Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at CambridgeRashdall, Hastings
Religion
Philosophy and Religion: Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge
Rashdall, Hastings
Christianity; Philosophy and religion
The theory of an all-inclusive Deity has recently been adopted and
popularized by Mr. Campbell,[6] who has done all that rhetorical skill
combined with genuine religious earnestness can do to present it in an
attractive and edifying dress. And yet the same Logic which leads to the
assertion that the Saint is part of God, leads also to the assertion that
Caesar Borgia and Napoleon Buonaparte and all the wicked Popes who have
ever been white-washed by episcopal or other historians are also parts of
God. How can I worship, how can I strive to be like, how can I be the
better for believing in or revering {104} a Being of whom Caesar Borgia
is a part as completely and entirely as St. Paul or our Lord himself?
Hindoo Theology is consistent in this matter. It worships the
destructive and the vicious aspects of Brahma as much as the kindly and
the moral ones: it does not pretend that God is revealed in the Moral
Consciousness, or is in any exclusive or one-sided way a God of Love. If
it be an 'ethical obsession' (as has been suggested) to object to treat
Immorality as no less a revelation of God than Morality, I must plead
guilty to such an obsession. And yet without such an 'obsession' I
confess I do not see what is left of Christianity. There is only one way
out of the difficulty. If we are all parts of God, we can only call God
good or perfect by maintaining that the deliverances of our moral
consciousness have no validity for God, and therefore can tell us nothing
about him. That has been done deliberately and explicitly by some
Philosophers:[7] the distinguished Theologians who echo the language of
this Philosophy have fortunately for their own religious life and
experience, but unfortunately for their philosophical consistency,
declined to follow in their steps. A God who is 'beyond good and evil,'
can be no fitting object of {105} worship to men who wish to become good,
just, merciful. If the cosmic process be indifferent to these ethical
considerations, we had better (with honest Agnostics like Professor
Huxley) make up our minds to defy it, whether it call itself God or not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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