509 - The Sense of the Presence of God

The Sense of the Presence of God
By John Baillie
269 pp. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. $3.95.

This volume, written by John Baillie before his death in 1960, was to have been the Gifford Lectures for 1961-1962. Although readers of his earlier works such as Our Knowledge of God will find little in the argument which is wholly new, it attempts to come to grips with some recent philosophical and theological movements and is valuable as an expression of the mind and spirit of one of the most respected Scottish theologians and teachers of the last generation. Written in his lucid and rich literary style, it reflects the broad learning and varied interests of a man who was not only a theologian but also a philosopher of religion, a writer of devotional books, a preacher, and an ecumenical leader. For this reason, it is difficult to know what criteria to apply in judging it, but it is clearly a work on the border-line between theology and philosophy of religion.

Baillie argues that we have knowledge that is certain, and that faith provides us with such knowledge of God in response to divine revelation. However, faith is not sight, and the theological formulations of its knowledge are always subject to correction and development. Hence, while certainty "pulsates through all our thinking" about God, we cannot claim finality for any of our "theological affirmations." Both sides of this view of religious knowledge are emphasized, and it is necessary to treat them separately.

The first side is based upon the conviction that our knowledge of God is not a product of inference but is immediate or intuitive. We have a "sense of the presence of God" which gives us knowledge of the ultimate reality just as sense perception gives us knowledge of the physical world. Thus, it is a "primary mode of awareness." It is not "based" upon religious experience but is "contained" in the latter as its cognitive element, In defending this view, Baillie sharply criticizes the narrow view of experience of many British empiricists who have held that sense experience is the only source of knowledge and have regarded aesthetic, moral, and religious experience as merely "subjective." He rightly insists that this view which is based upon the restriction of science to evidence drawn from sense experience, leads to a "reductive naturalism" which eliminates most of the qualities and values of ordinary experience and results in an impoverished view of the world. He also rejects the view of Aquinas that

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we can know non-corporeal realities such as God only by inference from sense experience. Natural theology of this kind is not only subject to Kant's criticism; it also falls to recognize that "faith does not deduce from other realities that are present the existence of a God who is not present but absent; rather it is an awareness of the divine Presence itself, however hidden behind the veils of sense."

This is the main philosophical thesis of the book. The main question it raises is whether the "sense" or "intuition" of God's presence is a sufficient basis for religious knowledge when we are confronted by the objection of empiricists, psychologists, and others that it cannot be shown to correspond to anything objective. Baillie rightly rejects the demand of logical positivists that verification of a religious intuition must be by reference to sense-experience, insisting that the proper way to verify it is by returning to the same "region of experience" in which it arose, and points out that it could be falsified only by showing that this whole "region of experience" is illusory. Unfortunately, this will hardly convince those who believe they have had no religious experience or who have accepted a naturalistic philosophy that denies the cognitive value of such experience as "self-authenticating." Although religious faith may originate in an intuition, as Baillie asserts, it will not be accepted by those who have not had the intuition and may not be maintained by those who have had it unless they believe it to be consistent with beliefs derived from other kinds of experience. If so, natural theology may have at least a secondary value. Although it may not be able to demonstrate God's existence, as Kant said, it may be able to confirm or at least support a belief in him which has originated in religious intuition or experience, if it can show that that belief not only is consistent with all aspects of experience but also offers the most adequate interpretation of them.

The other major thesis of the book is a theological one: the certainty of faith cannot be formulated in theological doctrines that are also certain. The "deus revelatus" is also the "deus absconditus," and the New Testament maintains a "balance of emphasis upon knowing and unknowing." The limitations of our knowledge of God's nature have been expressed by some theologians by saying that it is "analogical" (Aquinas) or "symbolic" (Tillich), while others have characterized it as "practical" (Kant) and "regulative rather than Speculative" (Mansel). Baillie criticizes the doctrine of analogy because of its assumption that knowledge of God's attributes "mounts from man to God." In reality, knowledge of the "perfect" and "infinite" is not derived from but presupposed by man's knowledge of imperfect and finite things, as Bonaventure said, and terms such as "wise," "good...... personality," and "Father" are applied more "properly" to, God than to man since they are perfectly realized only in him. He

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also rejects the approach of natural theology to God by analogy with finite things on the ground that knowledge of him attained by inference makes it impossible for our worship of him to be a response to his gracious initiative in revealing himself to us. There is some truth in Baillie's criticism of the doctrine of analogy when it is interpreted as he interprets it, but he himself seems to accept it when he says that the knowledge of God's attributes is always given "in comparison with and in contrast to" the corresponding attributes of man. And the fact that natural theology does not lead us to a God who is an adequate object of worship and that revelation is necessary for this purpose does not mean that the former has no value at all.

The powerful influence of Kant on Baillie is shown in his view that it is the usefulness of theological statements for "the practical conduct of our lives" that is most important and that "no affirmation has right of place within a system of Christian theology if it has no such usefulness." This emphasis upon the practical or ethical relevance of theology leads him to criticize the tendency of many early Fathers to interpret Christian doctrines in terms of Greek metaphysics and the failure of Protestant theologians to make clear the relevance of doctrines such as the Trinity by resting them upon their "original foundations" in "faith's primary insight" rather than upon traditional formulations. In this insistence of Baillie that theological statements are subject to revision in the light of the religious experience from which they arose he expresses the spirit of the best Protestant Liberalism. The same spirit is manifested in his sharp rejection of Barth's view that there is no knowledge of God apart from his revelation in Jesus Christ, his acceptance of the view that there have been elements of truth in other religions, and his assertion that God has revealed himself "savingly" through the "eternal Christ" to the adherents of other religions who have not known the name of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, he holds that salvation is found only in Christ and that the revelation in him is "complete in itself" and includes the "partial revelations" in other religions. The "scandal of particularity" implied by this exclusive claim cannot be overcome, but we can see in some measure why salvation should be in his name and no other when we consider his humility and the condescension of God in him.

The strength of the book lies primarily in this undogmatic view of theological statements and acknowledgment of a revelation of God in all religions, combined with unswerving loyalty to the revelation in Jesus Christ. Baillie's profoundly Christian spirit is also shown in his beautiful concluding chapter on gratitude to God as a response to his gracious love, as the dominant factor in Christian worship, and as the motive for Christian service to others. Therefore, the book should not be judged

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primarily as a philosophical treatise but as a testament of faith and a plea for theological moderation. From the philosophical point of view, Baillie's dependence upon immediate or intuitive knowledge to the virtual exclusion of discursive reasoning seems excessive, he subordinates the concern for truth too much to the concern for moral relevance in theology, and his treatment of philosophical problems such as the doctrine of analogy is too brief to be convincing. But his theological openness and his profound Christian devotion shine through this his last book as they did through all his teaching and writing.

George F. Thomas
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey