Chapter 3

Molded by Personalism

(1905-1916)

While ministering on a three-church circuit in Esparto, California, H. Orton Wiley commuted by passenger rail to Berkeley to attend classes at the University of the Pacific and the Pacific Theological Seminary (later the Pacific School of Religion).[100] He finished two degrees in three years, achieving concurrently the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Divinity.[101] By the end of the summer, Wiley began his long career in higher education.

On August 23, 1910, Wiley responded to an invitation sent by the Board of Trustees at Nazarene University, two members being Phineas F. Bresee and Ernest A. Girvin, to serve as dean and faculty member of the liberal arts college. Fred C. Epperson, another university board member, acknowledged Wiley's positive response with a note saying, "expect to see you and get to business next week."[102] After three years of building a liberal arts curriculum around a Bible college, Wiley, the college dean, was unanimously elected to the "chair of President" and to the faculty as "teacher of Philosophy and Education" in 1913.[103]

During his seminary work, Wiley completed his academic studies under the tuteluge of John Wright Buckham. Richard M. Vaughn wrote that "Personalism has no more persuasive exponent than Professor Buckham."[104] To understand Wiley's career as an educator, one must also understand the philosophy of personalism as it developed throughout the 20th century.

Personalism truly influenced the theological thought and educational practice of H. Orton Wiley. Attention will be given to the development of the philosophy of personalism in the United States, especially in the writings of Wiley's intellectual mentor, John Wright Buckham. Also, Wiley's personalistic influence upon his own students has been conducted through a brief review of two baccalaureate sermons from his first presidential tenure at Nazarene University and a case study of his interaction with an outstanding student from this period.

"This Thing Called Personalism"

Personalism can be defined as "the philosophy that gives priority to the personality, regarded as constituting the chief reality and highest value."[105] The terms personality, person, and self generally refer to the same central construct of reality-the person. Wiley defined the person as "a dynamically integrated Self, striving toward an ethical-social Ideal, having ultimate Value-Reality, and a conscious or semi-conscious relation to the Supreme Person."[106] Selfhood and Individuality are components of the whole Person in which the knowledge finds its meaning. Personalism is a distinct form of Christian education-the middle road between empirical methods and neo-orthodox modes of instruction.[107] The philosophy of personalism attempts to bridge the ideal with the real, the spiritual with the material, the monistic with the pluralistic, and the value of self with the value of community. Personalism is the culminative thought of various theologians, philosophers, and educators. A brief overview of the development of personalism will clarify the principal thinkers, origins, and connection of this philosophy to Wiley and Nazarene higher education in the United States.

The Development of the Philosophy of Personalism

Personalism emerged as a philosophical system from several intellectual sources. The breadth of these sources are beyond the scope of this chapter; however, there are literature reviews written about personalism. In the early 1920's, John Wright Buckham[108] and Edgar S. Brightman[109] gave brief overviews concerning the content and etymology of personalism, respectively. Later, Ralph T. Flewelling founded and edited the Personalist journal in 1947.[110] The Personalist published articles that gave a succinct overview of Personalism's main proponents and concepts. Borden Parker Bowne, however, is the personality "most definitely identified with [Personalism] as a system of philosophy." [111] Bowne's Personalism, written in 1908, is considered one of the first methodological explications of personalism.[112] Bowne's work was followed by Brightman, Buckham, and Flewelling who approached personalism in three distinct ways. They wrote from the perspectives of an etiological word study, a philosopher, and an intellectual historian, respectively.

Brightman's review focused primarily on the English use of the word "personalism."[113] "Personalism," according to Brightman, is "far from being classical," since it is relatively absent from dictionaries, encyclopedias, histories and introductory texts of philosophy published previous to 1922. Brightman admits that "personalism" is a relatively new word, and is fighting for recognition," although the concepts found in personalism may have deeper roots in philosophical history.

Personalism, according to Brightman, is a word used in three distinct ways: the logical, ethical, or metaphysical. [114] The logical use coincides with a "humanistic" understanding of "pragmatism" in which "the personal life with all its needs" replaces "reason alone" as a "guide to truth." Ethical uses of personalism refer to the ethics of "personality," "self-realization," or "perfectionism." Later in the 20th century, theologians from various schools of thought have co-opted the term for developing a distinct view of spirituality and morality.[115] Finally, personalism is used most frequently when describing a metaphysical approach to philosophy and theology. George H. Howison, Mary W. Calkins, and Borden Parker Bowne were the first American philosophers to use the term as an identifier for a philosophical school of thought.[116] Howison's theory of personal idealism and Calkin's view of absolutistic personalism are not only attempts at metaphysical explanations of the universe, but a beginning point for ethical discussions.[117] Calkins and Bowne used the term concurrently between 1906 and 1908 in public discourses.[118] It was John Wright Buckham, a contemporary of Howison, Calkins, and Bowne, who viewed personalism as a metaphysical philosophy.

Buckham's theological tone further expounds Brightman's search for a definition in an article aptly entitled "An Outline of a Philosophy of Personalism."[119] Buckham's personalism explains reality as the construct of persons that "experience, perceive, conceptualize, relate, and unify."[120] A person may only consciously know what may be known about the world and the self. The self constitutes reality in that "[E]verything else is less real than the self by whom it gets its place and meaning in the realm of reality."[121] The central theme of self as personal reality is organized around three major characteristics of self-activity (will), self-expression (creativity), and self-worth (value). Persons are "self-directive" and seek "to project into the outer from something of the wealth of its inner content" giving the personal self a sense of value, or "personal worth." Buckham states that "personality [is] . in the making," or that a person progressively develops as guided by "the eternal Creative Person," or Divinity.[122]

Flewelling's historical study identified three geographical sources for personalism: German, French, and American. According to Flewelling, personalism gained momentum with Berkeley and later English Personalists. The German influence upon personalism came through Leibniz who "might be conceded as the source of German Personalism,"[123] and continued through contributions from other German scholars, including Kant, Hegel, and Lotze. Hermann Lotze has the most direct influence upon American personalism, since he taught Bowne in Germany during the 18th century.[124] France contributed to personalism through Charles Renouvier (who also taught William James), Felix Ravaisson, and Henri Bergson. An example of Ravaisson's approach to personalism is found in the assertion that "mechanism could never explain organism."[125] In other words, mechanistic philosophies and science, unlike personalism, can not make sense of complex and rational organisms, such as human beings. Only humanity can make sense of reality, which is similar in thought to Buckham. Bergson replaced reason with feeling, or intuition, as a means for understanding the universe.[126] Bergson's philosophy also had social implications. Flewelling claims that Bergson's personalism was behind a "democratic movement [in France] based on the value of the Person and opposed to every type of totalitarianism, Facist, Nazi, Marxist, or Clerical."[127] German and French influences were complementary to a personalistic school of thought that emerged in the United States in the first decade of the 20th century. Flewelling mentiond the importance of Bowne and the "St. Louis School," including the influential idealist George H. Howison.[128]

How Personalism Moved from the East to the West Coast

Bowne taught at Boston University from 1876 to 1910 and served as dean of the Graduate School beginning in 1888. His writings include 17 books on philosophy and theology, as well as 133 articles written for popular religious and scholarly periodicals.[129] Bowne wrote that his work was essentially a philosophical rebuttal of Comte's positivism with a more theological approach to the study of knowledge and presenting instead a basis for a personal metaphysics.[130] Bowne's teaching provided the basis for what later became known as Boston Personalism.[131] There were, however, other thinkers outside of Boston and Bowne's influence that were also developing similar notions of personalistic thought.

