What is metaphysical naturalism?

Naturalism says that God does not exist and that physical matter is all there is. Charles Colson, prolific author and shaper of contemporary Christian thinking, believes that naturalism is by far the dominant worldview today and that it is responsible for creating our post-Christian and postmodern culture. Linked closely to naturalism are other anti-Christian worldviews, such as secular humanism, empiricism and evolutionism.

Positivism is another name for the latest phase of infidelity, differing but little if at all from Secularism. It is a combination of all shades. It is materialistic; for the man whose name is identified with this system denied all that is supernatural — by which he meant theological. He put aside all that is metaphysical; i.e. he allowed nothing but mere matter, the relation, the succession, the likeness which one thing bears to another. This system teaches that human perfection is to discard all reference to a Divine cause, and to resolve everything to nature and to mechanical laws. This will be the "universal religion" which will supersede all other creeds and notions; the one doctrine sufficiently comprehensive to answer all questions, and sufficiently positive to convince all men. This "Religion" has no starting-point save what it calls the active, affectionate and intelligent tendencies of human nature. In a word "Collective Humanity" is God! Are there in human nature no other tendencies but those of love and intelligence? Are not the opposite rather the tendencies which so prevail that love and intelligence as characterising mankind are only names, truly of things conceivable, but little beyond? Hatred and therefore war, ignorance and therefore superstition, mark the annals of the world. Some few by great perseverance and incessant labour may emerge from the mass of ignorance; but who, at any period, of men stood forth as the exponent of universal affection and goodwill? Possibly a man might die for his friend; but the exceptionality of such a case proves the general rule. Let the history of mankind bear witness. And if this witness be received, when where and how is this affectionate and intelligent "Collective Humanity," the god of the Positivist, to be manifested? It certainly will be a god that had a beginning. But in fact this system denies the Being of God and is Atheistic. It denies the personality of God — for man in the aggregate is God — and therefore Pantheistic. Deism it denies as providential superstition; like Secularism it affirms the law of nature to be the sole agency at work in the world. It is infidelity in its widest meaning, in its most illogical form; and its most absurd theories shock every rational mind. Nor does it come behind any previous school of scepticism in daring impiety. At a comparatively recent meeting of Positivists in a neighbouring country it was proposed and carried nem. con. that the idea of God should be banished from the country.

Now, unless God be pleased to destroy, as He has created, there is no such thing as annihilation; man is as incapable of one as of the other. So those who are commonly called by the name of annihilationists, or at any rate, many whom I have met, exclaim against the title; they say the soul is resolved into its elements. This is simple materialism. I am not going to reason on the essential individuality of spirit, though the thought of man tends that way, necessarily, from the original instincts of his soul; nor do I say it is false; nor do I say that souls also have a very subtle and refined body, with Platonists.

In the language of absolute materialism the body is the whole man. It may need breath or "spirit" (in the Thomasite sense) to make it capable of fulfilling its functions, but in materialistic language, thought, reason, mind, are properties pertaining to "brain in human form." Dr. Thomas gravely adduces Rom. 8:6, where he translates to phronema tes sarkos the "thinking of the flesh," as an irrefragable proof that the "flesh is the thinking substance," i.e., the brain; which, in another place, he adds, the apostle "terms the fleshy tablet of the heart." (!) I only quote this now as evidencing how thoroughly with them the body is all The man, they say, was such before the breath of life was breathed into him. "Dust thou art" expresses what he is in his whole being. Says Mr. Constable, "God formed man of the dust of the ground. Here we have the figure as it lay lifeless and thoughtless; and yet this figure was man. We cannot dispute this, for God tells us so Himself. It was man, before he could think, or feel, or breathe."$ To this being of course the inspiration of the breath of life gives life. "Soul" with Mr. Constable, as with most of similar views, is "life"; with Dr. Thomas and his party it is sometimes that, sometimes the breathing frame; i.e., of course the body. Spirit is either the breath of life itself; or a principle contained in it, a kind of vitalizing energy. The man himself is the body — the dust that lies in the grave. Spirit and soul "may again be disassociated from man; man may return to his old condition ere he had them at all, and the dead body they have left is then the man, the person, the self."§ "Where," is Mr. Blain's emphatic challenge, "where does the book of nature or the book of God tell what soul or man is made of except in the earth-wide and heaven-broad declaration, Dust thou art'?"¶

In the language of absolute materialism the body is the whole man. It may need breath or "spirit” (in the Thomasite sense) to make it capable of fulfilling its functions, but in materialistic language, thought, reason, mind, are properties pertaining to "brain in human form." Dr. Thomas gravely adduces Rom. viii. 6, where he translates the "thinking of the flesh," as an irrefragable proof that the "flesh is the thinking substance," i. e., the brain; which, in another place, he adds, the apostle "terms the fleshy tablet of the heart."(!)* I only quote this now as evidencing how thoroughly with them the body is all.† The man, they say, was such before the breath of life was breathed into him. "Dust thou art" expresses what be is in his whole being. Says Mr. Constable, "God formed man of the dust of the ground. Here we have the figure as it lay lifeless and thoughtless; and yet this figure was man. We cannot dispute this, for God tells us so Himself. It was man, before he could think; or feel, or Breathe."‡ To this being of course the inspiration of the breath of life gives life.

