The Sense of the Presence of God by John Baillie

First published: New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Essays; history; theology

Core issue(s): Faith; God; knowledge; revelation; trust in God

Overview

Trained in philosophy and theology, John Baillie taught at universities in Scotland, the United States, and Canada, and was a significant figure in the ecumenical church developments of the second third of the twentieth century. His views represent a middle position between the extremes of theological liberalism (Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich) and theological conservatism (Karl Barth).

In The Sense of the Presence of God, Baillie states that human experience (construed broadly enough to include “the sense of the presence of God”) provides a basis for knowledge sufficient for practical action, though it does not support claims to theoretical comprehension: “There can be no apprehension of the divine presence that is not at the same time a summons to a divinely-appointed task.” He insists that “we can see to do the work we were meant to do. . . . [And] if our end is the love and service of God, we cannot justly demand more light until we have better used the light we already have.” Baillie thus sides with those who think that God wants us to embrace religious belief and action despite (or even, in a sense, because of) “the very limitation of our possible knowledge.” He explicitly compares, but also contrasts, his view with Immanuel Kant’s attempt to limit knowledge to make room for faith. Religious knowledge is practical rather than speculative, but nonetheless knowledge.

Baillie rejects a narrow, positivist conception of experience, which he sees as philosophically inadequate in its own terms and as unrealistically divorced from the lessons of life. He believes that he, like others, has sensed the presence of God, though he grants that someone else might explain the experience away—just as someone insensitive to aesthetics might describe the sunset in a way that is complete, naturalistically speaking, while still missing the crucial element of beauty. Baillie thus resists the liberal impulse to explain away religious experience in psychological, social, or other terms.

However, Baillie also views this foundational religious and moral experience as a basis for critical reflection on the culturally and historically contingent forms of religious expression. The limits of any human understanding of the divine imply a willingness to re-examine and renew the forms of religious doctrine. He says that “the only exclusive claim which Christians are justified in making is not for what we call ’Christianity,’ not for their own brand of pious practices . . . but in the revelation . . . of God in Jesus Christ our Lord—a very necessary distinction which . . . Dr Barth exaggerated into a complete disjunction.” He looks forward to a theological liberalism that has learned from Barth’s conservative challenge.

In sum, Baillie asserts the presence of God even as he rejects the presumption of those who claim to know what God would have in mind—either to argue against God’s existence (as in the problem of evil), or to argue for certitude about God’s will.

We cannot pretend to know in advance how God ought to act for the enlightenment and salvation of the human race. . . . The only question which—shall I say, as a good empiricist?—I have a right to ask is: Do I in fact find God coming to meet me in Jesus Christ as nowhere else, or do I not? . . . To this question the Christian can do no other than return an affirmative answer. So when the German philosopher . . . tells me that “The Godhead loves not to pour His whole fulness into a single instance,” I cannot but wonder how he knew this.

This encounter with God in Christ is the foundational experience that is the basis for practical religious knowledge.

This insistence on the limitations of religious convictions, when these are viewed as theoretical or speculative claims, implies an antifundamentalist caution about questions of exactness and literalness. Baillie emphasizes the historical dimension of religious reflection, noting the dependency of its formulations on the “thought-forms” and languages of human cultures. On the other hand, a seemly intellectual modesty should not be allowed to devolve into the incoherence of relativism or the inadequacy of emotivism; he repeatedly rejects “reductive naturalism.” Baillie sees religious language as making meaningful, if imprecise, claims about the nature of reality—claims best understood in terms of the practical relationships individuals have both with God and with one another, and in terms of the Gospel narrative.

Christian Themes

To the liberal, the conservative’s desire to preserve the forms of the past buries the spirit of belief in the dead letter of dogma. To the conservative, the liberal’s desire to tell the truth by making it new is an open invitation to self-delusion and revisionism. In theology, as in politics and elsewhere in culture, this struggle is constantly replayed. In his attempt to occupy the middle ground, Baillie touches on many traditional Christian themes.

There are, for example, discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity, the “fatherhood” of God, miracles, the good news of the Incarnation, the humility and humiliation of Christ, the priority of the personality of Christ to that of human beings, and the central importance of the Gospel narratives. He examines the incomprehensibility of God, the impossibility of “demythologizing,” the priority of our knowledge of divine perfection to our knowledge of finite creatures, the nature of God’s kingdom, and the fear of the Lord. Baillie also discusses the naturally Christian soul, the nature of faith and works, salvation, trust, the overcoming of personal doubt, providence, the importance of gratitude, and the unity of humankind. Other topics include the relevance of the categories of Greek metaphysics to Christian thought, the connection between doctrine and heresy, the inadequacy of natural theology, the comparison of science and faith, the priority of value to science, and the “existential” significance of Christianity.

Of special interest, given Baillie’s mediating approach, is his discussion of the conflict of different faiths. While he firmly rejects the idea that religions other than Christianity contain no truth, he also insists that our ability to distinguish their elements of God-given truth from humanly inspired error is possible only on the basis of the essential Christian revelation. However, he believes that the encounter with other religions can help clarify what that essential revelation—in contrast with accidental historical and cultural accretions—really is, thereby returning faith to its foundation in experience.

Sources for Further Study

Baillie, John. And the Life Everlasting. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. Baillie discusses Christian and other views about human immortality.

Baillie, John. Our Knowledge of God. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939. Often regarded as Baillie’s best book, this volume presents the state of his thinking on the question of religious knowledge two decades before the Gifford lectures.

Fergusson, David, ed. Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie. New York: T. and T. Clark International, 2000. A collection of sixteen essays covering the lives, theological views, and church work of Baillie and his theologian brother, including a bibliography of their publications.

Hood, Adam. Baillie, Oman, and Macmurray: Experience and Religious Belief. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. A comparison of Baillie’s ideas about the experiential grounds of religious belief with those of two other twentieth century Scottish theologians; two chapters are devoted specifically to Baillie.

Newlands, George. John and Donald Baillie: Transatlantic Theology. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. An intellectual and cultural biography of the Baillie brothers, examining their influence on each other and on international ecumenical theology and church work.