love was prepared for before the advent of man. A. H. Strong,
Education and Optimism: “There was a time when the past history of
life upon the planet seemed one of heartless and cruel slaughter.
The survival of the fittest had for its obverse side the
destruction of myriads. Nature was ‘red in tooth and claw with
ravine.’ But further thought has shown that this gloomy view
results from a partial induction of facts. Paleontological life
was marked not only by a struggle for life, but by a struggle for
the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to be seen in
the instinct of reproduction, and in the care of offspring. In
every lion’s den and tiger’s lair, in every mother eagle’s feeding
of her young, there is a self-sacrifice which faintly shadows
forth man’s subordination of personal interests to the interests
of others. But in the ages before man can be found incipient
justice as well as incipient love. The struggle for one’s own life
has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of others.
The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of right,
righteousness, justice, and law, on earth. Every creature owes it
to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an adumbration of
morality even in the predatory and internecine warfare of the
geologic ages. The immanent God was even then preparing the way
for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of humanity.” And, we may
add, was preparing the way for the understanding by men of his own
fundamental attribute of holiness. See Henry Drummond, Ascent of
Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.
In further explanation we remark:
A. Negatively, that holiness is not
(_a_) Justice, or purity demanding purity from creatures. Justice, the
relative or transitive attribute, is indeed the manifestation and
expression of the immanent attribute of holiness, but it is not to be
confounded with it.
Quenstedt, Theol., 8:1:34, defines holiness as “summa omnisque
labis expers to Deo puritas, puritatem debitam exigens a
creaturis”—a definition of transitive holiness, or justice, rather
than of the immanent attribute. _Is. 5:16—_“Jehovah of hosts is
exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in
righteousness”—Justice is simply God’s holiness in its judicial
activity. Though holiness is commonly a term of separation and
expresses the inherent opposition of God to all that is sinful, it
is also used as a term of union, as in _Lev. 11:44—_“be ye holy;
for I am holy.” When Jesus turned from the young ruler (_Mark
10:23_) he illustrated the first; _John 8:29_ illustrates the
second: “he that sent me is with me.” Lowrie, Doctrine of St.
John, 51-57—“‘God is light’_ (1 John 1:5)_ indicates the character
of God, moral purity as revealed, as producing joy and life, as
contrasted with doing ill, walking in darkness, being in a state
of perdition.”
Universal human conscience is itself a revelation of the holiness
of God, and the joining everywhere of suffering with sin is the
revelation of God’s justice. The wrath, anger, jealousy of God
show that this reaction of God’s nature is necessary. God’s nature
is itself holy, just, and good. Holiness is not replaced by love,
as Ritschl holds, since there is no self-impartation without
self-affirmation. Holiness not simply _demands_ in law, but
_imparts_ in the Holy Spirit; see Pfleiderer, Grundriss,
79—_versus_ Ritschl’s doctrine that holiness is God’s exaltation,
and that it includes love; see also Pfleiderer, Die Ritschlische
Theologie, 53-63. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 69—“If perfection is
the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground
of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible
conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground
of faith in the supremacy of the good.” We would regard nature
however as merely the symbol and expression of God, and so would
regard beauty as a ground of faith in his supremacy. What
Santayana says of beauty is even more true of holiness. Wherever
we see it, we recognize in it a pledge of the possible conformity
between the soul and God, and consequently a ground of faith in
the supremacy of God.
(_b_) Holiness is not a complex term designating the aggregate of the
divine perfections. On the other hand, the notion of holiness is, both in
Scripture and in Christian experience, perfectly simple, and perfectly
distinct from that of other attributes.
Dick, Theol., 1:275—Holiness = venerableness, _i. e._, “no
particular attribute, but the general character of God as
resulting from his moral attributes.” Wardlaw calls holiness the
union of all the attributes, as pure white light is the union of
all the colored rays of the spectrum (Theology, 1:618-634). So
Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doct., 166; H. W. Beecher: “Holiness =
wholeness.” Approaching this conception is the definition of W. N.
Clarke, Christian Theology, 83—“Holiness is the glorious fulness
of the goodness of God, consistently held as the principle of his
own action, and the standard for his creatures.” This implies,
according to Dr. Clarke, 1. An inward character of perfect
goodness; 2. That character as the consistent principle of his own
action; 3. The goodness which is the principle of his own action
is also the standard for theirs. In other words, holiness is 1.
character; 2. self-consistency; 3. requirement. We object to this
definition that it fails to define. We are not told what is
essential to this character; the definition includes in holiness
that which properly belongs to love; it omits all mention of the
most important elements in holiness, namely purity and right.
A similar lack of clear definition appears in the statement of
Mark Hopkins, Law of Love, 105—“It is this double aspect of love,
revealing the whole moral nature, and turning every way like the
flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life, that is
termed holiness.” As has been shown above, holiness is contrasted
in Scripture, not with mere finiteness or littleness or misfortune
or poverty or even unreality, but only with uncleanness and
sinfulness. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 80—“Holiness in man
is the image of God’s. But it is clear that holiness in man is not
in proportion to the other perfections of his being—to his power,
his knowledge, his wisdom, though it is in proportion to his
rectitude of will—and therefore cannot be the sum of all
perfections.... To identify holiness with the sum of all
perfections is to make it mean mere completeness of character.”
(_c_) Holiness is not God’s self-love, in the sense of supreme regard for
his own interest and happiness. There is no utilitarian element in
holiness.
Buddeus, Theol. Dogmat., 2:1:36, defines holiness as God’s
self-love. But God loves and affirms self, not as self, but as the
holiest. There is no self-seeking in God. Not the seeking of God’s
interests, but love for God as holy, is the principle and source
of holiness in man. To call holiness God’s self-love is to say
that God is holy because of what he can make by it, _i. e._, to
deny that holiness has any independent existence. See Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 1:155.
We would not deny, but would rather maintain, that there is a
proper self-love which is not selfishness. This proper self-love,
however, is not love at all. It is rather self-respect,
self-preservation, self-vindication, and it constitutes an
important characteristic of holiness. But to define holiness as
merely God’s love for himself, is to leave out of the definition
the reason for this love in the purity and righteousness of the
divine nature. God’s self-respect implies that God respects
himself for something in his own being. What is that something? Is
holiness God’s “moral excellence” (Hopkins), or God’s “perfect
goodness” (Clarke)? But what is this moral excellence or perfect
goodness? We have here the method and the end described, but not
the motive and ground. God does not love himself for his love, but
he loves himself for his holiness. Those who maintain that love is
self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that
holiness is God’s love for himself, must still admit that this
self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the
standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence.
G. B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 364, tells us that “God’s
righteousness is the self-respect of perfect love.” Miller,
Evolution of Love, 53—“Self-love is that kind of action which in a
perfect being actualizes, in a finite being seeks to actualize, a
perfect or ideal self.” In other words, love is self-affirmation.
But we object that self-love is not _love_ at all, because there
is in it no self-communicating. If holiness is in any sense a form
or manifestation of love—a question which we have yet to
consider—it is certainly not a unitarian and utilitarian
self-love, which would be identical with selfishness, but rather
an affection which implies trinitarian otherness and the
maintenance of self as an ideal object. This appears to be the
meaning of Jonathan Edwards, in his Essay on the Trinity (ed.
Fisher), 79—“All love respects another that is the beloved. By
love the apostle certainly means something beside that which is
commonly called self-love: that is very improperly called love,
and is a thing of an exceeding diverse nature from the affection
or virtue of love the apostle is speaking of.” Yet we shall see
that while Jonathan Edwards denies holiness to be a unitarian and
utilitarian self-love, he regards its very essence to be God’s
trinitarian love for himself as a being of perfect moral
excellence.
Ritschl’s lack of trinitarian conviction makes it impossible for
him to furnish any proper ground for either love or holiness in
the nature of God. Ritschl holds that Christ as a person is an end
in himself; he realized his own ideal; he developed his own
personality; he reached his own perfection in his work for man; he
is not merely a means toward the end of man’s salvation. But when
Ritschl comes to his doctrine of God, he is strangely inconsistent
with all this, for he fails to represent God as having any end in
himself, and deals with him simply as a means toward the kingdom
of God as an end. Garvie, Ritschlian Theology, 256, 278, 279, well
points out that personality means self-possession as well as
self-communication, distinction from others as well as union with
others. Ritschl does not see that God’s love is primarily directed
towards his Son, and only secondarily directed toward the
Christian community. So he ignores the immanent Trinity. Before
self-communication there must be self-maintenance. Otherwise God
gives up his independence and makes created existence necessary.
(_d_) Holiness is not identical with, or a manifestation of, love. Since
self-maintenance must precede self-impartation, and since benevolence has
its object, motive, standard and limit in righteousness, holiness the
self-affirming attribute can in no way be resolved into love the
self-communicating.
That holiness is a form of love is the doctrine of Jonathan
Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (ed. Fisher), 97—“’Tis in God’s
infinite love to himself that his holiness consists. As all
creature holiness is to be resolved into love, as the Scripture
teaches us, so doth the holiness of God himself consist in
infinite love to himself. God’s holiness is the infinite beauty
and excellence of his nature, and God’s excellency consists in his
love to himself.” In his treatise on The Nature of Virtue,
Jonathan Edwards defines virtue as regard for being in general. He
considers that God’s love is first of all directed toward himself
as having the greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily
directed towards his creatures whose quantity of being is
infinitesimal as compared with his. God therefore finds his chief
end in himself, and God’s self-love is his holiness. This
principle has permeated and dominated subsequent New England
theology, from Samuel Hopkins, Works, 2:9-66, who maintains that
holiness = love of being in general, to Horace Bushnell, Vicarious
Sacrifice, who declares: “Righteousness, transferred into a word
of the affections, is love; and love, translated back into a word
of the conscience, is righteousness; the eternal law of right is
only another conception of the law of love; the two principles,
right and love, appear exactly to measure each other.” So Park,
Discourses, 155-180.
Similar doctrine is taught by Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, 93,
184—“Love unites existence for self with existence for others,
self-assertion and self-impartation.... Self-love in God is not
selfishness, because he is the original and necessary seat of good
in general, universal good. God guards his honor even in giving
himself to others.... Love is the power and desire to be one’s
self while in another, and while one’s self to be in another who
is taken into the heart as an end.... I am to love my neighbor
only as myself.... Virtue however requires not only good will, but
the willing of the right thing.” So Newman Smyth, Christian
Ethics, 226-239, holds that 1. Love is self-affirmation. Hence he
maintains that holiness or self-respect is involved in love.
Righteousness is not an independent excellence to be contrasted
with or put in opposition to benevolence; it is an essential part
of love. 2. Love is self-impartation. The only limit is ethical.
Here is an ever deepening immanence, yet always some transcendence
of God, for God cannot deny himself. 3. Love is self-finding in
another. Vicariousness belongs to love. We reply to both Dorner
and Smyth that their acknowledgment that love has its condition,
limit, motive, object and standard, shows that there is a
principle higher than love, and which regulates love. This
principle is recognized as ethical. It is identical with the
right. God cannot deny himself because he is fundamentally the
right. This self-affirmation is holiness, and holiness cannot be a
part of love, or a form of love, because it conditions and
dominates love. To call it benevolence is to ignore its majestic
distinctness and to imperil its legitimate supremacy.
God must first maintain his own being before he can give to
another, and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive
in the worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,
because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a
standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be
itself love, but must be holiness. We agree with Clarke, Christian
Theology, 92, that “love is the desire to impart holiness.” Love
is a means to holiness, and holiness is therefore the supreme good
and something higher than mere love. It is not true, _vice versa_,
that holiness is the desire to impart love, or that holiness is a
means to love. Instead then of saying, with Clarke, that “holiness
is central in God, but love is central in holiness,” we should
prefer to say: “Love is central in God, but holiness is central in
love,” though in this case we should use the term love as
including self-love. It is still better not to use the word love
at all as referring to God’s regard for himself. In ordinary
usage, love means only regard for another and self-communication
to that other. To embrace in it God’s self-affirmation is to
misinterpret holiness and to regard it as a means to an end,
instead of making it what it really is, the superior object, and
the regulative principle, of love.
