Fredrik H. Robison
HUMAN REASON, like a shoe string, is often a useful thing; but it certainly has its limitations. Human reason is a process of comparing the less known with the better known; or, at all events, the less familiar with the more familiar. Human reason throughout all of human experience has been confronted with certain more or less definite questions of life, and human reason has sought to find their answers and to give expression to those answers. Man, however viewed, is a sufficient phenomenon to arouse wonderment as to his nature, origin, purpose, and destiny. What, Whence, Why, Whither are man's questions about himself and about the rest of the creation which he knows.
Grammar is not an arbitrary thing, but is an attempt to codify human customs of thought as expressed in speech. The cases of a noun constitute a skeleton of all human intellectual activity. The nominative (or subjective) case essays to answer the primary query about anything, namely, What is it? The genitive (sometimes, though inadequately, called the possessive) implies the basic question, Where did it come from? and hence, Who does it belong to? The dative (not so clearly defined in English as it is in the more systematic languages, such as German and Greek) comes down to the field of application and relationship with, What is it for? Where does it stand in relation to us? The inquiries become more searchingly practical (which is usually a euphemism for selfish), passing in quick succession from curiosity to the realm of ownership, the desire for possession: the accusative (or objective) suggests the previously existing question, What is to be done to it or with it?
The answer to the first-case question calls for nouns, often adjectives. An attempt to answer the second discovers a need for verbs, adverbs, prepositions; while the third and fourth involve us in pronouns, much argumentation, research laboratories, factories, law courts, boards of trade, politics, and wars.
So much for things. But man's basic questions about himself are essentially the same; and his answers, or efforts at answer, comprehend all of human wisdom, that wisdom through which the world has not known God, nor will ever so know Him.
Culture is the silk purse distinguishing the Wise, the Wealthy, and the Good--the "best" people--from the sow's ear commoners. The sow's ears are the Dumb, the Dirty, and the Damned; not interested in the great questions of What, Whence, Why, Whither, but only in When do we eat? and Where do we go from here? For most of these latter, more leisure and more prosperity mean merely more dancing, more parties (and that word covers a great deal), more movies, more ready-made distractions in general. But enough, we are interested just now in the W. W. G.'s, who are the rulers of the people, regardless of the form of government.
This cultured gentry has almost a monopoly on thinking, but they do not all think in the same fields of interest. The Good tend to metaphysical and ecclesiastical subjects; the Wise to moralistic and humanitarian things; while the Wealthy, well, the wealthy go in for facts and practical affairs. Let these classes pursue their natural trend and we have our old friends, Ecclesiasticism, Scholasticism, and Business. Culture factories there are which produce all these commodities, but the great state universities concentrate on high production at the terrestrial, the less ethereal end of the Jacob's ladder.
The Good grope and grasp in the realms of theology and religion. The Wise piddle and palaver with philosophy and psychology. The Wealthy search and sweat in the fields of science and art. These six subjects may be said to take up the time and attention of nearly all thinking people. By them and in them they attempt to answer life's questions.
Each of these fields of interest is, indeed, a kind of reaction to some large challenge of life. The question which has given rise to theology is, What is God? The question which has fathered religion is, How to worship? Philosophy owes its existence to the query, What is truth? Psychology to, How do you get that way? What makes you do like you do? Science's presumptive question is, What is fact? While art is, How do they do it? Art is not here limited to the so-called fine arts, but to the field of practical application of knowledge to any kind of need—practice as opposed to theory.
The first in each of these three groups tends to be analytical, while the second is rather synthetic, or an adaptation of the facts presumably gathered before. Another grouping, a geographical one, suggests itself. Theology, religion, and philosophy are more prevalent in the oriental system of culture; psychology, science, and art in the occidental economy. But the ghastly shortcoming of them all is that they (as actually practiced) deal with things, whereas the true answer to them all is a Person, and that person is Christ.