As a young mathematics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, George H. Howison came upon "a large number of German intellectuals; and he was soon in the midst of zealots, the very breath of whose nostrils was German speculative ideas."[132] He developed several friendships in St. Louis, including William T. Harris[133], the leader of the Kant Club, a small and informal group of philosophers, and later U.S. Commissioner of Education, writer Bronson Alcott, and writer/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Howison eventually made his way to teaching stints at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[134]

It was, however, in smaller venues at the Concord School of Philosophy and the Chestnut Street Club, where Howison gained the attention of William James and Thomas Davidson. These friendships led Howison to the Mills Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity at the University of California in Berkeley. The importance of gaining an endowed chair rested upon "its own [financial] foundation and could not be overturned in some chance haste for economy" as was his former position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[135]

Howison preferred the intellectual connections he had in Boston, but took in stride the move to Berkeley. He soon made his mark as a professor of philosophy with a personalistic bent. George M. Stratton, a former student and biographer of Howison's, wrote, Howison "saw young men and women in need of becoming, first of all--not economic factors given to producing, distributing, and consuming marketable things; nor as learners of some liberal profession--but of becoming, or of being transformed into, something more humane."[136] Professor Howison dealt "with the whole person before him.with his power to act morally by treating himself and all his fellows as of eternal worth.He saw himself as a teacher of persons possessed of power to observe, to think, to enjoy beauty, to devote themselves to the great community of persons, of which the greatest of all is God."[137] Howison's concept of Personal Idealism[138] was explicated at various times, such as the lectures presented to the Philosophical Union in Berkeley,[139] where Howison's influence made an impression upon his colleagues, such as J. W. Buckham.[140]

Buckham, like Howison, was a New Englander transplanted to the West Coast. [141] Buckham's conception of personalism originated in Boston under Bowne's influence and became ingrained in Berkely with Howison's friendship.[142] Buckham contributed a dialectical approach to a personal understanding of self, especially in the tension between personality and individuality.[143]

Buckham's dialectical understanding of personalism included "the individual with his [or her] physical composition and racial inheritances, [who] is born, matures, decays, and dies, .[and] the person within the individual [who] can neither be born nor grow old and die."[144] There is a developmental scheme at work in order to "actualize" the individual into a person that finds an impetus in an "awakening" or "rebirth" to a "higher self."[145] According to Buckham, four influences shape the "person-to-be"[146] (or self) into a person (or higher self).[147] Psychophysically, "heredity and temperament" shape potential persons. The environment operates to form the person within the social context. Destiny also plays a vital role in guiding the person's development whether one refers to that form of guidance as providence or fate. The self, however, has freedom, or the "power of choice," among alternatives in taking the initiative to become the ideal of person. Personal freedom allows persons to "lay hold of the external, the past, the distant, the determined and makes these his [or her] own and out of them fashions the new."[148] Personality and individuality comprise the progressive tension inherent within the self.[149]

In Personality and the Christian Ideal (1909), Buckham initially explained the dialectic tension between personality and individuality.[150] Personality refers to the "potency" of "character" in tension with the "possession" of "natural endowments" of individuality. Individuality refers to the accumulation of naturally endowed "talents." Character is to personality what talent is to individuality. Whereas talent refers solely to finite "natural endowments," character reveals "the spiritual uniqueness" of persons. The principle of "Spiritual Uniqueness", according to Buckham, differentiates "personality from individuality."[151] And it is "the struggle for character [that] is the supreme struggle of one's inner life."[152] Wiley melded Buckham's thought with his own in the following statement: "By a series of free selective, self-determining acts of the self, it enters the moral and spiritual realm and becomes a person."[153]

H. Orton Wiley chose Buckham as his major professor and adviser.[154] Fireside chats after a homemade dinner at the Buckham's home highlighted Wiley's seminary days.[155] Wiley spent three years with Buckham studying Dogmatic Theology, while earning a Master of Sacred Theology in 1917 and Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1929.[156] Wiley reminisced, "While I understood but little of his teaching during my earlier seminary years, I am now increasingly conscious of the debt I owe him."[157] It was with Buckham, whether in the classroom and in the living room, that Wiley allowed personalism to enter into his philosophical and educational thought and practice.

Personalism in Wiley's Development as an Educator

Wiley entered professional life as a pharmacist. He was tested in scientific and vocational knowledge until certified in 1897 as a professional by the State of Oregon.[158] Vocational education and subsequent qualification for a viable occupation did not satisfy Wiley nor did his classification as a producer of "marketable things" (see Howison above). Instead, Wiley sought to develop his personhood through a liberal arts education at the University of California. Wiley's life thus posed as an example of the tension between vocational and liberal education in the United States of the late 19th century.[159]

H. Orton Wiley considered liberal arts to be the "best possible preparation for the great work to which God has called them," and this being all students, not just those seeking a ministerial education.[160] In the same article, Wiley cautions students to avoid the desire to earn money as the main motive for attending college. Rather, students should pursue an education that offers, "true worth [that] will seek the spiritual things of the kingdom of God." For Wiley, a liberal arts campus was the best place to develop personal worth and encourage a vital spirituality.

From the beginning, Wiley believed the liberal arts college needed to establish a place for students to "cherish and enfold the mentality with which God has endowed us in loyal relation to the Divine."[161] The students' relationship with God was of primary importance. The liberal arts curriculum not only made this connection to the Divine, but also developed the whole person. Traditional biblical ideas about personality stemmed from ancient Hebrew and Greek concepts of body, mind, and spirit. Instead, Wiley used the modern psychological language of "spiritual, moral, mental and physical."[162] The college experience provided students with a balanced, or "symmetrical," development of personality. Education answered the "dissatisfaction" of modern life, which failed to activate the operations of the "whole being." Instead of teaching a person a single skill set to accomplish a repetitive task, a liberal education provided a well-rounded body of experiences that awakened and challenged the totality of students' knowledge and abilities.

Wiley conveyed the importance of liberal arts education in his first position as academic dean (1910-1913) and president (1913-1916) at the Nazarene University (NU) in Pasadena, California. He sought to balance the Bible school emphasis with a liberal arts education. Wiley's purpose and practice seemed divergent, however. In a college address given early in his career, Wiley states,

The emphasis upon development in the study of biology, the evolutionary hypothesis in philosophy, the educational ideal of a religious nature inherent in the child to be unfolded and developed, of depravity as a theological dogma no longer tenable, -- all these and many others, combined to weaken the faith of the student in the fundamental doctrines of grace, and to minify the importance of a definite and conscious experience of salvation from sin.

