GIFFORD LECTURERS AND NATURAL

DR

THEOLOGY

BY REV. JOHN ASHTON, S.J.

R. A. ALEXANDER, in his recently published History of Modern Philosophy, refers to the fresh interest in the philosophy of religion which has been awakened by the institution of the Gifford Lectureship in the Universities of Scotland. 'Probably no literary bequest,' he writes, since its inception in 1890 has brought forth such a brilliant succession of thinkers, or afforded so rich a variety of fruitful discourse as this series of lectures has evoked' (page 615).

Among other provisions of his will, Lord Gifford founded a trust for the purpose of establishing a Lectureship, or Popular Chair for promoting Advanced Teaching and diffusing the study of Natural Theology.' This was explained to be a branch of 'natural science,' and the subject of the lectures was to be: 'Infinite Being, without reference to, or reliance upon, any supposed special, exceptional, or socalled miraculous revelation.' Thus, the widest scope is given to the lecturers, provided only that they avoid the supernatural. That would be reasonable enough, were the subject of Natural Theology regarded as merely providing a proof of Theism, without prejudice to any higher truths about God which might be discovered from any other source of knowledge not opposed to, but consistent with, sound reason. So it has happened that a professedly orthodox Christian lecturer, now and again, finds himself somewhat embarrassed by the limitations set down by Lord Gifford in his will. Natural religion,' said one of them, Sir G. Stokes, can but leave man in a state of hopeless thraldom, seeing what is right, aspiring after it, but too weak to stem the opposing tide, so as always to

FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XXII-OCTOBER, 1923

follow it.' Is it not, then, further conceivable, he asks, 'that there may also be means provided for the renovation of man's moral nature, equally transcending what, as belonging to our present moral nature, we know by our natural reason? If so, we need not expect to be able to find them out for ourselves.' The lecturer is here, as he acknowledges, in danger of trespassing beyond the limits laid down by the terms of the will, and so, with a reference to his profound conviction on the subject, and an expression of regret that he was debarred from entering on it, he turned aside. On the other hand, though the fact would probably be regarded by many as a merit of the will, the conditions therein laid down are so inclusive in their scope that a theory openly, or at least by implication, pantheistic, may be advocated. The lecturer may even abandon all logical proof of the existence of God, which the terms of the will seem to suppose, and, instead, fall back on the pragmatic test of experience or an appeal to the needs of human nature, though it will be claimed that, in so doing, he is merely expounding the principles of Natural Theology, in the widest sense of that term.' Thus Max Müller argued in his Gifford Lectures on the Science of Language,' that though man knows there is a God, yet

this knowledge is based neither on the evidences of the sense nor on the evidence of reason. No man has ever seen God. Neither sense nor reason can supply a knowledge of God. What are called the proofs of the existence of God, whether ontological, theological, or kosmological, are possible only after the idea of God has been realized in us. And so, appeal is made to a third kind of knowledge, which imparts to us what is neither furnished by the organs of sense nor elaborated by our reason, and which, nevertheless, possesses evidence equal, nay, superior to the evidence of sense and reason.3

Lecturing two years ago, the late Sir Henry Jones argued that the whole basis on which religion rests, that is, faith in the omnipotence and limitless love of God, is rendered insecure by the fact of the ultimate failure of some human lives.' But as an orderly universe requires 1 Natural Theology, pp. 141, 142.

2 Vol. ii. p. 627.

› Max Müller and Religion, by G. Greenlees, pp. 8, 9.

a belief in the immortality of the soul the test of religion was satisfied by the fact that such belief fits into the system.'

Sometimes it happens that, if not the arguments of different lecturers, at least their implications, are clearly irreconcilable. Thus Sir James Frazer considers that the questions of the truth and moral value of religious beliefs are irrelevant to the historical as distinguished from the dogmatic and philosophical method. He elects to pursue the former and professes to find that religious beliefs are ultimately traceable to magic. Thus not only is the moral value of religious beliefs irrelevant, but it disappears altogether, if Earl Balfour's elaborate argument that our beliefs must have a 'congruous origin' possesses any weight whatever. Natural Theology Sir James Frazer defines as that reasoned knowledge of a God or gods which man may be supposed, whether rightly or wrongly, capable of attaining to by the exercises of his natural faculties alone' (page 8). To the question of the survival of our conscious personality after death he adopts an equally non-committal attitude. After presenting two opposite views he declines to adopt the one or the other and leaves the question open (page 471).

