He is clearly a theistic Darwinian without misgiving, and the arguments for that hypothesis and for its religious aspects obtain from him their most favorable presentation, while he combats the dysteleology of Hackel, Buchner, etc.
To most, this restoration of teleology has come from an unexpected quarter, and in an unwonted guise; so that the first look of it is by no means reassuring to the minds of those who cherish theistic views of Nature.
But we are confident that, if a derivative hypothesis ever is established, it will be so on a solid theistic ground.
We should expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground; also, until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer; but we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the other side.
Clearly, then, the difference between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable.
It has been and always will be possible to take an atheistic view of Nature, but far more reasonable from science and philosophy only to take a theistic view.
Excellent as the present volume is in motive and clearly as it shows that Darwinism may bear an atheistic as well as a theistic interpretation, we fear that it will not contribute much to the reconcilement of science and religion.
In our opinion, then, it is far easier to vindicate a theisticcharacter for the derivative theory, than to establish the theory itself upon adequate scientific evidence.
We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides well with the theisticview of Nature.
Far be it from us to object to this mode of conceiving divine causation, although, like the two other theistic conceptions referred to, it has its difficulties, and perhaps the difficulties of both.
The first thing that strikes one's attention in this examination of the use of the theistic argument in the early Christian writers is, as has been indicated, the paucity of examples.
This Eclectic attitude of the Fathers, and their deprecation of any abstraction or partial statement usurping the place of the truth, explains to some extent their treatment of the theistic argument.
In the course of their education, as well as in their reading, they must have become fully acquainted with all the forms of the theistic argument.
Hence, expressed or unexpressed, a dualism mingles with all genuine theistic faith.
The Hebrew believer contributed his theistic conscience; the Hellenic, his pantheistic speculation; the Romanic, his passionate appropriation of redemption by faith.
One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief.
The theistic explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new nature within one the moment the old nature is sincerely given up.
The above account indicates that the Arya Samaj is tending to become a vaguely theistic sect.
The service in the new theistic church consisted in the recital of the Vedas by two Telugu Brahmans, the reading of texts from the Upanishads, and the expounding of the same in Bengali.
They are consistently non-theistic and it is only later that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas become transformed into beings about whom theistic language can be used.
It is remarkable that his opponents stigmatized him as a Buddhist in disguise and his system, though it is one of the most influential lines of thought among educated Hindus, is anathematized by some theistic sects[26].
The theistic view is popular, for without it what would become of temples, worshippers and priests?
Hence this is not the place to dwell on Bhakti or relatively modern theistic sects, however great their importance in later Hinduism may be.
There also runs through Indian religion a persistent though inconspicuous current of non-theistic thought.
Neither sect denies the existence of the rival god, but each makes its own deity God, not only in the theistic but in the pantheistic sense and regards the other deity as merely an influential angel.
The more theistic forms of Indian religion, whether Sivaite or Vishnuite, tend to regard individual souls and matter as eternal.
It is applied first to a definite form of Indian philosophy which is a theistic modification of the Sânkhya and secondly to much older practices sanctioned by that philosophy but anterior to it.
The intensely theistic character of the philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural.
The old society settled down into inactivity, lost much of its spirit of reform, and has never since accomplished much in the realm of theistic advance.
The modern theistic movement first found definite expression and impetus in the life and teaching of that noble son of India, Ram Mohan Roy, who hailed from the Brahmanic aristocracy of Bengal.
But, during a visit to England he sickened, and died in 1833; and the theistic movement weakened and waned for a few years, deprived of his leadership and inspiring presence.
This young man was Keshub Chunder Sen; and he soon became the leading figure, certainly the most striking, in the whole theistic movement of India.
This is no less true of those theistic movements which are by no means amiably disposed toward our religion.
This theistic movement, as a growing search after a personal God, is to be traced definitely to the growth of western thought, and especially to the direct influence of Christianity.
It gave a new direction and inspiration to his theistic conceptions.
The schismatic weakness of the theistic movement did not reach its consummation in this last division.
The new Somaj, however, soon acquired prominence and became the life and embodiment of the Indian theistic movement.
