Fourth Meditation. Christian Ignorance.

When I use the term "Christian Ignorance," I would not have either the sense which I attach to the expression, or the intention with which I use it, misunderstood. I do not think that it should be denied to man to make any use of his intelligence, to exercise any right to inquire freely after truth, or after any kind of truth. Is the field which is open to the human mind limited in extent? Is the mind itself of limited reach? Is there a difference of degree in human knowledge according as the objects are different to which it is applied? These are questions, all of them, fundamentally contained in the words "Christian Ignorance;" and of these questions it is my aim to offer what appears to me to be the right solution.

I am in the presence of four sciences, and of six schools or systems, which have made, are making, and will always continue to make, much noise in the world. The sciences are, Physiology, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The systems to which these sciences have given birth are, Materialism, Positivism, Scepticism, Spiritualism, Scientific Theology, Mystical Theology. I am far from meaning to discuss here the principles of these systems, or to attempt to determine their value; it would be to undertake the task of examining all philosophy and all philosophies. I mean to touch only upon one of the special questions which furnish in our days matter of debate between Christianity and these different schools. It is thus, and thus only, that I can clearly establish the sense which I attach to the words "Christian Ignorance;" and determine, at the same time, their bearing and their limitation.

I have, and for very simple reasons, little to say respecting the first three systems to which I have just referred, i. e., Materialism, Positivism, Scepticism. By its denial of the distinction of the soul and the body, of mind and matter, Materialism rejects Psychology, and arrives, as far as Ontology is concerned, only at Atheism or at Pantheism. Of the four great philosophical sciences, Physiology is the only one with which Materialism has any concern. Amongst Positivists, some, the more eminent, admit, it is true, the reality of Objects, or to speak more exactly, the reality of the domain of Psychology and of Ontology; but in admitting it they declare it to be inaccessible to the human mind: "Inaccessible," says M. Littré, "not null or non-existent; it is an ocean which washes our shore, and for which we have neither bark nor sail." [Footnote 36]

That is to say, that, according to Positivists, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology are not—cannot be—sciences. As for sceptics, they contest to the human mind all certitude, and especially certitude with respect to the subject-matters of Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The fundamental principle of Christian belief is then too absolutely strange to those three schools for it to be necessary that I should discuss with them the source, bearing, and legitimacy of that which I term "Christian Ignorance."

It is only with Spiritualists, with scientific Theologians, and with mystic Theologians, that it is possible to discuss this question of Christian Ignorance, for the three schools to which they belong are the only ones which, in the same way as Christianity itself does, open to the human mind the domain of the four sciences—Physiology, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology, and which recognise the right of the human mind there to search after truth, and the possibility of its being there discovered.

When I speak of Spiritualists, a preliminary remark is indispensable. Christianity is as spiritualistic, not to say more so, than Spiritualism itself. It is not, then, with Spiritualism in general, and with all Spiritualists without distinction, that Christians have to deal in the question of "Christian Ignorance," as it has in other questions; the discussion here lies between Christianity and Rationalistic Spiritualism alone; and not only between Rationalism and Christian ignorance, but also between Rationalistic science and Christian science.

Rationalistic Spiritualism admits the reality of Psychology, of Ontology, and of Theology, just as it does that of Physiology; it admits that these different sciences owe their birth and development necessarily to the spectacle of the universe, of men and of things, and have for their object the solution of the questions which this spectacle suggests. But this great fact once admitted, Rationalism places in Psychology, and in Psychology alone, the starting-point and the fulcrum of Ontology and of Theology; it only admits in these two sciences results to which the human mind attains by its own unaided efforts, that is to say, by way of observation and of reasoning; it recognises for human knowledge, with respect to Ontology and Theology, no source other than human reason. Christianity opens to Ontology and Theology a larger sphere and other sources of knowledge: besides the psychological facts supplied to these two sciences by observation and reasoning, it recognises historical facts as truths, not only which they are bound themselves to admit, but which they have a right to demand that others shall admit; Christianity does not make the human mind the sole object of its belief; it believes also in the history of Humanity, and finds in that History facts to the truth of which centuries, and the traditions of centuries, have testified, which it therefore holds, and is bound to hold, as well proved and as certain as any physical or psychological fact proved by the observations of contemporary science. The Creation, the primitive Revelation, the Mosaic Revelation, the Evangelical Revelation, are in Christian Doctrine historical facts which Ontology and Theology take, with reason, as the elementary data and the legitimate bases of science.

