006. MONISM IN THEOLOGY
MONISM IN THEOLOGY "Man is not God, but hath God’s end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become.
"The unity of the divine and the human within the spiritual life of man is a real unity, just because man is free; the identity manifests itself through the difference, and the difference is possible through the unity." To this statement of Professor Jones, I may add that Browning does not attempt to explain how unity of substance between God and man is consistent with freedom, sin, and guilt in the finite creature. Yet he believes in these last as firmly as in the first. He tells us in his " Christmas Eve" that it was God’s plan to make man in his image: To create man, and then leave him Able, his own word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him too, As a mere machine could never do That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. And in his " Legend of Pornic " he speaks of The faith that launched point blank her dart At the head of a lie, taught original sin, The corruption of man’s heart In other words, the poet is a monist, but an Ethical Monist; a believer that God and man are of one substance; but a hater of pantheism, which denies God’s transcendence and separate personality.
Jacob Boehme, the mystic, was a monist. But since it is my purpose to illustrate only the more recent tendency to monism, let me cite a great name in modern theology. Dorner declares1 that "the unity of essence in God and man is the great discovery of the present age. . . The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is the endeavor to point out the essential unity of the divine and human. . . To the theology of the present day the divine and human are not mutually exclusive, but are connected magnitudes." And yet Dorner is no pantheist, for he also declares that "faith postulates a difference between the world and God, between whom religion seeks a union. Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself, or to its own representations and thoughts. That would be a monologue; faith desires a dialogue. Therefore it does not consort with a monism which recognizes only God, or only the world; it opposes such monism as this. Duality is, in fact, a condition of true and vital unity. But duality is not dualism. It has no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity." It is this "rational demand for unity," as Dorner calls it, which constitutes the inner impulse of science. The modern doctrine of evolution is an attempt to meet this demand. But evolution is irrational, and gives no guarantee of useful progress in the history of life, unless it is the method of an intelligence and will, not only immanent in the system, but also transcendent, and continually importing into the system new increments of energy. Christ, the wisdom and the power of God, is the principle of evolution, as he is the principle of gravitation and of induction. The monistic tendency of our day is essentially a philosophical tendency. No thinker of recent times has had greater influence in this direction than has Lotze. He is both monist and objective idealist. Yet he holds with equal tenacity to the distinction between the divine personality and the human personality, and declares that " where two hypotheses are equally possible, the one agreeing with our moral needs and the other conflicting with them, nothing must induce us to favor the latter." He intends his monism to be an Ethical Monism, by which I mean simply a monism that conserves the ethical interests of mankind.
It is not too much to say that the monistic philosophy, in its various forms, holds at present almost undisputed sway in our American universities. Harvard and Yale, Brown and Cornell, Princeton and Rochester, Toronto and Ann Arbor, Boston and Chicago, are all teaching it. As my single illustration, I take Professor Ladd, of New Haven. In his " Introduction to Philosophy," recently published, he tells us that:
"Dualism is yielding, in history and in the judgment-halls of reason, to a monistic philosophy. . . Some form of philosophical monism is indicated by the researches of psychophysics, and by that philosophy of mind which builds upon the principles ascertained by these researches. Realities correlated as are the body and the mind must have, as it were, a common ground. . . They have their reality in the ultimate one reality; they have their interrelated lives as expressions of the one life which is immanent in the two. . . Only some form of monism that shall satisfy the facts and truths to which both realism and idealism appeal can occupy the place of the true and final philosophy." Yet Professor Ladd says most truly that "monism must so construct its tenets as to preserve, or at least as not to contradict and destroy, the truths implicated in the distinction . . . between the me and the not me, . . . between the morally good and the morally evil. . . No form of monism can persistently maintain itself, which erects its system upon the ruins of fundamental ethical principles and ideas."
It is of great importance, both to the preacher and to the Christian, to hold the right attitude toward the ruling idea of our time. This universal tendency toward monism, is it a wave of unbelief set agoing by an evil intelligence in order to overwhelm and swamp the religion of Christ? Or is it a mighty movement of the Spirit of God, giving to thoughtful men, all unconsciously to themselves, a deeper understanding of truth and preparing the way for the reconciliation of diverse creeds and parties by disclosing their hidden ground of unity? I confess that I have come to believe the latter alternative to be possibly, and even probably, the correct one, and I am inclined to welcome the new philosophy as a most valuable helper in interpreting the word and the works of God. Monism is, without much doubt, the philosophy of the future, and the only question would seem to be whether it shall be an ethical and Christian, or a non-ethical and antiChristian monism.
If we refuse to recognize this new movement of thought and to capture it for Christ, we may find that materialism and pantheism perversely launch their craft upon the tide and compel it to further their progress. Let us tentatively accept the monistic principle and give to it a Christian interpretation. Let us not be found fighting against God. Let us use the new light that is given us, as a means of penetrating more deeply into the meaning of Scripture. Let us see in this forward march of thought a sign that Christ and his kingdom are conquering and to conquer.