Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 79:316 (Oct 1922)
Article: Critical Notes On Prof. A. E. Taylor’s Theism
Author: James Lindsay

BSac 79:316 (Oct 1922) p. 492

Critical Notes On Prof. A. E. Taylor’s Theism

James Lindsay

In the last and newly published volume (XII) of the Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics appears a lengthy article on “Theism” by Prof. A. E. Taylor, on which I feel impelled to make some critical observations. I am in agreement with the introductory portions, but it would have been more in conformity with theistic philosophy if Prof. Taylor had spoken of “a single supreme Being,” instead of “a single supreme reality” (p. 261). If the theism of Plato was, as he rightly remarks, not complete, it was yet in its way real. Prof. Taylor might, with a firmer hand, have shown how, for Plato as a transcendentalism God is essentially separate from all created things. Plato, as theist, even holds that God cannot mix with man, and his dualism decisively separates spirit from matter. God is to him a personal Being whose substance stands at an infinite remove from material or created substance. So, whether Zeller is right or not in saying that Plato never really faced the question of God’s personality, Plato’s faith in a personal Deity as the supreme Maker of the universe must be held as theistic, after every allowance for picturesque language. ‘Likeness to God’ was, in his view, man’s prerogative and moral duty. Man’s moral relationship had a modifying effect on Plato’s doctrine of transcendence.

Prof. Taylor appears content to be quite uncritical of Neo Platonism, which is scarcely a satisfactory attitude. He says Neo Platonism is “strictly creationist,” in the sense that it holds “the causal dependence of everything” upon God. It is creationist in a sense distinctly inferior to that of true theism—in that of necessary and involuntary overflow, on the part of an imperfectly self-comprehending and somewhat inharmonious Deity, not in the sense of freely willed, deliberate action. It replaces the creation theory of Plato by an evolution, from the Supreme

BSac 79:316 (Oct 1922) p. 493

One to the lowest forms of matter, which is no result of Divine Will, as in theism. It is not emanative in the pantheistic sense, but, in its wholly unrelated One, it lacks all power of consistent maintenance of the origin of the multiple from the One. That this wholly unrelated One has yet to be conceived as the first cause of all things is an irrationality and absurdity which evokes no criticism from Prof. Taylor.

He says (p. 266) Neo Platonism “worked out for the first time a thoroughgoing metaphysical theism which provided the philosophical basis for the Christian theism of the whole Middle Ages.” Well, it was “metaphysical” enough, with the drawback of being inferior to Plato in ethical and religious points of view. One might ...