That which lays down the norm or standard for love must be the
superior of love. When we forget that “Righteousness and justice
are the foundation of his throne”_ (Ps. 97:2)_, we lose one of the
chief landmarks of Christian doctrine and involve ourselves in a
mist of error. _Rev. 4:3—_“there was a rainbow round about the
throne” = in the midst of the rainbow of pardon and peace there is
a throne of holiness and judgment. In _Mat. 6:9, 10, _“Thy kingdom
come” is not the first petition, but rather, “Hallowed be thy
name.” It is a false idea of the divine simplicity which would
reduce the attributes to one. Self-assertion is not a form of
self-impartation. Not sentiency, a state of the sensibility, even
though it be the purest benevolence, is the fundamental thing, but
rather activity of will and a right direction of that will. Hodge,
Essays, 133-136, 262-273, shows well that holy love is a love
controlled by holiness. Holiness is not a mere means to happiness.
To be happy is not the ultimate reason for being holy. Right and
wrong are not matters of profit and loss. To be told that God is
only benevolence, and that he punishes only when the happiness of
the universe requires it, destroys our whole allegiance to God and
does violence to the constitution of our nature.
That God is only love has been called “the doctrine of the
papahood of God.” God is “a summer ocean of kindliness, never
agitated by storms” (Dale, Ephesians, 59). But Jesus gives us the
best idea of God, and in him we find, not only pity, but at times
moral indignation. _John 17:11—_“Holy Father” = more than love.
Love can be exercised by God only when it is right love. Holiness
is the track on which the engine of love must run. The track
cannot be the engine. If either includes the other, then it is
holiness that includes love, since holiness is the maintenance of
God’s perfection, and perfection involves love. He that is holy
affirms himself also as the perfect love. If love were
fundamental, there would be nothing to give, and so love would be
vain and worthless. There can be no giving of self, without a
previous self-affirming. God is not holy because he loves, but he
loves because he is holy. Love cannot direct itself; it is under
bonds to holiness. Justice is not dependent on love for its right
to be. Stephen G. Barnes: “Mere good will is not the sole content
of the law; it is insufficient in times of fiery trial; it is
inadequate as a basis for retribution. Love needs justice, and
justice needs love; both are commanded in God’s law and are
perfectly revealed in God’s character.”
There may be a friction between a man’s two hands, and there may
be a conflict between a man’s conscience and his will, between his
intellect and his affection. Force is God’s energy under
resistance, the resistance as well as the energy being his. So,
upon occasion of man’s sin, holiness and love in God become
opposite poles or forces. The first and most serious effect of sin
is not its effect upon man, but its effect upon God. Holiness
necessarily requires suffering, and love endures it. This eternal
suffering of God on account of sin is the atonement, and the
incarnate Christ only shows what has been in the heart of God from
the beginning. To make holiness a form of love is really to deny
its existence, and with this to deny that any atonement is
necessary for man’s salvation. If holiness is the same as love,
how is it that the classic world, that knew of God’s holiness, did
not also know of his love? The ethics here reminds one of Abraham
Lincoln’s meat broth that was made of the shadow of a pigeon that
died of starvation. Holiness that is only good will is not
holiness at all, for it lacks the essential elements of purity and
righteousness.
At the railway switching grounds east of Rochester, there is a man
whose duty it is to move a bar of iron two or three inches to the
left or to the right. So he determines whether a train shall go
toward New York or toward Washington, toward New Orleans or San
Francisco. Our conclusion at this point in our theology will
similarly determine what our future system will be. The principle
that holiness is a manifestation of love, or a form of
benevolence, leads to the conclusions that happiness is the only
good, and the only end; that law is a mere expedient for the
securing of happiness; that penalty is simply deterrent or
reformatory in its aim; that no atonement needs to be offered to
God for human sin; that eternal retribution cannot be vindicated,
since there is no hope of reform. This view ignores the testimony
of conscience and of Scripture that sin is intrinsically
ill-deserving, and must be punished on that account, not because
punishment will work good to the universe,—indeed, it could not
work good to the universe, unless it were just and right in
itself. It ignores the fact that mercy is optional with God, while
holiness is invariable; that punishment is many times traced to
God’s holiness, but never to God’s love; that God is not simply
love but light—moral light—and therefore is “a consuming fire”_
(Heb. 12:29)_ to all iniquity. Love chastens (_Heb. 12:6_), but
only holiness punishes (_Jer. 10:24—_“correct me, but in measure;
not in thine anger”; _Ez. 28:22—_“I shall have executed judgments
in her, and shall be sanctified in her”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment
“I do not this for your sake, but for my holy name”; _1 John
1:5—_“God is light, and in him is no darkness”—moral darkness;
_Rev. 15:1, 4—_“the wrath of God ... thou only art holy ... thy
righteous acts have been made manifest”; _16:5—_“righteous art
thou ... because thou didst thus judge”; _19:2—_“true and
righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great
harlot”_)._ See Hovey, God with Us, 187-221; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 2:80-82; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 154,
155, 346-353; Lange, Pos. Dogmatik, 203.
B. Positively, that holiness is
(_a_) Purity of substance.—In God’s moral nature, as necessarily acting,
there are indeed the two elements of willing and being. But the passive
logically precedes the active; being comes before willing; God _is_ pure
before he _wills_ purity. Since purity, however, in ordinary usage is a
negative term and means only freedom from stain or wrong, we must include
in it also the positive idea of moral rightness. God is holy in that he is
the source and standard of the right.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 80—“Holiness is moral purity,
not only in the sense of absence of all moral stain, but of
complacency in all moral good.” Shedd, Dogm. Theology,
1:362—“Holiness in God is conformity to his own perfect nature.
The only rule for the divine will is the divine reason; and the
divine reason prescribes everything that is befitting an infinite
Being to do. God is not under law, nor above law. He _is_ law. He
is righteous by nature and necessity.... God is the source and
author of law for all moral beings.” We may better Shedd’s
definition by saying that holiness is that attribute in virtue of
which God’s being and God’s will eternally conform to each other.
In thus maintaining that holy being logically precedes holy
willing, we differ from the view of Lotze, Philos. of Religion,
139—“Such will of God no more follows from his nature as secondary
to it, or precedes it as primary to it than, in motion, direction
can be antecedent or subsequent to velocity.” Bowne, Philos. of
Theism, 16—“God’s nature = a fixed law of activity or mode of
manifestation.... But laws of thought are no limitation, because
they are simply modes of thought-activity. They do not _rule_
intellect, but only express what intellect _is_.”
In spite of these utterances of Lotze and of Bowne, we must
maintain that, as truth of being logically precedes truth of
knowing, and as a loving nature precedes loving emotions, so
purity of substance precedes purity of will. The opposite doctrine
leads to such utterances as that of Whedon (On the Will, 316):
“God is holy, in that he freely chooses to make his own happiness
in eternal right. Whether he could not make himself equally happy
in wrong is more than we can say.... Infinite wisdom and infinite
holiness consist in, and result from, God’s volitions eternally.”
Whedon therefore believes, not in God’s _unchangeableness_, but in
God’s _unchangingness_. He cannot say whether motives may not at
some time prove strongest for divine apostasy to evil. The
essential holiness of God affords no basis for certainty. Here we
have to rely on our faith, more than on the object of faith; see
H. B. Smith, Review of Whedon, in Faith and Philosophy, 355-399.
As we said with regard to truth, so here we say with regard to
holiness, that to make holiness a matter of mere will, instead of
regarding it as a characteristic of God’s being, is to deny that
anything is holy in itself. If God can make impurity to be purity,
then God in himself is indifferent to purity or impurity, and he
ceases therefore to be God. Robert Browning, A Soul’s Tragedy,
223—“I trust in God—the Right shall be the Right And other than
the Wrong, while He endures.” P. S. Moxom: “Revelation is a
disclosure of the divine righteousness. We do not add to the
thought when we say that it is also a disclosure of the divine
love, for love is a manifestation or realization of that rightness
of relations which righteousness is.” H. B. Smith, System,
223-231—“Virtue = love for both happiness and holiness, yet
holiness as ultimate,—love to the highest Person and to his ends
and objects.”
(_b_) Energy of will.—This purity is not simply a passive and dead
quality; it is the attribute of a personal being; it is penetrated and
pervaded by will. Holiness is the free moral movement of the Godhead.
As there is a higher Mind than our mind, and a greater Heart than
our heart, so there is a grander Will than our will. Holiness
contains this element of will, although it is a will which
expresses nature, instead of causing nature. It is not a still and
moveless purity, like the whiteness of the new-fallen snow, or the
stainless blue of the summer sky. It is the most tremendous of
energies, in unsleeping movement. It is “a glassy sea”_ (Rev.
15:2)_, but “a glassy sea mingled with fire.” A. J. Gordon:
“Holiness is not a dead-white purity, the perfection of the
faultless marble statue. Life, as well as purity, enters into the
idea of holiness. They who are ‘without fault before the throne’
are they who ‘follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth’—holy
activity attending and expressing their holy state.” Martensen,
Christian Ethics, 62, 63—“God is the perfect unity of the
ethically necessary and the ethically free”; “God cannot do
otherwise than will his own essential nature.” See Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 141; and on the Holiness of Christ, see
Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, 203-241.
The centre of personality is will. Knowing has its end in feeling,
and feeling has its end in willing. Hence I must make feeling
subordinate to willing, and happiness to righteousness. I must
will with God and for God, and must use all my influence over
others to make them like God in holiness. William James, Will to
Believe, 123—“Mind must first get its impression from the object;
then define what that object is and what active measures its
presence demands; and finally react.... All faiths and
philosophies, moods and systems, subserve and pass into a third
stage, the stage of action.” What is true of man is even more true
of God. All the wills of men combined, aye, even the whole moving
energy of humanity in all climes and ages, is as nothing compared
with the extent and intensity of God’s willing. The whole momentum
of God’s being is behind moral law. That law is his
self-expression. His beneficent yet also his terrible arm is ever
defending and enforcing it. God must maintain his holiness, for
this is his very Godhead. If he did not maintain it, love would
have nothing to give away, or to make others partakers of.
Does God will the good because it is the good, or is the good good
because God wills it? In the former case, there would seem to be a
good above God; in the latter case, good is something arbitrary
and changeable. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 186, 187, says that neither of
these is true; he holds that there is no _a priori_ good before
the willing of it, and he also holds that will without direction
is not will; the good is good for God, not _before_, but _in_, his
self-determination. Dorner, System Doctrine, 1:432, holds on the
contrary that both these are true, because God has no mere simple
form of being, whether necessary or free, but rather a manifoldly
diverse being, absolutely correlated however, and reciprocally
conditioning itself,—that is, a trinitarian being, both necessary
and free. We side with Dorner here, and claim that the belief that
God’s will is the executive of God’s being is necessary to a
correct ethics and to a correct theology. Celsus justified
polytheism by holding that whatever is a part of God reveals God,
serves God, and therefore may rationally be worshiped.
Christianity he excepted from this wide toleration, because it
worshiped a jealous God who was not content to be one of many. But
this jealousy really signifies that God is a Being to whom moral
distinctions are real. The God of Celsus, the God of pantheism, is
not jealous, because he is not the Holy One, but simply the
Absolute. The category of the ethical is merged in the category of
being; see Bruce, Apologetics, 16. The great lack of modern
theology is precisely this ethical lack; holiness is merged in
benevolence; there is no proper recognition of God’s
righteousness. _John 17:25—_“O righteous Father, the world knew
thee not”—is a text as true to-day as in Jesus’ time. See Issel,
Begriff der Heiligkeit in N. T., 41, 84, who defines holiness in
God as “the ethical perfection of God in its exaltation above all
that is sinful,” and holiness in men as “the condition
corresponding to that of God, in which man keeps himself pure from
sin.”
(_c_) Self-affirmation.—Holiness is God’s self-willing. His own purity is
the supreme object of his regard and maintenance. God is holy, in that his
infinite moral excellence affirms and asserts itself as the highest
possible motive and end. Like truth and love, this attribute can be
understood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Holiness is purity willing itself. We have an analogy in man’s
duty of self-preservation, self-respect, self-assertion. Virtue is
bound to maintain and defend itself, as in the case of Job. In his
best moments, the Christian feels that purity is not simply the
negation of sin, but the affirmation of an inward and divine
principle of righteousness. Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
1:137—“Holiness is the perfect agreement of the divine willing
with the divine being; for as the personal creature is holy when
it wills and determines itself as God wills, so is God the holy
one because he wills himself as what he is (or, to be what he is).
