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This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it
reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious
interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and
the Calvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion
sweeps past and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans
and Methodists, in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of
God. Arminians seem merely to have insisted that God has
conditioned himself, and by his own free act left men free to accept
or reject salvation. To the realist type of mind--here as always I
use "realist" in its proper sense as the opposite of nominalist--to
the old-fashioned, over-exact and over-accentuating type of mind,
such ways of thinking seem vague and unsatisfying. Just as it
distresses the more downright kind of intelligence with a feeling of
disloyalty to admit that God is not Almighty, so it troubles the
same sort of intelligence to hear that there is no clear line to be
drawn between the saved and the lost. Realists like an exclusive
flavour in their faith. Moreover, it is a natural weakness of
humanity to be forced into extreme positions by argument. It is
probable, as I have already suggested, that the absolute attributes
of God were forced upon Christianity under the stresses of
propaganda, and it is probable that the theory of a super-human
obstinancy beyond salvation arose out of the irritations natural to
theological debate. It is but a step from the realisation that
there are people absolutely unable or absolutely unwilling to see
God as we see him, to the conviction that they are therefore shut
off from God by an invincible soul blindness.
It is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned.
Beyond the little world of our sympathies and comprehension there
are those who seem inaccessible to God by any means within our
experience. They are people answering to the "hard-hearted," to the
"stiff-necked generation" of the Hebrew prophets. They betray and
even confess to standards that seem hopelessly base to us. They
show themselves incapable of any disinterested enthusiasm for beauty
or truth or goodness. They are altogether remote from intelligent
sacrifice. To every test they betray vileness of texture; they are
mean, cold, wicked. There are people who seem to cheat with a
private self-approval, who are ever ready to do harsh and cruel
things, whose use for social feeling is the malignant boycott, and
for prosperity, monopolisation and humiliating display; who seize
upon religion and turn it into persecution, and upon beauty to
torment it on the altars of some joyless vice. We cannot do with
such souls; we have no use for them, and it is very easy indeed to
step from that persuasion to the belief that God has no use for
them.
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