4.
This Thomistic theism has an outstanding coun-
terpart in F. R. Tennant's Philosophical Theology
(1930). Tennant argues that there is no
denying the
finite self, but that as regards all other philosophical
questions, probability is the guide of life. He concludes
that a cosmic
Person is the most reasonable hypothesis
for interpreting man's cognitive,
aesthetic, moral, and
religious experience as a whole.
Tennant struggles with the problem of the divine
immanence in Nature. God,
in creating, delegated
spontaneous activity to unities
(“substance-causes”) in
the subhuman world. A
gradation, as biological evolu-
tion shows,
eventuates in human self-consciousness,
desire, reason, and free will. The
facts of moral and
natural evil are most intelligible if we hypothesize
both
the delegating of limited spontaneity to subhuman
orders and the
“planting out” and “positing” of
per-
sons. With such metaphorical
expressions, Tennant
stresses the fact that things and persons are no
part
of God.
More specifically, God is the Creator of the primary
collocations of the
world. He is transcendent insofar
as the constitutive elements in Nature exhibit some
spontaneity
and persons enjoy limited moral freedom.
Is God, then, a deistic spectator
of the created world?
Is he immanent as a painter is immanent in his paint-
ings? Or does God, as in the Augustinian
and Cartesian
view, create from moment to moment and thus provide
continuity in his creation?
Tennant answers each of these questions negatively.
The Augustinian view
does not take seriously enough
the “planting out” of
beings-for-themselves. Tennant
thinks that evils in Nature, like cyclones
and cancer,
may be seen as an inherent, but not predetermined
consequence of the delegated spontaneity at the sub-
human level. Such evils and disorder, however, must
be seen
within the context of prevailing order and the
possibilities for goodness
in things. At the same time,
Tennant urges, “through God's
immanence all things
consist” (II, 212). Purpose-foiling tendencies
in the
subhuman realm are not allowed to disrupt the pur-
pose-realizing cosmos because of
God's appropriate
directive and creative activity in keeping
“the world
with all its differentiated detail and its ever
emergent
products” one whole (II, 216). Tennant reasons, ac-
cordingly, that “divine action
upon the world-
elements,” be
it occasional or continuous, is coherent
with the intricate adaptations
required for our under-
standing of cosmic
evolution, including man (II, 215).
The how of this
direction, like the original act of
creation, is not open to human analogy;
but it contra-
dicts nothing we know.
Tennant leaves it as an empiri-
cal question
whether interference with such law as we
know in Nature has actually taken
place when God
acts to preserve the dependable unity of Nature. In
any
case, Tennant's God is no spectator; he is no artist;
he is no continual
creator (Augustine). God delegates
autonomy, but does not remain helpless
as he directs
and creates in order to maintain and enrich the created
realm.
Tennant distinguishes between God's action upon
subhuman beings and his
action on persons capable
of reasonable, moral, and religious response. He
rejects
any theory of God's action upon man that suggests
indwelling
possession; no quasi-physical, impersonal
coercion by God—even
if it be called God's grace—is
acceptable in a universe intended
to support man's
moral development.
Tennant also differs from other theists in holding that
it is unempirical,
and therefore unreasonable, to speak
of God as creating the best possible
world from an
infinite number of contemplated possibilities.
“God
without a world is a superfluous abstraction, and a
God
who might have 'chosen' a different seminal world from
this, or
different 'primary collocations' would be a
different God” (II,
183). Since this world is the only
world we know, for us to talk of God's entertaining
other
eternal ideas is to talk as if we had some other
evidence for thinking
about God's nature other than
this world with man in it. For Tennant, God
has “no
empty capacity which somehow hits upon definite
modes of activity” (II, 184). “The world is what it
is
because God is what he is” (II, 184). It is this
particular
evolutionary world, not a “static
perfection,” which
calls for a World-Ground.
In Tennant, the relation of the unchanging eternal
God of classical theism
to the temporal world is stated
very cautiously. On the one hand, he does
not wish
to restrict God to the conceptual time of scientific
description; on the other, he wishes to keep God func-
tionally related to the created changing world. So
he
finally says, somewhat enigmatically, “We have no
right
to regard God as not supra-temporal. I admit that
He cannot be regarded as
supra-temporal” (P. A.
Bertocci, The Empirical
Argument, p. 255).
