The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge — A Closer Reading

The Antithesis Between Divine Action and Natural Law

Fiske identifies a persistent habit of thought that divides nature into two provinces: phenomena occurring with simple regularity, deemed the realm of natural law, and complex, irregular phenomena, assigned to immediate divine action. He traces this antithesis to “the lower or Augustinian theism” and argues that it has made theologians hostile to science and scientists hostile to theology. Each scientific discovery, he writes, has “stripped off territory” from the province of divine action, leading to a centuries-long conflict in which science has won every disputed position. The ordinary theologian, Fiske contends, still rests his case on “the assumption of disorder, caprice, and miraculous interference.”

The Higher Theism of Clement and Athanasius

Fiske contrasts the Augustinian tradition with what he calls “the higher theism of Clement and Athanasius.” Adopting this conception, he asserts, makes the alleged antagonism between science and theology vanish. He writes that once one adopts the idea of “an ever-present God, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground,” it becomes self-evident that the law of gravitation is “an expression of a particular mode of divine action.” For such a thinker, every extension of knowledge brings fresh confirmation of faith, and no part of the universe is godless. Fiske’s language here is notably concrete: he lists “the swaying to and fro of molecules,” “the secular shiftings of planetary orbits,” and “the mysterious sprouting of the seed” as arenas of divine activity.

The Theologian’s Question and Fiske’s Reply

Fiske quotes a hypothetical theologian who asks, if plants and animals have been naturally originated and the world evolved, “what is there left for God to do?” The scientific inquirer, Fiske responds, may reply that the difficulty is one theology has created for itself. He insists that it is not science that has relegated divine activity to a bygone eternity or left God without occupation in the present world. The mischievous distinction between divine action and natural law, he argues, is historically derived from “a loose habit of philosophizing characteristic of ignorant ages” and bequeathed by the Latin church. Fiske goes so far as to say that an atheist starting from such a basis is doing “as well as he knows how, with the materials given him.”

Fiske’s argument is tightly focused on reconciling evolutionary science with a revised theism, but the excerpts offer only his opening framework and a central section. Readers should note that the full text likely develops the historical review of modifications to the idea of God and may address the pantheism question more directly. The work is best approached as a philosophical lecture, not a systematic treatise, and its force depends on Fiske’s rhetorical contrasts between competing theological traditions.

I recall evenings shelving Fiske, how he found God not apart from nature’s grind but within its very order. That same quiet insistence—faith surviving honest scrutiny—returns in The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights — Story, Setting & Ideas. Two voices, decades apart, yet sharing one gentle conviction: the light of inquiry need not extinguish the old lamps. A kinship worth remembering.