01.10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER X THE DIVINE CREATOR

THUS far we have been treating what are usually called the metaphysical attributes of God. We pass now to the attributes which have more definitely to do with men, and we begin with God as Creator of men. In previous chapters I have here and there discussed some phases of this same problem, especially in the paragraphs on power, but as far as possible I have tried to keep the more metaphysical attributes free from the specific considerations raised by the relations of God to men, though this has been possible only to a limited extent.

We have already mentioned more than once the perplexity raised by the power which we usually attribute to God, and the presence of human suffering. To-day there is more or less willingness to limit God’s omnipotence so as to relieve him from blame for such suffering, though as far as men are concerned there is always the possibility that the suffering may be utilized for a moral purpose, dark as is the problem before the sufferers themselves at crises of apparently unutterable and needless agony. There is conceivably an explanation for such suffering which makes it different from that animal suffering which is so dense a mystery. We would better hold fast to the power of a God who can overrule suffering for the sake of ministering to the higher welfare of men than to be overanxious to limit that power.

It is in another quarter that of human freedom that we confront the obstacles which arise with belief in divine omnipotence. For we simply must have freedom if there is to be any reason at all in our holding to a belief in the Christian God. On the human side I do not see that present-day theorizing has added much strength to the usual arguments against freedom. When the doctrine of the conservation of energy was newer it was often interpreted to mean that, the sum of energies in the universe being constant, there could be no addition to these physical forces by free will. Now we see more definitely that free will requires only the power to choose among physical forces already existing, the human choice being simply the occasion on which one energy or another, already existing or potential, is directed into one channel or another. If this is conceded, the dreaded bugbear of the relation of free will and the conservation of energy reduces to the commonplace conclusion that in making choices our wills have to limit themselves to the forces available for carrying out those choices. The universe is ruled not by law, but by laws. There would be no setting aside law in human choice, but the utilization of one particular law, or set of laws, rather than another. Let a man make the craziest choice imaginable. Let him to all appearances be wildly arbitrary. There is no way that his choice could reflect the arbitrariness, except that he chose a lower law instead of a higher. There is no chance of a human being’s escaping the web of law.

I do not intend to review many of the arguments as to freedom; all I wish here is to touch upon those having a bearing on the nature of God himself. I will admit that there is no formal logic by which we can prove that man is free apart from some assumption as to the nature of God. The difficulty we fall into, however, as soon as we begin to declaim in high fashion about proof, is that there is no use talking about proof apart from freedom itself, or apart from recognizing a standard. For if there is no freedom, one choice stands on the same level as another, all being alike necessitated. The debate on freedom, by the way, has been waged too much in the specifically moral realm.

There has been in the utterance of the determinist an air of noble tragedy at the plight of man, who is compelled to take courses which arouse moral condemnation in his own mind and in that of his fellows, and yet without any ability to help himself. There is a sad self-pity in reflection of this type. Most of us, however, who might find a solemn comfort in thus pitying ourselves for the black tragedy of our moral helplessness, dislike to be laughed at for the ridiculousness of our mental plight. If there is no freedom whatever and everything is alike determined, all our intellectual processes are determined. The socalled "speculative significance of freedom" is skipped over all too lightly by many a determinist. Determinism is, on the strict basis, the product of forces which never for an instant slip toward freedom, but so is the belief in freedom. This iron-bound structure of law generates in the ordinary mind in all stages of the world’s history a conviction that it is not iron-bound. Now, I repeat that while we may work up a good deal of sympathy for ourselves over the moral aspect of our steel-clad helplessness, it is hard to feel anything but humiliation when we reflect that our truth and falsehood have no standard by which they can be judged. All are alike ridiculously false. Or, if we prefer, all are true but this is no happier an outcome than the other. We are like children at a movieplay applauding the actors, or shouting warnings to them, when they are nothing but shadows on a film with the ending fixed. We can laugh at it all, or cry at it all, for in such situation laughter and tears are much the same. No, if God makes us at all, he must give us a measure of freedom, provided he has it to give. There is no use of talking about the Christlikeness of God unless God has and can bestow freedom. This all, however, has to be limited and qualified by a steady grip of confidence in the divine fairness with men. In the chapter on "Power" I wrote of the general necessity of the union of power and responsibility in the divine, but I reserved part of this discussion for this special theme of man’s freedom. We must see that there is no use talking about moral or intellectual life without a degree of freedom, but that the granting of that freedom involves an incalculable responsibility for the Grantor. Obviously, we human beings could not be consulted about whether we were to be given freedom or not, or whether we cared to come into the world or not. While such a question could be seriously put only by a lover of Hibernian paradox, nevertheless a grave moral responsibility for the Creator here confronts us. I have spoken of our freedom, but in the most important of all issues, namely, that as to whether we were to exist at all or not, we had no freedom. Here determination rules. Now, if relations of man to man suggest anything as hints of the fairness of the divine attitude to men, the fact that we were not, and could not be, consulted about coming into this universe implies a stupendous responsibility upon the God who sent us here. There has been a religiously conventional emphasis on the worthlessness of man in the sight of God, an emphasis which at various times in the history of the church has altogether obscured the rights of man at the hands of God. Along with this has gone an assumption that life itself, with the possibility of eternal salvation, has been such a boon that the question of the divine responsibility is sacrilegious. This will not do. Even if life itself be selfevidently a good, responsibilities are upon the Creator for putting men into the stream of life.

Here, again, we must be on our guard lest the general proposition seem to throw more light than it does upon particular facts. It seems that some human beings are born practically without freedom. They are, as we say, creatures of animal impulse, by which we mean, in some instances, that animal impulses shaped or are shaping them. These are, indeed, an inescapable problem for a just and responsible God, but the question of their own moral or intellectual desert does not arise. They are far, far below a normal human plane, but the fault is not theirs, and the divine justice and compassion can be trusted concerning them. Moreover, we are all limited, but still there is the degree of liberty hi human life which makes choices in normal experience possible. We cry out at times that we have not enough freedom, and at other times that we have too much, but, much or little, all the freedom is a gift from God, and the Giver of the gift shares with the receivers the consequences of the gift. I think we all agree that the power involved in the creation of free souls is so immeasurable that the Creator is justified in creation only if the creation takes place in the light of his full knowledge. Volume after volume is being published to-day about God as Life, or as Life-urge, the popular exposition suggesting an unconscious somewhat pushing along through the lower material and animal existences until it comes to a manner of consciousness, without distinct personality, in man. It may be so, but there is no possibility of interpreting such "urge" in terms of Christlikeness. "Urge" is denied a responsibility which can be held to account. Responsibility for the creation of men can be assessed only if creation takes place through the will of a Creator. Of course if an intelligent God created men without full understanding of all possible consequences, the situation could not be saved by avowals that the creation came as the expression of love, without consideration of consequences. I am speaking more particularly, however, of the doctrine that socalled Life is back of creation. That Life is usually represented as an impersonality to which we could not attribute responsibility.

Here someone cries out that we have arrived at a blind alley that even God cannot know what a free soul will choose! This brings up an age-old debate which, however, need not detain us long. The foreknowledge-of-a-freechoice argument is a drawn battle. At least it has never been proved that such foreknowledge is a self-contradiction. I do not mean, though, that the responsibility of the Creator would imply that he must foresee what particular direction a free choice would take.