I am here met by a fundamental objection made to these facts and to their scientific authority; they are, it is said, opposed to the permanent laws of nature and of reason, as well as of human experience; science cannot admit supernatural facts. I have no intention in merely passing to re-enter here upon this great question; I have already expressed unreservedly my opinion with respect to it, [Footnote 37] and upon some other occasion I shall return to it; for, if I do not deceive myself, the question has not hitherto been properly sounded and to the depth which it demands. Here I confine myself to referring to two ideas—facts, rather—absolutely forgotten or ignored by the systematic opponents of the supernatural.

Liberty, free agency, in presence of the external or internal causes which operate upon the will, is the peculiar and distinctive characteristic of man. It is by this that man separates himself from and raises himself above nature, understanding by the term the ensemble of things determined by laws general, anterior, permanent. Man alone has it in his power to commence a new series of facts foreign to any general law, and originating in his will alone. To deny such facts, is to deny that man is a free agent, and to make him a machine regulated by external and fatal laws; that is to say, to drive man back to the condition of that nature which is substantially governed by laws of this kind, and thus to abolish at one blow human morality and human liberty.

The blow strikes still higher—it would abolish God. God, who created man, is, and was previous to the existence of his creations, a being essentially free; for liberty cannot be the daughter of Fatality. It is in the free divine volition that human Liberty has its source, and man's Liberty itself testifies to the source from which it emanates. By denying human liberty, we throw not only man but God into the condition of physical nature, that is to say, into the ensemble of causes obedient to fate, and deprived of all moral essence; that is to say, we plunge into Pantheism, which, in spite of Spinoza and Goethe, in spite of all the efforts of logical reasoning or poetic imagination, is, in ultimate analysis, nothing more than Atheism.

The systematic opponents of the supernatural must submit to this consequence. Most of them, I am certain, are far from being disposed to accept it, and would indeed repudiate it with the most honourable perseverance. Vain efforts! Driven from entrenchment to entrenchment, from fall to fall, they will be finally reduced to this extremity; and if divine wisdom had not assigned limits to the force of man's Logic, the practical consequences of such a system would soon make themselves evident in the moral and social condition of humanity.

There is a second necessity to which the systematic opponents of the supernatural must make up their minds. They must affirm that the laws proclaimed by them as general laws, laws immanent and permanent in what they call nature, are in effect the essential laws of all nature, of the entire universe, and of all the beings whose seeds are there sown. They would have no right to reject absolutely facts as supernatural if they were not supernatural of necessity and everywhere; if, in short, they were anywhere in harmony with laws of nature other than the laws of this hardly perceptible corner of nature which is the residence of man. If the laws of our world are not universal and absolute, who will venture to affirm that they cannot be changed or suspended, even there where they reign? Is human science ready to maintain that the laws which she discovers from her infinitely small Observatory are in effect universal and absolute laws in every place where matter exists, and where life manifests itself, in the midst of space and of time?

Here it is that Christian Ignorance begins to take its place; it admits the unknown and the diverse in the universe—an unknown incommensurable, a diverse infinitely possible. I respect and admire science profoundly; I am as moved, I feel as proud as M. de Laplace could ever have been at the aspect of this sublime flight of the human intelligence, which marches with sure footing in space and across worlds, measures their distances, and knows how many years are required for the light of the nearest of the fixed stars to reach us, whereas the light of our own sun reaches us in a few minutes. I am not less touched by the labours and the discoveries of the great modern Physiologists, who, walking in the footsteps of Bichat, observe and note, even in their minutest and most obscure details, the different phenomena which life in the midst of matter presents. But when I have rendered homage to these triumphs of human science, I compare them with the reality of things, with this universe infinitely great and infinitely minute, which man makes his study, and I cannot prevent the reflection, that the universe contains infinitely more objects than man's mind attains to, and infinitely more secrets than it discovers. What astronomer will dare to affirm that he has counted all the worlds, and that his eye has reached the point beyond which no more exist? What physiologist, what naturalist, will affirm that all those worlds have living inhabitants? and that, if so, those inhabitants must have the same form, and be subject to the same conditions and laws, as govern the inhabitants of this globe. Our science becomes very modest when set side by side with our ignorance, even in the matters appropriate to science; and, however extensive and various the conquests of the human mind may be, the universe is infinitely vaster and more varied than is either the genius or the strength of its vain conqueror. Knowing this, and without ceasing to admire the works of human science, Christian Ignorance bows humbly before that work of God, which outstrips and surpasses immeasurably every attainment of man.

Thus on two sides, and by two different processes, Christianity has a higher point of view, and penetrates further into the reality of things than Rationalistic Spiritualism. On the one side, by allowing its place to historic facts which are the life of mankind, as well as to psychological facts which are the life of man's soul, Christianity gives to Christian science a deeper, a broader foundation than rationalistic science supplies. On the other side, Christianity admits, both with greater grandeur and with more modesty than Rationalism, the unfathomable immensity of the universe, as well as the infinite diversity of its possible laws; and by the avowal of a "Christian Ignorance," it places itself, at least, at the most elevated point to view the spectacle of which human science cannot traverse or measure the extent.