Yet, he sought to widen the perspective of Nazarene college students by introducing a liberal arts curriculum into a college what had been solely a Bible school. NU based its course of study on a "group elective plan, affording a wide and consistent choice of electives" in music, history, science[163], education, philosophy, archeology, and foreign languages.[164] It should be noted that extracurricular activities were limited to practical ministry experiences, literary societies, and outdoor sports, like hiking and swimming. Athletics and Greek societies were deemed to carry the "spirit of boisterousness and rowdyism."[165]

In defining the role of higher education, Wiley tended to incorporate the language of holiness theology with a personalistic ideal. During a 1914 baccalaureate sermon, Wiley proclaimed,

Let us make Christ our Truth; truth not as a logical abstraction but a divine personification; .Christ in every truth until it becomes an apocalypse of glory. Oh for that waking! to come forth into that sunrise! Out of all our darkness and weakness, our numbness and deadness, into that light, the glow, the power and the glory of that beatific Christ-Shine. In the outstreaming of God, the divine halo, to exercise intuition, reflection, faith, worship. God shining all about you and in that shining to behold and believe; God's warmth within you, and in that warmth to feel; God's love flooding your soul, in that love, to love.[166]

This was Wiley's goal for higher education. Wiley further conveyed his educational aim for Nazarene college students: "When [students] thus come to know God, every discovery in the created world, whether in science, or history, or philosophy, of mathematics or music only leads them to greater adoration of God." In Wiley's educational philosophy one can see the influence of Buckham's Personalism, Bergson's Intuitionalism, and American holiness theology.

The confluence of the ethical dimension of personalism and holiness religious experience was also conveyed in the following quote from the next year's baccalaureate sermon in 1915.

We come to see God in this aloneness [of individualization] we view our lives against the moral background of God's righteousness and see ourselves and the true quality of our lives for the first time. Then it is that there comes such an awakening as we never expected. We see the qualities of our being for the first time and behold the sinfulness of our being.[167]

Christian education for Wiley combined the personalistic ideals of his intellectual mentors as well as the influence of his religious experiences in the American holiness movement.

Wiley made a distinction between Christian and secular education throughout his life. Later in his career, Wiley asserted, "Christian education means more than merely placing the Bible in the school and surrounding the students with a spiritual atmosphere.Christian education means a radical change in viewpoint, and more or less change in method."[168] Christian college curriculum is not the Bible surrounded by other similar supporting subjects, but a balance between "divine revelation and human acquisition,"[169] or, stated another way, as a balance between the Bible and a liberal arts curriculum. Wiley did not want only to make preachers and other Christian practitioners, but to offer a well-rounded "education of Christian young men and women" with "moral character and worth."[170] One of Wiley's students exemplified his attempt to provide a thorough Christian liberal arts education.

Wiley recalled his first interaction with this young student. He wrote:

I first met Esther Carson at the corner of Lake Avenue and Washington Street in Pasadena, at the opening of the first semester in 1910.We were waiting for the college bus--there was no city transportation to the college then--and as dean I was opening the first sessions of the college on the new Pasadena campus..I asked her what year she would be in, and she replied, "A freshman." She then asked me what year I was in, and so we became acquainted. This was the beginning of a friendship between dean and student--a friendship that was to reveal one of the most brilliant students that ever graced the college campus.[171]

Esther Carson wrote an extracurricular essay as a college sophomore that was later found in Wiley's personal files. Entitled "The Chemistry of Human Life," she translated the interaction of human personalities and relationships in the scientific jargon of chemistry. A brief example from her paper describes her analogy.

We have noted the crystalline structure of people whose characters are cubes, solid throughout and foursquare in every way; -- others are like prisms, reflecting every color of the rainbow; others of rhombic design, beautiful but not symmetrically developed; and still others whole mental make-up is altogether asymmetric, having no plan of symmetry whatever.[172]

Carson enveloped her scientific knowledge within a personalistic structure. She wanted to convey that the self is more than a mechanism. Carson followed Wiley and other Personalists in affirming the primacy of the person over a mechanistic view of humanity. In the words of Ravaission, "mechanism [can] never explain organism." Commenting on the law of the conservation of energy, Carson writes, "But the crowning marvel of this great chemistry of human life is the way elements and compounds [analogies for humans and their relationships] are changed and purified by the wonderful processes of the great Chemist."[173] In Carson's case, the organism explains scientific processes in an unmechanistic and idealistic fashion. Wiley's student had caught the idealistic notions of personalism. Carson was only a college sophomore when she penned this essay.

Esther Carson originally thought about college teaching as a profession. She was later offered a position by Wiley teaching Spanish at Northwest Nazarene College. Before she could begin, Carson went to the mission field to become one of the pioneering missionaries to Peru where she taught an illiterate people how to read. Moreover, she translated the Bible into the Aguruna dialect. This dialect had no written form until Carson put the language into writing. Tragically, Carson died during the birth of her second child and was buried at the top of a hillside outside the first Nazarene preaching point in Peru. Carson was an example of a student who had taken advantage of a balanced liberal arts education with an emphasis on a personalistic vocation[174] under the educational leadership H. Orton Wiley.

Summary

From 1905 to 1916, Wiley ministered in rural and urban churches, taught college classes, and presided over two Nazarene colleges. He married and had a family of four children. Within a decade of being ordained in ministry, Wiley moved into a national leadership role within the Church of the Nazarene. During this time, Wiley managed to earn four postsecondary degrees. He established a philosophical perspective for his spiritual and educational commitments. By this time, Wiley spent five years in academic leadership at Nazarene University as dean and president. In 1916, Wiley assumed full-time responsibilities at NNC after one year in Berkeley. Wiley was saturated in personalistic thought as he took the reigns of leadership at Northwest Nazarene College.

GOD AS PERFECT PERSONALITY

By H. Orton Wiley,

Excerpt of Chapter 13, Christian Theology, Volume 1,

published by Nazarene Publishing House, 1940, pages 290-291

We have considered God as the Absolute in the sense of the ground of all reality, and as the Infinite in the sense of efficiency; it remains now for us to consider God as Perfect Personality, first, in the sense of a completion or perfecting of the two previous aspects; and second, as furnishing the reason or purpose of all things. The Christian conception of God must therefore include the idea of Absolute Reality as the ground of existence, His Infinite Efficiency as its cause, and His Perfect Personality as the reason or end of all things.

We have seen that false conceptions of the Absolute and the Infinite have led to grievous errors respecting the true nature of God, so also a false conception of personality has led many to maintain that there is an inconsistency in ascribing personality and personal attributes to the Absolute and the Infinite. One of the outstanding problems of modem philosophy and theology, therefore, is this question of personality. At no point perhaps have philosophy and theology had such a direct contact, nor has philosophy done more to shape the theological conceptions of God, than in these conflicts which have arisen over the being and nature of God.

