit. The doctrine of Rome is that
immunity from
concupiscence or victory over it was a supernatural and added
gift, like immortality; that
over and above his " pura naturalia" there was a righteousness
in which Adam was "
constitutus." Hence all that he lost or could lose was the gift
of his original righteousness,
which left the natural conflict between flesh and spirit without
the restraint of the added
gift. Man has still all that in which he was created as such.
The effect of this view will
be hereafter seen when we reach the doctrine of Original Sin.
Meanwhile, it is
sufficient now to assert the Scriptural doctrine that whatever
belonged to his likeness to
God was stamped upon man in his original character: he received
both the image and its
superscription.
4. The doctrine of this Divine image is carried to its highest
point, and beyond the Old
Testament record, when it is connected with the Eternal Son as
the original, absolute,
archetypal Image of God. This description of the Second Person
in the Trinity is next to
that of Son the most common in the New Testament: it almost
becomes a proper name.
He is the eikoón toú
Theoú,
5. But this doctrine is incomplete without the addition of the
supernatural gift of the Holy
Ghost: if that may be called supernatural which belonged to the
union of God with this
His Elect Creature. The Holy Trinity must be connected with
every stage of the history of
mankind. As the Protoplast was formed in the image of the
eternal Image—a son of God,
The Spirit in man's spirit must not, however, be confounded with
the image of God as
such: the gift was distinct, but the true complement and
perfection of every other gift.
This is, as will be afterwards seen, the secret of the
trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit in
human nature.
6. From all this it appears that the expression Image of God, in
relation to the original
constitution of Adam, is a very broad one. A few particulars are
not enough for its
statement. It includes the whole sum of man's dignity and
prerogative, and it brings all
that belongs to God into some relation with this His highest
reflection in the creature.
There is nothing Divine that is not reflected in some most
wonderful sense: the Holy
Trinity, and all the Attributes, in the unity of light and love.
THE NATURAL AND FEDERAL UNITY OF THE RACE.
Adam was created as the head of a race, to descend from him by
natural generation. He
represented that race in his supremacy over the lower world; as
also in his subjection to a
probationary law. Thus he was, in a certain sense, both the
natural and the federal head of
mankind: in him both the natural and the spiritual development
and destiny of the human
species were decided.
1. As one of the laws of man's combination of spirit and matter,
he propagates his species
in the integrity of its individual members. Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his
image.
2. The human race in Adam was invested with supreme prerogatives
over the lower
creation. The first man was the representative of God upon
earth. It yielded its secrets to
his knowledge, its fruits sprang from his cultivation, and its
inhabitants were consigned to
his government. It is difficult now to estimate the dignity of
this prerogative: it was not
the image itself, but was its necessary consequence. Much of the
miseries of our race is
due to its forfeiture. The history of science and civilization
is the history of the struggles
of mankind to repair the loss. The remembrance of it as a
vanished estate and the
anticipation of its return unite in the poetry of the nations.
The poetry of the Bible finds
the same expression in Psalm 8, specially as touching the past;
and the Epistle to the
Hebrews expatiates upon it in reference to the future,
Hereafter we must consider this more fully: suffice now that the
record in Genesis,
interpreted by St. Paul to the Romans, represents the dealings
of God with our first
parents as regarding their posterity in them. Adam was in a
state of probation, and man
was in a state of probation: that is, the garden was a scene of
test to the whole estate of
mankind. The failure of man was foreseen; but it was permitted,
because of the new
creation and new probation which a second Adam would introduce:
here is the
profoundest problem of our origin and destiny. With all this,
however, we have not yet to
do. Enough that the entire human race was as one organic unity
represented in Adam,
even as it was as one organic unity represented by Christ.
If one died for all, then were all
dead or all died:
4. It might seem as if God, in the creation of man, took account
of his coming fall and
decreed redemption. The dust was ready to receive him when he
returned to his earth, and
the spirit to return to the God Who gave it. In the New
Testament St. Paul tells us that the
first man is of the earth, earthy,
This Divine account of man's origin displaces every other
devised by man's science.
Accepting the testimony, as we believe it, of the Creator
Himself, we have only to stand
on the defensive. " Neganti incumbit probatio." And it may
safely be said that no other
hypothesis of the production of mankind has yet proved its case.
