The Divine Attributes differ Virtualiter.
Theologians, to avoid the blank ignorance of God which must follow from the extreme view of the simplicity of his essence, which requires us to assume that the divine attributes differ only in our conceptions, or as expressing the diverse effects of the activity of God, made a distinction between the ratio rationantis and the ratio rationatæ. That is, the reason as determining, and the reason as determined. The attributes, they say, differ not re, but ratione; not in our subjective reason only; but there is in God a reason why we think of Him as possessing these diverse perfections. This idea, as before stated, was often expressed by saying that the divine attributes differ neither realiter, nor nominaliter, but virtualiter. If this be understood to mean that the divine perfections are really what the Bible declares them to be; that God truly thinks, feels, and acts; that He is truly wise, just, and good, that He is truly omnipotent, and voluntary, acting or not acting, as He sees fit; that He can hear and answer prayer; it may be admitted. But we are not to give up the conviction that God is really in Himself what He reveals Himself to be, to satisfy any metaphysical speculations as to the difference between essence and attribute in an infinite Being. The attributes of God, therefore, are not merely different conceptions in our minds, but different modes in which God reveals Himself to his creatures (or to Himself); just as our several faculties are different modes in which the inscrutable substance self reveals itself in our consciousness and acts. It is an old saying, "Qualis homo, talis Deus." And Clemens Alexandrinus1 says, "If any one knows himself, he will know God." And Leibnitz expresses the same great truth when he says,2 "The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He possesses them without limit. He is an ocean of which we have only received a few drops. There is in us something of power, something of knowledge, something of goodness; but these attributes are in entireness in Him." There is indeed danger in either extreme, danger of degrading God in our thoughts, by reducing Him to the standard of our nature, and danger of denying Him as He is revealed. In our day, and among educated men, and especially among students of philosophy, the latter danger is by far the greater of the two. We should remember that we lose God, when we lose our confidence in saying Thou! to Him, with the assurance of being heard and helped.
§ 3. Classification of the Divine Attributes.
On few subjects have greater thought and labor been expended than on this. Perhaps, however, the benefit has not been commensurate with the labor. The object of classification is order, and the object of order is clearness. So far as this end is secured, it is a good. But the great diversity of the methods which have been proposed, is evidence that no one method of arrangement has such advantages as to secure for it general recognition.
1. Some, as has been seen, preclude all necessity of a classification of the attributes, by reducing them all to unity, or regarding them as different phases under which we contemplate the Supreme Being as the ground of all things. With them the whole discussion of the divine attributes is an analysis of the idea of the Infinite and Absolute.
2. Others arrange the attributes according to the mode in which we arrive at the knowledge of them. We form our idea of God, it is said, (1.) By the way of causation; that is, by referring to Him as the great first cause every virtue manifested by the effects which He produces. (2.) By the way of negation; that is, by denying to Him the limitations and imperfections which belong to his creatures. (3.) By the way of eminence, in exalting to an infinite degree or without limit the perfections which belong to an infinite Being. If this is so, the attributes conceived of by one of these methods belong to one class, and those conceived of, or of which we attain the knowledge by another method, belong to another class. This principle of classification is perhaps the one most generally adopted. It gives rise, however, really but to two classes, namely, the positive and negative, i.e., those in which something is affirmed, and those in which something is denied concerning God. To the negative class are commonly referred simplicity, infinity, eternity, immutability; to the positive class, power, knowledge, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Instead of calling the one class negative and the other positive, they are often distinguished as absolute and relative. By an absolute attribute is meant one which belongs to God, considered in Himself, and which implies no relation to other beings; by a relative attribute is meant one which implies relation to an object. They are also distinguished as immanent and transient, as communicable and incommunicable. These terms are used interchangeably. They do not express different modes of classification, but are different modes of designating the same classification. Negative, absolute, immanent, and incommunicable, are designations of one class; and positive, relative, transitive, and communicable, are designations of the other class.
3. A third principle of classification is derived from the constitution of our own nature. In man there is the substance or essence of the soul, the intellect, and the will. Hence, it is said, we can most naturally arrange the attributes of God under three heads. First, those pertaining to his essence; second, those referring to his intellect; and third, those referring to his will, the word "will" being taken in its most comprehensive sense.
4. Others again seek the principle of classification in the nature of the attributes themselves. Some include the idea of moral excellence, and others do not. Hence they are distinguished as natural and moral. The word natural, however, is ambiguous. Taking it in the sense of what constitutes or pertains to the nature, the holiness and justice of God are as much natural as his power or knowledge. And on the other hand, God is infinite and eternal in his moral perfections, although infinity and eternity are not distinctively moral perfections. In the common and familiar sense of the word natural, the terms natural and moral express a real distinction.