Origin and Meaning of the Term. The idea of personality has been dominant in thought from the earliest times, but by a strange coincidence the word itself came into use only in modem times. The earliest Greek conceptions of the Deity were personal even if polytheistic, but the attributes of goodness and truth were not applied to them. Far earlier than this was the Hebrew conception of a personal God, with all the attributes which we ascribe to human personality. It was Boethius, however, in the earlier part of the sixth century who gave the definition of personality which has been current in the church until modem times. This definition is, Persona est naturoe rationalis individua substantia, or a "person is the individual subsistence of a rational nature." A person then, was characterized in a twofold way - an individual as being separate and distinct from others; and a common rational nature of which each individual was partaker.

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica defines a person as "that which is most perfect in all nature, as subsisting in rational nature." He argues then, "that the term person may be applied to God, since His essence contains in itself all perfection, but not in the same way it is given to His creatures, but in a more excellent way, as other names that are given to creatures are ascribed via eminentioe to God." It is evident that St. Thomas is thinking more of personality as being in God than as applied to God. The Trinitarian controversies had been carried on under the prevailing influence of Platonic Realism, and the tendency was to subordinate the individual to the universal. This was noticeable in the earlier Greek concepts of religion. The gods of the polytheistic pantheon were too personal, in the sense that their finiteness was subversive of their universality. The word "person," therefore, was thought of in the sense in which we commonly use it in its application to the Trinity, while the unity of God was expressed by the word substance" or "essence." Thus we have the Greek word hypostasis and the Latin word substantia which as the equivalent of hypostasis should, to be more exact, have been translated subsistence, instead of substance, the former denoting a distinction within the ultimate substance, rather than the substance itself. Thus God was personal in the sense of the Trinitarian distinctions, but to the ultimate and unitary being of God the more abstract term of essence or substance was applied. This failure to apply the term "person" to the whole being of God gave rise to the modem controversies between philosophy and theology concerning the nature of personality; and further, to controversies within theology itself respecting the nature of the Trinity. Out of these has come a firmer and wider grasp of the meaning of personality. It is seen to apply now, not only to the hypostatic distinctions of the Trinity, but to the whole conception of God as both Unity and Trinity. It has proved to be the ultimate reality, through which alone the Absolute can be understood. The world-ground is therefore personal, and the infinite efficiency of the first cause is likewise personal. Reserving the trinal nature of God for a later discussion, we shall trace the development of this wider concept of personality, presenting first, the Psychological Argument from the nature of self-consciousness, and second, the Metaphysical Argument from the nature of personality itself. The first argument is stated in the most able manner by Dr. William G. Shedd in his Dogmatic Theology; the second is best represented by Lotze in his discussion of the nature of personality.

The Psychological Argument for Personality. Personality is marked by self-consciousness and self-decision. Dr. Olin A. Curtis in his Christian Faith defines it as "the power of self-grasp, self-estimate, and self-decision," or more concisely "the power of self-conscious decision." Consciousness implies the duality of subject and object - a subject to know and an object to be known. Without this, consciousness is impossible. Self-consciousness is a higher form of consciousness, in which the subject and object are identified. The duality remains but the human spirit, in the act of self-cognition furnishes both subject and object in one being or substance. It has the power of setting itself over against itself, and thereby duplicating its own unity as subject and object. Man, therefore, not only thinks, feels and wills, but he knows that he thinks, feels and wills. It is this power of self-consciousness and determination that constitutes him a personal being. Dr. Shedd states the position as follows: Self-consciousness is (1) the power which a rational spirit or mind has of making itself its own object; and (2) of knowing that it has done so. If the first step is taken, and not the second, there is consciousness but not self-consciousness; because the subject would not, in this case, know that the object is the self. And the second step cannot be taken, if the first has not been. These two acts of a rational spirit, or mind, involve three distinctions in it, or modes of it. The whole mind as a subject contemplates the very same whole mind as an object. Here are two distinctions or modes of mind. And the very same whole mind also perceives that the contemplating subject and the contemplating object are one and the same essence or being. Here are three modes of one mind, each distinct from the others, yet all three going to make up the one self-conscious spirit. Unless there were these two acts and the three resulting distinctions, there would be no self-knowledge. Mere singleness, a mere subject without an object, is incompatible with self-consciousness. And mere duality would yield only consciousness, not self-consciousness. Consciousness is dual; self-consciousness is trinal (Cf. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, I, p. 183ff). Self-consciousness, being the most perfect form of consciousness, is applicable to God as the Supreme Being or Perfect Personality. But we must make a distinction here. Man has both consciousness and self-consciousness. By consciousness he is related to the objective world through sentiency. There is in him the sensuous consciousness of the animal and the blind agencies of physical appetite. The animal is impressed by external objects which are no part of itself, but apparently is never impressed by itself. It experiences heat and cold, pleasure and pain, but cannot duplicate its own unity and thus become aware of the subject which experiences them. An animal is not a person and cannot have self-consciousness. Man has this sentient consciousness also, but it differs in this respect, that it is capable of being scrutinized and converted into self-consciousness. On this lower plane, man may think, but he does not think of what he thinks; or he may feel, and not direct his attention to the character and quality of those feelings. It is one of the effects of conviction by the Holy Spirit," says Dr. Shedd, "to convert consciousness into self-consciousness. Conviction of sin is the consciousness of self as the guilty author of sin. It is forcing the man to say, 'I know that I have thus felt, and thus thought, and thus acted.' The truth and the Spirit of God bring sinners to self-knowledge and self-consciousness, from out of a state of mere consciousness" (Shedd, Christian Dogmatics, I, p. 180). Dr. Olin A. Curtis emphasizes this same fact but gives more attention to the volitional than to the intellectual and affectional aspects of personality. He regards self-decision as the most important feature of the entire persona] process because it is the culmination. "Whenever we will anything, supremely conscious of self, that volition is self-decision." "Whenever a man sees himself out there," he says, ''as an existing, isolated, peculiar individual, and then in the Hash of that vision of self, wills anything, that volition is self-decision. The person first makes himself the clear, full objective of his own thought, and then makes that definite point of his person the original initiative of his choice. And so the significance of self-decision becomes tremendous because the decision is charged with the conception, with the entire valuation, which the man has of himself" (Curtis, Christian Faith, pp. 23, 24).

Self-consciousness belongs to God. It is evident; however, that God like man cannot have consciousness apart from self-consciousness. First, sentiency cannot be attributed to God. God is Spirit (John 4: 24). According to the creedal statement He is "without body, parts, or passions." Here a sharp distinction is made between spirit and matter. Matter has bodily form, and must have parts and passions. A body is divisible and therefore capable of being destroyed. A body is capable of passions in the etymological sense of the term, that is, it can be wrought upon from without by material substances. Spirit being a unity can have no parts and is therefore indestructible. God as the Absolute Spirit is a unity and therefore can stand in no passive and organic relations to that which is not Himself. When the creed states that He is without "passions" it means that He is not operated upon or moved from the outside, but that all His activity is self-determined. The divine movement is all from within, that is, ab intra as over against ab extra. His personal decisions are always self-decisions of the highest possible type. His knowledge and affections are always the expression of His infinite and eternal worth. Second, there can be no growth or development of consciousness in God. Man comes to self- consciousness gradually through the increasing complexity of the relationships existing between the self and the objective world. As he develops physically from infancy to manhood, so he must develop in his mental and moral life. Like the Word incarnate, he increases in wisdom and stature, and like Him he should increase in favor with God and man. We cannot think of God as having blind and unreflecting mental processes. His reason is not discursive but intuitive. His is ever "self- conscious, self-contemplating, self-knowing and self- communing." He is indeed cognizant of the universe which He created, but this knowledge is not mediated through the senses as in man, and consequently is never partial or imperfect. Here we hear the breaking of the great deep on the infinite and eternal shores of God's omnipresence, His omniscience and His omnipotence.

