Theology and Emotions: Humanism – Theism – Naturalism

February 3, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
19. Theology and Emotions: Humanism – Theism – Naturalism

There was a time in the churches of our Universalist Unitarian denominations when considerable anxiety existed among Theists that Humanists were going to drain all the spiritual sustenance from religion; there was a parallel fear among Humanists that theistic attachment to traditional ways of believing was a great hindrance to the progress of our religions along lines of modern meaning and application. I believe that the anger generated by this encounter has been almost wholly dissipated by continuous discussion and re-statement. There has emerged a mode of understanding which encourages differences as opportunities where mutual growth is sure as long as good will prevails.

There are a series of recognitions to be made in discussing Humanist, Theist, and Naturalist, in order to make some allowance for many distinctions which could be made:

When discussing these terms in our religious context, one should concede that the qualification “so-called” might well precede Theist, Humanist, or Naturalist, for the differences are neither rigid nor crystal-clear.

Furthermore, in dealing with these subjects among [Unitarian Universalists], one admits in advance that no one definition will strike a chord of complete agreement with many – indeed, if with anyone.

Theological convictions are never produced in intellectual isolation. Our emotions exert huge influence in the final production of our total response to religion, as well as other attitudes born of experience. There is no need to hash over at length what I am sure every one of you knows – that with many among us, the response to theological discussion is one of straining for arguments to support our feelings. Our emotional reactions to these areas of theology are generally disclosed by antagonistic reactions to humanism, theism, or naturalism, as the case may be. Usually the hostile reactions are well-tamed by social control, but the feelings are unmistakable.

Therefore, when discussing theological attitudes included among us, recognition is necessary of the presence of influential emotions. The people in our gathered churches and fellowships represent a considerable variety of beliefs, and rightfully so. In the understanding of our heritage, it behooves us to recognize both the nature of our unity and the values of diversities among us. Under the power of wayward emotions, we can make the mistake of extreme defensiveness about our particular variation of theology. We are an open society in church government, but our fellowship would have a decayed center, if our guarded anxieties seriously handicapped inquiring minds and open hearts.

I. In such spirit, I would look at humanistic, theistic, and naturalistic trends of belief. Again, I am cautious, using the description, “trend of belief,” for humanists, theists, and naturalists cannot easily be sliced off and separated, as one could slice a cheese. If I seem more sympathetic to the naturalist trend, it is because this is where I stand today; although I give no assurance that this is where I will stand tomorrow.

What is religious humanism? The most lucid definitions are classical epigrams. In ancient Greece, Protagoras asserted, “Man is the measure of all things.” More than two thousand years later, Alexander Pope re-stated it, “The proper measure of mankind is man.”

Humanism posits that the only way of knowledge is human experience; that human experience is the only standards available for gauging human conduct and goals. The Humanist will usually interpret the enduring religious ideas of miracle, prayer, God, evil, immortality not as incontestable propositions, supernaturally revealed, but as human expressions and human evaluations of personal and group experiences. John Galsworthy once said, “Humanism is the creed of those who believe that within the circle of enwrapping mystery, men’s fates are in their own hands – a faith that is becoming for modern man the only possible faith.”

Most Humanists decline to use the God concept. This abstention is not usually because of militant atheism, but more often because they hold that God is a word of such wide range of meaning, from primitive notions to intellectual abstractions, that continued undefined usage only increases confusion. At times there will be asserted in an aggressive challenge to the universe. This spirit was worded splendidly by Goethe in the fragmentary poem, “Prometheus,” when the man chained on earth defies the gods on Olympus:

“Who gave me succour
Against the Titan’s over-mastering fate?
Who rescued me from death – from slavery?
Thou! - Thou, my soul burning with hallowed fire,

Hast not thyself alone accomplished all?
Yet didst thou, in thy young simplicity,
Glow with misguided thankfulness to him
That slumbers on unheeding there above!

I reverence thee?
Wherefore? Hast thou ever
Lighten’d the sorrows of the heavy-laden?
Hast thou ever stretched thy hand, to still the tears
Of the perplexed in spirit?
Was it not
Almighty Time, and ever-during Fate -
My lords and thine – that shaped and moulded me
Into the man I am?”

Other humanists have less Promethean attitudes, being content to believe that the ultimate mysteries of creation are beyond the capacity of human comprehension. The promise of supernatural salvation and the portent of supernatural, ever-lasting hellfire are just not live options for the Humanist. He needs neither such incentive nor threat. The Humanist asserts with Brutus (Julius Caesar, Act II, Sc. 1), “What need we any spur but our own best cause?”

Religious Humanists hold a candid common-sense religion, emphasizing the values of this world, the methods of science and profess full acceptance of human brotherhood.

