THE BUILDER APRIL 1927

BRO. JOHN J. LANIER, Kansas

Why I Believe in God

The inspiration of the religion of the modern thoughtful man is
neither deism, theism, nor pantheism but theopanism.

Theopanism is the opposite of pantheism both in etymology and
meaning. They come from the two Greek words, reversed, pan and
theos; pan means all, and theos means God. Pantheism means that all
is God and everything is a part of God, theopanism means that God
is all in all.

The all is spirit, personality; in all is the manifestation and
revelation of infinite personality in and as the world of nature
and man, it is God revealed to our senses: and for spirit, God, to
do this he must embody himself as matter.

Theopanism does not teach that man and nature are self-existent but
the continuous ever outgoing energy, thought, life and personality
of God. Should this activity of God cease--were God an inactive
God--they would not be. They are not a part of God, but God
incarnate as man and embodied as nature. In other words: God is
spirit, man is his soul, and the material universe is his body; in
an indivisible unity all space and all time; because God is
omnipresent, unchanging, and eternally active spirit as taught in
Ps. 139:7-8.

Whither shall I flee from thy spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. 

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

This is Theopanism which is found in a saga which Max Muller
translates from the wisdom of the East, a parable, which tells how
the gods met in council to discuss where they should hide their
divinity. One suggested that it be carried to the other side of the
earth and be buried; but it was pointed out that man was a great
wanderer, and that he might find the lost treasure on the other
side of the world. Another proposed that it be dropped in the depth
of the sea; but the same fear was expressed--that man, in his
insatiable curiosity, might dive deep enough to find it even there.
Finally, after a space of silence, the oldest and wisest said:
"Hide it in man himself, as that is the last place he will ever
look for it." And it was so agreed, all seeing at once the subtle
and wise strategy. Man did wander over the earth for ages, seeking
in all places, high and low, far and near, before he thought to
look within himself for the divinity he sought. At last, slowly,
dimly, he began to realize that what he thought afar off, "hidden
in the pathos of distance," is nearer than the breath he breathes,
even in his own soul. "Once man learns this deep secret life is new
and the old world is a valley all dewy to the dawn with a lark song
over it."

GOD IS MAN AND NATURE

In ancient times this saga brought a great light to those who sat
in the darkness and the shadow of death; and when we cease to
believe and love this truth the darkness of death covers us with
the shadow of its gloomy wings. Through the shadow of such an
eclipse the world passed during what is called the dark ages, but
out of which it has been passing for the last three hundred years.
The moment the world regained the essential truth that although God
transcends man and nature yet he is man and nature, it bounded
forward by leaps and bounds like a steed of war charging gloriously
into battle. The recovery of this truth unmade the medieval ages
and made modern Europe and America of today.

Under the inspiration and mighty impact of the great truth that the
world of nature and the world of man are alike the visible temple
of deity, again came back the idea of the sacredness of man, and
the virgin love and passion of man for nature. Under this new
inspiration the Bible again became the record of God revealing
himself as the sheeny lustre of green leaves, the laughter of
running waters, the majesty of snowclad mountains and the immensity
of the sidereal heavens, clothing himself with light as with a
garment, and walking upon the wings of the wind !

WHY BELIEVE IN GOD ?

Anaxagoras said, "If an ox could think, his god would be an
infinite ox," which means that the First Great Cause can be no less
than man is. I am a person, and no less than I am can be the author
of my existance and being. Therefore I believe in the personality
of God.

An objection is felt by many to the use of the word personality in
connection of the unseen power of the universe, that it implies
those limitations which belong to personal beings as we know them
on earth. In answer we can only say that we are not tied to the use
of the word if anyone will invent a better.

SOMETHING HIGHER THAN PERSONALITY

I am quite content to believe with Mr. Herbert Spencer "that the
choice is not between personality and something lower than
personality, but between personality and something higher," and if
you will, I am ready to call that Great Power the personality which
is above human personality, but I cannot call that Great Power
"it." Every word we use is weak and unfit. In speaking of that
Great Power we say "he," but he is an inadequate word, for it
implies limitation of sex. "They" is misleading because it suggests
the possibility of the divergence of will. But if "he" and "they"
are inadequate and misleading words, "it" is still more so, for we
cannot think of that power which is behind all things and which
humanity must depend upon as being a mere abstraction or a neutral
and willess thing.