The Metaphysical Nature of Personality. We have presented some of the psychological aspects of personality as found in the nature of self-consciousness; we must now consider more carefully its metaphysical characteristics. Pantheistic thought asserts that personality cannot be conceived without finite limitations. For this reason it has always objected to the application of the term personality to God. Personality according to the Hegelians and Neo-Hegelians consists in the contraposition of self to another object, a nonego by which it is limited. This limitation of the self by the cosmical ego is the cause of consciousness reflecting upon itself, thus giving rise to self-consciousness or personality. Infinite personality, then, according to this type of thought would be a contradiction in terms. But does personality depend upon this limitation? Theists reply in the negative. They maintain that this limitation may be the occasion but not the cause of personality. The root of personality lies in its nature before there is any contraposition to other subjects, and consists in the peculiar constitution of the subject as a finite spirit. The contraposition, therefore, is not the essence of personality, but only an inherent consequence of its nature.

The philosophical argument of the Hegelians against the Personality of God has been ably met on philosophical grounds by Hermann Lotze (1817-1881), whose writings have profoundly influenced theology. His chief works bearing upon this are the Microcosmos and his class lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Lotze approaches the subject of personality from the opposite angle, affirming that perfect personality belongs to God only, and that the necessity finite personality has of thinking itself over against a not-self is due to the limitation of finiteness rather than personality. He begins his argument by an analysis of personality which he finds yields two features, first, that the subject possesses an image of cognition or representation of what it is, by which it distinguishes itself from others; and second, that this image is unique, in that it cannot be contrasted with any other image in the same sense, that the other image may be contrasted with a third. The uniqueness and distinctness of this image he holds to be fundamental to personality. While our knowledge of personality may come from experience in the sense of mental development, it is not merely the orderly arrangement of ideas according to some system, but the ego standing in direct opposition to every nonego. Thus he finds that self- consciousness always implies the existence of a fundamental self-feeling which is its most essential element. Lotze also denies that personality is occasioned by the ego's activity being "reflected" back from a nonego. This he asserts is a "mere supplement of thought devoid of all basis." Such a process he says, would not distinguish the 'I' from "thou" or "he," our own personality from that of others. This distinction, he maintains, is not affected by means of pure ideation, but by the power of the self to combine its experiencing of feeling with its ideas. It is this combination that enables us to distinguish a personal state as our own. "The smallest capability for the experience of feeling," he says, "is sufficient to distinguish the one who experiences it from the external world, but the highest intellectuality apart from this capability, will not be able to apprehend itself as an ego over against a nonego. This is to say, once again, that personality presupposes feeling or self-feeling and cannot be subsequent intellectual construction only."

Lotze in denying limitation as the essence of personality, lays a firm foundation for belief in the personality of God. "What justification is there," he asks, "for attributing the term personality to its incomplete form in man, and grudging it to the Deity completely endowed with it?" Finiteness, then, according to Lotze, is the limitation rather than the expression of personality, and only in the infinite is there the truest and highest personality. "So little, therefore, is the idea of God's personality contradicted by His infinite greatness and perfection," says Christlieb, "that, on the contrary, it is precisely by reason of them that He must be personal" (Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p. 170).

We must draw our argument for the personality of God to a close. We have seen that the infinity of God, instead of placing Him outside the reach of human knowledge as agnosticism declares; or denying to Him personality as pantheism maintains, is instead, the very presupposition of His personality. And further, the idea of the Absolute can be maintained only as it posits an absolute Subject, that is, the absolute Personality. Thus the Absolute instead of being a contradiction of personality, can be explained only in the light of personality. The self-consciousness of the Absolute Personality does not need to limit itself by a not-self outside. God created the universe and gave it the position it holds, so that if we consider it a limitation in any sense of the word, it must be a self-limitation. This necessarily involves a belief in freedom. If we deny to God the freedom to create a world of finite existence apart from Himself, this very limitation would be a denial of His absoluteness. Thus the Christian concept of God preserves it from pantheism. On the other hand, it is maintained that one person can be distinguished from another, only by the multiplicity of powers which characterize him. Thus agnosticism holds that the Absolute, being by abstraction outside the realm of attributes, cannot be known. The Christian concept of God is that these powers are not abstracted from personality, but function in it as a unity instead of a multiplicity. Knowledge, feeling and will may be distinguished in finite personality, and exercised in some degree of independence, but this is not true of the Absolute Personality. Personal powers may correspond to certain objective distinctions in God, but it is His whole being that knows and feels and wills, and this in such a manner that their exercise does not break the absolute unity of His being. But apart from the philosophical significance of the term personality as applied to God, there is a religious significance to the term. As a personal Being, self-conscious and free, God stands in ethical and spiritual relations to mankind. As personal, God is Absolute reality in relation to the ground of all existence; as Infinite Efficiency, He is the Cause of all existence; so also as Perfect Personality, He is the reason or purpose of all existence.

PERSONALITY AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF FINITE EXISTENCE

We have shown that Perfect Personality is the completion of the process, which includes the concept of the Absolute as the ground of all reality, and the Infinite as the cause of all finite existence. We must now show that there is a sufficient reason or final cause of the universe, and this we find in Perfect Personality also. So far we have dealt mainly with the philosophical aspects of absoluteness, infinity and personality. But the term personality has a richer content than that given to it by metaphysics alone. To self-consciousness must be added self-determination. Perfect Personality involves perfection of intellect, feeling and will. There is therefore within the cosmos itself, a teleology or purpose which is derived from its Author. Dr. Domer has shown that Spirit expresses something positive, a peculiar Being transcending Nature and its categories, which is not merely in degree of higher worth than all finite good things, but which is also the absolute final end. In this higher something, or in God as Spirit, the principles will be found of all those ideas of which the world forms the mere finite manifestation or type, the principles of Measure, Design and Order, of Beauty and Harmony. God, as Spirit is the original seat of the "eternal truths"; they have in Him their absolute being. . . . . For how can absolute Being, which is to be necessarily thought of as the real and original possibility, both of existing things and of knowledge, be such a possibility if it is not essentially spiritual? (Cf. Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, p. 284). God as Perfect Personality satisfies, therefore, the religious nature of man, not only in its intellectual aspects, but in its moral and ethical demands as well.