Although Benjamin Franklin did not call himself a Humanist, an encounter he recorded in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY is apt summary of this point of view. Franklin offered accommodations to the famous George Whitefield, 18th century Wesleyan evangelist. Whitefield said that if Franklin had made the offer for Christ’s sake, he should not miss of a reward. Franklin replied, “Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for yours.” Then Franklin noted “one of our common acquaintances jocosely remarked that knowing it to be the custom of saints, when they received any favor to shift the burden of the obligation off their own shoulders, and place it in Heaven, I had contrived to fix it on earth.” The humanistic spirit contrives to fix religion on earth.

The Humanist can be called [an] autonomous man who is emancipated from supernatural authority. In contrast would be the Theist - “Theonomous” man (to use the classification employed by Wilhelm Fauck, THE HERITAGE OF THE REFORMATION, p. 176-82).

II. There has been and is an abundant measure of different varieties of theistic thought in our heritage. While many religious liberals found a great lift in casting off dogmatic chains of imposed beliefs, they discovered no warrant for casting aside their faith in God. One of Dr. Fosdick's delightful stories concerned the occasion when a young man burst into the study, exclaiming, “I don’t believe in God.” The minister asked, “What is this God you don’t believe in?” When the seeker explained his rejection of a revengeful, partisan God, who would inflict all sorts of cruel punishments and operate with an eccentric system of bizarre judgments and unpredictable grace, Dr. Fossil replied, “I don’t believe in that kind of God either. Let’s talk together and discuss what kind of God we can believe in.”

Thus it is with many among us. The progress of science, discovery of the orderly ways of the universe, the amazing regularity of cosmic movements and relationships supply persuasive evidence that “the hand that made us is divine, that through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”

Many Theists believe strongly that the freedom of man is rooted in obedience to the Creator. When man abuses his freedom, deprives others of what he seeks for himself, then judgment for his wrong-doing is eventually, but inevitably pronounced by the hand of God in history. This was the great prophetic tradition. “Thus saith the Lord,” were the stirring words that indicated that man’s freedom and happiness depended on his obedience to God, no matter how violently earthly foes might oppose that divine command.

The Theist does not deny the validity of the human experience; he asserts the right to interpret human experience on the assumption that the world and all that is therein are from the Creator; that men may seek to know more about the nature of that Creator and relate to it. The Theist also insists on the importance of ethical obligations to all persons. But he would emphasize that the brotherhood of man is rooted in, even conditional on, the Fatherhood of God.

Many Theists take a somewhat dis-enchanted view of Promethean Man who mocks the gods, as did Goethe’s hero. The point could be argued that whenever man deified himself, he was soon involved in corruption and disillusionment.

The Theist views God as creator of a rational order whose spirit energizes the processes of life, wherein man evolves a reasoning mind with the ability to entertain the idea of God as perfection beyond all imperfections; as complete love beyond all faulty human efforts to love; as the God who looked upon the world and saw that it was good. Sometimes the Theist sees a laboring God, struggling at the side of man to bring about growth in wisdom and morality, a God whose closest human image has been demonstrated by all the selfless saviors of man.

The late Teilhard de Chardin, in his remarkable book, THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, makes the theistic belief both poetic and persuasive, when he says (p. 292), “In the centre, so glaring as to be disconcerting, is the uncompromising affirmation of a personal God: God as providence, directing the universe with loving, watchful care; and God the revealer, communicating to man on the level of and through the ways of intelligence .... Such an attitude in the hearts of the faithful leave the door open to, and is easily allied to, everything that is great and healthy in the universe.”

III. Those of us who see truth and inspiration in the Naturalist position sometimes irritate both Humanists and Theists because we usually do not feel greatly disturbed in being tagged as either naturalistic humanists or naturalistic theists.

First, the natural contrasts with the supernatural. The God who is outside the universe either winding it up like a clock or suddenly breaking through into the natural order from the supernatural by incarnating himself as a man, stirs little response of faith from the naturalist. The God who intrudes in the affairs of the universe to perform a miracle, either because of a prayer properly said or unfathomable whim, is not consonant with man’s present understanding of the universe.

Secondly, the naturalist looks with some skepticism on humanist doctrines that tend to deify man or inflate man’s ego tot he size that induces exaggerated postures of defiance against the universe. If they myth of the supernatural god, creating the universe by successive commands in six days, is naïve, so also is the Promethean myth which describes man as establishing humanity in defiance of the wishes of God.

If the universe no longer seems to be the creation of a potter; similarly, it no longer seems a battleground where man must establish his humanity by struggling with the gods who would deny man the right to be human.

When we surmise what gigantic distances the universe encompasses; the complexity of organic life, the superb orderliness by which the universe functions, the process of creation, growth, change decay, which to our human experience now seems eternal – then our universe appears to be governed by principles of growth operating from within the universe itself.

When we use the words, “laws of the universe,” we are not making an analogy that some outside, supernatural legislative body or monarch codified the laws. “Laws of the universe” are a mythological reference of our time to indicate what seems to us to be marvelous order. Controlled forces indicate that there are great purposes toward whose realization these creative energies are proceeding.