In virtue of this attribute, God excludes from himself everything
that contradicts his nature, and affirms himself in his absolutely
good being—his being like himself.” Tholuck on Romans, 5th ed.,
151—“The term holiness should be used to indicate a relation of
God to himself. That is holy which, undisturbed from without, is
wholly like itself.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:456—“It is the
part of goodness to protect goodness.” We shall see, when we
consider the doctrine of the Trinity, that that doctrine has close
relations to the doctrine of the immanent attributes. It is in the
Son that God has a perfect object of will, as well as of knowledge
and love.
The object of God’s willing in eternity past can be nothing
outside of himself. It must be the highest of all things. We see
what it must be, only when we remember that the right is the
unconditional imperative of our moral nature. Since we are made in
his image we must conclude that God eternally wills righteousness.
Not all God’s acts are acts of love, but all are acts of holiness.
The self-respect, self-preservation, self-affirmation,
self-assertion, self-vindication, which we call God’s holiness, is
only faintly reflected in such utterances as _Job 27:5, 6—_“Till I
die I will not put away mine integrity from me. My righteousness I
hold fast, and will not let it go”; _31:37—_“I would declare unto
him the number of my steps; as a prince would I go near unto him.”
The fact that the Spirit of God is denominated the Holy Spirit
should teach us what is God’s essential nature, and the
requisition that we should be holy as he is holy should teach us
what is the true standard of human duty and object of human
ambition. God’s holiness moreover, since it is self-affirmation,
furnishes the guarantee that God’s love will not fail to secure
its end, and that all things will serve his purpose. _Rom.
11:36—_“For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things.
To him be the glory for ever. Amen.” On the whole subject of
Holiness, as an attribute of God, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
Religion, 188-200, and Christ in Creation, 388-405; Delitzsch,
art. Heiligkeit, in Herzog, Realencyclop.; Baudissin, Begriff der
Heiligkeit im A. T.,—synopsis in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:169;
Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 224-234; E. B. Coe, in Presb.
and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:42-47; and articles on Holiness in O. T.,
and Holiness in N. T., in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.
VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.
First Division.—Attributes having relation to Time and Space.
1. Eternity.
By this we mean that God’s nature (_a_) is without beginning or end; (_b_)
is free from all succession of time; and (_c_) contains in itself the
cause of time.
_Deut. 32:40—_“For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live
forever....”; _Ps. 90:2—_“Before the mountains ... from
everlasting ... thou art God”; _102:27—_“thy years shall have no
end”; _Is. 41:4—_“I Jehovah, the first, and with the last”; _1
Cor. 2:7_—πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων—“before the worlds” or “ages” = πρὸ
καταβολῆς κόσμου—“before the foundation of the world”_ (Eph.
1:4)_. _1 Tim. 1:17_—Βασιλεῖ τῶν αἰώνων—“King of the ages” (so
also _Rev. 15:8_). _1 Tim. 6:16—_“who only hath immortality.”
_Rev. 1:8—_“the Alpha and the Omega.” Dorner: “We must not make
Kronos (time) and Uranos (space) earlier divinities before God.”
They are among the “all things” that were “made by him ”_ (John
1:3)_. Yet time and space are not _substances_; neither are they
_attributes_ (qualities of substance); they are rather _relations_
of finite existence. (Porter, Human Intellect, 568, prefers to
call time and space “_correlates_ to beings and events.”) With
finite existence they come into being; they are not mere
regulative conceptions of our minds; they exist objectively,
whether we perceive them or not. Ladd: “Time is the mental
presupposition of the duration of events and of objects. Time is
not an entity, or it would be necessary to suppose some other time
in which it endures. We think of space and time as unconditional,
because they furnish the conditions of our knowledge. The age of a
son is conditioned on the age of his father. The conditions
themselves cannot be conditioned. Space and time are mental forms,
but not only that. There is an extra-mental something in the case
of space and time, as in the case of sound.”
_Ex. 3:14—_“I am”—involves eternity. _Ps. 102:12-14—_“But thou, O
Jehovah, wilt abide forever.... Thou wilt arise, and have mercy
upon Zion; for it is time to have pity upon her.... For thy
servants ... have pity upon her dust” = because God is eternal, he
will have compassion upon Zion: he will do this, for even we, her
children, love her very dust. _Jude 25—_“glory, majesty, dominion
and power, before all time, and now, and for evermore.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:165—“God is ‘King of the æons’_ (1
Tim. 1:17)_, because he distinguishes, in his thinking, his
eternal inner essence from his changeable working in the world. He
is not merged in the process.” Edwards the younger describes
timelessness as “the immediate and invariable possession of the
whole unlimited life together and at once.” Tyler, Greek Poets,
148—“The heathen gods had only existence without end. The Greeks
seem never to have conceived of existence without beginning.” On
precognition as connected with the so-called future already
existing, and on apparent time progression as a subjective human
sensation and not inherent in the universe as it exists in an
infinite Mind, see Myers, Human Personality, 2:262 _sq._ Tennyson,
Life, 1:322—“For was and is and will be are but is: And all
creation is one act at once, The birth of light; but we that are
not all, As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live
perforce from thought to thought, and make The act a phantom of
succession: there Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time.”
Augustine: “Mundus non in tempore, sed cum tempore, factus est.”
There is no meaning to the question: Why did creation take place
when it did rather than earlier? or the question: What was God
doing before creation? These questions presuppose an independent
time in which God created—a time before time. On the other hand,
creation did not take place at any time, but God gave both the
world and time their existence. Royce, World and Individual,
2:111-115—“Time is the form of the will, as space is the form of
the intellect (_cf._ 124, 133). Time runs only in one direction
(unlike space), toward fulfilment of striving or expectation. In
pursuing its goals, the self lives in time. Every _now_ is also a
succession, as is illustrated in any melody. To God the universe
is ‘totum simul’, as to us any succession is one whole. 233—Death
is a change in the time-span—the minimum of time in which a
succession can appear as a completed whole. To God ‘a thousand
years’ are ‘as one day’_ (2 Pet. 3:8)_. 419—God, In his totality
as the Absolute Being, is conscious not, _in_ time, but _of_ time,
and of all that infinite time contains. In time there follow, in
their sequence, the chords of his endless symphony. For him is
this whole symphony of life at once.... You unite present, past
and future in a single consciousness whenever you hear any three
successive words, for one is past, another is present, at the same
time that a third is future. So God unites in timeless perception
the whole succession of finite events.... The single notes are not
lost in the melody. You are in God, but you are not lost in God.”
Mozart, quoted in Wm. James, Principles of Psychology, 1:255—“All
the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong
dream. But the best of all is _the hearing of it all at once_.”
Eternity is infinity in its relation to time. It implies that God’s nature
is not subject to the law of time. God is not in time. It is more correct
to say that time is in God. Although there is logical succession in God’s
thoughts, there is no chronological succession.
Time is duration measured by successions. Duration without
succession would still be duration, though it would be
immeasurable. Reid, Intellectual Powers, essay 3, chap. 5—“We may
measure duration by the succession of thoughts in the mind, as we
measure length by inches or feet, but the notion or idea of
duration must be antecedent to the mensuration of it, as the
notion of length is antecedent to its being measured.” God is not
under the law of time. Solly, The Will, 254—“God looks through
time as we look through space.” Murphy, Scientific Bases,
90—“Eternity is not, as men believe, Before and after us, an
endless line. No, ’tis a circle. Infinitely great—All the
circumference with creations thronged: God at the centre dwells,
beholding all. And as we move in this eternal round, The finite
portion which alone we see Behind us, is the past; what lies
before We call the future. But to him who dwells Far at the
centre, equally remote From every point of the circumference, Both
are alike, the future and the past.” Vaughan (1655): “I saw
Eternity the other night. Like a great ring of pure and endless
light. And calm as it was bright; and round beneath it Time in
hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow
moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled.”
We cannot have derived from experience our idea of eternal
duration in the past, for experience gives us only duration that
has had beginning. The idea of duration as without beginning must
therefore be given us by intuition. Case, Physical Realism, 379,
380—“Time is the continuance, or continual duration, of the
universe.” Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 39—Consider time as a
stream—under a spatial form: “If you take time as a relation
between units without duration, then the whole time has no
duration, and is not time at all. But if you give duration to the
whole time, then at once the units themselves are found to possess
it, and they cease to be units.” The _now_ is not time, unless it
turns past into future, and this is a process. The now then
consists of nows, and these nows are undiscoverable. The unit is
nothing but its own relation to something beyond, something not
discoverable. Time therefore is not real, but is appearance.
John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:185—“That which grasps and correlates
objects in space cannot itself be one of the things of space; that
which apprehends and connects events as succeeding each other in
time must itself stand above the succession or stream of events.
In being able to measure them, it cannot be flowing with them.
There could not be for self-consciousness any such thing as time,
if it were not, in one aspect of it, above time, if it did not
belong to an order which is or has in it an element which is
eternal.... As taken up into thought, succession is not
successive.” A. H. Strong, Historical Discourse, May 9, 1900—“God
is above space and time, and we are in God. We mark the passage of
time, and we write our histories. But we can do this, only because
in our highest being we do not belong to space and time, but have
in us a bit of eternity. John Caird tells us that we could not
perceive the flowing of the stream if we were ourselves a part of
the current; only as we have our feet planted on solid rock, can
we observe that the water rushes by. We belong to God; we are akin
to God; and while the world passes away and the lust thereof, he
that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” J. Estlin Carpenter
and P. H. Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 10—“Dante speaks of God
as him in whom ‘every _where_ and every _when_ are focused in a
point’, that is, to whom every season is _now_ and every place is
_here_.”
Amiel’s Journal: “Time is the supreme illusion. It is the inner
prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode by which we
perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.... Time is the
successive dispersion of being, just as speech is the successive
analysis of an intuition, or of an act of the will. In itself it
is relative and negative, and it disappears within the absolute
Being.... Time and space are fragments of the Infinite for the use
of finite creatures. God permits them that he may not be alone.
They are the mode under which creatures are possible and
conceivable.... If the universe subsists, it is because the
eternal Mind loves to perceive its own content, in all its wealth
and expression, especially in its stages of preparation.... The
radiations of our mind are imperfect reflections from the great
show of fireworks set in motion by Brahma, and great art is great
only because of its conformities with the divine order—with that
which is.”
Yet we are far from saying that time, now that it exists, has no objective
reality to God. To him, past, present, and future are “one eternal now,”
not in the sense that there is no distinction between them, but only in
the sense that he sees past and future as vividly as he sees the present.
With creation time began, and since the successions of history are
veritable successions, he who sees according to truth must recognize them.
Thomas Carlyle calls God “the Eternal Now.” Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 30—“God is not contemptuous of time.... One day is with
the Lord as a thousand years. He values the infinitesimal in time,
even as he does in space. Hence the patience, the long-suffering,
the expectation, of God.” We are reminded of the inscription on
the sun-dial, in which it is said of the hours: “Pereunt et
imputantur”—“They pass by, and they are charged to our account.” A
certain preacher remarked on the wisdom of God which has so
arranged that the moments of time come successively and not
simultaneously, and thus prevent infinite confusion! Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:344, illustrates God’s eternity by the two ways in which
a person may see a procession: first from a doorway in the street
through which the procession is passing; and secondly, from the
top of a steeple which commands a view of the whole procession at
the same instant.
S. E. Meze, quoted in Royce, Conception of God, 40—“As if all of
us were cylinders, with their ends removed, moving through the
waters of some placid lake. To the cylinders the waters seem to
move. What has passed is a memory, what is to come is doubtful.
But the lake knows that all the water is equally real, and that it
is quiet, immovable, unruffled. Speaking technically, time is no
reality. Things _seem_ past and future, and, in a sense,
non-existent to us, but, in fact, they are just as genuinely real
as the present is.” Yet even here there is an order. You cannot
play a symphony backward and have music. This qualification at
least must be put upon the words of Berkeley; “A succession of
ideas I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible
measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.”
