RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Religion, Philosophy of
2. Leibnitz.
stance or that which is) and a naturalist. He may be regarded as a strong religious personality, if absorption in the universal, in love for the universal or God, which rests upon intuition, may be called religion; but irreligious if the counter-relation of God and man be included. The personality of God is excluded since even will and reason are denied to him; and there can be no designing providence, since the process of becoming follows after mechanical, mathematical laws. All things proceed from the nature of God by inevitable necessity, and his power and being are identical. The good is a conception of the human imagination, which obtains for man only; and there is no absolute good. God is both spirit and body. The essence of spirit is thought which issues in the intuition of God, bringing perfection, freedom, salvation from suffering, and joy, which is love, to its object. In place of the dead mechanism of Spinoza, Leibnitz offers his postulate of a development from within, toward distinct ends, by a scale of monads instinct with life and power. With this ' he attempts to combine the mechanism. On the antithesis of faith and reason, he maintained that some acceptable truths of revelation are incapable of rational proof; but they are valid, if only they be not contrary to reason. The latter he limits to what is contrary to the eternal and absolutely necessary truths; and thus he makes room to accept the church doctrines as possible, including that of the Trinity. God is the final absolute monad, the primal unity and highest good, yet present to all the individual monads. He necessarily exists, as the cause common to all the finite monads; otherwise the mutual adaptability between the monads and between body and soul would not be possible, whereas the universal harmony among them must be a preestablished one. The first cause has so organized each monad that it reflects the whole more or less perfectly. The ontological argument he deemed valid only if the idea of the perfect being be shown to be possible, which he regarded to mean as including no limits or negation. The cosmological argument he construes so that, starting out with the contingency of finite things, a necessary absolute first cause must be presupposed. Inasmuch as every monad is a reduced reflex of the highest, God's attributes may be deduced by exaggerating those of the soul to the utmost. The world composed of distinct monads rising in their scale according to the clearness of representation must be the best possible world; for, if not, God either would not or could not create a better. The first is contradicted by his goodness; the second by his omnipotence. In his theodicy he recognizes metaphysical, physical, and moral evil which he explains as a negative condition of the imperfection of the finite monads. In addition, without evil there would be no good; moreover, it multiplies the good, like Adam's sin, the occasion for Christ's redemption. On the ground that the being of all monads is representation, religion is based on the representation of the highest monad, that is, God. This knowledge of the perfect toward which the human monad strives originates love for it. Human souls have a sense of kinship to God, IX.— 30
whose attitude toward them is not as to creatures but like that of sovereign to subject or father to children. Here is the point of departure for the antithesis of the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace. Inasmuch as love to God is dependent on correct representation or cognition, intellectualism is implanted upon the domain of religion. Ascending degrees of illumination bear with them corresponding degrees of religion, morality, and happiness. The path is open to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
Christian Wolff (q.v.), chief representative of this period, sets himself the task of providing a clear, distinct knowledge, without which the aim of mankind or happiness can not be 3. The En- reached. In his Theologia naturalis he 1S fLn~ treats extensively the proofs of God's lish and " existence and attributes. He prefers French the a posteriori argument that the con- Deists, tingency of the world presupposes necessarily a first cause, without which it is not intelligible. But to be considered aa adequate ground for the world, reason and free will must be ascribed to him, and he must be infinite Spirit. To this, the a priori concept of his predecessors is added. Revealed theology is not disputed, and revelations transcending reason are not contrary to reason. As God is omnipotent, he can afford immediate revelation by miracle. H. S. Reimarus (q.v.) is to be classed as a deist so far as he denied all divine miracle save that of the original creation. Any miracles in addition would negate the wisdom and perfection of the Creator, since they would imply later interference as necessary. Most distinguished in the rationalistic Enlightenment was Lessing (q.v.), who conceded to historical revelation a temporary significance to be superseded as soon as reason had deduced its truths from its own ground. The early English philosophers show a minor appreciation for the religious. Francis Bacon (q.v.) entertained the idea of parallels; religion and science can not be merged. The result of mixing science with religion is unbelief; vice versa, fantasy. Thomas Hobbes (q.v.) finds the motive of religion as well as of superstition to be fear of the unseen powers. It is the former when acknowledged by the State, otherwise the latter. To oppose personal conviction to the faith enjoined by the sovereign is tantamount to revolution. Herbert of Cherbury (see Deism, I., § 1) asserts the independence of reason in the domain of religion, finding the " marks in common," and obtaining five natural truths of religion, to which belong the existence of God, duty, and retribution. It is customary to regard him as the first deist. His view that the idea of God is innate is denied by Locke in his empiricism. The existence of a Supreme Being is more certain, however, to him than the reality of the external world, but by way of reflection, supported by the cosmological argument. Divine revelation is not denied, but must not contradict reason. John Toland (q.v.), the first to be designated " free thinker," claimed that Christianity did not necessarily contain anything mysterious and that the Christian doctrines presented nothing above or contrary to reason. A chief work of English deism was William
Religion, Philosophy of