Nature and the Personal Spirit. Perfect Personality lies only in the realm of spirit. Spirit, therefore, must give meaning to nature. The spiritual sphere is the only sufficient explanation of nature, without which its contradictions for rational thought must ever remain an unsolved riddle. "It is no tragic accident," says Dorner, "that without exception, every individual thing or every natural good passes away. It lies in the nature of the case." Nature must be permeated by the spiritual sphere, so that all its processes are taken up and made subservient to higher ends. This is the argument of St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. There is, he says, a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Corinthians 15: 44-49). Here it is clearly declared that the end of nature is the spiritual, and that it is inherent in Christianity as a philosophy of life, that the natural must be spiritualized, that nature must be made to serve spiritual ends. The transient nature of finite existence, or the consumption of nature, is not therefore irrational, since it serves a permanent purpose and comes to fuller expression in something higher than the finite, thus serving an infinite end.

Personality and Its Positive Spiritual Content. But the spiritual realm not only transcends nature and becomes its end in a general way; there is a positive content to the term Spirit. It signifies not merely a higher degree of worth than nature, but a unique, personal being, transcending nature and its categories, and is in itself the Sufficient Reason of nature, its absolute and final end. It was Athanasius (296-373), the great champion of the Trinitarian conception of God who declared that "he who contemplates Creation rightly is contemplating also the Word who framed it, and through him begins to apprehend the Father" (Athanasius, Discourse Against the Arians, I, p. 12). Here we approach the deep and unfathomable mystery of the adorable Trinity. But it is impossible to discuss the question of Perfect Personality without anticipating the distinctly Christian conception of God as Trinal Spirit or Triune Being. Why are the principles of truth, right, beauty and harmony in the world? Do they not force us immediately to the belief that there is a principle of order in the world? And can there be order without wisdom? And can wisdom be less than personal? Here we have reached the inspired declaration of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1: 1-3). Here it is specifically stated that the world was created by the Word, that is, according to a rational order, and after principles absolute in the personal Word which later became incarnate in Christ. It was just because the Logos was personal and creative, that Christ became the Redemptive Person. In Him was manifested the fullness of grace and truth. It is then in God as Spirit, that we must find the original seat of mercy and truth, strength and beauty (Psalm 96: 6). It is in the Logos as the Eternal Word that they have their absolute and unoriginated being. These principles did not originate in will; they are true in themselves and are therefore eternal within His essence as Spirit. They are the categories which presuppose Divine Intelligence. Whether finite or absolute, there can be no true end apart from intelligence, nor can there be either beauty or harmony without it. Only as there is a synthesis of the mind within nature and the mind within man can there be any understanding of nature by man, or any communication of man with man. It is because of the eternal Logos which precedes and underlies the very structure of creation, constituting it a cosmos and not a chaos, that we have our world of order and beauty. And further still, it is because the Christian conception of the Logos given us by St. John is both personal and creative, that we are preserved from pantheism, which on the one hand would merge everything into God, or on the other, regard the world as an emergence or emanation from God. St. Paul in his address on Mars' Hill declared to the Athenians that God is not worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and passing directly from the creative aspect, he presents the ethical as the great goal of human personality, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17: 25- 28). A firm grasp upon the fact of personality forever prevents thought from becoming pantheistic.

THE PRINCIPLES OF RATIONAL INTUITION

What are these absolute principles, eternal in the Godhead and peculiarly the property of the Divine Logos, which form the archetypal ideas of the world, the rational principles of order in the universe? The ancient philosophers expressed these norms in the familiar classification of the true, the beautiful and the good. Dr. Samuel Harris in his Philosophical Basis of Theism. (p. 180ft) thinks this classification inadequate. Starting with Kant's questions, "What can I know? What shall I do? What may I hope?" he divides the last into two; which he finds to be "What may I become?" and "What may I acquire and enjoy?" He thus finds four norms instead of three, which he regards as ultimate realities, known through rational intuition. These are (1) the true, which is the rational standard or norm of what a man may know; (2) the right, which is the norm of human activity; (3) the perfect, which is the norm of what a man may become; and (4) the good, which is the norm of what a man may acquire and enjoy. A brief discussion of these will give us some idea of the richness of Perfect Personality, which forms the spiritual goal of finite human beings and the supreme end of all things.

The First Ultimate Is the True. By the "true" we mean those universal truths or primitive principles of the mind which regulate all knowing. These truths of the reason have objective reality as principles or laws of things, in that they are the constituent elements in absolute reason. There can be no truth apart from the reality of the world-ground, just as there can be no laws of nature apart from the Author or Creator. "By truth," says Dr. Strong, "we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God's being and God's knowledge eternally conform to each other" (Strong, Systematic Theology, I, p. 260). Thus as a Divine Perfection we must regard truth as an absolute correspondence of revelation with reality. Dr. Samuel Harris approves of Plato's position in regard to archetypal ideas, when touched, as he says by Christian theism. These archetypal ideas of the true, the right, the perfect and the good exist eternally and archetypally in God the Supreme Reason. These and all other forms and ideals compatible with them were in the mind of God as an ideal universe before they came to existence in the physical universe as we now perceive it. To these He gives expression in time and space, and under other limitations of finite beings. He also created men as finite rational beings which in their normal development come not only to know themselves, but to know themselves in the light of Another, and thus arises the moral and ethical system in which God gives expression to even higher archetypal thoughts.

Truth as it is applicable to God is usually classified as verity, veracity and faithfulness or fidelity. The two latter may be considered attributes in that they represent transitive truth manifested to His creatures. The former must be regarded as immanent truth, and not merely an active attribute. It is the exact correspondence of the Divine Nature with the ideal of absolute perfection. While this ideal can be only partially comprehended by finite beings, it is fully known to God in all its excellence, and to this supreme excellence His whole nature corresponds. It is in this aspect that the Scriptures call Him the true God, as indicated in the following references: And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent ( John 17: 3). Since truth is reality revealed, Jesus is the Truth because in Him are revealed the hidden qualities of God. This is given further statement in 1 John 5:20 where the writer declares that We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. In both of these passages the word àλŋqινόν is used which describes God as genuine or real as distinguished from àλŋqής, a term used to express the veracity or truthfulness of God. When, therefore, our Lord speaks of himself as the Truth, He means not merely that He is the truthful One, but that He is the Truth and the source of truth. His truth is that of being and not merely that of expression (Cf. also 2 Chronicles 15: 3, Jeremiah 10: 10, 1 Thessalonians 1: 9, Revelations 3: 7).

As to the veracity and faithfulness of God, the Scriptures abound in both references and illustrations. Since God's knowledge is perfect He cannot be mistaken; since He is holy there can be no disposition to deceive; and since His resources are infinite He is under no necessity of failure. His law being a transcript of His nature is unchangeable and exactly adapted to the character and condition of His people. It becomes, therefore, the ground of adoration and praise. Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever (Psalm 119: 142, 160). The Scripture writers delight in meditating upon the faithfulness of God as the foundation for faith and hope and love. If God were not true in all His promises and faithful in all His engagements, religion would be impossible. Hence we have such references as the following: God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? (Numbers 23: 19). He is a Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he (Deuteronomy 32: 4). Thy truth reacheth unto the clouds (Psalm 108: 4). The truth of the Lord endureth forever (Psalm 117: 2). Thy faithfulness is unto all generations (Psalm 119: 90). In the New Testament we have such references as the following: God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1: 9). If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2: 13). Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1: 17). Other references must be reserved for treatment in relation to the specific attributes of God.

