GOD (AS., OS., Dutch god, Goth. gup, OHG. got, cot, Ger. Gott, of doubtful etymology, per haps connected with Skt. MI, to Call, or with Skt. hu, Gk. xeip, chein, to pour ; the word is evidently originally a passive participle; the frequent deri vation of god from good, AS. god, Goth. gOds, OHG. guot, Ger. gut, is entirely erroneous). The eternal and infinite personal Spirit, the Creator and Governor of the universe, unchangeable in His attributes, whose nature is love.
There are two widely differing views of the origin of the idea of God. The first is the older Christian view, that God revealed Himself to the fathers of the people of Israel by such personal communication of Himself as gave them a true, though not complete, view of Him as the only, infinite, and eternal God. The course of the his tory of this people was such that they gradually came to have a more adequate and stable view of God's nature and attributes, in connection with which their whole conception of truth and re ligion underwent a process of constant develop ment. Finally, in Jesus Christ the perfect revelation of time Father appeared, and that form was given to all the elements in the idea of God which is now recognized as the highest to which man has attained. Thus the idea of God comes from God Himself, and its history undergoes such a development, and such a one only, as ,the im perfection and development of men has rendered necessary.
The second view is that which regards the idea of God as a purely natural development. As man develops from the animal world, he begins what may be called his human history, without the idea of God. There is, however, a tendency in him toward religion. His wants do not find perfect' satisfaction in the world, and he experi ences pain and hardship. He must seek help from some source, and the idea of some power or pow ers which can bestow this upon him arises in his mind by a 'psychological necessity.' Worship may begin in several ways, but probably by his appealing to the spirits of departed ancestors or to the great powers of nature, or both. The idea of gods once introduced, the tendency is toward a multiplication of gods, whence arises polytheism. A tendency soon becomes marked to ascribe to one God the control over some re stricted portion of country, or over the affairs of one family. This produces a• `henotheism' within a restricted group of persons, which may be perfectly consistent with polytheism and poly theistic worship apart from the restricted circle to which this one God belongs. But with the growth of the family into a tribe, and of the tribe into a nation, the sphere of the god is also en larged, and victories over other nations, as well us increasing intelligence about the world and what is in it, will produce ultimately the idea of one God, beside whom all other gods are only pretended gods, having no real existence. Thus
monotheism must develop. This view may be said to be at present struggling for recognition as a truly Christian view. It draws its support very largely from the Old Testament Scriptures as interpreted by the representatives of modern higher criticism. The question between the two views may be reduced to the single issue whether there has taken place a supernatural interference in the course of history for the salvation of man, or whether the knowledge of God has arisen by the immanent and impersonal operation of God in nature and in the mind of man.
However the final idea of God may have come to Jesus of Nazareth, it is indisputable that it never emerged in any philosophy' independent of Him (India, China, or Greece) and never has been developed since in independence of Him. All the proofs of the existence of God rest upon the idea of order in the world, and this idea is a Christian idea. It is faith, in distinction from a skepticism always possible and often very real. Under the guidance of this Christian element several distinct lines of proof have been presented which coincide in a single complex proof of the divine existence. The first proof is the so-called cosmological, from the mere existence of a de pendent world, which does not bear in itself the marks of eternal and independent existence, to an independent something which shall be its cause. This leaves the doctrine in a very vague condition. The next proof adds definiteness to it, the teleological proof. In innumerable individual objects, like the plants, in the adaptations of the chemical elements to each other, the construction of the bodies of animals and of the mind of man, and in the whole universe as revealed more and more by modern study, we see evidences of plan. The Cause of the world is, therefore, capable of making a vast plan, or He possesses intelligence and will, that is, rational personality. The moral proof argues from the nature of man himself, especially as a moral being, to the na ture of God as also moral, or benevolent, which argument is supplemented by the Christian argu ment which draws the conclusion from the experi ence of regeneration that God positively seeks to promote the holiness of men. These arguments are completed by the ontological argument, which in its best form ascribes to the highest conception which man is able to form of God (the Christian conception) objective validity, on the basis of the proposition that it is fundamentally inconceivable that the highest conception at which the mind of man can arrive should be a mere subjective creation. These arguments do not so much dis play the path by which man has come to the knowledge of God, as serve dialectically to unfold its contents.