Those which deny the
general principles, of creation have been already considered, as
also those which have
given other accounts of the origin of our race. One thing it
settles definitively: that it has
not been produced by any development of the principle of life in
matter, whether the
theory takes its earliest rude form that man is terrigena,
autochthon, a production of the
soil, or the scientific evolutional form of later days; that his
history has not been a gradual
ascent from the savage state, but that the savage condition is a
descent from his original;
and that he was created in one type, the representative of a
single species. The slightest
doubt on any of these points is inconsistent, not only with the
subsequent matter of
theology, but with the primitive record, the only one we
possess, of the creation of
mankind. According to the principle we adopt, and must adopt, it
is not directly necessary
to examine the hypotheses of scientific Anthropology; for
science has no generally
accepted hypothesis which fundamentally contradicts Scripture.
On all the points just
mentioned, and especially the unity of the race, the best
representatives of science are on
our own side.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN.
Speculations as to the Origin of Man upon the earth have been
more or less bound up
with those on the origination of life generally. Antiquity had
its vague theories, half
poetry, half science, of the necessary evolution of all forms of
life from the soil. Men
were autochthones,
terrigenae, born of the earth. The Pantheism of every age has held the
same idea, but dignified it by the supposition of an internal
source of life which moulds
matter into forms innumerable, and that of man among the rest:
assuming its highest
known immaterial expression in the human subject. Materialism
inverts the process, and
makes man an organism in which matter exhibits its perfection in
the phenomena of
thought and conscious personality. Modern speculations on this
subject differ generally
from the ancient, in consequence of their being constructed on a
theory that does not
necessarily exclude a personal God, the origin of all life.
Placing Him at the ultimate
point where life originated, they regard the evolution of all
the forms of life as the
operation of forces impressed upon matter, or constituting
matter itself: some making the
long time up to man, and his high intelligence, a continuous
advance of nature upon
itself, naturally selecting and making permanent its best types;
others regarding the
original law as having provided for a series of leaps from
species to species: but all,
whether they intend it or not, practically denying the creation
of the human soul or spirit
as a substance distinct from matter. It is impossible so to
state the theory of evolution as
to preserve the integrity of the higher element in man's nature.
But the true theory of that
nature requires that something was superadded to the physical
and immaterial life that lay
behind it in the history of the creation. The Scriptural account
is plain and express: man
was created in the image
of God.
The
1. The holy record declares that the species of man is one, and
that it sprang from one
common ancestor: Adam being the personal name of the first man,
and the generic name
of mankind. This truth is the common foundation of the doctrines
of sin and redemption.
By one man sin entered Mo the world;
2. No results of modern science disprove, or even render
doubtful, this truth. On the
contrary, evidences converge from all quarters to confirm it.
Whatever criteria are applied
to test the unity of species—whether physiological or
psychological—the human subject
sustains. And the history of the race furnishes a multitude of
corroborations. In two lines
especially, those of language and religion, the argument, if
argument it may be called,
gathers its endless materials. Comparative philology and
comparative theology, the
science of language and the science of religion, both throw
wonderful light upon the past
of mankind; but upon no truth does that light fall more brightly
than upon the unity of the
human race. Meanwhile, the sacred record gives a clear account
both of the central unity
and of the manifold diversity of the languages of men; both of
the fundamental unity and
endless variations of their religious beliefs.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
The antiquity of man on the earth is simply a chronological
question. Christ came at the
end of the world
And the question remains whether the chronology of the Bible, so
far as it contains a
chronology, meets the reasonable demands of the results of both
investigations.
1. It cannot be denied that the tendency of modern scientific
opinion is in favor of a very
long past history of the race of man upon earth. But it is
equally undeniable that the
induction of evidence is of the most precarious character; that
its elements are not only
composite, but mutually inconsistent; and that all the value it
has is bound up with the
assumption that man began his history at the first remove from
the mere animal life. The
most substantial evidence would, of course, be the discovery of
human remains—whether
the bones of man or his instruments— in juxtaposition with those
of extinct races of
animals. But that evidence is contradicted by some of the best
observers: geology has no
peremptory law for the rate of deposition, on the one hand; and,
on the other, the methods
of accounting for the collocation of human remains in connection
with other remains in
caverns are not exhausted. Moreover, the inferences defeat
themselves. They require, for
example, at least a hundred thousand years for the existence of
man on the earth; but the
known laws of population would account for the present numbers
of the race in six or
seven thousand years; while, on the other hand, even supposing
him to have risen from a
state of savagism, there is no reasonable account to be given of
his remaining sostationary
during so many tens of thousands of historical years. Linguistic
arguments are
equally precarious. Languages without a literature change very
swiftly. As to the
requirements of ethnological variety, we have no means of
judging how soon the early
varieties would receive from surrounding circumstances their
final impress: under our
own eyes a very few generations suffice to produce great changes
and make them
permanent. But we must take higher ground. We doubt not that in
due time scientific
researches will answer many of the scruples of science; and the
Holy Record gives us
reason to believe that many special interpositions of Providence
account for much that we
cannot quite harmonies. Though the God of creation rested, the
God of providence
worketh hitherto; and we do not know all the secrets of man's
gradual descent to the
present term of his life, of the Flood, of the extraordinary
impress upon the second
originals of the race, the phenomena of Babel, and the
dispersion of the nations.