Theology without Christ is blasphemy; religion without Christ is mockery; philosophy without Christ is a fraud; psychology without Christ is hypocrisy; science without Christ is a lie; art without Christ is folly. Culture without Christ is an illusion; it is darkness and not light. And all are without Christ who are not in Him.
Theology means, literally, `a word about God,' the study of God; but all we know or can know about God is in Christ. The answer is not merely in Him: He is the answer. He is God's Word. Christ is also the answer to the question from which religion has sprung. And as to worship: We cannot worship aright without Christ. He tells us we are to worship "in spirit and in truth," without any kind of inity, anity, ist, ite, or ism.
Philosophy is largely an attempt to do what God has left undone. The classic question of philosophy is, What is truth? And was voiced by Pilate in the presence of God's answer. It is not really a question of What is truth? but of Who is truth? Three thousand years, of codified philosophy have not answered one deep question nor touched any of the central problems of life. It is still fumbling and mumbling with things which God's Word takes for granted. The Scriptures assume (1) that God is and (2) that all truth is in Him. From this the conclusion is drawn that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." All man's boasted profundity has come nowhere near that truth. "Beware, that no one shall be despoiling you, through philosophy and empty seduction, in accord with human tradition, in accord with the elements of the world, and not in accord with Christ" (Col.2:8).
Logic is the private secretary, the yes-man, of philosophy. It is logic's business to agree and to make things so whether they are or not. Logic is a game of intellectual, dominoes--putting the pieces together to make the best showing, yet being only reminiscent of the truth.
During the last thirty years business has reached up and laid hold on psychology, seeing in it a tool to greater "efficiency," and hence greater profits. Those employed in this field have been called "practical psychologists," and were for a time supposed to pump some kind of rejuvenating fluid into such business organizations as were suffering from various maladies. Maybe the tom-tom beating helped a little but there are not a few large employers who doubt if the incantations did any good—and especially after they saw the medicine man's bill.
But one feature of all the hullabaloo and industrial face lifting has been to introduce a clearer concept of what psychology is. Thirty years ago anyone who had dragged endocrinology, the study of the ductless glands of the body, into the subject of psychology would have been thought gross and vulgar. Yet the endocrine glands which function by sensation, in some degree even produce the sensation, emptying their secretions directly into the blood, are much nearer the "soul-of-all-flesh-is-in-the-blood" proposition of Scripture than were the intellectual gewgaws, the mental bric-a-brac which passed for psychology a generation ago.
But the answer to psychology is still a person. The true Soul Study is in Him Who "poured out His soul unto death," and on Whom all our sensations depend, for "what have we that we have not received?"
Notably in the last hundred years; since the introduction of mechanical means of transportation, theology, religion, and philosophy have dropped below par, as realms of interest. In fact, they are in as ill repute as science was for centuries—good enough for the dotards; but for real he men, Bah!
In former centuries ecclesiasticism was the big business of the day; now it is commerce, manufacture, merchandising. Then politics was the fringe on the ecclesiastical garment. Now politics is the fuzz on the economic peach. Good men went long distances to sit in solemn councils; now they go even longer distances to sit in equally solemn conferences. Charges of heresy and punishment by excommunication were the order of that day; but the fear of being off color and of losing prestige are not less potent conforming influences today. The truth is that formalistic religion has given place to an economic brand. There is no need of tirades against those who then officiated: They were merely cogs in the wheel. And there is no use to wallow in a welter of cynicism now over men, either high or low. They know not what they do. They think the world would go to pieces if they did not insist on a certain line of "development" and "progress." And perhaps it would, without Christ.
In older times philosophy was made use of to razzle dazzle the minds of the inquiring. Nice questions of casuistry were introduced to bolster up doctrinal tenets and decrees of councils. Now "science" is in the center of the stage, though the stage director is industry. Science has not come in answer to the cries of our hearts. It is a product of the machine shop. That is its church. It teaches us not how to live but only how to work.
