AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN ON THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 October 1883, Page 12

AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN ON THE OLD TESTAMENT.

The Reverend A. R. Fitchett, in a sermon preached in All Saints Church Dunedin, on Sunday the 26th August, replied to a lecture of Judge Higinbotham's on " Science and Religion," and made the following observations (reported in the Dunedin Star), on the averment that—" The Churches were committed to anthropomorphic conceptions of God inconsistent with the teachings of Modern Science' : ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The Churches were charged with maintaining anthropomorphic views of the Diety, and so with presenting to the people as the object of worship a different God to the God revealed in nature and known through science. Anthropomorphism is the attributing of a human form to God—human parts and passionsthe conceiving of the Diety as like ourselves. The lecturer himself explained why such conceptions were natural in the early stages of the race's mental development, and admitted that they were inevitable. Before the advent of modern science this planet appeared to be the principal body in the universe -sun, moon, and stars were mere appendages for its convenience ; man was conceived as the chief object of the Divine care, the sole intelligent creature of the Divine government. God reigned over the kingdoms of men as an Oriental monarch over the satraps who governed his provinces King of Kings, irresponsible, arbitrary in his action, varying in his plans, capable of being deflected from His purpose by human entreaty. God in short, was mainly conceived as a magnified man, and in the childhood of the race it was natural so to conceive him. THE OLD TESTAMENT. Anthropomorphic conceptions undoubtedly pervade the Hebrew Scriptures. The Old Testament is the record of religous development in a particular people. At the beginning of Jewish history Jehovah is a tribe God —the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is a God amongst other and rival gods—greater than they, but it was long before the Jewish mind was cleared of the notion that the gods of other tribes and other regions had a real existence. As the tutelary deity of the clan, Jehovah was enshrined or tabernacled in a dwelling. At Salem was his tabernacle, and his dwelling in Zion. In the holy place of the Temple the lid of the Ark was Jehovah's throne; the cherubic figures on either side were the attendants on his state ; the table of the shewbread was spread before him every week, in keeping with the idea of his residence there. The phenomena of the natural world - the Jew referred to the direct action of Deity. The thunder was Jehovah's voice, the lightning l His arrows. He looks upon the earth and it trembles ; He touches the hills and they smoke- that was the Hebrew explanation of the earthquake and the volcano. It is tolerably certain

that this crude anthropomorphism was refined into poetry as mental development proceeded. The old phraseology was retained, but was accepted as figurative. Thus in Psalm 104 we have: Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters,” i e., in the watery firmament overhead; " who maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind.” Probably the intelligent Hebrew no more believed that God built chambers in the sky than he believed that the wind had wings. Both expressions were understood as poetry. In the more elevated utterances of the prophets anthropomorphism is condemned and repudiated: “ Canst thou by searching find out God ? ” "To whom will ye liken God ? or what likeness will ye compare unto Him ? ” “ God is not man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.” Even before the advent of Christ Hebrew thought had made long advances towards a purer and more spiritual conception of God than that formed by the primitive tribe.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM ENDS WITH JESUS CHRIST. The consummation of this progress came in the teaching of Jesus Christ. " God is a spirit." That is the final word about the nature of God. Beyond it we have not got ; cannot hope to get. God is a spirit; God dwelleth not in temples made with hands; is not localised either in " this mountain " or in the shrine ol the " holy place " at Jerusalem. These utterances supersede for ever the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament. That the ancient Jew conceived of God as possessing corporeal parts and human passions as being domiciled in a building, as subject to change" repenting him " and being "grieved at the heart."—as entreating to be " let alone " that he may carry out his original purpose unhindered by human importunity—that these were men's thoughts of God thirty centuries ago is nothing to us. Ours is not the theology of the Old Testament, but of the New. THE LATER REVELATION. Since the truth was enunciated that God is a spirit we have learned much. Not, indeed, respecting the ultimate nature of God —on that subject the final word has been spoken—but respecting the methods of God's action. This is the contribution to theology which has been made by modern science. We have learned that the Creator Spirit, still at work, works in methods absolutely fixed and unvarying. The changeless " laws of nature " are merely the modes in which we observe the creative and sustaining power of God to work. All modern science is a commentary on the New Testament text which affirms that God is the " Father of Lights," with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Unquestionably the most deeply-rooted conviction in the educated lay mind of to-day is that of the reign of law, the uniformity of Nature, the unbroken continuity which links effect with cause in all natural phenomena. Does the teaching given in the churches conflict with that conviction ? We have seen that Jesus Christ finally dismissed the older anthropomorphism by enunciating the truth that" God is a spirit." Have we, notwithstanding, gone back to ideas proper only to the childhood of the race ? Is the God of the churches a different God to the God of the University class room. That is the question remaining now to be answered.