THE BUILDER March, 1927

The Conception of God

By BRO. A. H. NORRIS, Pennsylvania

The discussion on this subject in the pages of THE BUILDER has
proved so far most interesting. The writer of the article in the
February number, Fundamentals in Freemasonry, has, in my opinion,
somewhat diverged from the main question, which as I understand it
is this, "What conception of God" is required of a candidate when
he makes the brief confession of faith demanded of him at his
entrance into the Order? A "Lay Brother" defines as best he can his
idea of God, and expresses a desire to know whether this is
acceptable in the Masonic Order. M. W. Bro. Briggs says it is not
acceptable because Freemasonry teaches a belief in the God of the
Bible. He is not altogether fair because he does not define the God
of the Bible before asserting that the God envisaged, by a "Lay
Brother" is not to be accepted by the Fraternity. If then, we grant
for the present, that the God of the Bible is the God of
Freemasonry we are no nearer a solution than before. Bro. Briggs
does not bring any evidence to support his contention except a
report of a Masonic trial held in Missouri in 1888. The Grand Lodge
of Missouri may be omnipotent in Missouri, but that does not help
to solve the problem in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, when it is
considered that the purpose of the discussion generally is to
determine the question, "What is the limiting conception of God
that the requirements of Anglo-Saxon Masonry imply?"

Granting for argument's sake that the God of the Bible is the God
of Freemasonry, it is obvious that we must first know what the God
of the Bible is before we can come to any conclusion. The position
of Bro. Briggs takes it for granted that everyone knows what this
Deity is and what He is supposed to be. But, the Bible taken by
itself is not so clear as seems to be assumed, since, according to
Bro. Briggs, the Bible is inspired by God all its statements about
the Supreme Being must be accurate.

Let us consider the God that is pictured for us in the Old
Testament, especially in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua and Samuel. It
is a tyrannical, capricious, jealous Deity that we find,
continually threatening death and destruction and frequently
bringing it to pass. A God who smites Miriam with leprosy to back
Moses up in a family dispute, who is appeased by Phineas sticking
a javelin through zimri the son of Salu and the Midianite woman he
had taken. A God who punished with death the least infraction of
ritual observance, such as that of Korah Abiram and Dathan, or the
men of Beth-Shemesh, of whom fifty thousand men were slain because
they looked into the Ark of the Covenant when it came back from
Philistia, or the death of the well-meaning Uzzah who put his hand
out to steady it when the oxen drawing the cart shook it. But
these, perhaps, are trifling matters to the approval, nay, more,
the definite injunction to attack cities and villages and kill
unsparingly men, women and children, as at Jericho, and Ai, and
later the Amalekites. Or even within the nation itself as in the
civil war with Benjamin, when by definite command the other tribes
twice attacked and were defeated with great loss, and then at the
third engagement almost destroyed the Benjamites. A few brief
references such as these in no way do justice to the monotonous
history of indiscriminate and bloody massacre related in the
narrative parts of the earlier books of the Old Testament from
Exodus to the wars of David, which Jehovah seems to highly approve;
the only way to appreciate it is to read these books through.

Again, leaving out the strange appearances to Abraham and Jacob,
what are we to think of the God who met Moses at the inn and tried
to slay him, but who was appeased by the blood shed by his wife in
circumcising their son, or the God whom Moses and Aaron and the
elders saw in the mount standing, apparently, on a "paved work of
a sapphire stone," or the God who showed Moses his "back parts" ?

This is with no intent to appear irreverent, these things are there
to be read by anyone who chooses in the inspired book. They are
difficulties that have always been felt, and many have been the
attempts to explain them, but none that are very satisfactory that
do not allow for very wide' degrees in the amount of inspiration
given to the different writers. These earlier pictures are wholly
inconsistent with the later ideas of the prophets and some (not
all) of the Psalms, as these again are immeasurably below the
conception offered in the New Testament. Probably this latest
conception is what Bro. Briggs refers to as the God of the Bible,
but how does he explain or eliminate the other God who is equally
of scriptural record?

In the whole argument he defeats himself, particularly when he
says:

Each Freemason is left to his own interpretation of the teachings
of the Bible concerning God, but when he rejects the authority of
the Bible concerning God it is time or him to retire from the
Order.

And again:

God is known only as he is revealed and Freemasonry finds in the
Bible the revelation of God which each Freemason is left to
interpret for himself.

