GOD AND EVIL by C.E.M. JOAD  

Extract:

'The thing a man does practically lay to heart and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion.' - carlyle

A book which takes religion for its subject ought manifestly has to begin with a definition of its subject. Numbers are available, yet none, I feel, is sufficiently authoritative to justify its adoption; for no one of these definitions, that is to say, can it be claimed that it embraces all of what is meant by people when they use the word religion, and that it embraces only what is meant. In the circumstances, the prudent course seems to be to abandon the attempt to frame a definition which is both objective and authoritative, and to take the easier way of indicating what I personally have in mind when I use the word. People have used the word religion to cover many different things; what follows is no more than an indication of those of them which I take to be important and am proposing to discuss in the following pages.

The Propositions of Religion.

First, then, I take religion to consist of a set of propositions to which those who 'believe in' religion would assent. The proposi­tions relate, in the first place, to the nature and purpose of the universe. They are to the effect that the world of solid, everyday things extended in space is not the only world, is not even the real world; for, they assert, there is another world, a world of spirit which is real in some sense in which the familiar world is illusory, and which is eternal as contrasted with the familiar world which is transitory. By many, this spiritual world is regarded as a universal consciousness which expresses itself in our partial consciousnesses or rather which is the essential core or reality of our partial consciousnesses. This essential core of the human being, which is his true self, is thus, by virtue of its participation in the reality of the universal consciousness, immortal. We are, then, immortal souls, and it follows that by virtue of our possession of, or rather, by virtue of our being immortal souls, we are here and now members of the real spiritual world, although by virtue of our bodies we are also and at the same time members of the familiar world of physical things.

If we live aright we can, even while we are in the body upon earth, partially realize our real nature as participators in the spiritual world and prepare ourselves to enter upon our full spiritual inheritance when our souls leave their bodies at death.

The universal consciousness which is the fundamental reality of the universe can be further defined, and by many, perhaps most, religions is further denned, as being of the nature of a Person. This Person is God.

Now we can only conceive of the personality of God in terms of our own personalities; we can, in other words, only conceive of Him anthropomorphically. To do so is no doubt to conceive Him falsely, since God is not after all a man, is not even a perfect man. Nevertheless, we are in a position to make certain state­ments about His attributes, as, for example, that He is all wise, all good, and all powerful; that He created us, created, that is to say, our souls, and that He cares for us and wishes us well; also that He created the familiar world of visible things and, therefore, our bodies which are members of that world. God, then, is the author of our being and it is to Him that we owe the gift of eternal life.

It is possible by practising certain disciplines, which are sum­med up in the words contemplation, meditation and prayer, and by living a good life to enter into direct intercourse with God. Such intercourse has been vouchsafed to the mystics who speak of it in the language of a revealed vision. The mystics are excep­tional men; ordinary men can, however, communicate with God in prayer and, if they.^pray with faith and (what is important) pray for the right things, God will listen to their prayers and grant their requests.

Apart from the direct vision of the mystics, God has revealed Himself in indirect ways to man. There are certain values, the values, namely, of moral goodness, of truth and of beauty, which constitute the permanent objects of human aspiration and the goals of human effort. These values may be conceived as

attributes of God. They are, that is to say, the ways in which God reveals  Himself to man. God has further vouchsafed to man the gift of freedom, so that, although he is free to live a good life, to persue the values and to love God, he is also free to do the reverse of these things.

I do not claim that these propositions cover the whole ground rf religious belief; they do not even constitute the highest com­mon factor of the beliefs of all the great religions. The Buddhists, for example, do not believe in the immortality of the individual soul: the Hindus, that there was first a universal spirit or consciousness which created the world—before God, they claim, there was non-existence from which God Himself sprang—or the Zoroas-nians that God is all-powerful—co-equal with God there is, they hold, another Being who is evil as God is good, who is God's antagonist and fights with Him for the control of the universe and the soul of man. I am conscious, too, that the circumstance of my having been born in a Western civilization and having in­herited a Christian culture and tradition has permitted the beliefs maintained by the Christian religion to colour, many would say to bias, my statement of the propositions common to most religions. If I had been born in India or China, I should no doubt have stated them differently. Nevertheless they do, I think, constitute the essential part of what most people, who at different times in the history of mankind have 'believed in' religion, would be understood to mean when they said that ,they so believed.

The Religious Faculty.

Secondly, there is a question of faculty. I have stated the above propositions as if their truth could be known in the same way as the truths of algebra; but religious truth is not exclusively a matter of intellectual knowledge, nor is the intellect the only faculty which is involved. What other faculties are involved, it is difficult to say. Most religions have, however, consistently maintained, and maintained as a part of the religion, as, that is to say, an article of faith, that mankind cannot live by knowledge alone. To know the truths which religions have affirmed is also to feel the truth of what one knows, so that it no longer remains something outside oneself, but is taken up into and incorporated with one's whole being. The heart, in short, is involved no less than the brain. Hence 'experience' is perhaps a better word than 'knowledge', an experience which is of the whole man; whereas the intellect knows algebra, the heart human love, the emotions fear, it is the whole man, the whole man as thinking, as feeling, as striving and as loving, that knows or experiences the truth of religion.