It is in the presence of another rival, I do not say of another adversary, that I have now to set Christian Ignorance. I begin by asking learned Theologians to forgive the freedom of my thoughts and of my speech; I feel for them a sincere sentiment of respect, let me say brotherly respect; for in the question to which I address myself I am now to deal with Christians. But actuated by the same feeling as that which influenced me when I was before speaking of the relation of the sacred writings to human science, I must declare my profound conviction that the subject which is here being treated is of pressing interest to Christian Religion in the great struggle in which it is engaged.

The Christian Religion is founded upon facts, upon an uninterrupted series of facts recorded in documents which exist. Whether the authenticity or the authority of any part of these documents, the reality or even the possibility of any of the facts which they contain is admitted or contested, it is not the less true that Christianity is not, as Greek Paganism was, a poetical mythology attributed to fabulous times; as the religion of Zoroaster was, a personification of the great forces and of the great phenomena of nature; or as the writings of Confucius were, a collection of philosophical meditations, and of moral precepts and counsels, for the use of wise and simple, of princes and subjects. I am far from contesting that poetry and philosophy, human imagination and human meditation, have their share in the books which form the documents of Christianity; it is at the same time incontestable, however, that the peculiar and essential characteristic of Christianity, from its very origin down to its latest development, is that it is historical: we behold the Christian Religion starting to life, living, traversing centuries, growing great and independent, just as we behold civil society doing, in a series of facts which succeed to one another and are different from one another. Christianity is not merely a religious doctrine; it is the history of the events wherein have been manifested the relations of God to man, and the action of God upon the destinies of Mankind.

In proportion to the vigour with which these events have developed and spread themselves, the human mind has been exposed to two temptations, which constitute at once its honour and its peril, the temptation of explanation and that of controversy.

What an undertaking! to explain God! his relation to man! the means and the process of his action upon man! Even when he essays to study, and to describe, the Nature of the God in whom he believes, Man's vision is troubled by the dazzling light; his thought exhausts itself, loses itself in the vain effort to attain, by means of comparisons and figures of all kinds, to the Divine Person: he conceives that person, he affirms that person, he contemplates that person, and yet that person he cannot know, cannot explain. The nearer he feels himself to God, the more does Man cast his eyes down, the more lowly does he incline himself, to adore, where he cannot pretend to observe. Even the very presence of God does not aid man in attaining to the science of God. What, then, the result where he would seek closely to follow the agency of God in the facts in which he only sees Him imperfectly,—where he attempts to carry the torch of human science into the depths of the secrets of Divine action?

I here enter into the domain which Christianity ignores. Two examples will fully suffice, I hope, to make my meaning clear.

The Divinity of Jesus, God's incarnation in Jesus, Jesus God and Man, these are the truths admitted, proclaimed, incessantly repeated in different forms, by the Gospels and the primitive documents of Christianity. I have already said [Footnote 38] that "it is the fact itself of the Incarnation which constitutes the Christian faith, and which rises above all definitions and all theological controversies. To disregard this fact—to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ—is to deny, to overthrow the Christian religion, which would never have been what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but that the Divine Incarnation was its principle, and Jesus Christ—God and Man—its author."

But Christians have not confined themselves to the belief of this sublime truth; they have striven to explain it; they have sought to know and to define how, and when, the divine nature and the human nature became united in Jesus Christ, to what extent such union took place, and what effect it produced upon Christ's personality. Hence all the questions, all the controversies, which were raised as to the mode and the consequences of the divine incarnation, by Nestorius and Eutyches, and which in the councils of Constantinople, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, divided and agitated the Christian Church, especially in the East.

Man had here essayed to construct a science of Religion and of divine History.

The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, as unanimously and persistently as they have proclaimed the Incarnation, contain and proclaim another great truth of Christianity, the co-existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and their combined action upon the human soul. The Trinity is written in the New Testament, where it takes its place in the history and in the Faith of Christ from their very beginning. Here, again, men have refused to restrict themselves to History, or to a belief in History; they have essayed to determine the elements, and to explain the "quomodo" of the religions truth; in other words, to transform history into science. Hence all the controversies, all the contests, all the authoritative decisions which have pretended to fix the nature, rank, and relations of the three Divine persons, or the manner of the one God's existence and action in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I enter into none of these controversies; I examine none of the doctrines and decisions which those controversies have either originated, or disputed; I now only seek to determine their essential character; it is the transition from divine truth to human science: it is Theology, the offspring, more or less legitimate, of Religion.

