Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Theism, 168-170—“In the present
state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large
balance of probability in favor of causation by intelligence.”
Ladd holds that, whenever one being acts upon its like, each being
undergoes changes of state that belong to its own nature under the
circumstances. Action of one body on another never consists in
transferring the state of one being to another. Therefore there is
no more difficulty in beings that are unlike acting on one another
than in beings that are like. We do not transfer ideas to other
minds,—we only rouse them to develop their own ideas. So force
also is positively not transferable. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 49,
begins with “the conception of things interacting according to law
and forming an intelligible system. Such a system cannot be
construed by thought without the assumption of a unitary being
which is the fundamental reality of the system. 53—No passage of
influences or forces will avail to bridge the gulf, so long as the
things are regarded as independent. 56—The system itself cannot
explain this interaction, for the system is only the members of
it. There must be some being in them which is their reality, and
of which they are in some sense phases or manifestations. In other
words, there must be a basal monism.” All this is substantially
the view of Lotze, of whose philosophy see criticism in Stählin’s
Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, 116-156, and especially 123.
Falckenberg, Gesch. der neueren Philosophie, 454, shows as to
Lotze’s view that his assumption of monistic unity and continuity
does not explain how change of condition in one thing should, as
equalization or compensation, follow change of condition in
another thing. Lotze explains this _actuality_ by the ethical
conception of an all-embracing Person. On the whole argument, see
Bib. Sac., 1849:634; Murphy, Sci. Bases, 216; Flint, Theism,
131-210; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:164-174; W. R. Benedict, on
Theism and Evolution, in Andover Rev., 1886:307-350, 607-622.
III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and Moral
Nature.
This is an argument from the mental and moral condition of man to the
existence of an Author, Lawgiver, and End. It is sometimes called the
Moral Argument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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