t, therefore, what is done is
just. Within this setting with its easy appeal to ignorance, it makes
little difference whether events are right because God does them or
whether God does them because they are right. Arminianism turns out,
when examined, to be largely an attempt to soften the absolutism of
Calvinism along certain lines. But these endless and, in the main,
sterile theological controversies reveal the artificiality of the
dogmas within which they are carried on. They are, when all is said,
only ingenious modifications and redressings of the primary assumptions
of the religious view of the world. I challenge any one to develop a
really tenable system of theology, a system which is self-consistent
and relevant to the world as we know it. I am certain that it cannot
be done. As a student of ethics, my growing conviction has for some
time been that these traditional controversies and modes of approach to
human life are barren and irrelevant, because they cast absolutely no
light upon human problems, social or personal. Modern ethics and
theology have ceased to have any genuine commerce. The one is in touch
with the sciences of biology, sociology, psychology and criminology;
the other, by its very nature, can gain nothing from these sciences.
Ethics is concrete and inductive. Theology is abstract and deductive.

I have not tried to state and criticize the numerous theodicies which
man's restless intellect has constructed. Mystics have taught that
evil is an {165} illusion. But illusions have a way of being very
real; and a derogatory term does not alter facts. Idealists have
declared that what we call evil only increases the divine harmony, as a
judicious discord heightens the effect of symphonic combinations. But
this aesthetic argument conflicts with moral relations. Surely God
would not be so self-centered. Thus there are weighty objections to
all the ingenious and profound apologies for the course of events. But
why are such apologies felt to be necessary? Simply and solely because
events are assumed to be under the control of an intelligent, moral
agent. Withdraw this assumption, and the problem vanishes.

When we turn from the religious view of the world to the scientific and
philosophical, we are immediately impressed by the different
perspective. What were theoretical problems of the most absolute and
inescapable kind cease to exist. While the religious view of the world
culminates i