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31'7 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Theism

nothing else for their existence and maintenance but God. It is evident that this is not dualism proper. If it be observed also that God is absolute perfection, producing the natural light or understanding in man, and that one of his first attributes is truth, Descartes may seem to be a theist. S=od is transcendent, yet in the most intimate relation with the world and man. Personality is also involved with veracity; yet Descartes is more deist than theist. The universe is a mechanism set in operation by a transcendent first cause; all things are moved by secondary cause and effect and the quantity of energy is invariable, which together with the validity and persistence of material law seems to be derived from the unchangeableness of God. According to Leibnitz, God is the highest monad, which is absolutely perfect. He creates all the other monads, which become self-existent and have God as the object of their aspiration. The world is a mechanism into which God does not again interfere; otherwise it would not be the best. So far Leibnitz is a deist. Besides, he maintains the belief in revelation and miracle, by the doctrine of the superrational in contradistinction to the counterrational. Only contingent happenings, such as the natural events, can be altered by God who is their ground. With this interference in the unity of nature Leibnitz passed from deism to theism. Transcendence is not sustained, but immediate divine contact with the universe is assumed, amounting to immanence in the religious and metaphysical spheres. Wolff follows Leibnitz closely and the Enlightenment is deistic.

Kant, whose definition is given above, postulates the existence of God from the infinite relation of virtue and happiness. The agreement of the latter with the former is to be assumed a priori as necessary, and as its ground is to be postulated a moral cause subsisting in reason and will and transcending nature, namely, the existence of God.

4. In For the theoretical reason the assumpModern tion of God is merely hypothetical;

Thought. for the practical reason, it is purely a matter of rational faith. In moral philosophy this faith is based on conscience in the form of a dual personality of defendant and judge. The latter must be an omnipotent being, God; but whether this be an actual or ideal person remains uncertain. In the " Critique of Judgment," the existence of God is postulated by the telic concep tion. The presence of contingent design in the multiplicity of nature and its subordination by reason to an unconditioned highest being involves a final objective in creation which is transcendent to nature, and its ground is in supreme intelligence. Man as a moral being must be accepted as this ob jective, affording the main condition upon which to observe the unity of the world, and a principle by which to consider the nature and attributes of such a cause. With reference to the highest good, namely, the existence of rational beings under moral laws, such a primal being must be omniscient, to whom all minds are open. He must be omnipotent, to adapt all nature to this purpose; all-merciful and just as conditions of a supreme cause of a world under moral laws. All the rest of the transcendental

attributes follow, such as eternity and omnipresence, as presumptions to such a final purpose. On the side of the cognizance of God, Kant is neither deist nor theist; on the side of rational faith as just illustrated he is theist. Yet he disavows a personal intercourse with God as expressed in prayer. Among his followers who inclined mostly to pantheism in various forms, this view of the " Critique of Judgment " in the main prevailed; namely, Herbart and M. W. Drabisch (Religionsphilosophie, Leipsie, 1840). Schleiermacher, in spite of his tremendous religious influence, can not be considered a theist, but wavers between deism and pantheism. Tie does not represent a personal God, but a living deity; and the customary attributes appear not as properties of his being but reflections of his activity in the religious consciousness. Decidedly in behalf of speculative theism is to be reckoned the series of philosophers including T. Hoffman and C. H. Weisse, and of theologians like A. Neander and R. Rothe (qq.v.) who withstood the pantheism of Hegel and united in the establishment of the Zeitschrift far Philosophic und spekulative Theologie, issued chiefly by T. H. Fichte. The latter in his individual writings, in the interest of an ethical theism, advances to a doctrine of absolute personality. Lotze replaces the metaphysical infinite by the concept of God, constituting a sort of ontological proof. As the ground of reality for the finite, God possesses the metaphysical attributes of wisdom, justice, and holiness. An indispensable assumption must be personality, since the living, self-subsisting, and self-enjoying ego is the necessary presupposition and the only possible seat of the good and of all good things. At all events, the contradistinction with the external world is not essential for personality, but this is to be realized on the basis of an immanent sense of self and existence for self. Otherwise the being of God is to be in a certain measure super-personal; but by this personality itself may disappear. With God who conditions man's being, he is united by the religious sense of himself as a divine being. Here Lotze approximates Spinoza's pantheism, as also in his view that his monads are modifications of the absolute universal ground, and that reciprocal activity presupposes a common propinquity in substance. More or less under the influence of Lotze are many present-day philosophers. Of these G. Class represents God (Phknomenologie and Ontologie des menschtichen Geistes, Erlangen, 1896; Realittit der Gottesidee, Munich, 1904) as personal and absolute spirit. Ludwig Bosse (Philosophic and Erkenntnisslehre, Leipsic, 1894) maintains that the inseparable constituents of reality rest upon a simple absolute ground, God. Guenther Thiele (Philosophic des Selbstbewusstseiycs, Berlin, 1895) affirms that the concept of God resolves itself in the absolute Ego. G. Glogau (Religioresphilosophie, Kiel, 1898) places the existence of God at the apex of philosophy; derives from it the ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful; and, in mystical fashion, makes the sense and experience of God and the ideals of principal importance. According to H. Siebeck (Religionsphilosophie, Freiburg, 1893), God is proved by metaphysics and experienced as a living power in the