Finney, quoted in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1877:722—“Eternity to us means
all past, present and future duration. But to God it means only
now. Duration and space, as they respect his existence, mean
infinitely different things from what they do when they respect
our existence. God’s existence and his acts, as they respect
finite existence, have relation to time and space. But as they
respect his own existence, everything is _here_ and _now_. With
respect to all finite existences, God can say: I was, I am, I
shall be, I will do; but with respect to his own existence, all
that he can say is: I am, I do.”
Edwards the younger, Works, 1:386, 387—“There is no succession in
the divine mind; therefore no new operations take place. All the
divine acts are from eternity, nor is there any time with God. The
_effects_ of these divine acts do indeed all take place in time
and in a succession. If it should be said that on this supposition
the effects take place not till long after the acts by which they
are produced, I answer that they do so in our view, but not in the
view of God. With him there is no time; no before or after with
respect to time: nor has time any existence in the divine mind, or
in the nature of things independently of the minds and perceptions
of creatures; but it depends on the succession of those
perceptions.” We must qualify this statement of the younger
Edwards by the following from Julius Müller: “If God’s working can
have no relation to time, then all bonds of union between God and
the world are snapped asunder.”
It is an interesting question whether the human spirit is capable
of timeless existence, and whether the conception of time is
purely physical. In dreams we seem to lose sight of succession; in
extreme pain an age is compressed into a minute. Does this throw
light upon the nature of prophecy? Is the soul of the prophet rapt
into God’s timeless existence and vision? It is doubtful whether
_Rev. 10:6—_“there shall be time no longer” can be relied upon to
prove the affirmative; for the Rev. Vers. marg. and the American
Revisers translate “there shall be delay no longer.” Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:147—“All self-consciousness is a victory over
time.” So with memory; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:471. On “the
death-vision of one’s whole existence,” see Frances Kemble
Butler’s experience in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:351—“Here there is
succession and series, only so exceedingly rapid as to seem
simultaneous.” This rapidity however is so great as to show that
each man can at the last be judged in an instant. On space and
time as unlimited, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 564-566. On the
conception of eternity, see Mansel, Lectures, Essays and Reviews,
111-126, and Modern Spiritualism, 255-292; New Englander, April,
1875: art. on the Metaphysical Idea of Eternity. For practical
lessons from the Eternity of God, see Park, Discourses, 137-154;
Westcott, Some Lessons of the Rev. Vers., (Pott, N. Y., 1897),
187—with comments on αἰῶνες in _Eph. 3:21_, _Heb. 11:3_, _Rev. 4_;
_10, 11_—“the universe under the aspect of time.”
2. Immensity.
By this we mean that God’s nature (_a_) is without extension; (_b_) is
subject to no limitations of space; and (_c_) contains in itself the cause
of space.
_1 Kings 8:27—_“behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot
contain thee.” Space is a creation of God; _Rom. 8:39—_“nor height
nor depth, nor any other creature.” Zahn, Bib. Dogmatik,
149—“Scripture does not teach the immanence of God in the world,
but the immanence of the world in God.” Dante does not put God,
but Satan at the centre; and Satan, being at the centre, is
crushed with the whole weight of the universe. God is the Being
who encompasses all. All things exist in him. E. G. Robinson:
“Space is a relation; God is the author of relations and of our
modes of thought; therefore God is the author of space. Space
conditions our thought, but it does not condition God’s thought.”
Jonathan Edwards: “Place itself is mental, and within and without
are mental conceptions.... When I say the material universe exists
only in the mind, I mean that it is absolutely dependent on the
conception of the mind for its existence, and does not exist as
spirits do, whose existence does not consist in, nor in dependence
on, the conception of other minds.” H. M. Stanley, on Space and
Science, in Philosophical Rev., Nov. 1898:615—“Space is not full
of things, but things are spaceful.... Space is a form of dynamic
appearance.” Bradley carries the ideality of space to an extreme,
when, in his Appearance and Reality, 35-38, he tells us: Space is
not a mere relation, for it has parts, and what can be the parts
of a relation? But space is nothing but a relation, for it is
lengths of lengths of—nothing that we can find. We can find no
terms either inside or outside. Space, to be space, must have
space outside itself. Bradley therefore concludes that space is
not reality but only appearance.
Immensity is infinity in its relation to space. God’s nature is not
subject to the law of space. God is not in space. It is more correct to
say that space is in God. Yet space has an objective reality to God. With
creation space began to be, and since God sees according to truth, he
recognizes relations of space in his creation.
Many of the remarks made in explanation of time apply equally to
space. Space is not a substance nor an attribute, but a relation.
It exists so soon as extended matter exists, and exists as its
necessary condition, whether our minds perceive it or not. Reid,
Intellectual Powers, essay 2, chap. 9—“Space is not so properly an
object of sense, as a necessary concomitant of the objects of
sight and touch.” When we see or touch body, we get the idea of
space in which the body exists, but the idea of space is not
furnished by the sense; it is an _a priori_ cognition of the
reason. Experience furnishes the occasion of its evolution, but
the mind evolves the conception by its own native energy.
Anselm, Proslogion, 19—“Nothing contains thee, but thou containest
all things.” Yet it is not precisely accurate to say that space is
in God, for this expression seems to intimate that God is a
greater space which somehow includes the less. God is rather
unspatial and is the Lord of space. The notion that space and the
divine immensity are identical leads to a materialistic conception
of God. Space is not an attribute of God, as Clarke maintained,
and no argument for the divine existence can be constructed from
this premise (see pages 85, 86). Martineau, Types, 1:138, 139,
170—“Malebranche said that God is the place of all spirits, as
space is the place of all bodies.... Descartes held that there is
no such thing as empty space. _Nothing_ cannot possibly have
extension. Wherever extension is, there must be _something_
extended. Hence the doctrine of a _plenum_, A _vacuum_ is
inconceivable.” Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 87—“According to
the ordinary view ... space _exists_, and things exist _in it_;
according to our view, only things exist, and _between them_
nothing exists, but space exists _in them_.”
Case, Physical Realism, 379, 380—“Space is the continuity, or
continuous extension, of the universe as one substance.” Ladd: “Is
space extended? Then it must be extended in some other space. That
other space is the space we are talking about. Space then is not
an entity, but a mental presupposition of the existence of
extended substance. Space and time are neither finite nor
infinite. Space has neither circumference nor centre,—its centre
would be everywhere. We cannot _imagine_ space at all. It is
simply a precondition of mind enabling us to perceive things.” In
Bib. Sac., 1890:415-444, art.: Is Space a Reality? Prof. Mead
opposes the doctrine that space is purely subjective, as taught by
Bowne; also the doctrine that space is a certain order of
relations among realities; that space is nothing apart from
things; but that things, when they exist, exist in certain
relations, and that the sum, or system, of these relations
constitutes space.
We prefer the view of Bowne, Metaphysics, 127, 137, 143, that
“Space is the form of objective experience, and is nothing in
abstraction from that experience.... It is a form of intuition,
and not a mode of existence. According to this view, things are
not in space and space-relations, but appear to be. In themselves
they are essentially non-spatial; but by their interactions with
one another, and with the mind, they give rise to the appearance
of a world of extended things in a common space. Space-predicates,
then, belong to phenomena only, and not to
things-in-themselves.... Apparent reality exists spatially; but
proper ontological reality exists spacelessly and without spatial
predicates.” For the view that space is relative, see also Cocker,
Theistic Conception of the World, 66-96; Calderwood, Philos. of
the Infinite, 331-335. _Per contra_, see Porter, Human Intellect,
662; Hazard, Letters on Causation in Willing, appendix; Bib. Sac.,
Oct. 1877:723; Gear, in Bap. Rev., July, 1880:434; Lowndes,
Philos. of Primary Beliefs, 144-161.
Second Division.—Attributes having relation to Creation.
1. Omnipresence.
By this we mean that God, in the totality of his essence, without
diffusion or expansion, multiplication or division, penetrates and fills
the universe in all its parts.
_Ps. 139:7 __sq.__—_“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or
whither shall I flee from thy presence?” _Jer. 23:23, 24—_“Am I a
God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off?... Do not I
fill heaven and earth?” _Acts 17:27, 28—_“he is not far from each
one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
Faber: “For God is never so far off As even to be near. He is
within. Our spirit is The home he holds most dear. To think of him
as by our side Is almost as untrue As to remove his shrine beyond
Those skies of starry blue. So all the while I thought myself
Homeless, forlorn and weary, Missing my joy, I walked the earth
Myself God’s sanctuary.” Henri Amiel: “From every point on earth
we are equally near to heaven and the infinite.” Tennyson, The
Higher Pantheism: “Speak to him then, for he hears, and spirit
with spirit can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than
hands and feet.” “As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart.”
The atheist wrote: “God is nowhere,” but his little daughter read
it: “God is now here,” and it converted him. The child however
sometimes asks: “If God is everywhere, how is there any room for
us?” and the only answer is that God is not a material but a
spiritual being, whose presence does not exclude finite existence
but rather makes such existence possible. This universal presence
of God had to be learned gradually. It required great faith in
Abraham to go out from Ur of the Chaldees, and yet to hold that
God would be with him in a distant land (_Heb. 11:8_). Jacob
learned that the heavenly ladder followed him wherever he went
(_Gen. 28:15_). Jesus taught that “neither in this mountain, nor
in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father”_ (John 4:21)_. Our
Lord’s mysterious comings and goings after his resurrection were
intended to teach his disciples that he was with them “always,
even unto the end of the world”_ (Mat. 28:20)_. The omnipresence
of Jesus demonstrates, _a fortiori_, the omnipresence of God.
In explanation of this attribute we may say:
(_a_) God’s omnipresence is not potential but essential.—We reject the
Socinian representation that God’s essence is in heaven, only his power on
earth. When God is said to “dwell in the heavens,” we are to understand
the language either as a symbolic expression of exaltation above earthly
things, or as a declaration that his most special and glorious
self-manifestations are to the spirits of heaven.
_Ps. 123:1—_“O thou that sittest in the heavens”; _113:5—_“That
hath his seat on high”; _Is. 57:15—_“the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity.” Mere potential omnipresence is Deistic as
well as Socinian. Like birds in the air or fish in the sea, “at
home, abroad, We are surrounded still with God.” We do not need to
go up to heaven to call him down, or into the abyss to call him up
(_Rom. 10:6, 7_). The best illustration is found in the presence
of the soul in every part of the body. Mind seems not confined to
the brain. Natural realism in philosophy, as distinguished from
idealism, requires that the mind should be at the point of contact
with the outer world, instead of having reports and ideas brought
to it in the brain; see Porter, Human Intellect, 149. All
believers in a soul regard the soul as at least present in all
parts of the brain, and this is a relative omnipresence no less
difficult in principle than its presence in all parts of the body.
An animal’s brain may be frozen into a piece solid as ice, yet,
after thawing, it will act as before: although freezing of the
whole body will cause death. If the immaterial principle were
confined to the brain we should expect freezing of the brain to
cause death. But if the soul may be omnipresent in the body or
even in the brain, the divine Spirit may be omnipresent in the
universe. Bowne, Metaphysics, 136—“If finite things are modes of
the infinite, each thing must be a mode of the entire infinite;
and the infinite must be present in its unity and completeness in
every finite thing, just as the entire soul is present in all its
acts.” This idealistic conception of the entire mind as present in
all its thoughts must be regarded as the best analogue to God’s
omnipresence in the universe. We object to the view that this
omnipresence is merely potential, as we find it in Clarke,
Christian Theology, 74—“We know, and only know, that God is able
to put forth all his power of action, without regard to place....
Omnipresence is an element in the immanence of God.... A local God
would be no real God. If he is not everywhere, he is not true God
anywhere. Omnipresence is implied in all providence, in all
prayer, in all communion with God and reliance on God.”
