The Conception of God. Josiah Royce

and human immortality would once more fall within the bounds of knowledge, since the being of God would become continuous with the being of man, the being of man with the being of God.

      The condition of this apparent victory for religion, however, as we must not fail to note, was the acceptance of the Immanent God, the all-pervasive Intelligence; precisely as later, in the system of Spencer, the solution of the tension between Positivism and agnostic Pietism was the acceptance of the Immanent Unknowable. But more worthy of note is the fact, that in the continuous dialectical development involved in the self-expression of the “Divine Idea,” as this was worked out by Hegel, provision had been made, as if ready to hand, not only for the great law of evolution in the creation, but—of far greater significance—for its explanation by something more illu​mining than a “final inexplicability,”—the utmost explanatory reach of the “Unknowable.”

      These sketches of the historic thought lying directly behind us, barest outline though they are, suffice to explain the issues in which we at this day are engaged. If the scientific doctrine of Evolution, taken with all its suggestions, has been to the religious conceptions inherited by our century the surpassing summons to prepare for a radical change; and if to those friends of the deep things in the traditional faith who incline to hearken at the summons the Spencerian construction of evolution in terms of the “Unknowable” seems a revolution amounting to the abandonment of all religious conceptions worth human concern—since it puts an end to the conscious communion of the creature with a conscious Creator and Saviour, and in its depths unmistakably forebodes the eventual extinction of personal being from the universe—if these things are so, then it is easy to understand how the idealistic conceptions of Kant’s successors, especially in the form given to them by Hegel, should appeal as strongly as they have appealed, and are still appealing, to those who would preserve to their conviction the Personality of the Eternal, and all that this carries with it for religion. For this idealistic philosophy seems by one and the same stroke to assure them of God’s reality, and to adjust his nature, and his way of existence, to their minds “as affected by modern knowledge.” It assigns to him such an immanence in his works as explains evolution by presenting it as “continuous creation,” and it gives, at last, what seems like a ​real meaning to the traditional dogma of his Omnipresence.

      In this light, the conflict existing in thought down to the present day, so far as it bears on religion, appears to lie between the conception of the Immanent God and the conception of the Immanent Unknowable—between a world-informing Person, whom it is supposed this idealistic Monism secures us, and a world-pervading Power, perpetually transforming its effects, which is all that the agnostic Monism leaves us. On this view. Monism would appear as if settled: there would only remain, as the reflecting world so far appears to think, a choice between its two species. It was therefore with pertinence that Mr. Balfour, in his Foundations of Belief, set these two systems, under the titles of “Naturalism” and “Transcendental Idealism,” in a contrasting agreement in lack, and, exposing some of their incurable defects, while assuming them to exhaust the possibilities of rational ingenuity, made this assumption the basis of his subtle and rather telling plea for a return to external authority, as the only foundation for religious stability. The day has assuredly gone by, however, when men, confessing there is no support for religion in reason, are willing to rest it on decrees and on might; or, going M. de Voltaire one better in his cynicism, are “for the safety of society” not only willing to “invent a God,” but are ready to enforce him. “When it comes to that,” the minds of this generation surely would say, “it is time to give religion over, and to let God go.” On the other hand, quite as surely, ​multitudes of them are still of firm hope, and even of persuasion, that religion, in its highest historic meaning, is verifiable by reason. Their inheritance in aspirations after Immortality as the only field for exercising to the full their moral Freedom—in longings after the reality of God, in which alone, as they see, have those aspirations any sure warrant—this inheritance they are still confident will be shown valid at the bar of knowledge, will be vindicated as of the substance of reality itself, when once the nature of that reality gets stated as genuine intelligence sees it to be. They know the inheritance is worthless unless it has this certification by intelligence, but they are alert in the trust that the certification is there, and only waits to be shown. The hour has arrived, they are sure, for a higher philosophy, thoroughly Personal, which will prove itself Complete Idealism and Fulfilled Realism at one and the same time.

It is on this ground, one now may repeat, that the existing interest in that form of Theism which culminates in the school of Hegel can be explained. In this way, too, one can understand why this interest, in spite of interrupting pauses, has continued to grow since the day of its beginning, and why, coming into a religious medium more serious and stable when it took possession of the English-speaking mind, it has spread far more widely since the rise and growth of scientific evolution. At present, the way of thinking which engages this interest moves, in one form or another, side by side with the advancing spread of Spencerian thought, and appears more and more as ​the reliance of those who would vindicate an eternal Person against the hostile theory of Agnosticism. That this spread of the conception of an Immanent God is a fact, affecting not only the world of technical philosophy but also the world of applied theology and practical religion, it is enough to cite in evidence the writings and influence of the late Professor Green in England, of the brothers Caird in Scotland, of Professor Watson in Canada, and, in the United States—besides its presence in various modified forms in the philosophical chairs at the leading universities—the preaching of Phillips Brooks, the long and impressive philosophical industry of our National Commissioner of Education, the noticeable book of Professor Allen entitled The Continuity of Christian Thought, the recent public declaration of Dr. Strong, and the writings of Dr. Gordon, such as his Christ of To-day and his Immortality and the New Theodicy. Nor should one forget, in this connexion, the Bampton Lectures of 1893, by Mr. Upton. Idealistic Monism pervades the religious influence of all these minds, gives this its controlling tone, and tinges deeply the New Theology, as it is called, wherever this appears—be it among Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, or Unitarians, or even among the progressive Romanists: one finds clear traces of it in the “liberal” theological seminaries in almost every denomination. A significant fact of the same order was the irenical essay of Mr. John Fiske, The Idea of God as affected by Modern Knowledge, with its extraordinary popular success. Here a professed ​follower of Darwin and of Spencer undertook to interpret the Philosophy of Evolution so as to impart to the Immanent Power, the “Omnipresent Energy” of the evolutionist, a tinge of the Personal God, and to transfigure evolutional Agnosticism into Cosmic Theism. Of this, the pervading theme was the substitution of a “quasi-personal God immanent in the world” for the traditional “God remote from the world.” Evolutionism joined forces with a semi-idealistic Monism, to extend the spread of the conception of a one and only Immanent Spirit.^[2]

      But whatever religious advantages this form of Idealism may have—in the way of displacing Agnosticism and of recovering an Absolute that shall be personal so far as regards possession of self-consciousness and intelligent purpose—or even in the way of winning an assurance of something for the human Self that may excusably be called everlasting life—there still remains to be settled a question of far graver import for religion and for human worth; the question, namely, of Freedom, and of the moral responsibility and moral opportunity dependent on freedom. Can the reality of human free-agency, of moral responsibility and universal moral aspiration, of unlimited spiritual hope for every soul—can this be made out, can it even be held, consistently with ​the theory of an Immanent God? This, for a few awakened minds at least, now becomes the “burning question.” It well may be, that, in their preoccupation with the task of rescuing out of Agnosticism something absolutely real which they could also call a Person, these philosophical allies of religion have overlooked a lurking but fatal antagonism between their form of Idealism and the central soul of the traditional faith, the vital interests of man as man. At all events, the time has come when the question whether this is not so should be raised with all emphasis, and examined to the end. For if our genuine freedom is to disappear when we accept the religion whose God is the Immanent Spirit, then the new religion is in truth a decline from the highest conceptions of the historic faith, and in this regard has no advantage