5. Schleiermacher's method is, of course, peculiar. It is based on the characteristic principle of his system, that all religion is founded on a sense of dependence, and all theology consists in what that sense of dependence teaches us. He does not treat of the divine attributes in any one place, but here and there, as they come up according to his plan. Our sense of dependence does not awaken in our consciousness a feeling of opposition to God's eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence, or omniscience. These, therefore, are treated of in one place. But we, as dependent creatures, are conscious of opposition to God's holiness and righteousness. These, therefore, belong to another head. And as this opposition is removed through Christ, we are brought into relation to God's grace or love, and to his wisdom. These form a third class.
That so many different principles of classification have been adopted, and that each of those principles is carried out in so many different ways, shows the uncertainty and difficulty attending the whole subject. It is proposed in what follows to accept the guidance of the answer given in the "Westminster Catechism," to the question, What is God? It is assumed in that answer that God is a self-existent and necessary Being; and it is affirmed of Him, I. That He is a Spirit. II. That as such He is infinite, eternal, and immutable. III. That He is infinite, eternal, and immutable, (1.) In his being. (2.) In all that belongs to his intelligence, namely, in his knowledge and wisdom. (3.) In all that belongs to his will, namely, his power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Whatever speculative objections may be made to this plan, it has the advantage of being simple and familiar.
§ 4. Spirituality of God.
A. The Meaning of the Word "Spirit."
The fundamental principle of interpretation of all writings, sacred or profane, is that words are to be understood in their historical sense; that is, in the sense in which it can be historically proved that they were used by their authors and intended to be understood by those to whom they were addressed. The object of language is the communication of thought. Unless words are taken in the sense in which those who employ them know they will be understood, they fail of their design. The sacred writings being the words of God to man, we are bound to take them in the sense in which those to whom they were originally addressed must inevitably have taken them. What is the meaning of the word "spirit?" or rather, What is the usus loquendi of the Hebrew and Greek words to which our word "spirit" corresponds? In answering this question, we learn what our Lord meant when he said God is a Spirit. Originally the words rvch and pneuma meant the moving air, especially the breath, as in the phrase pneuma biou; then any invisible power; then the human soul. In saying, therefore, that God is a Spirit, our Lord authorizes us to believe that whatever is essential to the idea of a spirit, as learned from our own consciousness, is to be referred to God as determining his nature. On this subject consciousness teaches, and has taught all men, —
1. That the soul is a substance; that our thoughts and feelings have a common ground, of which they are the varying states or acts. Substance is that which has an objective existence, and has permanence and power. Even Kant says: "Wo Handlung, mithin Thätigkeit und Kraft ist, da ist auch Substanz," where operation, and consequently activity and power are, there is substance.3 This is not only the common conviction of men, but it is admitted by the vast majority of philosophers. As before remarked, that there should be action without something acting, is as unthinkable as that there should be motion without something moving.
2. Consciousness teaches that the soul is an individual subsistence. This is included in the consciousness of the unity, identity, and permanence of the soul. It is not that we are conscious simply of certain states of the soul, from which we infer its substance and subsistence; but that such are the contents of the knowledge given to us in the consciousness of self. Des Cartes famous aphorism, Cogito ergo sum, is not a syllogism. It does not mean that existence is inferred from the consciousness of thought; but that the consciousness of thought involves the consciousness of existence. Des Cartes himself so understood the matter, for he says: "Cum advertimus nos esse res cogitantes, prima quædam notio est quæ ex nullo syllogismo concluditur; neque etiam cum quis dicit Ego cogito, ergo sum, sive existo,' existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notam simplici mentis intuitu agnoscit."4 Mansel says: "Whatever may be the variety of the phenomena of consciousness, sensations by this or that organ, volitions, thoughts, imaginations, of all we are immediately conscious as affections of one and the same self. It is not by any after-effort of reflection that I combine together sight and hearing, thought and volition, into a factitious unity or compounded whole, in each case I am immediately conscious of myself seeing and hearing, willing and thinking. This self-personality, like all other simple and immediate presentations, is indefinable, but it is so because it is superior to definition."5 This individual subsistence is thus involved in the consciousness of self, because in self-consciousness we distinguish ourselves from all that is not ourselves.
3. As power of some kind belongs to every substance, the power which belongs to spirit, to the substance self, is that of thought, feeling, and volition. All this is given in the simplest form of consciousness. We are not more certain that we exist, than that we think, feel, and will. We know ourselves only as thus thinking, feeling, and willing, and we therefore are sure that these powers or faculties are the essential attributes of a spirit, and must belong to every spirit.
