005. ETHICAL MONISM
ETHICAL MONISM The tendency of modern thought in all its departments, whether physics, literature, theology, or philosophy, is to monism. Let me give one illustration from physics, a second from literature, a third from theology, and a fourth from philosophy. In the first of these fields it would be easy to cite the distinguished Englishman, the late John Tyndall. I prefer to quote a representative close at hand. A recent utterance of Dr. Thomas C. Chamberlin, dean of the College of Science of the new University of Chicago, furnishes me with a clear statement of the monistic tendency in physics. "It is not sufficient," he says, "to the modern scientific thought, to think of a ruler outside of the universe, nor of a universe with the ruler outside. A supreme Being who does not embrace all the activities and possibilities and potencies of the universe seems something less than the supremest Being; and a universe with the ruler outside seems something less than a universe. And therefore the thought is growing in the minds of scientific thinkers that the supreme Being is the universal Being, embracing and comprehending all things." Here is monism, but apparently a monism without transcendence, a monism which sees no God before, beside, and above the universe.
Doctor Chamberlin has no intention of espousing the cause of pantheism; he simply presses the idea of a universe to what he conceives to be its logical conclusion, maintaining, at the same time, as we may believe, the distinction between divine and human personality, and the independence and responsibility of man. He not only concedes, but claims, that man has liberty of choice. Now we readily grant that the transcendence of God does not imply God’s existence in space outside the universe—that would be to imagine a second universe which contained the first. But we do feel compelled to maintain that the universe does not exhaust God nor constitute a complete manifestation of him. "Lo! these are but parts of his ways; but a whisper is heard of him; the thunder of his power, who can understand?"
It is important to defend the doctrine of the divine immanence; for " we are also his offspring " ; "he is not far from each of us "; "in him we live and move and are." This truth Doctor Chamberlin asserts. We could wish that he had supplemented his utterance with another, which would give scientific expression to the Scripture teaching that "the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain" God, and that, while God is "in all things" and "through all things," he is also "above all things." In the field of literature I might take John Milton for my illustration. But there is a more modern instance. Robert Browning is a monist. He holds that there is but one substance or principle of being. All things are potentially spirit; or, in other words, the universe is a universe of spirits. Nature herself is instinct with life, and all things are the manifestation of a divine idea and plan. In his strange poem entitled "Hohenstiel-Schwangau," he declares: This is the glory that, in all conceived, Or felt, or known, I recognize a Mind— Not mine, but like mine—for the double joy, Making all things for me, and me for him.
He does not hesitate to include man, as well as nature, in this monistic view of the universe. Man too is, in the deep basis of his being, connected with God. Humanity is naturally rooted and grounded in him "from whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things." In "The Ring and the Book" the Pope soliloquizes:
O Thou, as represented to me here In such conception as my soul allows—
Under thy measureless, my atom width!
Man’s mind, what is it but a convex glass, Wherein are gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?
Professor Jones, of Wales, has given us the best exposition of Robert Browning’s philosophy. He says that "while Browning insists on this identity of the human spirit with God, and declares all the phenomena of the world to be manifestations of love, he does not forget that the identity is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves God lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality. In his poem entitled ’ Death in the Desert,’ we read: