CHAPTER X

GOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION

"Does God love,

And will ye hold that truth against the world?"

BROWNING.

OUR thought of God has been so revolutionised by the Life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, that we are inclined very often to suppose that to Him we owe the whole of it. It is true enough that we cannot overstate our debt to Him; but we may mis-state it, and we do this if we omit from our completed thought of God those elements which have their origin elsewhere and which He took for granted. When He taught men about God, they already meant something by that Name. It will therefore be worth while before we consider the illumination brought by Christ to recapitulate what we know or believe concerning God apart from Him. This might be attempted in many ways; it will be appropriate to follow one that is germane to the general argument that is being worked out.

As we rise in the scale of being from Thing through Brute to Person, we inevitably find suggested to our mind a perfection of Personality, which would be completely self-determining, completely "good" as wholly realising the absolute values, and completely unified inwardly and outwardly. Moreover, we find

1 I made this mistake in some measure in Foundations, pp. 213, 214.

Cf. Chapter VI.

that such a Personal Being, if He exists, would supply what otherwise is desired but not forthcoming-an explanation of the universe as a whole. To assume the reality of such a Being is therefore scientifically sound; and this assumption (justifiable on purely intellectual grounds) finds confirmation in certain forms of experience which have just as good prima facie claims as any others to be regarded as veridical.2 If theism were philosophically improbable, religious experience would have to be explained away by whatever processes the psychology of any epoch might prefer. If there were no such thing as religious experience, Theism, though probable as a philosophy, would be at once too nebulous and too precarious to become the basis of a way of life. But religious experience, far from being non-existent, is almost universal; and Theism, far from being demonstrably false, is philosophically probable. The two together give us a reasonable and very practical assurance of the Being of God, that is of the reality of a Personal Being who is completely self-determined or "free," who is completely at one with Himself, who is in complete apprehension and enjoyment of absolute value, and who is the source of all existence other than Himself. These qualities can be expressed in familiar terms; God is known as Spirit, constant, holy, and almighty. To these attributes yet another must be added, as we reflect that in His creative will all time and all temporal process finds its source and unifying principle; He is Spirit, constant, holy, almighty, and eternal.

Greek philosophers came near to such a conception by the way of thought; but the Supreme Being was for them but doubtfully personal. Plato indeed exclaims, with reference perhaps to his own earlier exposition of the Idea of Good, "Are we to believe that the most Real is deprived of motion and life and soul and mind? " 8 Ând Aristotle uses personal

1 Cf. Chapter I. pp. 7-9.

Cf. Chapter III. • Sophist, 249 a.

terms of God. But a Being whose activity consists, even if His very self does not consist, of a "thinking of thought "1 has a personality of a rather attenuated type. Philosophy never in fact goes beyond apprehension of the formal principle of Deity; it never reaches, and from its own nature never can reach, intercourse with the living God. That is no matter for surprise; philosophy never reaches intercourse with living men either. men either. Intercourse with God or with men is not the conclusion of an argument, but a mode of experience. Knowledge of the living God comes not from Greece or from philosophy but from Palestine and from religious experience.

The classical instances of such experience are the Hebrew prophets and Psalmists; among the prophets we must include the historians who wrote the story of their nation with a constant eye to the questionnot "What here or there was the purpose of man?" but "What here or there was the purpose of God?" There is no need now to trace out the process of development in their understanding of the God with whom they were in communion; the result may be not unfairly expressed in the words already used: God is Spirit, constant, holy, almighty, and eternal, a Being of Majesty unapproachable, awful alike in greatness and in holiness, to fear whom is the beginning of wisdom. Such a belief Christ found in the world and took for granted. But the precise content of those terms He profoundly modified.

In studying the difference which Christ has made in the conception of God, we have to attend to three points: first, His teaching about the Father; secondly, His manifestation of the Divine Nature in His own

1 Metaphysics, 1072 b, 14-30; 1074 b, 33-35.

2 I am sure the Prophets cannot, in isolation, support the immense metaphysical and theological edifice which Bishop Gore, in his Belief in God, builds upon them. But such an edifice can (I think) be safely based on the religious experience of mankind, taken in conjunction with the philosophic grounds of Theism, and of that experience the Prophets are the most conspicuous examples.