The Second Ultimate Is the Right. Here the principles of rational intuition are known as laws, in that they are regulative of energy or power. These apply in every realm-the physical, the moral and the spiritual. The term right is used to express conformity of action to the principles of reason regarded as law. This is applicable to both intellect and will. By the term "ought" is meant the action of a free rational being in response to the demands of reason. Law in its bare intellectual form is merely observed sequences, and as it concerns physical power is conformity of action to the laws of the physical realm. In duty, however, a new reality arises which must be considered in relation to free will and thus becomes moral law. Like the other intuitions of reason this law is operative in a practical way before it is formulated in thought. As man reflects, he comes to see that whatever he knows as true in the reason, becomes a law of action. Hence there develops a sense of oughtness, and duty takes on a new and intense meaning. He sees himself under an overmaster or Lord, and in conscience he knows himself along with, or in the light of, Another. Kant in his Metaphysics of Morals represents conscience as conducting a case before a court and gives his conclusion in these words: "Now that he who is accused by conscience should be figured to be just the same person as the judge, is an absurd representation of a tribunal; since in such an event the accuser would always lose his suit. Conscience must, therefore, represent itself always some one other than itself as Judge, unless it is to arrive at a contradiction with itself." He finds, also, that conformity or lack of conformity to the law as right results in two conflicting types of character. To the one he applies the term virtue and to the other vice. More remotely, however, he finds the one to be holy and the other sinful, and this in direct relation to the Overmaster, known and felt in conscience. God as Perfect Personality must, therefore, be both holy and righteous, and as such demands both holiness and righteousness in His subjects. "Holiness," says William Newton Clarke, "is the glorious fullness of God's moral excellence, held as a principle of His own action and the standard for His creatures" (Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, p. 89).

The Third Ultimate Is the Perfect. By perfection is meant the correspondence of outward action with the inner rational standard. When the mind imagines a perfect object, that creation of the imagination is called an ideal. Ideals, therefore, are not obtained by imitation, or the copying of observed objects, but are creations of the mind itself. Beauty and harmony are not dependent upon material altogether, but may be pure spiritual images. Beauty is primarily and originally pure form. It does not arise from matter, but is a form impressed upon matter. Material things as we find them in nature become beautiful through the interworking of these forms. Furthermore, this formative principle must be capable of being fixed in thought, not merely as outward law of beauty or harmony, but as a principle of the Essence itself. The law of the beautiful, of harmony and order, of perfection must therefore belong to the nature of God and be a part of the absolute Essence. As God is the Supreme Being, or the Being of beings, so His perfection is a supreme perfection, or a perfection of all perfections. It belongs therefore to God to impress the stamp of His own being upon all the divine works, and consequently His works are perfect. It was for this reason that Augustine loved to think of God as primary beauty and harmony. "God," he says, "is lovely as the beautiful, for we can only love the beautiful; but the truly beautiful is the supersensuous, is immutable truth." As applied to God, perfection is usually regarded in theology as the principle of harmony which unifies and consummates all the divine attributes, thus preventing the sacrifice of one attribute to another, and bringing each one to its supreme manifestation. Perfection in God is not the combination of many qualities, but only, "the undivided glory of the several rays of the divine character." It is the harmony of absolute freedom from inner contradictions. Beauty is therefore directly connected with holiness, and we are commanded to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness (Psalm 96:9. Cf. 1 Chronicles 16:29, Psalm 29:2, 2 Chronicles 20:21, Psalm 110:3).

But the Divine Life as perfect, is not merely one of freedom from inner contradictions, it is also one of positive content. It is filled with inner divine potentialities, and all these potencies are in harmonious equilibrium. It becomes, therefore, essentially a Self-purpose. The Scriptures recognize this beauty and harmony which characterize the Divine Perfection, as it recognizes truth and righteousness as belonging to the Divine Nature. The psalmist declared that Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined (Psalm 50:2); and again, Thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain (Psalm 104:1-3). When Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount enjoined upon His disciples the principles of perfection, saying, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5: 48), He could have referred to nothing short of that freedom from inner contradictions which constitutes a holy being, and the possession of those positive potencies which in harmony with the divine nature stamped themselves in beauty upon all His works. The perfection He enjoins upon His disciples is not the absolute perfection of the Divine Being, but that in human personality which corresponds to the divine nature. It is the deliverance of the soul from the inner contradictions brought about by sin, or inherited depravity, and its restoration to purity of heart and simplicity of purpose. And, furthermore, this perfection implies in man as it does in God, a correspondence between the outer activities of life and the inner harmony of being. Perfection in this sense is intensely ethical, in that it includes both inner holiness and outward righteousness. It is the fulfillment of the oath which he aware to our father Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life (Luke 1: 73-75).

The Fourth Ultimate Is the Good. The good is the last and highest in the series of ultimates which constitute the norms of finite human existence. In its ultimate and absolute sense, our Lord applies the term to God only, there is none good but one, that is God (Matt. 19: 17). In this sense it is to be interpreted as the divine sentiment which wills the good of all creatures as such. Thus there is seen to be a distinction between the perfect in the sense of a conformity to the norms of truth and right, and the good in the sense of the useful. A thing may be either a means to something else, or it may be an end in itself. In the former sense, its value is estimated only in relation to that other thing and not for its own sake. This determines it as useful. "The fitting, the useful, the convenient, depend on something else," says Augustine, and "cannot be judged by themselves, but only according to that relation to something else." On the other hand, a thing may be willed for its own sake instead of another, and through its own inner harmony and beauty become an end in itself or a good. It should be observed that the good as the highest in the series of norms involves each of the others in an order of precedence and dependence. Truth in itself appears to be foundational and presupposes no truth, and right is such, only by conformity to truth as a law of action. The perfect presupposes both the ideas of truth and right; while the good not only involves the experiences of joy and sorrow, but presupposes the true, the right and the perfect as the norm or standard by which to discriminate the sources of joy and the pursuit of pleasures worthy of a rational being. The good is then the rational.

The good, therefore, is the rational end or object of acquisition, possession and enjoyment. It presupposes the truth, the right and the perfect; it is that in which they culminate. Here we come to the province of ethics, and the necessary investigation of the realm of ends, which shall constitute a full and sufficient reason for life itself. It is this reality known by reason, which opens to knowledge the whole sphere of teleology or final causes. But while the good may be defined as that which has rational worth, the question arises immediately, "What is this good? What is it which has in itself some worth as estimated by reason; which is everywhere and always worthy of human acquisition and possession, and everywhere and always worthy to be the source of happiness to a rational being?" This, Harris defines as "the perfection of his being; his consequent harmony with himself, with God the Supreme Reason, and with the constitution of the universe; and the happiness necessarily resulting" (Harris, Self-revelation of God, p. 271).