IV The Arya Somaj is a movement somewhat kindred to the Brahmo Somaj, in so far as it is a definite protest against modern Hinduism and is theistic in its teaching.
The functions of the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those of the theistic God.
If you call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is supposed to be.
This essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of collateral consequences.
Morally, the theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual frustrations.
The theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of the deepest reality in the universe.
The objections already stated apply to the whole class; and, although probably each illustration used by the Theistic advocate is capable of an elucidation entirely at variance with his argument, the main features of objection are the same.
The general who asks God to give him victory, and who thanks God for the conquest, would be regarded as a lunatic by his Theistic brethren, if he placed the smallest reliance on God's omnipotence as a factor in winning the fight.
Professor Flint has a well-deserved reputation as a clear thinker and writer of excellent ability as a Theistic advocate.
Another Theistic proposition is thus stated: "Every effect must have a cause; the first cause universal must be eternal: ergo, the first cause universal must be God.
An important contribution to Theistic literature has been the publication of the Baird lectures on Theism.
Among those who have been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own exertions to a consistent Theistic belief.
There are but three Theistic religions--the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Muhammadan.
Amongst the prominent Theistic advocates relying upon the a priori argument in England are Dr.
Colenso has collected for us a store of traditional meanings for the IAO of the Greek, and the Ieue of the Hebrew, but though these are interesting to the student of mythology, they give no help to the Theistic demonstrator.
Morley says: "It was not the truth of the theistic belief in itself that Voltaire prized, but its supposed utility as an assistant to the police.
He appears to have remained a dualist or modern Manichean--an opinion which James Mill considered was the only Theistic view consistent with the facts.
A thoroughgoing theisticmonism must find in matter some aspect or other of the self-revelation of God.
For us evolution, if we seek to give it a Theistic content, is God making manifest, in the vast ascent of form and existence, an always fuller revelation of Himself.
In this way he solves his problem--at least to his own satisfaction--and even supplies a basis for Theistic faith.
Hedonism appears as the sequel to naturalism; or, more rarely, as part of a theistic system whose morality is divine legislation enforced by an appeal to motives of pleasure and pain.
They agree that the acknowledgment of God in nature and history is the sequel to a theistic belief, and an inevitable attitude on the part of the religious consciousness.
Such reflections concerning God find their religious expression in a mystical sense of unity, which has in many cases either entirely replaced or profoundly modified the theistic strain in Christianity.
But with the ordinary believer, even where an extraneous but almost inevitable polytheism is least in evidence, the religious experience consists in substantially the same elements that appear in theistic religions.
Caldwell attributes its literature to the seventeenth century, but the evidence available is small and it is clear that this theistic anti-brahmanic school had a long life.
This admittedly theistic form of Buddhism is late and is recorded from Nepal, Tibet (in the Kâlacakra system) and Java, a distribution which implies that it was exported from Bengal.
It is therefore probable that the theistic portions of the Yoga are an addition made under Brahmanic influence.
It follows, however, that all early Atheism, so-called, was only the rejection of theistic ideas from some part of the business of life.
But even Voltaire, as Mr Morley has shown, was somewhat less of a Deist after the earthquake of Lisbon; and "Candide" is not a good Theistic tract.
It needed the constant reform and modification of theistic doctrine, and later the complete arrest of all scientific thought, to keep the theistic view of things in power and place.
Footnote 72: This fact is entirely ignored by Professor Flint in his defence of the old plea of Foster and Chalmers against Mr Holyoake in "Anti-Theistic Theories," App.
Newton's theistic theory of matter is as absurd a one as any man of science ever framed; but he has earned by it the tenderness of later theists, while his fame secures the lenity of later physicists.
No man is a Theist in all things; but in the ages of ignorance men were theistic in most matters.
The most powerful part of its argument was the demonstration that those who consented to drop the Christian element from the oath and held by the Theistic were treating Christianity, as such, as a thing that could be dispensed with.
All these questions are in the region of the unknown, and the unknowable; and in face of them the Theistic position is simply this.