Yet to doubt the omnipotence of science is impiety, nowadays. It even verges on impiety to make such inquiry about the new technology as might lead to doubt. Science has attained the state of an established system of faith, which is trusted in as devoutly as any monastic ever conned his creed till rote. Take any magazine of size and standing, turn through its advertising pages and see if the word "science" does not occur from one to six times on every page. What science has done, what science is doing, what it will do is extolled to the seventh heaven. `Science will provide,' and on that technological breast we are asked to rest sweetly and in peace.
The psalmists of science wax eloquent in their devotion. `I will lift up mine eyes unto the laboratories, whence cometh help: my help cometh from necessity, which made heaven and earth.' That is blasphemy, but it is heard in substance on every side in every day.
The saints of science are lauded and invoked. The achievements of science are made the personal triumphs of a series of great men; and so the human intellect is glorified. But the apostasy, any apostasy from Eden down, is putting the creature for the Creator, the thing made for the Maker, no matter whether that thing be an idol, a religious system, an oriental philosophy, a hard-boiled mess of assumptions called science, or just self in its more chummy aspects. The substitution is made. God is not honored; His sovereignty is not acknowledged; His will is not done.
The devotees of science look down, not up. In the beginning is a machine, say they, which is alpha and omega. They aspire to be among those who apply science in the realm of practice. Those who have so applied it are not merely regarded for what they have done. They are worshipped and adored by the avenues of publicity which they quite naturally and unavoidably control. The panting cry of the lower-down is, `Suffer me to come unto them, for of such is the chamber of commerce.'
But science without Christ is a lie. Why, you say? Because no one can understand any of the facts of life without knowing the central Fact. Without Him was not anything facted that was facted. But not only that: "In Him all things consist." He maintains the relationship of all that He has made; and to delve into facts without Him is like examining the ocean depths by running a butterfly net through the fog that hangs over the water's surface. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov.1:7).
Art is the lowest rung on the ladder of culture, the most mundane. It deals with things; and people are interested in things to a larger extent than ever before--not because the people are essentially different from those who have gone before, but because there are more things to be interested in than previously. Women have the franchise, but they are ten thousand times more interested in stockings than in statecraft, even when one takes into account the quantitative differences. Men have the responsibilities of husbandry, yet they are more interested in flivvers than in finance.
Art, that is, production, fabrication or making of things, is of necessity controlled by the ruling classes in society, and the ruling classes now happen to be industrialists. When the church was high up, the things of largest import which were made were things whose original conception had found place in the mind of some ecclesiastic or ecclesiastical hanger-on. So now, art is impounded by industry. Industry now is largely mechanical, so that the man with machines can impose any form of art on the public he wishes to, and he naturally imposes the lowest form in order to assure himself of the largest market. The net result is that, while the things done are numerous and colossal, they are only things. They have no life and elicit no sentiment. However much an elegant machine may feed the vanity of the individual, it is hard to become attached to it as one would to a living creature. Standardization has its points, but it removes the novelty of specific difference. From architecture, man's glorified mud pies, to jazz the musical jimson weed, all bears the stamp of machine, and none of it bears anything like the image of Christ.
The world still waits for its Sovereign, Who shall offer to man's original thirst for knowledge, science the most boundless and sublime; to his love of distinction, an eminence before which all the prizes of present fame are dust and air; and to his spiritual powers, an enlargement of faculty, a vividness of view, and an endless succession of experiences wholly beyond the contemplation of our minds.
"Does not God make stupid the wisdom of this world? For since, in fact, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom knew not God, it delights God through the stupidity of a proclamation to save those who are believing, since, in fact, Jews are requesting signs and Greeks are seeking wisdom, yet we are proclaiming Christ crucified, to Jews, indeed, a snare, and to the nations stupidity, yet to those who are called, Jews as well as Greeks, Christ the power of God and the Wisdom of God, seeing that the stupidity of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor.1:20-25).
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