When I say its offspring more or less legitimate, and speak of Theological science in these guarded terms, it is not that I do not design to say openly all that I think upon the subject. The scientific Theology of Christianity commands often my admiration, always my respect. In their effort to explain the grand facts of the Old and New Testament, its writers have addressed themselves to a glorious task; they have in pursuing it fallen upon and thrown light upon sublime truths; they have engaged for the cause of Christianity in formidable contests; they have lent a moral influence often pregnant of effect to the institutions and authorised teachers of Christ's religion. But their efforts have been even more ambitious than energetic, more compromising than efficacious; they have, even with the words unceasingly in their mouths, shown an ignorance of the limits of human science. The Christian Religion is a miracle, the miraculous work of God; this was the point from which they started, their fundamental datum; forgetting what they have so affirmed, they have sought and they have thought to ensure the triumph of the divine truth by explaining it; they have obscured and changed it by an intermixture of man's work. Man can recognise as realities the facts which are at the same time both Christian dogmas and Christian mysteries. Man can recognise his own subjection to them, but it is not given to man to make of them a science.

Bossuet also essayed to fathom the Trinity; in the midst of his explanations and of his comparisons, he stops short and exclaims: "I do not know who can vaunt that he understands that perfectly, or who can satisfy himself as to what the modes of being can add to being, or as to whence arises their distinction in the unity and the identity which they have with the being itself. All this is not very comprehensible; all this, nevertheless, is truth." [Footnote 39]

Thus after this final effort of his genius, it was in Christian ignorance that the last great doctor of the Church was forced to take refuge.

It is not only that these attempts of Scientific Theology are unsuccessful, they entail, as experience painfully shows, a serious danger. Pride is the ordinary companion of science, and what pride equal to the pride of the science which dares to believe that it has penetrated the secrets of God's action and of man's destiny! Scientific Theology has had the greatest share in religious persecutions; its doctors have had to defend not only their faith but their system, not only God's work but their own work and this simultaneously. Those whose systems were the most logical have generally been the most tyrannical; history in this respect fully confirms what independently of history might fairly be presumed; namely, that supposing the faith equal, "Christian ignorance" is far more naturally and readily inclined to moderation and charity than Theological science.

But it is not only the scientific Theologians whose ambition and efforts have led them to mount beyond the sphere of human science; others there are who fall in a different manner into the same error and the same peril. The Mystic Theologians ask for light as to the relations of God to man, not from dialectics and reasoning, but from sentiment and inspiration. They admit between God and man a direct and mysterious communication, which, in certain cases and upon certain conditions, conveys to the human being divine revelations of a character personal and individual. With this torch in the hand they approach the questions which concern grace, prayer, and the destiny awarded by Providence to each creature, and flatter themselves that they are able to raise the veil by which the solution of such questions is hidden.

I cannot contemplate without profound emotion these pious impulses of the human soul, desirous of penetrating the secrets of God. What more excusable than that ardent and trembling curiosity in the midst of the darkness of our life and destiny? Whoever believes really in God cannot fail to believe himself under the eye and in the power of God; how, indeed, would it be possible for him to admit that his Creator is indifferent and powerless? There are, it may be added, very few who, at certain moments and under certain circumstances, have not felt, in the innermost recesses of their being, a stirring, an impulsion, not proceeding from themselves, nor from the world around them, inexplicable to them, except as proceeding from a superior source and power. Who of us has not, in the course of his life, been sometimes aware of a design foreign to his own volition, his own forecast, conducting him to an end which he did not forecast? And, finally, in the infinite number of prayers rising to God from the midst of human misery and suffering, are there not some to which the event brings satisfaction, just as there are others with respect to which the contrary is the case? Hence the problems of the divine Grace, the divine Providence, the efficacy of prayer. No doubt the desire is very natural which passionately aspires to solve problems so grand, and which, in the hope to do so, strives to rise to a direct and personal communication with their Divine author. But the more natural the desire, the more profound the error. No doubt God acts upon us, upon our soul, and upon our destiny, by his providence and by his grace; no doubt he hears and listens to our prayers; but it is not given to us to foresee his action and his answer, nor to appreciate them in their motives and their effects. "The ways of God are not our ways." Whether general problems are submitted to man's intelligence, or questions touching him personally trouble his soul; whether the Doctors of Theology construct systems, or the Mystic Theologians fall into ecstasies, we see in all these cases that man has arrived at limits which oppose an effectual barrier to his scientific vision, and which no transports of piety will ever enable him to overleap. Beyond those limits, the condition imposed by God upon man is confidence in spite of ignorance; or in other words, "Christian Ignorance" which is gage at once for his wisdom, his charity, and his liberty.