According to the first statement the man who accepts the jealous,
vengeful, threatening and domineering God first illustrated is
entitled to become a Freemason and to remain one, but the man who,
like our "Lay Brother," rejects this picture and attempts by
philosophical reasoning to build up a conception of God, not in
human form perhaps, nor with inhuman passions, but nevertheless
including the attributes of the God of the Ten Commandments and of
the prophets, is to be rejected and expelled. It sounds rather
absurd.

As for the second assertion, if Freemasonry finds in the Bible the
revelation of God, and this God is to be understood as the moral
Being of the Ten Commandments, and the loving Father of the
Gospels, then no Freemason is free to interpret the Bible for
himself. He must accept the interpretation of the Fraternity. Sad,
if true, but ridiculous because it is not true.

This is neither the time nor the place for a disquisition upon the
Bible and Freemasonry, and whether or not the Masonic Fraternity is
obliged to consider the Bible to be divinely inspired in the
Fundamentalist sense. But there must, however, be some explanation
of this relationship if we are to come to any conclusions upon the
latitude to be allowed a member of the Craft in conceiving God.
There is, in the whole ritual, only one place where it may be taken
as implying that the Bible is considered to be inspired in the
sense that God alone is speaking, and that the thought of the
writer does not enter into the sacred word. It is said that "the
Holy Bible is His inestimable gift to man." The sentence in itself
is ambiguous, and if the attitude of the Fundamentalists in the
Order is the only correct one it should be modified. If not, it may
well stand as it is unless those who might be called Modernists
insist like their Fundamentalist brethren that there is no view
allowable but their own. I think even our "Lay Brother" would be
inclined to say that the Bible was inspired by God. I cannot speak
with authority on this point of course, but I judge this to be the
opinion from the general tone of his article. It was not, however,
inspired in the sense that every word in the Bible is the literal
word of God, but in the sense that every great and important
undertaking is inspired. In this sense Confucius, Buddha, Socrates,
Plato were inspired, and even Aristotle, Galileo, Copernicus and
hundreds of others who have opened fresh vistas to human thought
and conquered new realms of knowledge. There is nothing in such a
view which conflicts with the ritual phrase.

The most important argument in support of the view of a "Lay
Brother" lies in nearly the concluding paragraph of his article,
where he says

Since I was not asked to define in precise terms just what the God
I trusted and believed in was, I can see no reason why anyone has
any just cause for complaint because I happen to hold to an opinion
which differs from his. I do not ask him to change his God and
substitute mine in order to stay in the Fraternity. I respect the
opinions of others, they are doubtless as near right as I am, and
I leave them to enjoy such happiness as they may get from the
contemplation of their God. I ask no more for myself.

The candidate is not asked to define his conception of God, and the
Fraternity has no right to ask him to define it. Since he has not
been asked for a definition of this God in whom he puts his trust
what right have we as members of the Masonic Fraternity to
afterwards foist upon him dogmatic assertions that such and such a
thing must be believed or one cannot remain a Freemason? If he
accepts the Bible as only a sublime work of philosophy, history,
literature, or all three together, it makes no difference as long
as he is willing that the lessons he can derive from it for himself
should constitute a rule and guide to his faith.

We are distinctly told that Freemasonry is not a religion or a
sect, unless it be that a belief in the One Living and True God,
whatever that may mean exactly, makes it one. As long as a brother
believes in something that, in a sense significant to himself, he
is able honestly to call God, it makes no difference whether I or
anyone else understand it in the same way or not. It is GOD to him,
and that is the only thing important. I think there is need for
tolerance, for less dogmatic criticism, for more appreciation of
the views of others, and for more intelligent interpretation of the
ritual than has hitherto been practiced. Some have understood it
dogmatically and narrowly, others, and they are many, are too
indifferent to try to understand or give it any meaning at all that
affects themselves. Let the individual have his own understanding
of God; the Supreme Architect of Freemasonry will then be a
composite of the beliefs of all Freemasons and as such will be an
all embracing symbolical designation. Certainly it is far better
for a man to reject the view of inspiration held by the
Fundamentalist and to believe in a Great and Good God, than it is
for him to believe that every word, every phrase, every sentence of
the Bible represents the utterance of the Almighty and thus be
forced to accept that terrible God of vengeance and bloodshed which
so much of the Bible presents to us.

