Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32).
Since the fall man has been in a search for certainty. He has groped his way through fog, darkness, superstition, ignorance, pain, suffering and sin. He has striven for intellectual certainty; for economic security; for political power; for the elixir of youth to guarantee health surety. Amidst change, flux, turmoil and tumult man greatly desires permanence, solidity and peace.
This quest for certainty has taken men through multitudinous labyrinths of philosophical speculation; through various educational enterprises and countless religious practices and rituals; all hoping to repose on the solid rocks of certainty. In the dim light of early Grecian speculation the Milesians were asking, "What is the original ground of all things?" and the Eleatics, "How are things changed from the one to the many?" The Atomists, Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists, Cynics and Cyrenaics continued the quest. Centuries before Christ, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle made their searches. Stoicism, Epicureanism and Sophism followed the quest -- all unsuccessfully.
As we approach a more modern period we find Francis Bacon earnestly seeking to rid the mind of errors, prejudices and presuppositions, categorized under four headings: (1) the Idols of the Tribe -- fallacies natural to mankind itself; (2) the Idols of the Cave -- errors peculiar to individual men; (3) the Idols of the Market Place -- errors arising from our association with one another; and (4) the Idols of the Theater -- errors which have come to the minds of men from the dogmas of philosophers. After clearing the mind of the above types of error he proposed an inductive method by which to build a sure superstructure guided by prudent rules of procedure hoping to find certainty. It has been said of Bacon, "He undertook too much and failed to a great extent."
Descartes, an eminent French philosopher adopted a method similar to that of Bacon by
first attempting to rid the mind of all acquired knowledge and then hoping to find some axiomatic, self-evident truths and upon these build a sound, incontestable structure of knowledge. He claimed to find three such truths: (1) the existence of the self, (2) the existence of the corporeal world and (3) the existence of God. Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume furthered the quest with rather disappointing results, for we note Hume concluding at the end of his search for certainty with the following pathetic utterances: "I am at first affrighted and confounded with the forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger and detraction. When I turn my eye inward I find nothing but doubt
and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose me and contradict me. Every step I take is with hesitation and every new reflection makes me dread error and absurdity in my reasoning. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I return to these speculations they appear so cold and strained and ridiculous that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any further." For a certainty Hume had not found -- Truth.
Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest of philosophers, started out with the avowed aim to
discover what is certain and sure. He ended his search by becoming an epistemological skeptic and denied that one can have knowledge of metaphysical reality. Philosophers, scientists, religionists, poets, artists and musicians have all been on the quest for certainty.
Here we are today with the world in complete war. The things upon which men have
placed their faith and confidence have vanished and countless thousands, yea, millions, are wondering just what life is all about and whether or not there is any certainty.
Dorothy Thompson, the well-known columnist and one of the most intelligent persons in
America, wrote an article for a nationally read magazine recently, entitled, "Youth Challenges Education."* [* Ladies Home Journal, June, 1941.] Because of the fact that this article presents the dilemma and predicament in which the youth of America finds it self I am quoting quite liberally from it as a background for further comments in this sermon. In fact, Miss Thompson's article, in itself, consists mostly of the letter which was received by the president of a large eastern university, in fact, one of our greatest universities, from one of his undergraduate students. Miss Thompson opens her article by saying, "Better than anything else I have read, it sums up the dilemma of our 'educated' youth. It needs thoughtful reading by educators and parents." Here are excerpts from various paragraphs of the letter -- it would repay you to read the entire article:
You, sir, were brought up from earliest childhood in an atmosphere of traditional
Christianity and Democracy. You read, learned and inwardly digested the Bible. Nearly every Sunday you went to church, and there you heard and believed sermons which postulated the divinity of Christ, eternal principles of right and wrong, the existence of the human soul, a personal God and a life after death. Thanks to your early training, your life as you have led it derives its meaning largely from the teachings of Jesus.
During your youth you also were educated to think that man is superior to animals, that he is a free agent capable of choosing between good and evil.
But what about us, the youth of America? What have we been taught to revere in the
university you direct, and in other similar institutions throughout the land?
In the modern college it is probably fair to say that Christianity has progressively lost its
grip on young minds. You may have noticed that, unlike you, most of us have scarcely ever glanced at the Bible.
When our elders refer to eternal verities, absolutist ethics, we are likely to recall the
lesson your instructors in sociology have driven home -- that morals are relative to time and place, and what is good in one society is bad in another. Such teaching is separated only by a hair's breadth from the view that there can be no such thing as sin.
Have we not gleaned from our very own professors of natural sciences, philosophy and
ancient history that religions are the product of myth and superstition and that men create gods in their own image; that if there is such a thing as a soul, no scientist has ever isolated it in the laboratory?
Turning to political systems, you learned that man is distinct from animals, and yet our
Biology courses now conceive man merely as one species of mammal.
Furthermore, is not your traditional doctrine of free will at odds with the basic assumption of modern science -- determinism?
What reason is there, in the light of present knowledge, for continuing to accept any form of Christianity?
Personally, I fail to understand how you, or any other college president, can expect us to
become ardent Christians and Democrats when the vital postulates on which these faiths are supposed to rest are daily undermined in the classrooms.
Our situation has indeed grown more serious than you think. Your generation must soon
pass on to our hands the torch of Democracy and Christianity. Our hearts impel us to be faithful to that trust, but our heads, that you have helped condition, may decree otherwise.
