Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors. James Freeman Clarke

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      But there is another example of the supernatural element in the world. Dr. Bushnell, in his book called “Nature and the Supernatural,” contends that man is capable of supernatural acts; that, in fact, every really free act is, and must be, a supernatural act. To those who hold the doctrine of necessity, this is, of course, no argument. But they who believe, in the testimony of their own consciousness, that they are free beings; who feel that they are not dragged helplessly by the strongest motive, but can resist it or yield to it; who, therefore, feel themselves responsible for what they do, or omit to do, they can see that in a real sense they create new influences. Their actions are not results of [pg 048] previous causes, but are new causes, not before in the world. Some supernatural power dwells in man's will just as far as it is made free by reason and choice. Man stands between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and error, with the power of choosing either one or the other. If he chooses one, he sends a power into society, life, humanity, to help it forward; if the other, he sends in a power to hold it back. This power is not from man's nature, but from something in him outside his nature. When he acts from habit, impulse, passion, and not from choice, he is simply a natural being; when he acts from choice, he is not a natural being, but either a supernatural or a subternatural being, according as he chooses good or evil. When he chooses good, he rises above the natural man into the sphere of angels; when he chooses evil, he sinks below the natural man into the sphere of brutes or demons.

§ 6. Supernatural Events not necessarily Violations of Law.

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      Now, says the supernaturalist, if we have all this evidence to show that God not only acts through nature, by carrying on existing forces and laws, but also has repeatedly come into nature with new creations, not there before—and if even man himself has a certain limited but strictly supernatural power, so as to be able to stand outside of the nexus of law, and act upon it—why deny, as incredible, that God should have made a new moral creation in Christianity? should have created a new class, order, genus, and species of spiritual beings, not represented before by any existing congeners? And why question that what we call miracles—that is, physical interferences with natural laws—should have attended this sudden influx of spiritual life? We do not claim, says the judicious supernaturalist (like Dr. Bushnell, for example), that miracles are suspensions or violations of natural laws; but that they are the natural modification of the agency of such laws by a new and powerful influence. Of this, too, there is ample analogy in nature. The mineral kingdom, for example, is passively subject to mechanical and chemical [pg 049] laws, which are resisted and modified by plants and animals. A stone obeys passively the law of gravitation; a plant resists it, rises into the air in opposition to it. Such a proceeding on the part of a plant must seem to a stone a pure miracle. If a piece of granite should write a book of theology, it would probably say that the plant, in growing up, had violated or suspended a law of nature. But it has not. The force of gravitation has worked on according to its own law; it has been dragging the plant downward all the time, only the vital power in the plant has overcome its force, and modified the result. And, again, a tree, seeing a dog run to and fro, might call that a miracle. The tree, unable to move from its place, could not conceive of the possibility of voluntary motion. But no law of nature is violated; only a higher power comes in—the power of animal life.

      To a dog, again, the proceedings of a man are strictly miraculous. To plant corn, reap it, thresh it, grind it, and bake bread out of it, is exactly as much a miracle to the dog, as the multiplication of loaves, or turning water into wine, by Christ, is a miracle to us. But no law of nature was violated in either case. Reason in the one case, some profounder spiritual power in the other, may have modified the usual operation of law, and produced these results.

      The Orthodox supernaturalist therefore contends that the supernatural is a constant element of life. Higher natures are all supernatural to lower natures, but natural in themselves, because obedient to the laws of their own nature. Nature, without this supernatural element, is only a machine, of which God, standing outside, turns the handle. This is a low conception both of nature and of God. As Goethe says, in one of his immortal lyrics—

      “Not so, outside, doth the Creator linger,

      Nor let the all of things run round his finger,

      But moves its centre, not its outer rim;

      Comes down to nature, draws it up to him;

      Moving within, inspiring from above,

      With currents ever new of light and love.”

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§ 7. Life and History contain Supernatural Events.

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      And besides all this, says the supernaturalist, we have continued and constant evidences, in all history and in all human experience, of the existence of this supernatural element. Only a small minority of mankind have ever doubted it; and those are men so immersed in physical science, or so hampered by some logical manacles, or so steeped in purely worldly affairs, as to be incapable of seeing the supernatural facts which are recurrent evermore. Christianity itself has been an uninterrupted series of supernatural events. The physical miracles of Christ are nothing to the spiritual miracles which Christianity is always working. Bad men are made good, weak men strong, cowardly men brave, ignorant and foolish men wise, by a supernatural influence given in answer to prayer, poured down into hearts and minds which open themselves to receive it. The conversion of a bad man by the power of Christianity is a miracle. The power of faith, hope, love, which every Christian has experienced, coming into him, not through any operation of his nature, but simply poured into his soul from some higher sphere—this makes all argument unnecessary to one who has had ever so little Christian experience.

      This is the substance of Orthodox supernaturalism; and this seems to me to be its truth, separated from its errors.

      The naturalism of the present time we conceive to be partly directed against a false supernaturalism, and partly to be a mistake arising from a too exclusive attention to the order of the universe, as expressed in law.

§ 8. The Error of Orthodox Supernaturalism.

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      Supernaturalism has generally disregarded God in nature, and only sees him in revelation. It has allowed a sort of natural religion, but only in the way of an argument to prove the existence of God by what he did a long time ago. But it has not gone habitually to nature to see God there, incarnate in sun, moon, and stars; incorporate in spring, [pg 051] summer, autumn, and winter; in day and night; in the human soul, reason, love, will. God has been all around us, never far from us; but theology has only been willing to see him in Jewish history, in sacred books, or on Sundays in church. Let us see him there all we can, but see him also in every rippling brook, in every tender flower, in all beauty, all sublimity, all arrangement and adaptation of this world. No wonder that naturalism should come to do what the Church has left undone—to find its God and Father in this great and wonderful world which he has made for us. The creed says, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost;” that is, God the Creator, seen in Nature and Providence; God the Redeemer, seen in Christianity; and God the Sanctifier, seen in every righteous and holy soul. But the Church has neglected its own creed, and omitted God the Creator, often also God the Sanctifier, and has only seen God in Christianity, in its history, its Church, its doctrines, its ceremonies.8 Against this, naturalism comes as a great and needed protest, and calls us to see God also in nature and life.

      Then the Church has been too apt to teach a miraculous revelation, in which the miracles are violations of law. But