2. The received chronology of our earliest sacred books is not
rigorous. Estimates
perfectly orthodox have added to the commonly received term of
the duration of human
life upon earth a sufficient number of centuries to allow time
enough for all race and
linguistic variations. The question has theological interest
only as affecting the truth of
Scripture; and, before the Scriptural chronology is attacked,
both friends and foes must
agree as to what it teaches. But it is no disparagement to the
Old Testament to say that we
have not yet a certain key to its dates. That they do not
harmonies with Egyptian, and
Chinese, and Indian chronology is of no importance: no reliance
can be placed upon the
latter, when they go back beyond about three millennia B.C. But
the laws of reckoning
generations in the Book of Genesis are not clearly determined;
nor on what principles we
are to reconcile the Hebrew original and the Septuagint, which
latter allows nearly two
thousand years more. The genealogies for the most part mark the
descent, and not always
the regular succession. Hence there are multitudes of estimates
given by Jewish and
Christian chronologists of the period elapsing between Adam and
Christ. The longest of
them would allow all the latitude we need.
1. Discussions have never been wanting as to the constituents of
human nature. The early
Christian Church inherited the ancient philosophical Trichotomy,
as expounded by Plato.
The soul was regarded as the principle of animal life, common to
man and the lower
orders, and the spirit as added by the Divine inbreathing to be
man's special prerogative:
whether as a new substance or a new qualification of the soul
was never determined. But
this distinction, which is adopted for practical purposes by St.
Paul, was perverted to
heretical ends. The Gnostics taught that the spirit in man was
an emanation from the
essence of God, and therefore incapable of being defiled by
matter: thus undermining the
true doctrine of the fall, and the very foundation of
redemption. Apollinaris availed
himself of it to rob the person of Christ of the human spirit:
the Lord's sensitive soul
being a sufficient vehicle for the Divine Logos. In later times
the doctrine of original sin
was embarrassed by this distinction: a theory was very
prevalent, and still is, which
limited the transmission of sinful bias to the sensitive nature
only. Hence the healthier
tone of Christian teaching, especially in the West, found it
needful to hold fast the
Dichotomy of human nature: body and soul, flesh and spirit,
being interchangeable
expressions for the dual nature of man. It will be obvious,
however, to those who weigh
well the utterances of Scripture, that, provided the original
constituent elements of human
nature are only two, the whole religious history of man requires
a certain distinction
between soul and spirit: his one personality being connected by
his soul with the world of
sense, and by his spirit with the world of faith. Yet soul and
spirit make up one person.
2. There is a modern theology, orthodox in all other respects,
which assumes that the
spirit in man is the prerogative of the regenerate only: an
attempt to reconcile the two
theories which Scripture does not sanction. It is true that in
the Old Testament the terms
lnepesh chayaah and
Wnishmat, answering to psuche,
soul, and
pneuma, spirit, are used both of men and animals; but in the
fuller revelation certainly the
pneuma is never given to the beast, and never denied to man.
Who knoweth the spirit of
man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth
downward to the earth?
It is true also that St. Paul says that the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the
Last
Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
3. Adam was generic humanity as well as the personal Adam: that
name in the Hebrew
never knows inflection. Scripture uses no such abstract term as
human nature; though St.
James speaks of every
fúsis of beasts that hath been tamed
teé fúsei teé anthroopínee
Granting the truth of this mysterious principle—not the less
true because we cannot
fathom it—every man descended of Adam presents his own personal
individualization of
a generic character impressed by its Creator on mankind; and
receives into himself the
generic evil of original sin, which is the sin of the race in
Adam. But this is anticipating.
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