Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/259

Rh THEISM 241 and holiness. The Allah of Mohammed was essentially despotic will, and so fell far below the Jahveh of Moses, essentially righteousness, and the Heavenly Father of Christ, essentially holy love. Mohammedanism is almost as contrary to Christianity as one form of theism can be to another. It is as Unitarian as Christianity is trini- tarian. Its cardinal tenet is as distinctly anti-trinitarian as anti-polytheistic. It has often been represented as hav ing had the providential task assigned it of preparing the way for Christianity by destroying polytheism ; in reality, it has hitherto offered a far more stubborn resistance to Christianity than any polytheistic religion has done. 1 Medieval The mediaeval world was so complex, so full of contrasts theology, and contradictions, that it cannot be &quot; summed up in a formula.&quot; Most general statements current regarding it will be found on examination only partially true. It is often described as the age in which external religious authority ruled, and all religious thought ran in narrow, strictly prescribed paths, whereas, in fact, the mediaeval theologians were far freer to speculate on almost all points of religious doctrine than Protestant divines have been. Because traditionalism abounded, it is forgotten that ration alism also abounded ; because scholasticism flourished, that mysticism was prevalent ; because theism was com mon, that pantheism, speculative and practical, was not uncommon. The Middle Age was, however, par excellence, the age of theology. Theology never before or since so interested and dominated the human intellect. Nearly every eminent mediaeval thinker was a theologian. The chief streams of theistic belief and speculation which tra versed the Middle Age were three, the Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan. The first was much the broadest and fullest. Few points of theistic doctrine were left un- handled by the Christian divines of the Middle Age. The conclusions came to on the chief points were various and divergent. As to the manner in which God is known, for instance, some laid stress on faith or authoritative revela tion ; others on immediate consciousness, the direct vision of the pure in heart, the illumination of the Spirit of God in the minds and hearts of the true children of God ; others on reason and proof ; and some attempted media tion and synthesis. Anselm gave logical form to an a priori argument for the Divine existence based on the idea of God as a being than whom a greater cannot be con ceived. His most ingenious attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of supposing the perfect, the infinite, to be a mere subjective fiction prepared the way for the multitude of attempts, identical or similar in aim, which have since been made. Thomas Aquinas was the best representative of those who held that the invisible God was only to be known through His visible works. He argued from motion to a mover, from effect to cause, from the contingent to the necessary, from lower kinds of good to a supreme good, and from order and purpose in the world to a governing intelligence. Raymond of Sebonde added to the ontological and physico-teleological arguments a moral argument. William of Occam criticized keenly and un favourably both the a priori and a posteriori proofs, and held that the existence of God was not a known truth but merely an article of faith. There was not less diversity of view as to how far God may be known. Erigena held that even God Himself could not comprehend His own nature, and Eckhart that the nature of God is neces sarily unknowable, as being a nature without nature, without predicates, without opposites, pure oneness. That man cannot know God s real nature, cannot know Him per essentiam, cannot have a quidditiva cognitio Dei, and that 1 See MOHAMMEDANISM, and authorities there mentioned ; also Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, lect. 1, with authors and works there indicated. the so-called attributes of God are only descriptive of the effects of His operations as they appear to the human mind, or even are merely symbols or metaphors, was maintained by many of the scholastic doctors. Aquinas, for example, with all his confidence as a dogmatic system- builder, so denied the cognoscibility of God. That the human mind may have a true, although it cannot have a perfect knowledge of God, an apprehensive but not a comprehensive knowledge of Him, was, however, in the Middle Age, as it has been ever since, the position most commonly taken up. The scholastic divines discussed a multitude of foolish questions regarding God, but that was not due to extravagant faith in the power of the human mind to know or comprehend God. Prof. Sheldon very justly says, &quot; on the whole, the scholastic theology, notwithstanding some strong negative statements, assumes in reality a minimum of acquaintanceship with the essen tial nature of God.&quot; The negative statements are, for the most part, those of the mystics with respect to the beatific vision. Mediseval discussions as to the nature of God turned chiefly on two points, the relation of the Divine essence to the Divine attributes and of the one Divine substance to the three Divine persons. The conclusion come to by the vast majority of scholastic theo logians on the first point was that the attributes were not really or objectively in God, but merely human repre sentations reflected, as it were, on the idea of God, because the mental constitution of man is what it is, and because God wished to be thought of in certain divers manners. To hold them objectively real in God, and therefore intrin sically distinct either from the essence of God or from one another, was considered to be incompatible both with the incomprehensibility and with the absolute simplicity of the Divine nature. Duns Scotus, in maintaining that the attributes were formalitates realiter distinctx, took up an exceptional position. On the other point the conclusion as generally reached was one seemingly quite inconsistent with the foregoing, namely, that the persons were objec tively and eternally real and distinct. The discrepancy is especially apparent in those theologians (e.g., Anselm, Abelard, Hugo and Richard of St Victor, Alexander of Hales, and Aquinas) who represented the persons of the Trinity as corresponding to distinctions among the very attributes which they in another reference denied to be distinct. The mediaeval schoolmen, with very few and doubtful exceptions, conjoined with their theism the doctrine of the Trinity as defined by the ancient church. Roscelin of Compiegne and Gilbert de la Porre&quot;e laid themselves open to the charge of tritheism ; and obviously nominalism, by allowing nothing but a nominal existence to the essence or general nature of which the individual is a specimen, tended towards tritheism, towards resolv ing the Trinity into a triad of Divine individuals or self- subsistent beings, connected only by a common specific character. While the schoolmen accepted the doctrine of the Trinity on authority, they did not conceive them selves precluded from endeavouring to illustrate it and to make it appear as consonant to reason as possible. They sought to show its consistency with the unity of God, and its general reasonableness by various speculative con siderations, but especially by the aid of analogies drawn from the constitution of the mind and even from particular physical phenomena. They did not suppose that they were thereby demonstrating the doctrine of the Trinity : they fully recognized that doctrine to be the indication of a mystery, &quot; dark with excess of light,&quot; and the truth of which could only be directly apprehended in the beatific vision conferred by the highest and most special grace ; but they proceeded on the belief that, inasmuch as it was a central truth of revelation, the whole creation, and. XXIII. 31