So long as it is conceded that consciousness is not confined to a
single point in the brain, the question whether other portions of
the brain or of the body are also the seat of consciousness may be
regarded as a purely academic one, and the answer need not affect
our present argument. The principle of omnipresence is granted
when once we hold that the soul is conscious at more than one
point of the physical organism. Yet the question suggested above
is an interesting one and with regard to it psychologists are
divided. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie (1892), 138-159,
holds that consciousness is correlated with the sum-total of
bodily processes, and with him agree Fechner and Wundt. “Pflüger
and Lewes say that as the hemispheres of the brain owe their
intelligence to the consciousness which we know to be there, so
the intelligence of the spinal cord’s acts must really be due to
the invisible presence of a consciousness lower in degree.”
Professor Brewer’s rattlesnake, after several hours of
decapitation, still struck at him with its bloody neck, when he
attempted to seize it by the tail. From the reaction of the frog’s
leg after decapitation may we not infer a certain consciousness?
“Robin, on tickling the breast of a criminal an hour after
decapitation, saw the arm and hand move toward the spot.” Hudson,
Demonstration of a Future Life, 239-249, quotes from Hammond,
Treatise on Insanity, chapter 2, to prove that the brain is not
the sole organ of the mind. Instinct does not reside exclusively
in the brain; it is seated in the _medulla oblongata_, or in the
spinal cord, or in both these organs. Objective mind, as Hudson
thinks, is the function of the physical brain, and it ceases when
the brain loses its vitality. Instinctive acts are performed by
animals after excision of the brain, and by human beings born
without brain. Johnson, in Andover Rev., April, 1890:421—“The
brain is not the only seat of consciousness. The same evidence
that points to the brain as the _principal_ seat of consciousness
points to the nerve-centres situated in the spinal cord or
elsewhere as the seat of a more or less _subordinate_
consciousness or intelligence.” Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 26—“I
do not take it for proved that consciousness is entirely confined
to the brain.”
In spite of these opinions, however, we must grant that the
general consensus among psychologists is upon the other side.
Dewey, Psychology, 349—“The sensory and motor nerves have points
of meeting in the spinal cord. When a stimulus is transferred from
a sensory nerve to a motor without the conscious intervention of
the mind, we have reflex action.... If something approaches the
eye, the stimulus is transferred to the spinal cord, and instead
of being continued to the brain and giving rise to a sensation, it
is discharged into a motor nerve and the eye is immediately
closed.... The reflex action in itself involves no consciousness.”
William James, Psychology, 1:16, 66, 134, 214—“The cortex of the
brain is the sole organ of consciousness in man.... If there be
any consciousness pertaining to the lower centres, it is a
consciousness of which the self knows nothing.... In lower animals
this may not be so much the case.... The seat of the mind, so far
as its dynamical relations are concerned, is somewhere in the
cortex of the brain.” See also C. A. Strong, Why the Mind has a
Body, 40-50.
(_b_) God’s omnipresence is not the presence of a part but of the whole of
God in every place.—This follows from the conception of God as incorporeal
We reject the materialistic representation that God is composed of
material elements which can be divided or sundered. There is no
multiplication or diffusion of his substance to correspond with the parts
of his dominions. The one essence of God is present at the same moment in
all.
_1 Kings 8:27—_“the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot
contain (circumscribe) thee.” God must be present in all his
essence and all his attributes in every place. He is “totus in
omni parte.” Alger, Poetry of the Orient: “Though God extends
beyond Creation’s rim, Each smallest atom holds the whole of him.”
From this it follows that the whole Logos can be united to and be
present in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills
and governs the whole universe; and so the whole Christ can be
united to, and can be present in, the single believer, as fully as
if that believer were the only one to receive of his fulness.
A. J. Gordon: “In mathematics the whole is equal to the sum of its
parts. But we know of the Spirit that every part is equal to the
whole. Every church, every true body of Jesus Christ, has just as
much of Christ as every other, and each has the whole Christ.”
_Mat. 13:20—_“where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.” “The parish priest of austerity
Climbed up in a high church steeple, To be nearer God so that he
might Hand his word down to the people. And in sermon script he
daily wrote What he thought was sent from heaven, And he dropt it
down on the people’s heads Two times one day in seven. In his age
God said, ‘Come down and die,’ And he cried out from the steeple,
‘Where art thou, Lord?’ And the Lord replied, ‘Down here among my
people.’ ”
(_c_) God’s omnipresence is not necessary but free.—We reject the
pantheistic notion that God is bound to the universe as the universe is
bound to God. God is immanent in the universe, not by compulsion, but by
the free act of his own will, and this immanence is qualified by his
transcendence.
God might at will cease to be omnipresent, for he could destroy
the universe; but while the universe exists, he is and must be in
all its parts. God is the life and law of the universe,—this is
the truth in pantheism. But he is also personal and free,—this
pantheism denies. Christianity holds to a free, as well as to an
essential, omnipresence—qualified and supplemented, however, by
God’s transcendence. The boasted truth in pantheism is an
elementary principle of Christianity, and is only the
stepping-stone to a nobler truth—God’s personal presence with his
church. The Talmud contrasts the worship of an idol and the
worship of Jehovah: “The idol seems so near, but is so far,
Jehovah seems so far, but is so near!” God’s omnipresence assures
us that he is present with us to hear, and present in every heart
and in the ends of the earth to answer, prayer. See Rogers,
Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 10; Bowne, Metaphysics, 136;
Charnock, Attributes, 1:363-405.
The Puritan turned from the moss-rose bud, saying: “I have learned
to call nothing on earth lovely.” But this is to despise not only
the workmanship but the presence of the Almighty. The least thing
in nature is worthy of study because it is the revelation of a
present God. The uniformity of nature and the reign of law are
nothing but the steady will of the omnipresent God. Gravitation is
God’s omnipresence in space, as evolution is God’s omnipresence in
time. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:73-“God being omnipresent,
contact with him may be sought at any moment in prayer and
contemplation; indeed, it will always be true that we live and
move and have our being in him, as the perennial and omnipresent
source of our existence.” _Rom. 10:6-8—_“Say not in thy heart, Who
shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, Who
shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from
the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth,
and in thy heart.” Lotze, Metaphysics, § 256, quoted in
Illingworth, Divine Immanence, 135, 136. Sunday-school scholar:
“Is God in my pocket?” “Certainly.” “No, he isn’t, for I haven’t
any pocket.” God is omnipresent so long as there is a universe,
but he ceases to be omnipresent when the universe ceases to be.
2. Omniscience.
By this we mean God’s perfect and eternal knowledge of all things which
are objects of knowledge, whether they be actual or possible, past,
present, or future.
God knows his inanimate creation: _Ps. 147:4—_“counteth the number
of the stars; He calleth them all by their names.” He has
knowledge of brute creatures: _Mat. 10:29_—sparrows—“not one of
them shall fall on the ground without your Father.” Of men and
their works: _Ps. 33:13-15—_“beholdeth all the sons of men ...
considereth all their works.” Of hearts of men and their thoughts:
_Acts 15:8—_“God, who knoweth the heart”; _Ps.
139:2—_“understandest my thought afar off.” Of our wants: _Mat.
6:8—_“knoweth what things ye have need of.” Of the least things:
_Mat. 10:30—_“the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Of
the past: _Mal. 3:16—_“book of remembrance.” Of the future: _Is.
46:9, 10—_“declaring the end from the beginning.” Of men’s future
free acts: _Is. 44:28—_“that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and
shall perform all my pleasure.” Of men’s future evil acts: _Acts
2:23—_“him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God.” Of the ideally possible: _1 Sam.
23:12—_“Will the men of Keilah deliver up me and my men into the
hands of Saul? And Jehovah said, They will deliver thee up” (_sc._
if thou remainest); _Mat. 11:23—_“if the mighty works had been
done in Sodom which were done in thee, it would have remained.”
From eternity: _Acts 15:18—_“the Lord, who maketh these things
known from of old.” Incomprehensible: _Ps. 139:6—_“Such knowledge
is too wonderful for me”; _Rom. 11:33—_“O the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.” Related to wisdom:
_Ps. 104:24—_“In wisdom hast thou made them all”; _Eph.
3:10—_“manifold wisdom of God.”
_Job 7:20—_“O thou watcher of men”; _Ps. 56:8—_“Thou numberest my
wanderings” = my whole life has been one continuous exile; “Put
thou my tears into thy bottle” = the skin bottle of the
east,—there are tears enough to fill one; “Are they not in thy
book?” = no tear has fallen to the ground unnoted,—God has
gathered them all. Paul Gerhardt: “Du zählst wie oft ein Christe
wein’, Und was sein Kummer sei; Kein stilles Thränlein ist so
klein, Du hebst und legst es bei.” _Heb. 4:13—_“there is no
creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are
naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to
do”—τετραχηλισμένα—with head bent back and neck laid bare, as
animals slaughtered in sacrifice, _or_ seized by the throat and
thrown on the back, so that the priest might discover whether
there was any blemish. Japanese proverb: “God has forgotten to
forget.”
(_a_) The omniscience of God may be argued from his omnipresence, as well
as from his truth or self-knowledge, in which the plan of creation has its
eternal ground, and from prophecy, which expresses God’s omniscience.
It is to be remembered that omniscience, as the designation of a
relative and transitive attribute, does not include God’s
self-knowledge. The term is used in the technical sense of God’s
knowledge of all things that pertain to the universe of his
creation. H. A. Gordon: “Light travels faster than sound. You can
see the flash of fire from the cannon’s mouth, a mile away,
considerably before the noise of the discharge reaches the ear.
God flashed the light of prediction upon the pages of his word,
and we see it. Wait a little and we see the event itself.”
Royce, The Conception of God, 9—“An omniscient being would be one
who simply found presented to him, not by virtue of fragmentary
and gradually completed processes of inquiry, but by virtue of an
all-embracing, direct and transparent insight into his own
truth—who found thus presented to him, I say, the complete, the
fulfilled answer to every genuinely rational question.”
Browning, Ferishtah’s Fancies, Plot-culture: “How will it fare
shouldst thou impress on me That certainly an Eye is over all And
each, to make the minute’s deed, word, thought As worthy of reward
and punishment? Shall I permit my sense an Eye-viewed shame, Broad
daylight perpetration,—so to speak,—I had not dared to breathe
within the Ear, With black night’s help around me?”
(_b_) Since it is free from all imperfection, God’s knowledge is
immediate, as distinguished from the knowledge that comes through sense or
imagination; simultaneous, as not acquired by successive observations, or
built up by processes of reasoning; distinct, as free from all vagueness
or confusion; true, as perfectly corresponding to the reality of things;
eternal, as comprehended in one timeless act of the divine mind.
An infinite mind must always act, and must always act in an
absolutely perfect manner. There is in God no sense, symbol,
memory, abstraction, growth, reflection, reasoning,—his knowledge
is all direct and without intermediaries. God was properly
represented by the ancient Egyptians, not as having eye, but as
being eye. His thoughts toward us are “more than can be numbered”_
(Ps. 40:5)_, not because there is succession in them, now a
remembering and now a forgetting, but because there is never a
moment of our existence in which we are out of his mind; he is
always thinking of us. See Charnock, Attributes, 1:406-497. _Gen.
16:13—_“Thou art a God that seeth.” Mivart, Lessons from Nature,
374—“Every creature of every order of existence, while its
existence is sustained, is so complacently contemplated by God,
that the intense and concentrated attention of all men of science
together upon it could but form an utterly inadequate symbol of
such divine contemplation.” So God’s scrutiny of every deed of
darkness is more searching than the gaze of a whole Coliseum of
spectators, and his eye is more watchful over the good than would
be the united care of all his hosts in heaven and earth.
Armstrong, God and the Soul: “God’s energy is concentrated
attention, attention concentrated everywhere. We can attend to two
or three things at once; the pianist plays and talks at the same
time; the magician does one thing while he seems to do another.
God attends to all things, does all things, at once.” Marie
Corelli, Master Christian, 104—“The biograph is a hint that every
scene of human life is reflected in a ceaseless moving panorama
_some where_, for the beholding of _some one_.” Wireless
telegraphy is a stupendous warning that from God no secrets are
hid, that “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed;
and hid, that shall not be known”_ (Mat. 10:26)_. The Röntgen
rays, which take photographs of our insides, right through our
clothes, and even in the darkness of midnight, show that to God
“the night shineth as the day”_ (Ps. 139:12)_.