It will be seen, then, that perfect personality is not only the highest philosophical concept of the Divine Being, but it becomes also the supreme end of finite existence. The essential good is primarily the perfection of the being in personality. The good is itself the realization of the truths, laws and ideals of reason. In so far as man attains the perfection of his own being, he attains the end which reason declares to have true worth. This is an end worthy of pursuit and acquisition, not only for ourselves but for all moral beings. The steps in this process of development must begin in the acquisition of a right moral character. Character begins in choice, and from thenceforth the will is a charactered will. Each succeeding choice develops, confirms or modifies this character. The moral law requires of its subjects, love to God as supreme, and love to our neighbor equally with ourselves. Love is therefore the fulfilling of the law. It is the essential germ of all right character.

But the good not only includes harmony within the individual person, in the sense of a character unified and motivated by perfect love, it includes also the perfection of all the powers and susceptibilities of the person progressively unfolding according to the law of love. This tends toward the discipline, development and refinement of the individual, but implies also a correspondence of finite reason with the Supreme Reason, the finite will with the infinite will of God. Holiness, as we have pointed out, is "the glorious fullness of God's moral; excellence, held as the principle of His own action and the standard for His creatures," and therefore the Supreme Good for all of God's creatures. Furthermore, we must regard harmony with God's universe as involved in this Supreme Good. The universe, both physical and spiritual, is the expression of the archetypal ideas of God, and was brought into existence through the Divine Word or Logos (John 1:3). The individual cannot work out his own good apart from the universe. He belongs to a universal system of which God is the Author, and in which His wisdom and His love are evermore coming to harmonious expression. His well-being consists in a proper and harmonious adjustment to the system of which he is a part, and which was designed by the Supreme Reason for his progressive good. Here is the deep and profound meaning of the words, All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Romans 8: 28). Then again, the good must include happiness. This follows as a consequence of the perfection of the person and his harmony with God and the universe. Happiness can have no separate existence. It is always inseparable from that in which it has its source. Thus joy springs out of right character and action and is inseparable from it. This is the meaning of Jesus who said to His sorrowing disciples, I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you (John 16: 22). The personal, therefore, must ever be the true end or object of acquisition, possession or enjoyment. It is only in personality that the ideas of the true, the right and the perfect culminate. God as Perfect Personality is the only worthy object of human choice, and love to God the fulfilling of the law. With perfect love to God and man, the soul must forever unfold in the light of this Supreme Good, and at every stage of its progress will embrace enlarged conceptions of the true, and the right, the perfect and the good.

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD

In our discussion of the Divine Names and Predicates, we pointed out in a preliminary manner, some of the Scripture predicates of God as used by our Lord and His apostles. Among these were the terms Spirit, Life, Light and Love. Having now presented the philosophical aspects of God as the Absolute, the Infinite and the Personal; and having shown the necessity of a personal God to meet the ethical and religious demands of finite personality, we turn from philosophy to discuss the religious concept of God. Christianity holds that the true concept of God is that which Christ revealed, or more specifically, which God himself revealed through Christ. We shall therefore endeavor to fill up in some measure the outline already presented, by a further discussion of Christ's concept of God, enlarged and interpreted by those additional concepts given by Him to the apostles through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

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THE TRINITY

Christian Theology, Volume 1, pages 393-395

The evangelical doctrine of the Trinity affirms that the Godhead is one substance, and that in this one substance there is a trinality of persons. Perhaps the simplest statement of this truth is found in the Nicene Creed which declares "There is but one living and true God. . . . . And in the unity of this Godhead there be Three Persons, of one substance, power and eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the deepest and most sacred in the Christian system. Stearns points out that St. Augustine in beginning one of the books in his treatise on the Trinity breathes the following prayer: "I pray to our Lord God himself, of whom we ought always to think worthily, in praise of whom blessing is at all times rendered, and whom no speech is sufficient to declare, that He will grant me both help for understanding and explaining that which I design, and pardon if in anything I offend" (De Trinitate, v. i, 1).

Whether or not God would have revealed Himself as Trinity, if man had continued sinless, we need not inquire. We do know that it is in the mystery of redemption that this truth comes into clear vision. Reason may have suspected it, but only in the redemptive Christ has it been made visible. Nor can we enter into this most sacred sanctuary of the Christian faith by way of human knowledge, but only through Christ who is the Way as well as the Truth and the Life.

The Experiential Basis of the Doctrine. The doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible as humid air. The cool wave of reflection through which the church passed, condensed its thought and precipitated what all along had been in solution. While there are philosophical views of the Trinity, yet philosophical analysis probably never could have produced, and certainly did not produce it.

It arose as an expression of experience, and that too, of an experience which was complex and rich. The doctrine is an attempt at simplification, stating and summarizing briefly what is given more at length in the New Testament. It was religion before it was theology, and in order to be effective must again become in each of us, religion as well as theology.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not, therefore, a merely theoretical or speculative one. It is intensely practical. With it is bound up our eternal salvation. It is revealed historically in close connection with redemption, and not merely as an abstract metaphysical or theological conception. God the Father sent His Son into the world to redeem us; God the Son became incarnate in order to save us; and the Holy Spirit applies the redemptive work to our souls. The Trinity, therefore, is vitally involved in the work of redemption, and it is from this practical and religious aspect of the doctrine that the truth must be approached. Because of its bearing on human conduct and destiny, it has been necessary to define it metaphysically in order to prevent its perversion by speculative thought. The doctrine, while receiving contributions from the various systems and types of philosophy, does not owe its origin to any of them, and can never be fully explained by them.

The experience of the apostles and early disciples was intensely religious, rich, luxuriant and all-compelling. The Epistles of St. Paul which form an open gate-way to the thought and life of the New Testament, reveal a full-fledged organized religion, a Church living in the ardent belief that Christ as the divinely glorified Son of God, was giving His life to it by the Holy Spirit. But later Judaism into which this new religion came was also a fully organized religion, aflame with faith in one God, the revealed law of God, and the coming of the kingdom of God. It held at least some belief also, in a Messiah who should be connected with the Spirit of the Lord, and by this means inaugurate the new kingdom. What happened between these two viewpoints must furnish the clue to a solution of the problem. First, Jesus had appeared in a ministry like that of the old prophets, had later been recognized as the Messiah by some of His disciples, had then claimed the title at Jerusalem, was then regarded with religious awe by His disciples, discredited and put to death by the rulers, leaving behind Him an utterly discouraged and desolate following. Second, there had followed immediately many appearances of Jesus risen and glorified, and these had turned the testimony of the disciples into one of triumphant joy. Third, after a brief period of tarrying in Jerusalem, there had been the bestowal of the Holy Spirit according to promise; and this had issued in confident and successful missionary effort. These facts were sufficient to bridge the gap, and accounted for the success of the gospel ministry through a continuation of the mystical presence of Christ in the Church. Increasing attention was of necessity given to Christ in the thought of the Church. He was proved to be the Messiah by the resurrection from the dead, and the bestowal of the Divine Spirit. Hence He was invoked in prayer, and without sharp personal distinctions was called God.

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