Responsibility admittedly must involve a knowledge of all the possible directions the choice could take. Permit me to repeat what I said about freedom as possibility of choice between or among laws. All that the demands of moral law might require of the divine knowledge is that the Creator know all the possibilities of choices. Absolute foreknowledge of the choice taken might not necessarily be essential, but enough knowledge of all possible outcomes to prevent the creation of men from becoming an irresponsible piece of foolhardiness, out of harmony with the character of God as we see it in Christ, is a just expectation. The risks involved in the creation of a human race we have no means of knowing, but we do not believe they can be assumed without knowledge enough, and power enough, and love enough, to prevent disaster, if God is to be like Christ. Moreover, we do not know what Christlikeness calls for in detailed treatment of this or that person. What we do believe is that divine judgment must not condemn a man for anything for which the man is not to blame. All the influences which we call hereditary, environmental, subconscious, which lie beyond the reach of the man’s own will are grounds for moral judgment against man only so far as he acquiesces wrongfully in them. The ultimate responsibility for them lies outside the man himself in that system of which the man is a part, which implies that the responsibility at last gets back to God himself. We need not shrink from this conclusion. The responsibility can best be lodged with God if we sincerely think of him as like Christ. In these references to the power and knowledge presumed if God is to create a world of men, I do not take back what I have said about the self-limitation of God in a system like ours. I have in mind now power described in the more spiritual aspects. I do not mean that God is not to create unless he is willing at a crisis to prevent human failure by metaphysically transforming men into puppets. That would be a surrender of the creative task altogether from the moral viewpoint. I here mean by power the resources of education, of persuasion, of spiritual influences. It may be that a world like ours is the best for the training of imperfect wills, but that with the growth of the wills in self-control, a radically different environment might be .granted man, an environment which, if given him now, might be the worst for moral training. It has often been said that the final test of Christianity is not adversity but prosperity. It may be that after the moral will has been disciplined into strength by adversity it can then be trusted to prosperity. The writer of the first chapters of Genesis manifested deep insight when he let us see that it was possible for men to mishandle an Eden prosperity through lack of moral strength. We probably could not use much more light of knowledge than we now have. The events of the Great War showed that. It is evident that In this year of our Lord 1927 the only way to keep civilization from destruction is by development of a moral self-control a thoroughgoing devotion to righteousness and good will. Otherwise, the growth of knowledge of the forces of destruction may invite worldwide disaster. To come back to the point the powers of God to which I refer for the development of men are those of the education of mind and heart and will.

It is not for this essay to try to discuss elaborate theories of the salvation of individuals, but it is necessary for me to say that if individuals are to be "lost" using the old evangelical word for whatever meaning the reader may put into it the loss can result only after the divine resource, short of making the individual over into a puppet saint, has been exhausted. The evangelical preachers have too often overlooked the responsibilities assumed by a Christlike God in salvation. There has been too much flavor of arbitrariness, not to say high-handedness, in their presentation of God’s dealing with souls. We have long since learned that it is beyond our province to pass judgment on the destiny of individual lives. Even with those who sin against all our understanding of the possibilities of divine grace we are more and more cautious in uttering judgment, because we do not have the divine knowledge and we cannot measure the divine resources. Souls must not be pronounced lost until every resource possible to the divine persuasiveness has been brought to bear upon the stubborn will. The fundamental consideration that men are not here by their own choice, that the measure of necessity and the measure of freedom under which they work are not of their own choice, throws responsibility upon the Creator which only the paying out of the last ounce of divine resource can discharge. If men come to doom, it must be after these resources have been so thoroughly tried that all moral intelligences everywhere will acquiesce in the doom. The public opinion of a redeemed race must finally sanction the divine judgment. Under whatever form we think of heaven it must be the kingdom of moral intelligences. What would we say if the moral sentiment of heaven failed to sanction and ratify the judgment of God? Then there would at once arise the question as to which was the more Christlike, the judgment of heaven or the judgment of ,the Creator? This is not intended as irreverence, but an insistence that the final judgments upon moral failure must rest wholly upon a moral base, if we are to think of God as like unto Christ. There must be no trace of arbitrariness whatsoever. The Cross shows how seriously God has taken this responsibility. When we are using such expressions as "discharging moral obligations," and "counting the cost," we lay ourselves open to the charge of anthropomorphism, but the charge is not to be so heeded as to empty the words of their essential meaning. The moral considerations suggested here may not mean the same to the Creator as to us, but the difference probably is that they mean more to him. He knows what they mean to us. Our meanings point not away from his, but toward his. The essentials of Christ’s moral seriousness could not rule with the Creator if he plunged into the launching of a race light-heartedly, or with a love that had not counted the cost. It will never do to imagine the mistaken or evil choices of men as taking God by surprise. To read the story of Eden, for example, as if the Creator had fitted the world with all manner of goods for men, and as if men had then so surprised God by disobedience that he had to alter his plans and make some second-thought adjustment outside the garden, is to argue against the moral responsibility of the Creator. All the possibilities had to be taken into account. All the costs had to come within the field of view. If the trees in the garden were prepared, the weeds outside were prepared also. Moreover, the moral requirement is that the cost itself shall be justifiable. It would not do to allow for a possible question at the end as to whether redemption had been worth while. The salvation of the human race must not be conceived of after the analogy of the king who goes to war and finds the expenses far outrunning his original estimates, or after the analogy of the house-builder who, after he has begun to build, finds himself embarrassed by unforeseen drains upon his funds. No doubt the cost of the human race to the race itself because of the harmful influences that men exert over one another to say nothing of the cost to God himself, must be beyond all our ability to estimate, but we do not honor God in speaking as if he had been taken by surprise in his plans for men. Dreadful as is the cost, it can be met. If we are to think of God as the Christian God, the launching of a race of human beings was not a foolhardy outburst of irresponsible good-humor, afterward confronting an insoluble situation brought about by the misuse of freedom. That conception is not an honor to God. James Russell Lowell’s whimsical word that God would not have allowed men to get hold of the match-box if the universe had not been fire-proof has its point. A God who would have permitted men to burn up the universe in wild excesses of freedom might have been a God of a sort, but not the God of Christ. Here, again, familiarity with the temper and spirit of Jesus is a steadying force. Jesus had none of that silly, sunshiny optimism which will have it that everything is to come out all right by some turn or other, but he never knew blank hopelessness. The bearing of the cross, whatever it means, does not mean a smiling all-will-come-right superficiality, or a helpless despair. It is not a last-minute expedient, but an essential, inherent in the divine putting forth of the powers that are to win men.

