Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Impressive as are these evidences of intelligence in the universe
as a whole, and increased in number as they are by the new light
of evolution, we must still hold that nature alone cannot prove
that this intelligence is personal. Hopkins, Miscellanies,
18-36—“So long as there is such a thing as impersonal and adapting
intelligence in the brute creation, we cannot necessarily infer
from unchanging laws a free and personal God.” See Fisher,
Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 576-578. Kant shows that the
argument does not prove intelligence apart from the world
(Critique, 370). We must bring mind to the world, if we would find
mind in it. Leave out man, and nature cannot be properly
interpreted: the intelligence and will in nature may still be
unconscious. But, taking in man, we are bound to get our idea of
the intelligence and will in nature from the highest type of
intelligence and will we know, and that is man’s. “Nullus in
microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus.” “We receive but
what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live.”
The Teleological Argument therefore needs to be supplemented by
the Anthropological Argument, or the argument from the mental and
moral constitution of man. By itself, it does not prove a Creator.
See Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 26; Ritter, Hist. Anc. Philos.,
bk. 9, chap. 6; Foundations of our Faith, 38; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 215; Habit and Intelligence, 2:6, and chap. 27. On immanent
finality, see Janet, Final Causes, 345-415; Diman, Theistic
Argument, 201-203. Since righteousness belongs only to
personality, this argument cannot prove righteousness in God.
Flint, Theism, 66—“Power and Intelligence alone do not constitute
God, though they be infinite. A being may have these, and, if
lacking righteousness, may be a devil.” Here again we see the need
of the Anthropological Argument to supplement this.
B. Even if this argument could prove personality in the intelligence and
will that originated the order of the universe, it could not prove either
the unity, the eternity, or the infinity of God; not the unity—for the
useful collocations of the universe might be the result of oneness of
counsel, instead of oneness of essence, in the contriving intelligence;
not the eternity—for a created demiurge might conceivably have designed
the universe; not the infinity—since all marks of order and collocation
within our observation are simply finite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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