Christianity is on the horns of a terrible dilemma. It has long wavered between the bold attitude of Isaiah, softened by such devices as apologetic ingenuity could invent, and the mythological dualism current at the time of its birth. God must be totally responsible for all physical evils, at least; or else he must be thwarted by something independent of himself, whether this be an evil spirit or matter. Now scholars have pointed out that the idea of a prolonged conflict between a { 160} good and an evil power was characteristic of the Persian religion, and that this view tinged later Judaism and passed over into Christianity. Here it was met and reënforced by Neo-Platonism in the form usually called Gnosticism and Manicheism. At present, the tide has turned in favor of monotheism and against the coexistence of an evil power. We are inclined to smile at a personal devil, perhaps because superstition has made him humorous, perhaps because we know better the seat and cause of what we call evil. Science has helped to do away with the devil; but, in so doing, has it not also undermined the idea of Providence? Must not the same arrow transfix an effective God that does away with an effective Devil?
The God of the past was a realistic God; he counted for everything in the governance of the universe. The God of modern theology is fast becoming an ideal of personality. When God is thought of as a tender-hearted and perfect gentleman, the question of evil takes the following form: Can we harmonize this conception with the facts of life? _Is God an agent or an ideal_? We must bear in mind the fact that God is an hypothesis characteristic of the religious view of the world, and that, like every other hypothesis, it should help to explain the facts to which it is relevant. But does it do this? Is it fruitful?
I am free to confess that theodicies of all sorts strike me as proofs of the inapplicability of the religious view of the world. Yet immense dialectical ability has been displayed in the tireless search for some satisfactory theory of God's relation to the universe. A glance at these theories reveals the working of the time-spirit. When man is harsh, his god is harsh and cruel. When { 161} man is tender, his god is benevolent. And this correspondence does not complete the story. In past ages, the political organization was autocratic and unyielding. The subjects of the monarch did not dream of questioning the justice of his rule. It was not right for common men to think of such matters; it was out of their sphere of control and understanding. Besides, is not might the sanction of right? During these monarchial periods, God was thought of as a heavenly king whose power and glory and dominion was without end. This correspondence between the political organization and the theological picture betrays the sociological side of theology. All of man's ideas are human ideas, and so his idea of his God and the very personality and moral outlook of that God reflect the social standards which are in force around the individual. If human justice is cruel, God's justice is strict and unyielding. What could be more natural than this parallelism? But as punitive justice yields to ideas of mercy and sympathy, a change comes over man's conception of this heavenly replica of his own sentiments and institutions. Irrational punishment with its brutal terrors gives way to thoughts of lovingkindness.