God is immanent in this purposive order; God is resident within the universe.

Man is part of this natural order. What we call “evolution” has brought him to this age where we are conscious of ourselves as beings with feelings, with ability to direct our own evolution, at least to a degree, with responsibilities in this wondrous universe to discover ways of living better and more truly.

I make a venture of faith, too, that this process of organic growth, this human awareness of moral achievements and the human hopes of purposes achieved, which then point to greater purpose yet, is the very nature of this immanent God who is within, not beyond.

That this immanent God is personal, in the manner of the God who walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening was a personal man-like God, I find difficult to accept. God is much more a process of growth than a bearded patriarch.

The Naturalist finds it difficult to assume that man is the center of the universe or that God must be like man, personally aware of individual trials and hopes.

Yet man’s understanding is personal, his hopes are sensitive, his struggles are conscious, his griefs are real. These feelings are as much of the totality of experience as the pivoting constellations. If God is all in all, in somewhat the manner I have attempted to describe, then personality, too, is inextricably interwoven in this whole great process of creation we call life in the universe. Joseph Addison caught the nuance of this ineffable hope in his great hymn we sang today,

“And spangled heav’ns, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The un’wearied sun from day to day
Does his Creator’s power display,
And publishes to ever land
The work of an almighty hand.”

There can be no end to the river of our theological understanding. Always there will be not only cross-currents and tricky shallows, but also abundant life pouring in from new tributaries. To sum up for today, there seem to be no theological requirements among us except the obligation to be both intelligent and sympathetic. At this stage of our religious process, indicators are that there is some measure of the Humanist, Theist, and Naturalist in almost every one of us.

The Humanist may resist, disavow, even disdain most traditional theological words and practices. But as a writer in “The New Statesman and Nation” pointed out some-time ago, with a bit of satiric glee, that even humanists fall into the trap of heresies. For example, “One-Wee-Prayerism: the shocking heresy that, in moments of acute stress and danger, one wee prayer is permissible. This may be attributed later to behaviouristic reflex responses.” More seriously, the Humanist is more an honest searcher for language that indicates more accurate meanings, than he is a ruthless destroyer of beloved beliefs.

The Theist may strain for the privilege of placing current relevancy in older words, such as the Fatherhood of God, prayer, worship. But frequently this is not as vital as he may assert. Harry Emerson Fosdick once penned with dismal accuracy the ways of many,

“They’re praising God on Sunday,
They’ll be all right on Monday,
It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.”

But in justice to the Theist, because he treasures the name of God, seeks to relate himself to God in corporate worship, it does not mean that he is naïve, ignorant, or reactionary. More often the Theist treasures the ongoing centrality of historic language as the proper vehicle for great ideas and hopes that all men understand.

For all the somewhat vague mystical acceptance by the Naturalist of all the universe and his experience of it as the nature of God, he is willing, or should be, to change things for the specific benefit of the human order. We may say with John Burroughs, the great naturalist, “We cannot lift ourselves over the fence by our own waistbands; no more can we by searching find God, because he is not an object that has place and form and limitations. He is the fact of the fact, the life of the life, the soul of the soul, the incomprehensible the sum of all contradictions, the unity of all diversity....”

But if we Naturalists in theology were perfectly consistent, we might be content to be at ease, for what is, is God; what is, is best. But we are eager for change, most of us, and willing to be among the change-makers. Although Robert Frost might not have classified himself among the theological naturalists, he expressed our feelings perfectly, and recorded our inconsistency accurately, when he wrote in “The Lesson for Today,”

“And were an epitaph my story
I would have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone;
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

Theists, Humanists, Naturalists, or whatever, in the contrasting shades of our differences and inconsistencies, we would be well advised that “by our fruits we shall be known.” Albert Schweitzer, the great Bible scholar, philosopher, musician and the most famous mission doctor in all history, attended a conference of missionary workers in Africa. Schweitzer took little part in the theological discussions. He preached, briefly and simply as is his life-time habit. Following the service, when he was requested for an opinion of a theological matter, a native preacher condescendingly interrupted and “pointed out that the matter was outside the doctor’s province, ‘because he is not a theologian as we are.’”

We can similarly let our theological pretensions – which may not seem as incisive and profound to others as they do to ourselves – lead us into insignificance. We have not arrived, any of us, at the whole truth, finally revealed. Nor will all the tasks that persons are capable of doing await the Shangri-La when theologically, we will all be of one mind. In the meantime, we will be known more fully by the way our beliefs are reflected in the kind of persons we are and the tasks we try to do well.

This is the dimension which would enable us to chant the refrain known to the Negro slaves of the sea islands of Georgia, as they strained over the oars, rowing their boat to shore,

“When your dream is dead and gone,
Keep on movin;
Dream once more and travel on,
Keep on movin.”