Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge — John Shaqi
Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at CambridgeRashdall, Hastings
Religion
Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge
Rashdall, Hastings
Christianity; Philosophy and religion
(3) A third consequence which follows from our determining to accept
the moral consciousness as containing the supreme revelation of God is
this. From the point of view of the moral consciousness {80} we cannot
say that the Universe is wholly good. We have only one means of
judging whether things are good or bad: the idea of value is wholly
derived from our own ethical judgements or judgements of value. If we
distrust these judgements, there is no higher court to which we can
appeal. And if we distrust our most ultimate judgements of value, I do
not know why we should trust any judgements whatever. Even if we grant
that from some very transcendental metaphysical height--the height, for
instance, of Mr. Bradley's Philosophy--it may be contended that none of
our judgements are wholly true or fully adequate to express the true
nature of Reality, we at all events cannot get nearer to Reality than
we are conducted by the judgements which present themselves to us as
immediate and self-evident. Now, if we do apply these judgements of
value to the Universe as we know it, can we say that everything in it
seems to be very good? For my own part, I unhesitatingly say, 'Pain is
an evil, and sin is a worse evil, and nothing on earth can ever make
them good.' How then are we to account for such evils in a Universe
which we believe to express the thought and will of a perfectly
righteous Being? In only one way that I know of--by supposing they are
means to a greater good. That is really the substance and substratum
of all the Theodicies of all the Philosophers and all the {81}
Theologians except those who frankly trample on or throw over the Moral
Consciousness, and declare that, for those who see truly, pain and sin
are only additional sources of aesthetic interest in a great
world-drama produced for his own entertainment by a Deity not
anthropomorphic enough to love but still anthropomorphic enough to be
amused.
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