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God The Invisible Kingby H. G. Wells [Herbert George Wells]GOD THE INVISIBLE KINGby H. G. WellsCONTENTSPREFACE1. THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION2. HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT3. THE LIKENESS OF GOD4. THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS5. THE INVISIBLE KING6. MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION7. THE IDEA OF A CHURCHTHE ENVOYPREFACEThis book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religiousbelief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; itis not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is aprofound belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing inits statements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared forthe expression of a faith different from and perhaps in severalparticulars opposed to his own. The writer will be found to besympathetic with all sincere religious feeling. Nevertheless it iswell to prepare the prospective reader for statements that may jarharshly against deeply rooted mental habits. It is well to warn himat the outset that the departure from accepted beliefs is here novague scepticism, but a quite sharply defined objection to dogmasvery widely revered. Let the writer state the most probableoccasion of trouble forthwith. An issue upon which this book willbe found particularly uncompromising is the dogma of the Trinity.The writer is of opinion that the Council of Nicaea, which forciblycrystallised the controversies of two centuries and formulated thecreed upon which all the existing Christian churches are based, wasone of the most disastrous and one of the least venerable of allreligious gatherings, and he holds that the Alexandrine speculationswhich were then conclusively imposed upon Christianity merit onlydisrespectful attention at the present time. There you have a chiefpossibility of offence. He is quite unable to pretend any awe forwhat he considers the spiritual monstrosities established by thatundignified gathering. He makes no attempt to be obscure orpropitiatory in this connection. He criticises the creedsexplicitly and frankly, because he believes it is particularlynecessary to clear them out of the way of those who are seekingreligious consolation at this present time of exceptional religiousneed. He does little to conceal his indignation at the role playedby these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing thereligious life of mankind. After this warning such readers fromamong the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible tostorms of theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is anineffable mystery and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, readon at their own risk. This is a religious book written by abeliever, but so far as their beliefs and religion go it may seem tothem more sceptical and more antagonistic than blank atheism. Thatthe writer cannot tell. He is not simply denying their God. He isdeclaring that there is a living God, different altogether from thatTriune God and nearer to the heart of man. The spirit of this bookis like that of a missionary who would only too gladly overthrow andsmash some Polynesian divinity of shark's teeth and painted wood andmother-of-pearl. To the writer such elaborations as "begotten ofthe Father before all worlds" are no better than intellectualshark's teeth and oyster shells. His purpose, like the purpose ofthat missionary, is not primarily to shock and insult; but he iszealous to liberate, and he is impatient with a reverence thatstands between man and God. He gives this fair warning and proceedswith his matter.His matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is onlyincidentally and because it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinalChristianity.In a previous book, "First and Last Things" (Constable and Co.), hehas stated his convictions upon certain general ideas of life andthought as clearly as he could. All of philosophy, all ofmetaphysics that is, seems to him to be a discussion of therelations of class and individual. The antagonism of the Nominalistand the Realist, the opposition of the One and the Many, thecontrast of the Ideal and the Actual, all these oppositions expressa certain structural and essential duality in the activity of thehuman mind. From an imperfect recognition of that duality ensuegreat masses of misconception. That was the substance of "First andLast Things." In this present book there is no further attack onphilosophical or metaphysical questions. Here we work at a lessfundamental level and deal with religious feeling and religiousideas. But just as the writer was inclined to attribute a wholeworld of disputation and inexactitudes to confused thinking aboutthe exact value of classes and terms, so here he is disposed tothink that interminable controversies and conflicts arise out of aconfusion of intention due to a double meaning of the word "God";that the word "God" conveys not one idea or set of ideas, butseveral essentially different ideas, incompatible one with another,and falling mainly into one or other of two divergent groups; andthat people slip carelessly from one to the other of these groups ofideas and so get into ultimately inextricable confusions.The writer believes that the centuries of fluid religious thoughtthat preceded the violent ultimate crystallisation of Nicaea, wasessentially a struggle--obscured, of course, by many complexities--to reconcile and get into a relationship these two separate mainseries of God-ideas.Putting the leading id a part against evil.The writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merelyextraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim inthis book is to give a statement of religion which is no longerentangled in such speculations and disputes.Let him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, andthat is to remark that except for one incidental passage (in ChapterIV., 1), nowhere does he discuss the question of personalimmortality. [It is discussed in "First and Last Things," Book IV,4.] He omits this question because he does not consider that it hasany more bearing upon the essentials of religion, than have thetheories we may hold about the relation of God and the moral law tothe starry universe. The latter is a question for the theologian,the former for the psychologist. Whether we are mortal or immortaea of this book very roughly, these twoantagonistic typical conceptions of God may be best contrasted byspeaking of one of them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of theother as God-as-Christ or the Redeemer. One is the great OutwardGod; the other is the Inmost God. The first idea was perhapsdeveloped most highly and completely in the God of Spinoza. It is aconception of God tending to pantheism, to an idea of acomprehensive God as ruling with justice rather than affection, to aconception of aloofness and awestriking worshipfulness. The secondidea, which is opposed to this idea of an absolute God, is the Godof the human heart. The writer would suggest that the great outlineof the theological struggles of that phase of civilisation and worldunity which produced Christianity, was a persistent but unsuccessfulattempt to get these two different ideas of God into one focus. Itwas an attempt to make the God of Nature accessible and the God ofthe Heart invincible, to bring the former into a conception of loveand to vest the latter with the beauty of stars and flowers and thedignity of inexorable justice. There could be no finer metaphor forsuch a correlation than Fatherhood and Sonship. But the trouble isthat it seems impossible to most people to continue to regard therelations of the Father to the Son as being simply a mysticalmetaphor. Presently some materialistic bias swings them in a momentof intellectual carelessness back to the idea of sexual filiation.And it may further be suggested that the extreme aloofness andinhumanity, which is logically necessary in the idea of a CreatorGod, of an Infinite God, was the reason, so to speak, for theinvention of a Holy Spirit, as something proceeding from him, assomething bridging the great gulf, a Comforter, a mediatordescending into the sphere of the human understanding. That, andthe suggestive influence of the Egyptian Trinity that was then beingworshipped at the Serapeum, and which had saturated the thought ofAlexandria with the conception of a trinity in unity, are probablythe realities that account for the Third Person of the ChristianTrinity. At any rate the present writer believes that thediscussions that shaped the Christian theology we know weredominated by such natural and fundamental thoughts. Thesediscussions were, of course, complicated from the outset; andparticularly were they complicated by the identification of the manJesus with the theological Christ, by materialistic expectations ofhis second coming, by materialistic inventions about his"miraculous" begetting, and by the morbid speculations aboutvirginity and the like that arose out of such grossness. They w...
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