The Ends of Religion.

The question of faculty raises the question of ends. If there are truths which are beyond the realm of reason or of reason operating alone, it will follow that the knowledge of such truths will exhibit important differences from the kind of knowledge obtained by reason, or by reason operating alone. The characteristic feature of knowledge in the ordinary sense of the term, when we use it to describe the knowledge of the things of this world, is that the knower is separate from what is known. If I know that I hold a pen and sit at a desk, my knowledge does not make me one with the pen or the desk. Indeed, it would be said that I do indeed know them only because I am other than what I know. But the knowledge that is religious knowledge, just because it is more than knowledge, leaps across the gulf which separates knower from known, so that in the last resort, when the soul truly knows God, the soul ceases to be separate from God, ceases, that is to say, to be individual and becomes one with what it knows. This condition of oneness can be achieved while the soul is still in the flesh in the mystical vision, when the true self realises its oneness with the God it knows and loves; it may also be achieved, and permanently achieved, after death, since it is in part the body which separates the soul from God. 'Our spirit,' says St. Catherine of Genoa, 'is ever longing to be free from all bodily sensations so as to be able to unite itself to God through love.'

Even before this stage is reached, however, since the soul cannot know God however imperfectly without loving and revering what it knows, and since in the experience of earthly love the soul of the lover approaches and enters into communion with the soul of the beloved, we may say that the relation of the mind to religious truth is never purely intellectual and other, but is always and from the beginning in part intuitive and akin.

Religious Practice.

Thirdly, there is the question of practice. Since knowledge is not enough, since to know is also to love, to reverence and to strive after, the peculiar kind of knowledge which religion gives carries with it certain obligations, carries in particular the obligation to live in such a way as to commend oneself to Him whom one loves, to humble oneself before Him for whom one feels reverence, to draw nearer to Him after whom one strives. Religion, in other words, enjoins a way of life. It does so for three reasons. First, because such a way of life is seen in the light of revealed truth to be good in itself; secondly, because it is pleasing to God; thirdly, because it is a preparation of the soul for the fuller life to be lived hereafter.

The first and the second motives entail one another. It is good because it pleases God, and it pleases God because it is good. Yet each motive is separately authoritative. It is enough for one who recognizes the value of goodness that the way of life should be good in itself; it is enough for one who loves and fears God that it should be pleasing to Him. The third motive is particularly liable to perversion, since the suggestion that one should live in such and such a way in order to prepare oneself by so living for eternal bliss can be represented as an invitation to take out a long-term insurance policy whose benefits will be drawn in the next world; it can, in other words, be represented as an incentive to the exercise of far-sighted selfishness. In fact, however, this motive follows directly from the recognition of the necessary limitations of the life of the soul in the body, and a consequent determination to achieve a fuller and more blessed life hereafter.

From all these motives, there follows the obligation to live in a certain way. That way has been pointed out to us by the teachers of the great religions. There are important differences in their teachings, but through them there run a number of threads which are fairly clear and fairly consistent: to be kind, gentle, compassionate and just; not to be self-seeking; to discipline, even in some cases to suppress the bodily passions; not to set over much store by the things of this world; to respect the rights of others, treating them as not less important than oneself; to love them so far as one can, and to love and fear God.

These and similar injunctions constitute common elements in the practical teaching of most of the great religions.

But the way of life which the religions enjoin cannot be lived without assistance. Though the spirit is willing, though, that is to say, the true self desires only what is good and to be good, the flesh is weak and the body, which is the source or the vehicle of all manner of evil desires, deflects the true self from its objectives, or so blinds it that it cannot perceive them. Hence arises temptation, which is a conflict between two motives, a good and a bad, often resulting in a yielding to the bad. Because men are by nature sinful, we cannot always resist temptation; we cannot, therefore, lead the life which the religions enjoin, unless God helps us to do so. If, however, we pray to Him for help it will be given. Thus it is only through the assistance of Divine Grace, as it is called, that man can succeed in living aright. 'I clearly recognize,' says St. Catherine of Genoa, 'that all good is in God alone, and that in me, without Divine Grace, there is nothing but deficiency.' 'The one sole thing in myself,' she continues, ' in which I glory, is that I see in myself nothing in which I can glory.'

I am not suggesting that the foregoing constitutes a definition of religion. It is obvious that it does not; but it does convey broadly what I understand by the content and the claims of religion. To an elucidation of this content and an examination of the claims that are made for it, the following pages are devoted.