"Soul" with Mr. Constable, as with most of similar views, is "life"; with Dr. Thomas and his party it is sometimes that, sometimes the breathing frame; ie., of course the body. Spirit is either the breath of life itself, or a principle contained in it, a kind of vitalizing energy. The man himself is the body - the dust that lies in the grave. Spirit and soul "may again be disassociated from man; man may return to his old condition ere he had them at all, and the dead body they have left is then the man, the person, the self"§ "Where," is Mr. Blain's emphatic challenge, "where does the book of nature or the book of God tell what soul or man is made of, except in the earth-wide and heaven-broad declaration, ‘Dust thou art'?"#

The connection between matter and mind is notorious - now, to say "it must be" is merely the irrational folly of saying that my present state is the necessary and universal form of being. You may have examined with Mr. Owen and Professor Huxley, every cerebrum and cerebellum from a Lemur to a Pithecus, and you have not touched the question; you have seen it on the side of matter, and of matter only, and you are incapable, in ideas or reasoning, of going further, because that is the form of your existence now, and even so, only one and the lowest side of it.

As to infidels, any moral apprehension of what miracles are, or anything else is, of the misery of man, or the love of God, or the power and value of the truth, is absent from their minds. Exalting man as he is, the false fancy that in these days of enlightenment the lancet and the microscope have found out everything, and exploded God's truth and love and man's ignorance both together, reducing everything to general laws without being able to tell us where they came from, and thus to a materialism, which, as an able but honest materialist has said, leads them up to a blind wall beyond which they cannot get. Such is the true character of modern science: very interesting in the discovery of laws which govern matter (that is, the material world beneath us), but excluding from man every moral principle, every excellent affection, and all divine goodness and truth. They tell us that this is no part of science: I quite agree.

But are there no such things as love, and goodness, and morality, and right affections? no knowledge of God? When they come to "the blind wall," can they assure us there is nothing behind it? or tell us something of what is? Neither. It is simply excluding man from everything beyond matter, even to openly denying all responsibility, degrading man and denying God. The first they do, pretending to exalt him; the other is the stupid pretension to deny that of which they confess they are wholly ignorant (and they are quite right); though (thank God) it is a knowledge that is as open to them in God's love as to those who already enjoy its light.

I quite understand that one who knows mere material laws, and gives freewill to man (not morally, but will, I mean) but none to God - who is in a horrible state enough to be content with this world, or to pretend he is, for he is not - will reject any living God, any thing above these laws, because he has no idea above them; material sequence of facts is all he can apprehend - conceives no moral action on man, nor perhaps by him.

No one desires to deny that "on the whole" the government of the universe is carried on by general laws. But this is no presumption at all against miracles, that is, the intervention of divine power when man is in misery to recall him to God, and give the ground of confidence in goodness in power. With a weak, scarcely benevolent, God doing the best He could (and that very bad as Mr. Mill holds), there is no need to believe anything about it. Man, he thinks, is to do better if he can. (It is a disgrace to Oxford to allow such a book.) But he contradicts himself here; practically he admits such acts of power may be satisfactorily certified (page 168). Now, supposing resurrection from the dead is (and I repeat it is not a question of a counteracting cause defeating an effect, but of power acting when the effect is produced, acting by its own energy), it may set ordinary laws in motion again, as in many cases it did, but did its own work independent of them. There was no counteracting anything generally, and, if the fact be certified, it is no question of probability or improbability. Supposing one rising really from the dead who stank after four days in the grave, what probable sequence of nature is there in that? There is no mental honesty here. And that there is deliverance from death and misery by goodness and power is worthy of God, but not to take man out of his present place of responsibility till full accomplishment be come.

149 He tells us (p. 171) that the law of causation, number, and extension are the only cases of absolute incredibility of any exception; but what does extension apply to but to matter? Consequently there is no such thing as spirit at all. As to number, eternity, I am, is an exception. It is the stupidest limiting of everything to observed matter. To the whole class of moral motives in man even, number and extension cannot apply. What is the number and extension of a mother's love, of a child's attachment? It is brutish, his system; and if there be a cause for everything - which I believe there is for this creation, and that cause is God - belief in a fact (not exactly contrary to, but) independent of some recognised law of nature, has nothing to do with shaking conviction of the truth of the law (p. 175), as I have said. Resurrection does not make me doubt of death as a law of nature in us now; quite the contrary. - As to his throws of dice, I leave them to him and D'Alembert.

147 Nor is it merely (p. 166) that B did not follow A. This assumes only the negative of existing causes or laws. But supposing X comes in, which was not there? He does not even consider the possibility of another power which may act from itself so as that no observed action of A has anything to say to it. It is not to be credited but on evidence which would overturn the law. It has nothing to do with the law - may confirm it. Thus resurrection supposes the law of death, is an action of power not in the sphere of observed sequences. And note here, our question here is not if it be true, but if it be impossible, for which the only ground is the positive assumption that there is no power possible outside observed sequences, which he alleges are no efficient causes at all. If what a human being can see is no more than a set of appearances, either there is no ground of believing anything, and complete induction is a fable, or I may have as good or better evidence of what power extrinsic to observed phenomena and sequences has done. So when he says (p. 167) he cannot admit a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. Now law of nature is merely existing phenomena; and this is the absurd idea that the ascertained phenomena of nature are the only possible things that can be, and not a conclusion within nature, but the denial of all action outside it, and that as possible; which is simply nonsense as reasoning, and the more so as he is obliged to admit such action at "the origin of all things." Because such a thing is, as far as we know it, there can be nothing else! There can be no other ground for this but the positive denial without proof that God can act, and affirmation that there is nothing possible but what we have observed. Yet the ultimate properties and their cause he confessedly has not accounted for. Nor within the limits of fixed laws, quite another question, is all so certain, though enough for all human purposes in the sphere man is in. Because if ABC produces abc, and BC only bc, this does not prove A is the cause of a; it may be a necessary condition of B being the cause. I must have ABC produce abc always, BC not produce a, and A by itself produce a; a concatenation of proof hardly ever to be found. And this supposes I know all possible causes which could produce a, and all to be absent. (See p. 168.)