Professor Mitchel’s equatorial telescope, slowly moving by
clockwork, toward sunset, suddenly touched the horizon and
disclosed a boy in a tree stealing apples, but the boy was all
unconscious that he was under the gaze of the astronomer. Nothing
was so fearful to the prisoner in the French _cachot_ as the eye
of the guard that never ceased to watch him in perfect silence
through the loophole in the door. As in the Roman empire the whole
world was to a malefactor one great prison, and in his flight to
the most distant lands the emperor could track him, so under the
government of God no sinner can escape the eye of his Judge. But
omnipresence is protective as well as detective. The text _Gen.
16:13—_“Thou, God, seest me”—has been used as a restraint from
evil more than as a stimulus to good. To the child of the devil it
should certainly be the former. But to the child of God it should
as certainly be the latter. God should not be regarded as an
exacting overseer or a standing threat, but rather as one who
understands us, loves us, and helps us. _Ps. 139:17, 18—_“How
precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the
sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than
the sand: When I awake, I am still with thee.”
(_c_) Since God knows things as they are, he knows the necessary sequences
of his creation as necessary, the free acts of his creatures as free, the
ideally possible as ideally possible.
God knows what would have taken place under circumstances not now
present; knows what the universe would have been, had he chosen a
different plan of creation; knows what our lives would have been,
had we made different decisions in the past (_Is. 48:18—_“Oh that
thou hadst hearkened ... then had thy peace been as a river”).
Clarke, Christian Theology, 77—“God has a double knowledge of his
universe. He knows it as it exists eternally in his mind, as his
own idea; and he knows it as actually existing in time and space,
a moving, changing, growing universe, with perpetual process of
succession. In his own idea, he knows it all at once; but he is
also aware of its perpetual becoming, and with reference to events
as they occur he has foreknowledge, present knowledge, and
knowledge afterwards.... He conceives of all things
simultaneously, but observes all things in their succession.”
Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—holds that God does not
temporally foreknow anything except as he is expressed in finite
beings, but yet that the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at
one glance of the whole of the temporal order, present, past and
future. This, he says, is not foreknowledge, but eternal
knowledge. Priestley denied that any contingent event could be an
object of knowledge. But Reid says the denial that any free action
can be foreseen involves the denial of God’s own free agency,
since God’s future actions can be foreseen by men; also that while
God foresees his own free actions, this does not determine those
actions necessarily. Tennyson, In Memoriam, 26—“And if that eye
which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the
green the mouldered tree, And towers fallen as soon as built—Oh,
if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of
life true life no more And Love the indifference to be, Then might
I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That
Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn.”
(_d_) The fact that there is nothing in the present condition of things
from which the future actions of free creatures necessarily follow by
natural law does not prevent God from foreseeing such actions, since his
knowledge is not mediate, but immediate. He not only foreknows the motives
which will occasion men’s acts, but he directly foreknows the acts
themselves. The possibility of such direct knowledge without assignable
grounds of knowledge is apparent if we admit that time is a form of finite
thought to which the divine mind is not subject.
Aristotle maintained that there is no certain knowledge of
contingent future events. Socinus, in like manner, while he
admitted that God knows all things that are knowable, abridged the
objects of the divine knowledge by withdrawing from the number
those objects whose future existence he considered as uncertain,
such as the determinations of free agents. These, he held, cannot
be certainly foreknown, because there is nothing in the present
condition of things from which they will necessarily follow by
natural law. The man who makes a clock can tell when it will
strike. But free-will, not being subject to mechanical laws,
cannot have its acts predicted or foreknown. God knows things only
in their causes—future events only in their antecedents. John
Milton seems also to deny God’s foreknowledge of free acts: “So,
without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably
foreseen, They trespass.”
With this Socinian doctrine some Arminians agree, as McCabe, in
his Foreknowledge of God, and in his Divine Nescience of Future
Contingencies a Necessity. McCabe, however, sacrifices the
principle of free will, in defence of which he makes this
surrender of God’s foreknowledge, by saying that in cases of
fulfilled prophecy, like Peter’s denial and Judas’s betrayal, God
brought special influences to bear to secure the result,—so that
Peter’s and Judas’s wills acted irresponsibly under the law of
cause and effect. He quotes Dr. Daniel Curry as declaring that
“the denial of absolute divine foreknowledge is the essential
complement of the Methodist theology, without which its
philosophical incompleteness is defenceless against the logical
consistency of Calvinism.” See also article by McCabe in Methodist
Review, Sept. 1892:760-773. Also Simon, Reconciliation, 287—“God
has constituted a creature, the actions of which he can only know
as such when they are performed. In presence of man, to a certain
extent, even the great God condescends to wait; nay more, has
himself so ordained things that he must wait, inquiring, ‘What
will he do?’ ”
So Dugald Stewart: “Shall we venture to affirm that it exceeds the
power of God to permit such a train of contingent events to take
place as his own foreknowledge shall not extend to?” Martensen
holds this view, and Rothe, Theologische Ethik, 1:212-234, who
declares that the free choices of men are continually increasing
the knowledge of God. So also Martineau, Study of Religion,
2:279—“The belief in the divine foreknowledge of our future has no
basis in philosophy. We no longer deem it true that even God knows
the moment of my moral life that is coming next. Even he does not
know whether I shall yield to the secret temptation at midday. To
him life is a drama of which he knows not the conclusion.” Then,
says Dr. A. J. Gordon, there is nothing so dreary and dreadful as
to be living under the direction of such a God. The universe is
rushing on like an express-train in the darkness without headlight
or engineer; at any moment we may be plunged into the abyss. Lotze
does not deny God’s foreknowledge of free human actions, but he
regards as insoluble by the intellect the problem of the relation
of time to God, and such foreknowledge as “one of those postulates
as to which we know not how they can be fulfilled.” Bowne,
Philosophy of Theism, 159—“Foreknowledge of a free act is a
knowledge without assignable grounds of knowing. On the assumption
of a real time, it is hard to find a way out of this
difficulty.... The doctrine of the ideality of time helps us by
suggesting the possibility of an all-embracing present, or an
eternal now, for God. In that case the problem vanishes with time,
its condition.”
Against the doctrine of the divine nescience we urge not only our
fundamental conviction of God’s perfection, but the constant
testimony of Scripture. In _Is. 41:21, 22_, God makes his
foreknowledge the test of his Godhead in the controversy with
idols. If God cannot foreknow free human acts, then “the Lamb that
hath been slain from the foundation of the world”_ (Rev. 13:8)_
was only a sacrifice to be offered _in case_ Adam should fall, God
not knowing whether he would or not, and _in case_ Judas should
betray Christ, God not knowing whether he would or not. Indeed,
since the course of nature is changed by man’s will when he burns
towns and fells forests, God cannot on this theory predict even
the course of nature. All prophecy is therefore a protest against
this view.
How God foreknows free human decisions we may not be able to say,
but then the method of God’s knowledge in many other respects is
unknown to us. The following explanations have been proposed. God
may foreknow free acts:—
1. _Mediately_, by foreknowing the motives of these acts, and this
either because these motives induce the acts, (1) necessarily, or
(2) certainly. This last “certainly” is to be accepted, if either;
since motives are never _causes_, but are only _occasions_, of
action. The cause is the will, or the man himself. But it may be
said that foreknowing acts through their motives is not
foreknowing at all, but is reasoning or inference rather.
Moreover, although intelligent beings commonly act according to
motives previously dominant, they also at critical epochs, as at
the fall of Satan and of Adam, choose between motives, and in such
cases knowledge of the motives which have hitherto actuated them
gives no clue to their next decisions. Another statement is
therefore proposed to meet these difficulties, namely, that God
may foreknow free acts:—
2. _Immediately_, by pure intuition, inexplicable to us. Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:203, 225—“If God can know a future
event as certain only by a calculation of causes, it must be
allowed that he cannot with certainty foreknow any free act of
man; for his foreknowledge would then be proof that the act in
question was the necessary consequence of certain causes, and was
not in itself free. If, on the contrary, the divine knowledge be
regarded as _intuitive_, we see that it stands in the same
immediate relation to the act itself as to its antecedents, and
thus the difficulty is removed.” Even upon this view there still
remains the difficulty of perceiving how there can be in God’s
mind a subjective certitude with regard to acts in respect to
which there is no assignable objective ground of certainty. Yet,
in spite of this difficulty, we feel bound both by Scripture and
by our fundamental idea of God’s perfection to maintain God’s
perfect knowledge of the future free acts of his creatures. With
President Pepper we say: “Knowledge of contingency is not
necessarily contingent knowledge.” With Whedon: “It is not
calculation, but pure knowledge.” See Dorner, System of Doct.,
1:332-337; 2:58-62; Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 1858:601-605;
Charnock, Attributes, 1:429-446; Solly, The Will, 240-254. For a
valuable article on the whole subject, though advocating the view
that God foreknows acts by foreknowing motives, see Bib. Sac.,
Oct. 1883:655-694. See also Hill, Divinity, 517.
(_e_) Prescience is not itself causative. It is not to be confounded with
the predetermining will of God. Free actions do not take place because
they are foreseen, but they are foreseen because they are to take place.
Seeing a thing in the future does not cause it to be, more than
seeing a thing in the past causes it to be. As to future events,
we may say with Whedon: “Knowledge _takes_ them, not _makes_
them.” Foreknowledge may, and does, presuppose predetermination,
but it is not itself predetermination. Thomas Aquinas, in his
Summa, 1:38:1:1, says that “the knowledge of God is the cause of
things”; but he is obliged to add: “God is not the cause of all
things that are known by God, since evil things that are known by
God are not from him.” John Milton, Paradise Lost, book
3—“Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no
less proved certain unforeknown.”
(_f_) Omniscience embraces the actual and the possible, but it does not
embrace the self-contradictory and the impossible, because these are not
objects of knowledge.
God does not know what the result would be if two and two made
five, nor does he know “whether a chimæra ruminating in a vacuum
devoureth second intentions”; and that, simply for the reason that
he cannot know self-contradiction and nonsense. These things are
not objects of knowledge. Clarke, Christian Theology, 80—“Can God
make an old man in a minute? Could he make it well with the wicked
while they remained wicked? Could he create a world in which 2 + 2
= 5?” Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 366—“Does God know the
whole number that is the square root of 65? or what adjacent hills
there are that have no valleys between them? Does God know round
squares, and sugar salt-lumps, and Snarks and Boojums and
Abracadabras?”
(_g_) Omniscience, as qualified by holy will, is in Scripture denominated
“wisdom.” In virtue of his wisdom God chooses the highest ends and uses
the fittest means to accomplish them.
Wisdom is not simply “estimating all things at their proper value”
(Olmstead); it has in it also the element of counsel and purpose.
It has been defined as “the talent of using one’s talents.” It
implies two things: first, choice of the highest end; secondly,
choice of the best means to secure this end. J. C. C. Clarke, Self
and the Father, 39—“Wisdom is not invented conceptions, or harmony
of theories with theories; but is humble obedience of mind to the
reception of facts that are found in things.” Thus man’s wisdom,
obedience, faith, are all names for different aspects of the same
thing. And wisdom in God is the moral choice which makes truth and
holiness supreme. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 261—“Socialism
pursues a laudable end by unwise or destructive means. It is not
enough to mean well. Our methods must take some account of the
nature of things, if they are to succeed. We cannot produce
well-being by law. No legislation can remove inequalities of
nature and constitution. Society cannot produce equality, any more
than it can enable a rhinoceros to sing, or legislate a cat into a
lion.”
3. Omnipotence.
By this we mean the power of God to do all things which are objects of
power, whether with or without the use of means.
_Gen. 17:1—_“I am God Almighty.” He performs natural wonders:
_Gen. 1:1-3—_“Let there be Light”; _Is. 44:24—_“stretcheth forth
the heavens alone”; _Heb. 1:3—_“upholding all things by the word
of his power.” Spiritual wonders: _2 Cor. 4:6—_“God, that said,
Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts”;
_Eph. 1:19—_“exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
believe”; _Eph. 3:20—_“able to do exceeding abundantly.” Power to
create new things: _Mat. 3:9—_“able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham”. _Rom. 4:17—_“giveth life to the dead, and
calleth the things that are not, as though they were.” After his
own pleasure: _Ps. 115:3—_“He hath done whatsoever he hath
pleased”; _Eph. 1:11—_“worketh all things after the counsel of his
will.” Nothing impossible: _Gen 18:14—_“Is anything too hard for
Jehovah?” _Mat. 19:26—_“with God all things are possible.” E. G.
