The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

GOD, NATURE, AND LOVE

Have no fear of natural science – it brings us nearer to God. (Christian Century, p. 1520.)

When one has seen whole populations annihilated by sleeping sickness, as I have, one ceases to imagine that human life is nature's goal. In fact, the Creative Force does not concern itself about preserving life. It simultaneously creates and destroys. (The Ethics of Reverence for Life, p. 227)

Why do the laws of nature and the laws of ethics diverge so sharply?…God is the power that sustains the universe. Why is this God who reveals himself in nature the denial of everything we feel to be ethical? How can a force rationally create life and irrationally destroy it at the same time? How can we reconcile God as a force of nature with God as ethical will, the God of love as we must conceive him when we have risen to a higher ideal of life to reverence for life, to empathy and compassion?…It is a great misfortune for mankind that we cannot offer a harmonious philosophy of life. (Sermon, February 23, 1919; quoted in Albert Schweitzer: Essential Writings)

To have reverence in the face of life is to be in the grip of the eternal, unoriginated, forward-pushing will, which is the foundation of all being. (Civilization and Ethics, p. 223.)

All living knowledge of God rests upon this foundation: that we experience Him in our lives as Will-to-Love. (Out of My Life and Thought, p. 277.)

The highest proof of the Spirit is love. Love is the eternal thing which men can already on earth possess as it really is. (Out of My Life and Thought, p. 249.)