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Thus it will be inferred that the force of the arguments in support of Natural Theology put forward by these lecturers is as unequal as their character is varied. Scholars from every part of the world have been invited-Earl Balfour, Andrew Lang, Driesch, William James, Prof. Stout, Bergson, Pfleiderer, Sir James Frazer, Prof. Sorley, Dean Inge, being among the contributors.

Amid all the diversity of outlook and treatment [writes Prof. A. Alexander] one truth has been impressed upon the mind of the student : that in some way religion is central to man and must gather all human interests into itself; that every advance in science and art, poetry and romance, and in ethical and social life, has an intimate bearing on religious conceptions and ultimately involves some form of spiritual interpretation of life. These writers, each from his own standpoint, unite in showing that a knowledge of God or the Absolute is the goal and crown of all philosophical inquiry, and that in some way the quest of the Divine must underlie and illumine all our quest of truth."

1 Gifford Lectures, delivered at St. Andrews, 1911-12.

Op. cit., p. 615.

It was a great pleasure, recently, to listen to Earl Balfour, at the Bute Hall of the Glasgow University, in the course of his second series of Gifford lectures, which had been interrupted by the war, defending so many of the principles of Natural Theology, if not in the terms of, at least in consonance with, the teaching of Scholasticism. In the whole list of Gifford lecturers he is the one whose views have been most criticized, both by philosophers and scientists alike. Huxley, Prof. W. Wallace, Fairbairn, Canon Barry and others have all had something to say on the subject; while an anonymous writer wrote a book as a formal criticism of his philosophy.1 At least two writers, to whom Earl Balfour referred in the ninth of his recent lectures, did not wait for the end of the course to make certain adverse criticisms. Another had claimed that his polished periods have exhausted their effect. Philosophers have forgotten them. Nor is there any academic news of the moment to be communicated about a revival of interest.'" That was written nearly two years ago, and he is still expounding with great ability and vigour the very arguments to be found in his early writings, which he has elaborated over and over again. A 'correspondent' in The Times, commenting on his Foundations of Belief, at the time of its publication, in the year 1895, said that it revealed the writer as 'a thinker in a transition stage.' Yet there is no philosopher of whom it can be said that he has adhered more consistently to his original message, first delivered forty years ago, than Earl Balfour. It is true, as Mr. Scott says, that philosophy has nowhere to any marked extent set itself squarely to confront just his questions'; but the reason may be that philosophers are unwilling to examine those questions from his particular point of view, on which he has been so insistent. In his Presidential Address at the meeting of the British Association in the year 1888, he confessed that the line of thought

1 Mr. Balfour's Apologetics Critically Examined.

2 J. W. Scott, Mr. Balfour's Early Writings,' Contemporary Review, August, 1921.

which so strongly appealed to him seemed to have little interest for anyone else; while elsewhere he has spoken of the title of his Foundations of Belief as having attracted more interest than its contents. Another reason for this may be that such is the 'spirit of his intellectual detachment,'1 that it is not always easy to say what precisely is the view that he holds, or to distinguish it from that which he criticizes. Huxley, for instance, expressed a certain appreciation of the hue of scepticism which overspreads the Foundations so extensively, that a less sympathetic observer might easily fail to distinguish between what is rock and what is sand"; or, to make use of another metaphor, it is sometimes difficult to see the wood of his philosophy for the trees of his criticism. Perhaps, to a certain extent, that may be explained by the admission that he has always found it easier to convince himself of the insufficiency of Naturalism than of the absolute sufficiency of any of the schemes by which it has been sought to modify or complete it.' ' So that his search after first principles is destined to be ineffectual.' Earl Balfour has a weakness for philosophic' or, as he now prefers to call it, after Mr. Russell, methodological' doubt. And so the charge has not infrequently been brought against him that his philosophy is a somewhat veiled attack upon Human Reason. This accusation, which has again been recently repeated, Earl Balfour deprecates. His method, he argues, of using doubt in favour of belief is not, as some have maintained, demoralizing. 'How could reason be disparaged by the process he had adopted?' he asks. They might say that reason occupied the place of the defendant in the case, but reason was also the plaintiff, the advocate, the judge; and if reason occupied all these places in this high court of justice he was unable to see how reason could be

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1 Pringle-Pattison (Seth), Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 231.

2 Nineteenth Century, for March, 1895, 'Mr. Balfour's Attack on Agnosticism.'

Foundations of Belief. p. 96.