whole societies or nations. Something of the kind happened with the Stoics of the imperial period. Their philosophy was only just above suicide-mark, and was continually dropping below it. In Asia the same is true of whole populations, with whom the value of life has sunk to the very lowest point.
Of all these classes of men we say very justly that they want faith. Their criminality or languor or despair are the consequences of their having no faith. But we sometimes express the same thing differently and say that they have no God, no theology. With our Christian habit of connecting God with goodness and love, we confuse together the notions of a theology and a faith. Let us reflect that it is quite possible to have a theology without having a faith. We may believe in a God, but a God unfavorable, hostile, or indifferent to us. In the same way we may believe in a God neither altogether friendly nor altogether the reverse. The different pagan theologies were of this kind, and even many Christian sects, while nominally holding the perfect benevolence of God, have practically worshiped a Being who in this respect did not differ from the pagan deities.
It would be legitimate to call such general views of the relation of Nature to our ideals by the name of theology in all cases, and not merely those particular general views which are encouraging. If we believe that Nature helps us in our strivings, we have both a theology and a faith; if we believe that Nature is indifferent to us, or hostile to us, we have no faith, but we have still a theology. We have still a definite notion of God's dealings with us. And this use of the word is not only justified by its etymology; it is much more conformable to actual usage. To identify theology with the doctrine of the supernatural is, as I have pointed out, to narrow the meaning of the word unnaturally, and to appropriate it to a particular part of a particular theological system. The practical effect of giving this technical sense to a word which in the common understanding has a much larger meaning, is to produce a deception. When those who reject the supernatural declare theology to be exploded, they are commonly understood to mean that a vast mass of doctrine, partly moral, partly historical, partly physical, in which the supernatural is mixed up, is exploded, whereas all they really say is that just that part is exploded which is supported only by the evidence of the supernatural. In like manner it is but a small part of what is commonly understood by theology that has to do with final causes, and yet those who consider final causes not objects of knowledge are fond of drawing the inference that all theological systems must be systems of spurious knowledge. Sometimes this juggle which is practised with the word theology becomes grotesquely apparent, and a skeptic will tell us in the same breath that theology deals with matters entirely beyond the range of human intellect, and that theology has been refuted by the discoveries of modern science.