TRUE ACCOUNT OF LIFE

We have seen the advance of religion, pointing humanity from age to
age forward and onward to higher ideals and larger life. All these
things, we say, are due to the influence of one mighty force, that
unseen power, that will within the world, which seems recognized in
one form or another by the clearest and profoundest thinkers; and
seeing all this we cannot speak of that power and that will as
being "it" rather than "he." Hence, I cannot but believe that the
true account of life is, that it is an education of beings who
think and will and love by a being who thinks, wills and loves;
and, until some better phrase is found, I shall call this an
education of persons by a person whose personality is as much
higher than theirs as the consciousness of a human being is higher
than the consciousness of a plant, and in comparison with whose
love our love is but the faintest shadow of a shade.

PERSONALITY OF GOD AND MAN

Belief in the personality of man and belief in the personality of
God stand or fall together. When faith in the personality of God is
weak, or is altogether wanting, as in the pantheistic religions of
the East, the perception which men have of their own personality is
found to be in an equal degree indistinct. The feeling of
individuality is dormant. The soul indolently ascribes to itself a
merely phenomenal being. It conceives itself as appearing for a
moment, like a wave on the ocean to vanish again in the
all-engulfing essence whence it emerged. Philosophical theories
which substitute "matter" or an "unknowable" for the selfconscious
Deity, likewise dissipate the personality of man. If they deny that
God is spirit, they deny with equal emphasis that man is a spirit.
The pantheistic and atheistic schemes are in this respect
consistent in their logic; but out of man's perception of his
personal attributes arises the belief in a personal God. On this
fact of our own personality the validity for the argument of theism
depends.

PERSONALITY THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE

That which I see, that which I hear, that which I think, that which
I feel, changes with each moment of my varied existence. I who hear
and see and think and feel am the one conscious self, whose
existence gives unity and connection to the whole.

Personality comprises all that we know of that which exists;
relation to personality comprises all that we know of that which
seems to exist. And when from the little world of man's
consciousness and its objects we would lift up our eyes to the
inexhaustible universe beyond, and ask to whom all of this is
related, the highest existence is still the highest personality;
and the source of all being reveals himself by his name, "I Am."

SUBSTITUTES OFFERED FOR A PERSONAL GOD

So here we have before us a theory of the universe; time-honored,
coherent, concrete, positive, august; and abstract criticism is
powerless against it; futile unless supported by some positive
hypothesis to take the place of what it seeks to remove; seeing
that, after all, the universe is a fact, and some account of it
needs be true. What then are the positive hypotheses which are
offered us as substitutes for a personal God? There is Hegel's
Idea. There is the Blind Will which Schopenhauer sought to
substitute for the Hegelian Idea. There is the Supra-Conscious
Unconscious with which Hartman sought to improve upon
Schopenhauer's Will. There is the Moral Order of Fichte, Matthew
Arnold's Eternal-Not-Ourselves that makes of righteousness. Not one
of these notions is conceivable apart from personality.

They are derived by abstraction from the various functions of
personality and when severed from their source they become not
merely hypothetical but absolutely meaningless; words, mere words;
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We feel as we peruse
them that their authors and adherents alike have unconsciously
personified these abstractions, and to this surreptitious
reintroduction of personality all their plausibility is really due.

MATERIALISM

Materialism looks at first sight more solid. But materialism is in
precisely the same case, since matter regarded by itself is another
meaningless abstraction. We know matter only at first hand within
our own bodies, and there and there alone we are inside of it, and
can view it from within. But matter in our own bodies is in
intimate unity with personality. And we have no reason to suppose
that matter ever exists or can exist or there is such a thing as
matter unsustained by spirit. And what is true of matter is more
obviously true of energy and force. Thus no positive hypothesis can
be offered as a substitute for a personal God, which is not an
abstraction from personality, and therefore demonstrably unreal; or
an abstraction inconsistently personified, and therefore
demonstrably untrue.

AGNOSTICISM

Agnosticism professes to rest upon physical science, but physical
science makes two assumptions which may be very briefly summarized
and which are incompatible with the agnostic position. In the first
place it takes for granted that the universe can be known, or in
other words is intelligible. This assumption or conviction is so
obvious and universal that it easily escapes notice altogether. But
it involves the important conclusion that the universe is a work of
mind since we cannot attribute intelligibility to any sour but
intelligence. Thus the initial presupposition of physical science
is metaphysical, and carries us at once beyond the region which the
agnostic calls the known.

Again physical science assumes that our perceptive faculties are
trustworthy. But our perceptive faculties do not stand alone. They
are inseparably bound up with our emotions and our will, as part
and part of our personality, and the conviction of their veracity
must by consequence imply that our other facilities are equally as
veracious. But our other faculties as inevitably lead us to see
moral purpose in the universe as our reason to see rational
arrangement; and here again we are beyond the limit of what the
agnostic knows. To accept these conclusions is to abandon
agnosticism to reject them is to make any kind of certainty
impossible, and reduce all knowledge to mere opinion; in her words,
to abandon science. In fact to deny divine is to deny human
personality, and that is what the agnostic really does.