For the modern world, the Christian doctrine of God remains as the only safeguard in reason for a permanent theistic belief[129].
The only way in which pure, theistic conceptions have ever been communicated to any considerable number of persons previously destitute of them, has been by the instruction of those who already possessed them.
Therefore we consider that there is a real agreement among all theistic and Christian philosophers.
This is the point of co-incidence of the a priori and a posteriori arguments, demonstrating the Christian theistic conception.
But the extremists themselves have no better standing-point than the intermediaries, and in their theisticconception have admitted a principle from which they can be driven by irresistible and invincible logic to the Catholic Church.
From this it appears that the conception of nature in any theisticsystem implies the supernatural; because it implies a cause and end for nature above itself.
By this process the idea of necessary being evolves itself, necessarily, into the complete theistic conception of God, as is shown most amply in the treatises of theologians and religious writers.
Wherever the idea of God, as exhibited by pure, theistic philosophy, is contained in the common belief of the people, it is held as a portion of some religious system purporting to be derived from revelation.
If conscience, then, be fallible, how is it a Theistic proof?
A candid and unbiassed examination of the so-called theistic proofs can but lead to the one conclusion: they are worthless.
To my mind, this is simply non-Christian Theism, and the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, is the place where such persons should perform their devotions.
Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, "Are there tribes of Atheists?
Finally we have to consider some arguments that have often quite as much weight with the believer as Bible apologetics orTheistic proofs.
Illingworth's views regarding "Divine Immanence" I fear I have digressed somewhat from the subject at present under consideration--the Theistic argument from a Beneficent Intelligence.
Militant Rationalism is jubilant; while the pastor of the Theistic Church [7] proclaims: "I see a battle coming.
Having digested these prefatory remarks, let us now proceed to consider the Theistic arguments.
The question carries us back to the theistic presupposition in the trustworthiness of experience--which is adapted to deceive if I am the only person existing.
Can the merely empirical data even of internal consciousness reveal this causal connexion between volition and bodily motions, without the venture of theistic faith?
The theistic trust in which our experience is rooted remaining latent, or being unintelligent.
By Sankhya-mukhya which I render, 'the foremost of Sankhyas' is meant 'follower of the theistic philosophy of Patanjala.
The theistic conception, in Plato, reaches the highest purity and spirituality.
The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual.
Footnote 869: Mr. Watson adopts this hypothesis to account for the theistic opinions of the ancient philosophers of Greece.
In Plato both the theisticconception and the moral idea seem to have touched the zenith.
The Theistic argument is, therefore, necessarily composed of both experiential and à priori elements.
In the development of the Theistic argument in a logical form.
These à priori, necessary judgments constitute the major premise of the Theistic syllogism, and, in view of the facts of the universe, necessitate the affirmation of the existence of a God as the only valid explanation of the facts.
The à posteriori, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism.
It will be seen at a glance that this is the central and vital question in the Theistic argument.
In the former case the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism is utterly invalidated; in the latter case it is abundantly sustained.
There could henceforward be no doubt as to the more than heretical tendency of the theistic doctrine.
The theistic hypothesis cannot continue to subsist unless it be freed once for all from puerile and gross associations.
The most acceptable form of theistic doctrine in the future will, no doubt, be some moral philosophy analagous to that of Kant.
Dogmatic theism, like all dogma, is doomed; but what is purest in the theistic spirit may survive.
We shall see in Chapter XX that thetheistic problem certainly belongs to this class.
It would be interesting to read and criticise in class some of the theistic arguments that philosophers have brought forward.
The universe, without theistic ground, was regarded as eternal, forever evolving in fortuitous concourse of atoms.
In some speculation it rests simply on certain ontological assumptions, sometimes pantheistic as in Spinozism, sometimes materialistic as in non-theistic evolutionism.
The theistic theory of evolution, assuming the cosmic system to be grounded in the will and power of God and filled with his ever-working presence does not necessarily bring any trouble into the question of fixed moral law.
Even in simply rationaltheistic ethics, despite theistic pre-suppositions and conclusions, the view may still deal too much with abstractions and rest too much on abstract ideas or impersonal things.