It does small credit to God, it hardly is consonant with the revelation in Christ, to represent the redemption of men as brought about by expedients which suggest last-minute frenzy. Such representation implies that God introduced men into a world without quite seeing the future. Earlier in this essay I spoke of the difficulty of believing that this present universe was created for human purposes alone. That does not mean, however, that God did not know what he was doing in putting men here.

I am not much concerned, in this present discussion, about the problem of miracles as popularly understood, but some debate about miracle does not do credit to God. In the assumptions of some thinkers the scheme of law is in itself so tightly bound that if it is to serve men it must be now and again set aside. It is easy to see how this conception comes about. The weaving of every event to every other in a web of relationships literally "gets on our minds" till we are almost obsessed with a notion of the inflexibility of law. The assumption here argues a measure of helplessness on the part of God, as if God had so committed himself to a tangled net of interlacings that he can do nothing but upon occasion set the law aside. Here we have grave reflection upon the divine responsibility. If God has devised a set of methods that he cannot really use, but which he has to set aside to redeem men, he is not the God we have a right to accept from the teaching of Jesus. Too much of the argument for miracle leaves God in a dubious plight as having started a system which he had afterward to set aside. The possibility of miracle as departure from the accustomed method is hardly open to doubt by believers in the God of Christianity. The actuality of miracle, as the seizure of the higher powers of nature by the higher spiritual personalities, is likewise not open to serious doubt. Miracle, however, as a desperate tearing loose from all law is questionable.