WHAT JESUS TAUGHT

We woefully fail to understand how radical and volutionary these
teachings of Jesus are: "No man hath seen God at any time." John
1:18. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father for the Father in
me. The works that I do the same shall ye do." John 14:9-12.

This absolute statement, "No man hath seen God at any time,"
destroys all the mythologies in the Old Testatament, as for
instance, in the second chapter of Genesis where God is represented
as appearing to Adam and Eve and walking in the garden and talking
with them. Not only in this chapter but wherever similar things are
taught in the Old Testament, Jesus' answer is. "It is mythology. No
man hath seen God at any time."

The Christian religion is not a mythological religion. The proof of
it is that his religion is reproduced in the life of humanity. In
a sentence it is: Man is the son of God; the highest, final and
only true revelation of God there ever has been or can be, is man.
He who hath seen the perfect man hath seen God, and he who doth not
find God in such a man will never find him at all.

WHAT IS GOD LIKE?

The question every person wants answered is, What is God like?
Jesus answered this question when he said: "No man hath seen God at
any time, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

Since God is Spirit, and no man hath ever seen or can see spirit,
mind, thought only as these reveal themselves in material form--God
must be like the highest spiritual revelation revealed to man in
material form; if not, God must be forever unknown. This highest
revelation of God is man himself--an invisible spirit clothed in a
human body. Of all men so revealing themselves Jesus is, we
believe, the most perfect embodiment of God. Therefore the historic
Jesus is the unveiling of the divine nature in human history. The
inner reality of the universe has looked into human eyes through
the eyes of Jesus Christ.

We adore the Godhead as unveiled in the personality, teaching and
Spirit of Jesus. He is the personality of God incarnate. He is the
source and origin of the Christian Church. He and his religion are
historical, not mythological. It is the reproduction of himself in
human lives.

The critical tendency which in the name of history seeks to show
that Christianity is an electric religion, having its origin in
various aspirations and tendencies, cults and philosophies, in the
first century of our era, fails to do justice to the personality of
Jesus as constituting the magnetic center which attracted all these
things to itself.

It is interesting to note that Sir James Frazer, who, whatever his
personal attitude toward Jesus may be, is as a student of religion
surely unrivaled in the width and variety of his knowledge, is
perfectly clear as to the relation of the personality of Jesus to
Christianity. He says:

"The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes
been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question
the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on
account of the legends that have gathered around them. The great
religious movements which have stirred humanity to its depths and
altered the beliefs of nations spring ultimately from the conscious
and deliberate efforts of extraordinary minds, not from the
unconscious cooperation of multitudes. The attempt to explain
history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity
of the vulgar, but it will find no favor with the philosophic
historian.

"The reason for Christianity's triumph over the various
mystery-cults, which were the most influential of its rivals, is
that the Lord of the Christian religion is a historic personage,
whereas the heads of these cults are mythological."

The final and satisfactory proof that the Christian religion is
historical and not mythological is that it is reproduced in human
life, which in the nature of the case is impossible in mythological
religions whose origin is not historical human experience but the
imagination of great poets--Homer, for instance.

The supreme and final test of the religion of Christ is "the works
that I do, the same shall ye do!" The Christian religion can be
reproduced in my experience and your experience. If it cannot, it
is not a historical but a mythological religion, and will vanish
from the earth as all mythological religions have done. But
Christianity will never vanish because God does reproduce himself
as Son in us.

INCARNATION OF GOD

The essence of the Christian religion is that God is Spirit who
embodies his life as the cosmic universe and incarnates his
personality as man, for "that which hath been made was life in him
and the word was made flesh." God is personal spirit, the living
principle and essential life of the Cosmos, and is incarnate as
Lord, Jesus Christ. There is but one personality in the one God of
the universe, and that personality partially incarnates itself in
all men and perfectly as Jesus.

As revealed in the New Testament, Jesus is not the Great Exception
but the Great Example and the Great Power we all have it in us to
become. In him we find the fulfillment of the law of our own Being,
and the more clearly we see this the more the complete life will
assert itself in us. If we look at Christ in this way, we shall
find that we are dealing with a Living Fact inherent in the
ultimate nature of man, and which is therefore reproducible in
everyone.


Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real
friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart
our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy and comforts us
in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting
pleasure to us.--Pilpay.

