Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/235

* THEINXE. 191 THEISM. franiaise en 1801 et 1S03 (18C8), and by his friendly intercourse with the German Old Catholic leaders. He died of apoplexy at Civiti Vccchia. Consult Briick, Gcschichte dcr kathol- ischoi Kirche in Deutschland (Mainz, 1896). THEISM (from Gk. SeAs, thcos^, god). The theory which assumes a living relation between God and His creatures, though it does not neces- sarily detine it. It also carries with it, in many theories, the personal implication, and explains the universe in terms of divine reason and will. The intellectual gcnealogj' of this conception, in its historical aspect, is very ancient, dating back to the early thought of the Greeks. In the philosophic theism of Socrates, which was a rejdy to the irreligion of the Sophists, we find a clear conception of a Divine Personality and an attempt to prove its existence. Socrates makes use of the doctrine of final causes for this purpose, maintaining, against the Sophistic ma- terialism, that the universe is the product of benevolent moral will (Phwdo, 96, 199) : that this will holds personal relations with all his creatures, and seeks to bring the highest good to all. This he taught while practically all the Kast worshiped the objects of nature (sun. trees, etc.) as God, and, therefore, Socrates may be regarded as the founder of theism as understood in the West. Plato added little to the funda- mental conception except to develop it by means of his doctrine of the Idea {iS4a, eTSos). The absolute Idea is the Good. i.e. God. In the Re- public (509 b. ) we accordingly read: "All in- telligible beings derive their being and their essence from the good." To this thesis he ad- duces four proofs, all bearing on Socrates's idea of final cause. { 1 ) From the notion of efficient cause. All things proceed from some cause, and the cause must be adequate to produce what exists. (Sophist, 205 b.) (2) From the ideal nature of the Cause. If there be a universe of real things, as no one can doubt, it can proceed only from an ideally perfect cause, i.e. from God. iPhilebus, 30.) (.3) From the idea of cause as motion. All motion implies a self-mover, i.e. an adequate originating cause for the motion and change. (Laiis. x.) (4) From the finality of cause. All things seek their end. The end. must be moral, and therefore transcendent. In other words, the universe must at last prove itself to be a revelation of the Good, i.e. God. This is the heart of the Platonic theism. "Let me tell you, then, why the Creator made this world of gener- ation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy. He desired that all things should be as like Himself as they could be." {Tim. 29.) Aristotle's argument is the same as Plato's, but deeper in its empirical developments. He rises, syntheticall.v. through nature, to his proof of the divine existence. In the eighth book of his Physics he gives us what he calls his 'proof of the First-Mover.' Everything that is in mo- tion is moved either by something else or by itself. If the former be the case, we are obliged to follow up the series of causes until we arrive at the idea of a self-mover, i.e. an immovable cause having its end in itself. Hence the first- mover must have been set in motion by itself, i.e. it is a self-mover. But, inasmuch as. com- monly speaking, it is essential to the idea of motion that there be something to be moved, it follows that there may be three kinds of movers: first, the mover that imparls motion and is moved; second, the mover that is movable in it- self but immovable in relation to others; and third, the mover that is immovable both in itself and in relation to others. It is the last kind alone that gives us the speculative foundation of theism ; for this is the mover that moves the rest of the world and is nevertheless absolutely immovable by anything external to itself; a true cause of the origin and end of all things. Augustine, the most eminent of the early Christian thinkers, adopted the Platonic theism", seeking to combine it with the Christian views. He accepted substantially all the principal proofs of God's existence and His providential government as these had been prepared in Greek thought; but there were points where he added to previous thinking. The Greeks had put a gulf between God and the world, so great that the tendency was to separate them absolutely. Augustine completed this by declaring that God made the world out of nothing, and without the aid of intermediate agents. Second, Augustine taught that God creates out of His mere good- ness and bounty, not because He has need of anything; so that in creating He adds nothing to His nature. (Conf. xiii. iv.) This view struck at the Stoic pantheism, at the Oriental theories of emanation, and at the fundamental weakness of the platonic theism, the failure to define the nature of the relation between God and the finite world. The various other proofs of the existence of God given in the Middle Ages pursue two methods, one a priori, the other a posteriori. That is, one .starts in Platonic fashion with the idea of a perfect being and infers its existence from this idea ; the other argues, after Aristotle, from the evidences of order and perfection in the world to the idea of a perfect being who is the author of them. Anselm is an early and promi- nent representative of both this and the a priori or ontological argument, which assumes that God is a being of such a nature that it is im- possible to conceive any greater. The defect of this argument, as Gaunilo pointed out, consists in arguing from existence in thought to existence in fact. From the former, of course, we can logically infer nothing but an ideal thought- existence. Other theistie proofs during the Middle Ages were concerned with the course of nature and history. Thus Duns Scotus declared that the impossibility of conceiving an infinite chain of natural causes necessarily carried the mind to the idea of a great First Cause adequate to the production and preservation of the world. Aqui- nas also {Siimma I., qu. 2) reaches the same conclusion, o contingentia mundi, reproducing Aristotle's proofs almost word for word. The contemplation of final causes, though not exten- sively meditated upon, led to very similar logi- cal results from the cosmological point of view; for medi.Tval thinkers were fond of dwelling on the fact of the imperfection of the physical and of inferring therefrom the existence of a perfect being in whose spiritual essence the soul could find the ground of the Christian faith. Thus we find that theism received the stamp of Chris- tian ideas; that the greatest minds in the mediae-