Robinson, Christian Theology, 73—“If all power in the universe is
dependent on his creative will for its existence, it is impossible
to conceive any limit to his power except that laid on it by his
own will. But this is only negative proof; absolute omnipotence is
not logically demonstrable, though readily enough recognized as a
just conception of the infinite God, when propounded on the
authority of a positive revelation.”
The omnipotence of God is illustrated by the work of the Holy
Spirit, which in Scripture is compared to wind, water and fire.
The ordinary manifestations of these elements afford no criterion
of the effects they are able to produce. The rushing mighty wind
at Pentecost was the analogue of the wind-Spirit who bore
everything before him on the first day of creation (_Gen. 1:2_;
_John 3:8_; _Acts 2:2_). The pouring out of the Spirit is likened
to the flood of Noah when the windows of heaven were opened and
there was not room enough to receive that which fell (_Mal.
3:10_). And the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like the fire that
shall destroy all impurity at the end of the world (_Mat. 3:11_;
_2 Pet. 3:7-13_). See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 307-310.
(_a_) Omnipotence does not imply power to do that which is not an object
of power; as, for example, that which is self-contradictory or
contradictory to the nature of God.
Self-contradictory things: “facere factum infectum”—the making of
a past event to have not occurred (hence the uselessness of
praying: “May it be that much good was done”); drawing a shorter
than a straight line between two given points; putting two
separate mountains together without a valley between them. Things
contradictory to the nature of God: for God to lie, to sin, to
die. To do such things would not imply power, but impotence. God
has all the power that is consistent with infinite perfection—all
power to do what is worthy of himself. So no greater thing can be
said by man than this: “I dare do all that may become a man; Who
dares do more is none.” Even God cannot make wrong to be right,
nor hatred of himself to be blessed. Some have held that the
prevention of sin in a moral system is not an object of power, and
therefore that God cannot prevent sin in a moral system. We hold
the contrary; see this Compendium: Objections to the Doctrine of
Decrees.
Dryden, Imitation of Horace, 3:29:71—“Over the past not heaven
itself has power; What has been has, and I have had my hour”—words
applied by Lord John Russell to his own career. Emerson, The Past:
“All is now secure and fast, Not the gods can shake the Past.”
Sunday-school scholar: “Say, teacher, can God make a rock so big
that he can’t lift it?” Seminary Professor: “Can God tell a lie?”
Seminary student: “With God all things are possible.”
(_b_) Omnipotence does not imply the exercise of all his power on the part
of God. He has power over his power; in other words, his power is under
the control of wise and holy will. God can do all he will, but he will not
do all he can. Else his power is mere force acting necessarily, and God is
the slave of his own omnipotence.
Schleiermacher held that nature not only is grounded in the divine
causality, but fully expresses that causality; there is no
causative power in God for anything that is not real and actual.
This doctrine does not essentially differ from Spinoza’s _natura
naturans_ and _natura naturata_. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
2:62-66. But omnipotence is not instinctive; it is a power used
according to God’s pleasure. God is by no means encompassed by the
laws of nature, or shut up to a necessary evolution of his own
being, as pantheism supposes. As Rothe has shown, God has a
will-power over his nature-power, and is not compelled to do all
that he can do. He is able from the stones of the street to “raise
up children unto Abraham,” but he has not done it. In God are
unopened treasures, an inexhaustible fountain of new beginnings,
new creations, new revelations. To suppose that in creation he has
expended all the inner possibilities of his being is to deny his
omnipotence. So _Job 26:14—_“Lo, these are but the outskirts of
his ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the
thunder of his power who can understand?” See Rogers, Superhuman
Origin of the Bible, 10; Hodgson, Time and Space, 579, 580.
_1 Pet. 5:6—_“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of
God”—his mighty hand of providence, salvation, blessing—“that he
may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him,
because he careth for you.” “The mighty powers held under mighty
control”—this is the greatest exhibition of power. Unrestraint is
not the highest freedom. Young men must learn that self-restraint
is the true power. _Prov. 16:32—_“He that is slow to anger is
better than the mighty; And he that ruleth his spirit, than he
that taketh a city.” Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2:3—“We have power
in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to
do.” When dynamite goes off, it all goes off: there is no reserve.
God uses as much of his power as he pleases: the remainder of
wrath in himself, as well as in others, he restrains.
(_c_) Omnipotence in God does not exclude, but implies, the power of
self-limitation. Since all such self-limitation is free, proceeding from
neither external nor internal compulsion, it is the act and manifestation
of God’s power. Human freedom is not rendered impossible by the divine
omnipotence, but exists by virtue of it. It is an act of omnipotence when
God humbles himself to the taking of human flesh in the person of Jesus
Christ.
Thomasius: “If God is to be over all and in all, he cannot himself
be all.” _Ps. 113: 5, 6—_“Who is like unto Jehovah our God....
That humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and
in the earth?” _Phil. 2:7, 8—_“emptied himself ... humbled
himself.” See Charnock, Attributes, 2:5-107. President Woolsey
showed true power when he controlled his indignation and let an
offending student go free. Of Christ on the cross, says Moberly,
Atonement and Personality, 116—“It was the power [to retain his
life, to escape suffering], with the will to hold it unused, which
proved him to be what he was, the obedient and perfect man.” We
are likest the omnipotent One when we limit ourselves for love’s
sake. The attribute of omnipotence is the ground of trust, as well
as of fear, on the part of God’s creatures. Isaac Watts: “His
every word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The
voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.”
Third Division.—Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.
1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.
By veracity and faithfulness we mean the transitive truth of God, in its
twofold relation to his creatures in general and to his redeemed people in
particular.
_Ps. 138:2—_“I will ... give thanks unto thy name for thy
lovingkindness and for thy truth: For thou hast magnified thy word
above all thy name”; _John 3:33—_“hath set his seal to this, that
God is true”; _Rom. 3:4—_“let God be found true, but every man a
liar”; _Rom. 1:25—_“the truth of God”; _John 14:17—_“the Spirit of
truth”; _1 John 5:7—_“the Spirit is the truth”; _1 Cor. 1:9—_“God
is faithful”; _1 Thess. 5:24—_“faithful is he that calleth you”;
_1 Pet. 4:19—_“a faithful Creator”; _2 Cor. 1:20—_“how many soever
be the promises of God, in him is the yea”; _Num. 23:19—_“God is
not a man that he should lie”; _Tit. 1:2—_“God, who cannot lie,
promised”; _Heb. 6:18—_“in which it is impossible for God to lie.”
(_a_) In virtue of his veracity, all his revelations to creatures consist
with his essential being and with each other.
In God’s veracity we have the guarantee that our faculties in
their normal exercise do not deceive us; that the laws of thought
are also laws of things; that the external world, and second
causes in it, have objective existence; that the same causes will
always produce the same effects; that the threats of the moral
nature will be executed upon the unrepentant transgressor; that
man’s moral nature is made in the image of God’s; and that we may
draw just conclusions from what conscience is in us to what
holiness is in him. We may therefore expect that all past
revelations, whether in nature or in his word, will not only not
be contradicted by our future knowledge, but will rather prove to
have in them more of truth than we ever dreamed. Man’s word may
pass away, but God’s word abides forever (_Mat. 5:18—_“one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law”; _Is.
40:8—_“the word of God shall stand forever”).
_Mat. 6:16—_“be not as the hypocrites.” In God the outer
expression and the inward reality always correspond. Assyrian
wills were written on a small tablet encased in another upon which
the same thing was written over again. Breakage, or falsification,
of the outer envelope could be corrected by reference to the
inner. So our outer life should conform to the heart within, and
the heart within to the outer life. On the duty of speaking the
truth, and the limitations of the duty, see Newman Smyth,
Christian Ethics, 386-403—“Give the truth always to those who in
the bonds of humanity have a right to the truth; conceal it, or
falsify it, only when the human right to the truth has been
forfeited, or is held in abeyance, by sickness, weakness, or some
criminal intent.”
(_b_) In virtue of his faithfulness, he fulfills all his promises to his
people, whether expressed in words or implied in the constitution he has
given them.
In God’s faithfulness we have the sure ground of confidence that
he will perform what his love has led him to promise to those who
obey the gospel. Since his promises are based, not upon what we
are or have done, but upon what Christ is and has done, our
defects and errors do not invalidate them, so long as we are truly
penitent and believing: _1 John 1:9—_“faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins” = faithful to his promise, and righteous to
Christ. God’s faithfulness also ensures a supply for all the real
wants of our being, both here and hereafter, since these wants are
implicit promises of him who made us: _Ps. 84:11—_“No good thing
will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”; _91:4—_“His truth
is a shield and a buckler”; _Mat. 6:33—_“all these things shall be
added unto you”; _1 Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear
heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever
things God prepared for them that love him.”
Regulus goes back to Carthage to die rather than break his promise
to his enemies. George William Curtis economizes for years, and
gives up all hope of being himself a rich man, in order that he
may pay the debts of his deceased father. When General Grant sold
all the presents made to him by the crowned heads of Europe, and
paid the obligations in which his insolvent son had involved him,
he said: “Better poverty and honor, than wealth and disgrace.”
Many a business man would rather die than fail to fulfil his
promise and let his note go to protest. “Maxwelton braes are
bonnie, Where early falls the dew, And ’twas there that Annie
Laurie Gave me her promise true; Which ne’er forget will I; And
for bonnie Annie Laurie I’d lay me down and dee.” Betray the man
she loves? Not “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks
melt wi’the sun.” God’s truth will not be less than that of mortal
man. God’s veracity is the natural correlate to our faith.
2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.
By mercy and goodness we mean the transitive love of God in its two-fold
relation to the disobedient and to the obedient portions of his creatures.
_Titus 3:4—_“his love toward man”; _Rom. 2:4—_“goodness of God”;
_Mat. 5:44, 45—_“love your enemies ... that ye may be sons of your
Father”; _John 3:16—_“God so loved the world”; _2 Pet.
1:3—_“granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and
godliness”; _Rom. 8:32—_“freely give us all things”; _John
4:10—_“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
(_a_) Mercy is that eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to
seek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed
themselves to his will, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice.
Martensen: “Viewed in relation to sin, eternal love is
compassionate grace.” God’s continued importation of natural life
is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what he desires to do
for his creatures in the higher sphere—the communication of
spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When he bids us
love our enemies, he only bids us follow his own example.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 2:2—“Wilt thou draw near the nature
of the gods? Draw near them, then, in being merciful.” Twelfth
Night, 3:4—“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be
called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty.”
(_b_) Goodness is the eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to
communicate of his own life and blessedness to those who are like him in
moral character. Goodness, therefore, is nearly identical with the love of
complacency; mercy, with the love of benevolence.
Notice, however, that transitive love is but an outward
manifestation of immanent love. The eternal and perfect object of
God’s love is in his own nature. Men become subordinate objects of
that love only as they become connected and identified with its
principal object, the image of God’s perfections in Christ. Only
in the Son do men become sons of God. To this is requisite an
acceptance of Christ on the part of man. Thus it can be said that
God imparts himself to men just so far as men are willing to
receive him. And as God gives himself to men, in all his moral
attributes, to answer for them and to renew them in character,
there is truth in the statement of Nordell (Examiner, Jan. 17,
1884) that “the maintenance of holiness is the function of divine
justice; the diffusion of holiness is the function of divine
love.” We may grant this as substantially true, while yet we deny
that love is a mere form or manifestation of holiness.
Self-impartation is different from self-affirmation. The attribute
which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute
which moves him to maintain. The two ideas of holiness and of love
are as distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of
generosity on the other. Park: “God loves Satan, in a certain
sense, and we ought to.” Shedd: “This same love of compassion God
feels toward the non-elect; but the expression of that compassion
is forbidden for reasons which are sufficient for God, but are
entirely unknown to the creature.” The goodness of God is the
basis of _reward_, under God’s government. Faithfulness leads God
to keep his promises; goodness leads him to make them.