If we are to be saved, our elders must assist us to harmonize our education with the old
faith.
If our outlook is ever to rise above a selfish materialism, somehow, somewhere, we must
find an answer to our questions.
I think it is time for us, as Americans, to pause a moment and ask ourselves a question, "Is this youth who wrote this letter to the University President correct and just what do we have, as Americans, that we can place our faith upon with some degree of certainty and surety, and not continue to be the victims of relativism in almost every field of endeavor and thought?
Recently I came across what is called the "Rockefeller Credo." It embodies most of the
things that we, as Americans, should believe and fight for. There are ten planks in this Credo.
1. I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
2. I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation;
every possession, a duty.
3. I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
4. I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity of making a living.
5. I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime
requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.
6. I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.
7. I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his
bond; that character -- not wealth or power or position -- is of supreme worth.
8. I believe that the rendering of useful service, to be the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.
9. I believe in the all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the
individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.
10. I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate;
that right can and will triumph over might.
The above ten principles of the "Rockefeller Credo" are all Christian principles. They
spring from Christ's teachings. We accept them. But how can I pass from a merely theoretical, rational affirmation of these ideals to a practical, soul-possessing sense of their eternal reality to my own individual personality? This is the problem and concern of this sermon.
Certainty Of Personal Existence
Of just what are we certain? Suppose we go back for a moment to Descartes. He started
with the fact of personal existence. "I think, therefore, I exist." Cognito, ergo sum. Descartes derives the substance of his argument from St. Augustine. It is true that I may have hallucinations, illusions and doubts and may be in error; nevertheless, the fact is that I am the one having the hallucinations, illusions, doubts and errors -- I exist individually. You cannot get behind the "I." When you doubt your own being -- your own existence -- nothing else in the realm of truth matters. David Hume claimed that you could never perceive yourself except at the point of a sense perception and therefore denied that the self exists at all for he claimed if you annihilated all the senses you have annihilated the self. This reasoning jumps to illogical conclusions. It is the existence of the self that makes a sense perception possible, not the sense perception the self. Immanuel Kant differentiates between the "empirical" self of Hume and what he called the "transcendental" self. The "transcendental" self views and studies the "empirical" self. But you cannot get behind the "transcendental" self. Hume, in denying the existence of the self, approached a house, as it were, looked into all five windows of the building and concluded there was nobody at home. But who was looking into the window? When he tried to perceive himself looking into the five windows of sense, who was doing the perceiving? His existent self -- his real self. We start all quests for knowledge and certainty with the self.
Certainty Of Existence Of Corporeal World
Descartes' second item of apparent certainty was that, the corporeal world exists.
Something besides myself exists. Other persons and things, all without and beyond me, exist. From whence did these things come? What is their explanation?
Certainty Of God's Existence
This led to the third postulate of certainty, namely, that God exists. If I ask the questions,
"From whence did I come?" and "From whence did the corporeal world come?" there is only one rational answer. It is true that there are three possible answers, but only one is reasonable.
the three possibilities are: (1) that all that exists, including myself, came from nothing; (2)
it came from non-intelligence, and (3) it came from intelligence. You cannot get beyond these three possibilities. Everything that exists either sprang out of nothing, arose from non-intelligence, or is the result of intelligence.
The first alternative, namely, that all that exists came from nothing is ridiculous and is
revolting to a rational mind, so we discard it. When I look around me and note all the items of intricate purpose, the seasons; the solar system; the vegetative life giving off oxygen being breathed in by the human organism which in turn gives out carbon which in turn is breathed in by the vegetative life; when I look at myself with all its delicate organisms, the eye; the ear; the heart; the lungs; the brain and other parts all synchronized perfectly for the purpose of the person, it seems to be irrational to ascribe it all to nothingness. To adopt such a view is contrary to everything we know. It puts a potential power in nothingness that is without reason. We therefore leave alternative one and pass to the second, namely, that all that now exists sprang from non-intelligence. This leads us to a problem -- how can a greater spring from a lesser? How can intelligence come from non-intelligence; purpose, order, system from blind, chaotic, inert stuff? This is contrary to science. A greater can produce a lesser but not a lesser a greater. Intelligence is
the greatest thing we know. How could it come from inanimate, static matter? We discard
alternative two and have only one answer left, namely, that all that exists, including myself, came from intelligence. We label this intelligence, "God."
But the critic says, "Where did this intelligence (God) come from?" "Who made God?"
Have you ever heard this smug question? And the critic thinks he has you stopped. But does he? Not at all. Let's ask him for his answer to the question, "From whence do all things come?" He has only three possibilities, (1) nothing, (2) non-intelligence and (3) intelligence. Numbers 1 and 2 we have discarded for rational reasons and have only Number 3 left. But he persists, "Where does intelligence come from? Let him answer: God must have come from:
(1) Nothing -- (2) Non-Intelligence -- (3) -- Intelligence
We discard Numbers 1 and 2 as being unworthy of rational thought and take the position
that God must have come from Number 3 -- intelligence. This of course, would be a greater God. But the critic continues to ask, "Where did this intelligence, this greater God, come from?" Well, let him answer -- from:
(1) Nothing -- (2) Non-Intelligence -- (3) -- Intelligence