p. 3 | A Humanized God

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 9, 1908

A Humanized God

The real meaning of the New Theology and of the scientific religion which is now so widely advocated is being developed in such a significance that no one need be longer in doubt as to what is involved in them. Those conclusions which at one time it was necessary to infer from the premises and principles adopted are now plainly stated and accepted by the exponents of these modern views of religion, and we can therefore quote their own words as to these revolutionary teachings.

The acknowledged leader of the New Theology in England is R. J. Campbell, who succeeded Dr. Joseph Parker as pastor of the City Temple, London, for a long time the home of liberalism. Mr. Campbell’s exposition of his views has now been published in a recent book which has been reviewed by a friendly critic in The Outlook of Dec. 14, 1907, from whose summary of its teaching we take the following paragraph:—

The ancient and recently recovered truth of the immanence of God and his indwelling in humanity [God in man]—the distinctive note of the “New Theology”—saturates his thought and controls his interpretation of the New Testament. To him “the spiritual idea is to reach the stage where we can say with fulness of knowledge, and not merely as an act of faith, ‘I and my Father are one.’” He will not recognize that there is any real dividing line between the being of God and the being of man: “our being is God’s, not some of it merely, but all of it, although our present consciousness of it is our own.” It is this apparent if not real denial of individual personality, which seems to many of his readers to carry with it a denial of individual responsibility and an obscuring of divine personality, which has aroused the popular criticism against Mr. Campbell, and given significance to his theological critics. In thus treating of essential humanity as essentially divine, Mr. Campbell entirely humanizes Jesus, and thereby scandalizes the adherents of the traditional Christology, though he declares “the all-pervading Presence represented and summed up in the name of Jesus.”

Here we have a plain statement of the real essence of the New Theology,—“the immanence of God and his indwelling in humanity,”—and this is interpreted as removing “any real dividing line between the being of God and the being of man.” Of course this denies individual personality both to God and to man, when any proper idea of personality is entertained, and with this go the Biblical teaching concerning sin and the atonement, and all the essential features of the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ.

This may be called “new theology,” but it is in truth very old theology, being identical in its essence with the Hindu theology, although the forms of expression are adapted to modern times. In corroboration of this assertion we will quote some statements from “The Intellectual Development of Europe,” by Draper:—

The theology of India is underlaid with pantheism. “God is one because he is all.” . . . They [the Vedas] convey the idea that while there is a pervading spirit existing everywhere of the same nature as the soul of man [no “real dividing line between the being of God and the being of man”], though differing from it infinitely in degree, visible nature is essentially and inseparably connected therewith. . . . As to the relation between the Supreme Being and man, the soul is a portion or particle of that all-pervading principle, the Universal Intellect or Soul of the World, detached for a while from its primitive source, and placed in connection with the bodily frame, but destined by an inevitable necessity sooner or later to be restored and rejoined—as inevitably as rivers run back to be lost in the ocean from which they arose. . . . Considering thus the relation in which all animated nature stands to us, being a mechanism for purification, this doctrine of the transmigration of the soul leads necessarily to other doctrines of a moral kind, more particularly to a profound respect for life under every form, human, animal, or insect. . . . The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there is a supreme power, but no Supreme Being. . . . It asserts an impelling power in the universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a self-existent, an eternal, a personal God.—Vol. I, pages 59-69.

As further showing the identity of the fundamental ideas of the modern, scientific religion with the heathenism of ancient India, we will quote from an article in the Christliche Welt (Christian World), a German publication, written by Pastor Faut, who defines the latest religious views of scientists:—

The world no longer is regarded as a soulless machine, but as an organism endowed with a soul. Scientists are teaching that the world has a soul, which is the mysterious background or foundation of the activities of the world. All things are saturated with the world spirit or world soul. . . . Formerly it [science] deprived the world of its God; now it makes a god of the world itself. The God of the old faith is regarded as a visionary conception; and science still adheres to the tenet that a transcendental God can not exist. Rather the world itself, the whole universe, is God, and accordingly the soul has now again an object to which it can consecrate itself. . . . This new religion is not identical with the old, which in childlike confidence trusted the fatherly love of God; but religion has been entirely humanized, and is no longer a faith in transcendental things. Religion has been restored to mankind; and this is the religion of the modern man on the basis of the pantheistic teachings of modern science. The result is the “religious common sense” of the modern thinker, which is to take the place of the former absence of all religions. . . . It teaches a divine immanence in nature, and is a kind of pantheism.

Those who were obliged to deal with the teachings urged upon this denomination, but repudiated by it, and which are still being put out from the same source need only to read these quotations to see that we were being asked to accept the pantheistic principles of the New Theology and of the religion of modern scientists, a mere variation of Hindu theology. There was the same “profound respect for life under every form, human, animal, or insect,” which led to the assertion that “there is likewise a greater brotherhood, which includes not only man, civilized man, savage man, Christian man, heathen man,—all men,—but likewise man’s humbler relatives of the animal world, into whose nostrils, as well as man’s, God breathed the breath of life,” and which designated the slayer of an animal as “an assassin;” and there was that definition of life as “that divine spark of infinite energy which animates all living things, and makes all sentient creatures kin.” There was also that same idea of “that all-pervading principle, the Universal Intellect or Soul of the World,” which is found in the Hindu theology, as may be seen from the following quotation:—

The more one learns of nature, the more deeply one looks into the secrets of God’s creative work, the more clearly does one recognize the kinship which exists between the human mind and the infinite, between the higher and nobler manifestations of human thought and the divine thoughts which are expressed in the sunlight, the clouds, the flowers, the trees, the fields of waving grain, the fragrant meadows, the rushing torrent, the heaving ocean, the whole moving, speaking universe about us. . . . Nature reveals to us an infinite personality [not a person] working constantly, harmoniously. The uniformity of law is due, not to the fact that the power behind is blind, unintelligent, unreasoning force, but to the fact that the power [not the person] at work in nature is possessed of such infinite intelligence that every act was perfect the first time it was done, and not being susceptible of improvement, can only be repeated.—“The Miracle of Life,” pages 454, 455.

This third angel’s message was designed to be a protest against all this perversion of the revelation of God and the gospel of Christ, and we are thankful that it has not yielded to the blandishments of this self-exalting and God-debasing, scientific theology. The truth of the gospel needs now to be proclaimed to all the world “with a loud voice.”