Edwards, Nature of Virtue, in Works, 2:263—Love of benevolence
does not presuppose beauty in its object. Love of complacence does
presuppose beauty. Virtue is not love to an object for its beauty.
The beauty of intelligent beings does not consist in love for
beauty, or virtue in love for virtue. Virtue is love for being in
general, exercised in a general good will. This is the doctrine of
Edwards. We prefer to say that virtue is love, not for being in
general, but for good being, and so for God, the holy One. The
love of compassion is perfectly compatible with hatred of evil and
with indignation against one who commits it. Love does not
necessarily imply approval, but it does imply desire that all
creatures should fulfil the purpose of their existence by being
morally conformed to the holy One; see Godet, in The Atonement,
339.
_Rom. 5:8—_“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We ought to love our
enemies, and Satan is our worst enemy. We ought to will the good
of Satan, or cherish toward him the love of benevolence, though
not the love of complacence. This does not involve a condoning of
his sin, or an ignoring of his moral depravity, as seems implied
in the verses of Wm. C. Gannett: “The poem hangs on the berry-bush
When comes the poet’s eye; The street begins to masquerade When
Shakespeare passes by. The Christ sees white in Judas’ heart And
loves his traitor well; The God, to angel his new heaven, Explores
his deepest hell.”
3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.
By justice and righteousness we mean the transitive holiness of God, in
virtue of which his treatment of his creatures conforms to the purity of
his nature,—righteousness demanding from all moral beings conformity to
the moral perfection of God, and justice visiting non-conformity to that
perfection with penal loss or suffering.
_Gen. 18:25—_“shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
_Deut. 32:4—_“All his ways are justice; A God of faithfulness and
without iniquity, Just and right is he”; _Ps. 5:5—_“Thou hatest
all workers of iniquity”; _7:9-12—_“the righteous God trieth the
hearts ... saveth the upright ... is a righteous judge, Yea, a God
that hath indignation every day”; _18:24-26—_“Jehovah recompensed
me according to my righteousness.... With the merciful, thou wilt
show thyself merciful ... with the perverse thou wilt show thyself
froward”; _Mat. 5:48—_“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect”; _Rom. 2:6—_“will render to every man
according to his works”; _1 Pet. 1:16—_“Ye shall be holy; for I am
holy.” These passages show that God loves the same persons whom he
hates. It is not true that he hates the sin, but loves the sinner;
he both hates and loves the sinner himself, hates him as he is a
living and wilful antagonist of truth and holiness, loves him as
he is a creature capable of good and ruined by his transgression.
There is no abstract sin that can be hated apart from the persons
in whom that sin is represented and embodied. Thomas Fuller found
it difficult to starve the profaneness but to feed the person of
the impudent beggar who applied to him for food. Mr. Finney
declared that he would kill the slave-catcher, but would love him
with all his heart. In our civil war Dr. Kirk said: “God knows
that we love the rebels, but God also knows that we will kill them
if they do not lay down their arms.” The complex nature of God not
only permits but necessitates this same double treatment of the
sinner, and the earthly father experiences the same conflict of
emotions when his heart yearns over the corrupt son whom he is
compelled to banish from the household. Moberly, Atonement and
Personality, 7—“It is the sinner who is punished, not the sin.”
(_a_) Since justice and righteousness are simply transitive
holiness—righteousness designating this holiness chiefly in its mandatory,
justice chiefly in its punitive, aspect,—they are not mere manifestations
of benevolence, or of God’s disposition to secure the highest happiness of
his creatures, nor are they grounded in the nature of things as something
apart from or above God.
Cremer, N. T. Lexicon: δίκαιος = “the perfect coincidence existing
between God’s nature, which is the standard for all, and his
acts.” Justice and righteousness are simply holiness exercised
toward creatures. The same holiness which exists in God in
eternity past manifests itself as justice and righteousness, so
soon as intelligent creatures come into being. Much that was said
under Holiness as an immanent attribute of God is equally
applicable here. The modern tendency to confound holiness with
love shows itself in the merging of justice and righteousness in
mere benevolence. Instances of this tendency are the following:
Ritschl, Unterricht, § 16—“The righteousness of God denotes the
manner in which God carries out his loving will in the redemption
alike of humanity as a whole and of individual men; hence his
righteousness is indistinguishable from his grace”; see also
Ritschl, Rechtf. und Versöhnung, 2:113; 3:296. Prof. George M.
Forbes: “Only right makes love moral; only love makes right
moral.” Jones, Robert Browning, 70—“Is it not beneficence that
places death at the heart of sin? Carlyle forgot this. God is not
simply a great taskmaster. The power that imposes law is not an
alien power.” D’Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 237-240—“How can
self-realization be the realization of others? Why must the true
good be always the common good? Why is the end of each the end of
all?... We need a concrete universal which will unify all
persons.”
So also, Harris, Kingdom of Christ on Earth, 39-42; God the
Creator, 287, 290, 302—“Love, as required and regulated by reason,
may be called righteousness. Love is universal good will or
benevolence, regulated in its exercise by righteousness. Love is
the choice of God and man as the objects of trust and service.
This choice involves the determination of the will to seek
universal well-being, and in this aspect it is benevolence. It
also involves the consent of the will to the reason, and the
determination to regulate all action in seeking well-being by its
truths, laws, and ideals; and in this aspect it is
righteousness.... Justice is the consent of the will to the law of
love, in its authority, its requirements, and its sanctions. God’s
wrath is the necessary reaction of this law of love in the
constitution and order of the universe against the wilful violator
of it, and Christ’s sufferings atone for sin by asserting and
maintaining the authority, universality, and inviolability of
God’s law of love in his redemption of men and his forgiveness of
their sins.... Righteousness cannot be the whole of love, for this
would shut us up to the merely formal principle of the law without
telling us what the law requires. Benevolence cannot be the whole
of love, for this would shut us up to hedonism, in the form of
utilitarianism, excluding righteousness from the character of God
and man.”
Newman Smyth also, in his Christian Ethics, 227-231, tells us that
“love, as self-affirming, is righteousness; as self-imparting, is
benevolence; as self-finding in others, is sympathy.
Righteousness, as subjective regard for our own moral being, is
holiness; as objective regard for the persons of others, is
justice. Holiness is involved in love as its essential respect to
itself; the heavenly Father is the holy Father (_John 17:11_).
Love contains in its unity a trinity of virtue. Love affirms its
own worthiness, imparts to others its good, and finds its life
again in the well-being of others. The ethical limit of
self-impartation is found in self-affirmation. Love in
self-bestowal cannot become suicidal. The benevolence of love has
its moral bounds in the holiness of love. True love in God
maintains its transcendence, and excludes pantheism.”
The above doctrine, quoted for substance from Newman Smyth, seems
to us unwarrantably to include in love what properly belongs to
holiness. It virtually denies that holiness has any independent
existence as an attribute of God. To make holiness a manifestation
of love seems to us as irrational as to say that self-affirmation
is a form of self-impartation. The concession that holiness
regulates and limits love shows that holiness cannot itself be
love, but must be an independent and superior attribute. Right
furnishes the rule and law for love, but it is not true that love
furnishes the rule and law for right. There is no such double
sovereignty as this theory would imply. The one attribute that is
independent and supreme is holiness, and love is simply the
impulse to communicate this holiness.
William Ashmore: “Dr. Clarke lays great emphasis on the character
of ‘a good God.’... But he is more than a merely _good_ God; he is
a just God, and a righteous God, and a holy God—a God who is
‘angry with the wicked,’ even while ready to forgive them, if they
are willing to repent in his way, and not in their own. He is the
God who brought in a flood upon the world of the ungodly; who
rained down fire and brimstone from heaven; and who is to come in
‘flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God’ and
obey not the gospel of his son.... Paul reasoned about both the
‘goodness’ and the ‘severity’ of God.”
(_b_) Transitive holiness, as righteousness, imposes law in conscience and
Scripture, and may be called legislative holiness. As justice, it executes
the penalties of law, and may be called distributive or judicial holiness.
In righteousness God reveals chiefly his love of holiness; in justice,
chiefly his hatred of sin.
The self-affirming purity of God demands a like purity in those
who have been made in his image. As God wills and maintains his
own moral excellence, so all creatures must will and maintain the
moral excellence of God. There can be only one centre in the solar
system,—the sun is its own centre and the centre for all the
planets also. So God’s purity is the object of his own will,—it
must be the object of all the wills of all his creatures also.
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 282—“It is not rational or safe for the
hand to separate itself from the heart. This is a _universe_, and
God is the heart of the great system. Altruism is not the result
of society, but society is the result of altruism. It begins in
creatures far below man. The animals which know how to combine
have the greatest chance of survival. The unsociable animal dies
out. The most perfect organism is the most sociable. Right is the
debt which the part owes to the whole.” This seems to us but a
partial expression of the truth. Right is more than a debt to
others,—it is a debt to one’s self, and the self-affirming,
self-preserving, self-respecting element constitutes the limit and
standard of all outgoing activity. The sentiment of loyalty is
largely a reverence for this principle of order and stability in
government. _Ps. 145:5—_“Of the glorious majesty of thine honor,
And of thy wondrous works, will I meditate”; _97:2—_“Clouds and
darkness are round about him: Righteousness and justice are the
foundation of his throne.”
John Milton, Eikonoklastes: “Truth and justice are all one; for
truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but truth in
our practice.... For truth is properly no more than contemplation,
and her utmost efficiency is but teaching; but justice in her very
essence is all strength and activity, and hath a sword put into
her hand to use against all violence and oppression on the earth.
She it is who accepts no person, and exempts none from the
severity of her stroke.” A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
326—“Even the poet has not dared to represent Jupiter torturing
Prometheus without the dim figure of Avenging Fate waiting
silently in the background.... Evolution working out a nobler and
nobler justice is proof that God is just. Here is ‘preferential
action’.” S. S. Times, June 9, 1900—“The natural man is born with
a wrong personal astronomy. Man should give up the conceit of
being the centre of all things. He should accept the Copernican
theory, and content himself with a place on the edge of things—the
place he has always really had. We all laugh at John Jasper and
his thesis that ‘the sun do move.’ The Copernican theory is
leaking down into human relations, as appears from the current
phrase: ‘There are others’.”
(_c_) Neither justice nor righteousness, therefore, is a matter of
arbitrary will. They are revelations of the inmost nature of God, the one
in the form of moral requirement, the other in the form of judicial
sanction. As God cannot but demand of his creatures that they be like him
in moral character, so he cannot but enforce the law which he imposes upon
them. Justice just as much binds God to punish as it binds the sinner to
be punished.
All arbitrariness is excluded here. God is what he is—infinite
purity. He cannot change. If creatures are to attain the end of
their being, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice is
nothing but the recognition and enforcement of this natural
necessity. Law is only the transcript of God’s nature. Justice
does not make law,—it only reveals law. Penalty is only the
reaction of God’s holiness against that which is its opposite.
Since righteousness and justice are only legislative and
retributive holiness, God can cease to demand purity and to punish
sin only when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases
to be God. “Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.”
Simon, Reconciliation, 141—“To claim the performance of duty is as
truly obligatory as it is obligatory to perform the duty which is
prescribed.” E. H. Johnson, Systematic Theology, 84—“Benevolence
intends what is well for the creature; justice insists on what is
fit. But the well-for-us and the fit-for-us precisely coincide.
The only thing that is well for us is our normal employment and
development; but to provide for this is precisely what is fitting
and therefore due to us. In the divine nature the distinction
between justice and benevolence is one of form.” We criticize this
utterance as not sufficiently taking into account the nature of
the right. The right is not merely the fit. Fitness is only
general adaptation which may have in it no ethical element,
whereas right is solely and exclusively ethical. The right
therefore regulates the fit and constitutes its standard. The
well-for-us is to be determined by the right-for-us, but not _vice
versa_. George W. Northrup: “God is not bound to bestow the same
endowments upon creatures, nor to keep all in a state of holiness
forever, nor to redeem the fallen, nor to secure the greatest
happiness of the universe. But he is bound to purpose and to do
what his absolute holiness requires. He has no attribute, no will,
no sovereignty, above this law of his being. He cannot lie, he
cannot deny himself, he cannot look upon sin with complacency, he
cannot acquit the guilty without an atonement.”