33S PAET I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. IV. — Can God be known ?
thus partial and imperfect, no sane man would assert that we have no self-knowledge.
The common doctrine on this subject is clearly expressed by Des Cartes : ^ " Sciri potest, Deum esse infinitum et omnipotentem, quanquam anima nostra, utpote finita, id nequeat comprehendere sive concipere ; eodem nimirum modo, quo montem manibus tan- gere possumus, sed non ut arborem, aut aliam quampiam rem bra- chiis nostris non majorem amplecti : comprehendere enim est cogi- tatione complecti ; ad hoc autem, ut sciamus aliquid, sufficit, ut illud coo-itatione attingamus."
Even Spinoza^ says: "Ad qu£estionem tuam, an de Deo tam claram, quam de triangulo habeam ideam, respondeo affirmando. Non dico, me Deum omnino cognoscere ; sed me qusedam ejus attributa, non autem omnia, neque maximam intelligere partem, et certum est, plurimorum ignorantiam, quorundam eorum habere notitiam, non impedire. Quum Euclidis elementa addiscerem, primo tres trianguli angulos duobus rectis agquari intelligebam ; hancque trianguli proprietatem clare percipiebam, licet multarum aliarum ignarus essem."
While, therefore, it is admitted not only that the infinite God is incomprehensible, and that our knowledge of Him is both par- tial and imperfect ; that there is much in God which we do • not know at all, and that what we do know, we know very imperfectly ; nevertheless our knowledge, as far as it goes, is true knowledge. God really is what we believe Him to be, so far as our idea of Him is determined by the revelation which He has made of Himself in his works, in the constitution of our nature, in his word, and in the person of his Son. To know is simply to have such apprehensions of an object as conform to what that object really is. We know what the word Spirit means. We know what the words infinite, eternal, and immutable, mean. And, therefore, the sublime prop- osition, pregnant with more truth than was ever compressed in any other sentence, " God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and immu- table," conveys to the mind as distinct an idea, and as true (i. e., trustworthy) knowledge, as the proposition " The human soul is a finite spirit." In this sense God is an object of knowledge. He is not the unknown God, because He is infinite. Knowledge in Him does not cease to be knowledge because it is omniscience ; power does not cease to be power because it is omnipotence ; any more than space ceases to be space because it is infinite.
1 Epistolae, i., iex., edit. Amsterdam, 1682.
2 Epistola Ix. vol. i. p. 659, edit. Jena, 1802.
§ 1, B, C.l GOD AS AN OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. 339
B. How do we know God? How does the mind proceed in forming its idea of God ? The older theologians answered this question by saying that it is by the way of negation, by the way of eminence, and by the way of causality. That is, we deny to God any limitation ; we ascribe to Him every excellence in the highest degree ; and we refer to Him as the great First Cause every attribute manifested in his works. We are the children of God, and, therefore, we are like Him. We are, therefore, authoi'ized to ascribe to Him all the attributes of our own nature as rational creatures, without limitation, and to an infi- nite degree. If we are like God, God is like us. This is the fun- damental principle of all religion. This is the principle which Paul assumed in his address to the Athenians (Acts xvii. 29) : " For- asmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." For the same reason we ought not to think that He is simple being, or a mere abstraction, a name for the moral order of the universe, or the unknown and unknowable cause of all things, — mere inscrutable force. If we are his chil- dren. He is our Father, whose image we bear, and of whose nature we partake. This, in the proper sense of the word, is Anthropomor- phism, a word much abused, and often used in a bad sense to ex- press the idea that God is altogether such a one as ourselves, a being of like limitations and passions. In the sense, however, just explained, it expresses the doctrine of the Church and* of the great mass of mankind. Jacobi ^ well says : " We confess, therefore, to an Anthropomorphism inseparable from the conviction that man bears the image of God ; and maintain that besides this Anthropo- morphism, which has always been called Theism, is nothing but atheism ol fetichism."
0. Proof, that this Method is Trustworthy.
That this method of forming an idea of God is trustworthy, is proved, —
1. Because it is a law of nature. Even in the lowest form of fetichism the life of the worshipper is assumed to belong to the object which ho worships. The power dreaded is assumed to pos- sess attributes like our own. In like manner under all the forms of polytheism, the gods of the people have been intelligent personal agents. It is only in the schools of philosophy that we find a difFer-
1 " Von den gottlichen Dingen," Werke, iii. pp. 422, 423, edit. Leipzig, 1816.
840 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. IV. — Can God be known ?
ent method of forming an idea of the Godhead. They have sub- stituted TO 01/ for 6 ojv, TO Oetov for 6 ©eos, TO dyaOov for o aya66<s- It is here as with regard to the knowledge of the external world. The mass of mankind believe that things are what they perceive them to be. This philosophers deny. They affirm that we do not per- ceive the things themselves, but certain ideas, species, or images of the things ; that we have, and can have, no knowledge of what the things themselves really are. So they say we can have no knowledge of what God is ; we only know that we are led to think of Him in a certain way, but we are not only not authorized to be- lieve that our idea corresponds to the reaHty, but, say they, it is cer- tain that God is not what we take Him to be. As the people are right in the one case, so ai'e they in the other. In other words, our conviction that God is what He has revealed Himself to be, rests on the same foundation as our conviction that the external world is what we take it to be. That foundation is the veracity of con- sciousness, or the trustworthiness of the laws of belief which God has impressed upon our nature. " Invincibility of belief," accord- ing to Sir William Hamilton, " is convertible with the truth of. belief," ^ although, unhappily, on this subject, he did not adhere to his own principle, " That what is by nature necessarily believed to be, truly is." '^ No man has more nobly or more earnestly vin- dicated this doctrine, which is the foundation of all science and of all faith. " Consciousness," he sa3^s, " once convicted of falsehood, an unconditioned scepticism, in regard to the character of our intellectual being, is the melancholy but only rational result. Any conclusion may now with impunity be drawn against the hopes and the dignity of human nature. Our personality, our immateriality, our moral liberty, have no longer an argument for their defence. ' Man is the dream of a shadow.' God is the dream of that dream." ^ The only question, therefore, is, Are we invincibly led to think of God as possessing the attributes of our rational nature ? This cannot be denied ; for universality proves invincibility of belief. And it is a historical fact that men have universally thus thought of God. Even Mr. Mansel^ exclaims against the trans- cendentalists, " Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself, that human reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God." True, he denies the correctness of that portrait ; or, at least, he asserts that we cannot know whether it is correct or not. But tliis
1 Philosophy, edit. Wight, New York, 1854, p. 233. 2 Jbid. p. 226.
« Ibid. p. 234.
* Limits of Religious Thought, edit. Boston, 1859, pp. 56, 57.