It is the character of God that is at issue in this debate. We have to do with the fundamental purpose in creation. If that fundamental purpose was appropriate to a God like unto Christ, then the purpose must have been in the divine mind from the beginning. We are not to conclude that the system of laws was inaugurated first on its own account, and was then set aside because an unforeseen crisis afterward arose. If the moral purposes of God are an afterthought, they are not the purposes of the God whom Jesus has taught us to follow. Why may we not hold that the laws were from the outset themselves fit for redemption purposes? Does it not make for greatness in our view of man to conceive of God as willing to make miraculous departures from law in his behalf? This question cannot be answered without asking ourselves as to the character of God set before us by the emphasis on miracle. The best boon we can confer upon man is to teach him the best idea of God. I insist that there can be little cogent criticism of miracle as the anticipation and seizure of methods beyond the organized knowledge of a given period, but that is not a setting aside of law as if it were of secondary importance. If men are to be saved into a salvation worth while, one element of that salvation must be the development of the mental orderliness and sanity which are best revealed to us in the regularity of the operations of the universe. To be sure, the law as taken in itself seems cold and impersonal, but this is chiefly when we look at the outside objective world. Law is the expression of the regularity of the inner realm as well as of the outer. Miracle as too often taught would mean that the universe proceeds without regard to what conies before or after, that the demands of system are lightly to be thrust to one side. This would argue for the imperfection of the methods of the Divine Mind.

We shall have to exalt more and more the resources of redemption in the realm of law, law being the method by which a responsible God acts. The scientific method, justly viewed, has its value not only in its practical results but in its efficacy hi religious revelation. Of course anything can be ponderously studied; and that worthless aims determine much scientific study is altogether too apparent. Still, the scientific method in itself can be made to tend to the development of the religious mood. I refer now more directly to some prerequisites of scientific procedure the willingness to face the facts and all the facts, the assumption that we have a right to the truth and can know the truth, the ability to suspend judgment and to make a conclusive decision at the end of our reasoning. All this is of the essence of the righteousness which we believe to be so distinctive in the revelation of Jesus. We do not need to be told that the thinking of the day of Jesus had not come within hailing distance of what we call scientific method. , Nevertheless, the Christian spirit was from the beginning a willingness to recognize facts. Christianity is a fact-religion, and progresses by the spiritual use of facts squarely faced. There is not a writer of New Testament Scriptures or of the Old Testament, for that matter who does not manifestly live in a fact world. From an early date the great heresies condemned by the church were those which, in the name of extravagant vision or theory, failed to take enough account of actual facts.

I know that there are many who, in spite of all we can say, will have it that emphasis on miracle conceived of as virtual contempt of law makes God’s efforts for man’s salvation more serious. It may be so, but it makes God’s creative activity less serious; and when we are striving to understand the moral nature of God let us remember that after-adjustment is less a tribute to the divine nature than preadjustment. There was, indeed, something of the artificial and mechanical about the old "Plan of Salvation," but the plan did suggest a Planner. The picture of God as the Rescuer of men is not complete without account of his provision for men’s rescue. In other words, though the universe is not made for us alone, it, we may believe, contains provision for redemption from evil choices and their consequences, provision woven constitutionally into the texture of which the world is made.

It is trite to say that the greatness of the possibility of a good can be measured by the greatness of the actuality of an evil. This is notably true when we are thinking of the choices of men. More than this, there seems a degree of self-limitation in the consequences of an evil choice. There may be there often seems to be a loosening of further and further beneficial forces in a good choice, more powerful than the consequences of an evil choice. Perhaps in the long run the consequences of good travel farthest. Mark Antony was speaking as an orator and not as a moral philosopher when he declared that the evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. Perhaps in the kingdom of God it is the other way around.

We cannot linger too long with this theme, but we must say that with freedom not an abstract somewhat just rushing about in a void, but a choice of laws which leads to consequences already involved in the choice, and with the Creator expressing his own nature through these consequences, it becomes a duty of men to peer as far ahead as possible toward the consequences. If there is a moral obligation upon God to make a universe of flexible useableness, it becomes the duty of man to bring his mind to bear to make the most of that universe for moral purposes. In a -measure it is given to man to enter into the mind of the Creator and become himself creative. If it was the duty of the Creator to fill the universe with possibilities in the fruitful use of law, it is the duty of man to master the laws. In a list of divine attributes we occasionally see God’s "ownership" referred to. From the early days of life in Canaan the Israelites made their Lord the Baal the owner of the land. This expression suggests nothing beyond what has been said in connection with creation. An owner is responsible for the way he uses his possession, but the "ownership" adds nothing to the conception of moral responsibility set forth hi discussion of God as Creator.