4. Consciousness also informs us of the unity or simplicity of the soul. It is not compounded of different elements. It is composed of substance and form. It is a simple substance endowed with certain attributes. It is incapable of separation or division.
5. In being conscious of our individual subsistence, we are conscious of personality. Every individual subsistence is not a person. But every individual subsistence which thinks and feels, and has the power of self-determination, is a person; and, therefore, the consciousness of our subsistence, and of the powers of thought and volition, is the consciousness of personality.
6. We are also conscious of being moral agents, susceptible of moral character, and the subjects of moral obligation.
7. It need not be added that every spirit must possess self-consciousness. This is involved in all that has been said. Without self-consciousness we should be a mere power in nature. This is the very ground of our being, and is necessarily involved in the idea of self as a real existence.
It is impossible, therefore, to overestimate the importance of the truth contained in the simple proposition, God is a Spirit. It is involved in that proposition that God is immaterial. None of the properties of matter can be predicated of Him. He is not extended or divisible, or compounded, or visible, or tangible. He has neither bulk nor form. The Bible everywhere recognizes as true the intuitive convictions of men. One of those convictions is that spirit is not matter, or matter spirit; that different and incompatible attributes cannot belong to the same substance. In revealing, therefore, to us that God is a Spirit, it reveals to us that no attribute of matter can be predicated of the divine essence. The realistic dualism which lies at the bottom of all human convictions, underlies also all the revelations of the Bible.
B. Consequences of the Spirituality of God.
If God be a spirit, it follows of necessity that He is a person — a self-conscious, intelligent, voluntary agent. As all this is involved in our consciousness of ourselves as spirit, it must all be true of God, or God is of a lower order of being than man.
It follows also that God is a simple Being, not only as not composed of different elements, but also as not admitting of the distinction between substance and accidents. Nothing can either be added to, or taken from God. In this view the simplicity, as well as the other attributes of God, are of a higher order than the corresponding attributes of our spiritual nature. The soul of man is a simple substance; but it is subject to change. It can gain and lose knowledge, holiness, and power. These are in this view accidents in our substance. But in God they are attributes, essential and immutable.
Finally, it follows from God's being a spirit, that He is a moral as well as an intelligent Being. It is involved in the very nature of rational voluntary being, that it should be conformed to the rule of right, which in the case of God is his own infinite reason. These are primary truths, which are not to be sacrificed to any speculative objections. It is vain to tell us that an infinite spirit cannot be a person, because personality implies self-consciousness, and self-consciousness implies the distinction between the self and the not-self, and this is a limitation. It is equally vain to say that God cannot have moral excellence, because moral goodness implies conformity to law, and conformity to law again is inconsistent with the idea of an absolute Being. These are empty speculations; and even if incapable of a satisfactory solution, would afford no rational ground for rejecting the intuitive truths of reason and conscience. There are mysteries enough in our nature, and yet no sane muan denies his own personal existence and moral accountability. And he is worse than insane who is beguiled by such sophistries into renouncing his faith in God as a personal Spirit and a loving Father.
The Scriptures confirm these Views.
It need hardly be remarked that the Scriptures everywhere represent God as possessing all the above-mentioned attributes of a spirit. On this foundation all religion rests; all intercourse with God, all worship, all prayer, all confidence in God as preserver, benefactor, and redeemer. The God of the Bible is a person. He spoke to Adam. He revealed himself to Noah. He entered into covenant with Abraham. He conversed with Moses, as a friend with friend. He everywhere uses the personal pronouns. He says, "I am," that "is my name." I am the Lord your God. I am merciful and gracious. Call upon me, and I will answer you. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. O thou that hearest prayer, to thee shall all flesh come. Our Lord has put into our lips words which reveal that God is a spirit, and all that being a spirit implies, when He teaches us to say: "Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done." Everywhere the God of the Bible is contrasted within the gods of the heathen, as a God who sees, hears, and loves. These are not regulative, they are real truths. God does not mock us when He thus presents Himself to us as a personal Being within whom we can have intercourse, and who is everywhere present to help and save. "To human reason," says Mansel, "the personal and the infinite stand out in apparently irreconcilable antagonism; and the recognition of the one in a religious system almost inevitably involves the sacrifice of the other."6 This cannot be so. According to the Bible, and according to the dictates of our own nature, of reason as well as of conscience, God is a spirit, and being a spirit is of necessity a person; a Being who can say I, and to whom we can say Thou.
§ 5. Infinity.
Although God reveals Himself as a personal Being capable of fell worship with man, whom we can worship and love, and to whom we can pray with the assurance of being heard and answered; nevertheless He fills heaven and earth; He is exalted above all we can know or think. He is infinite in his being and perfections. The ideas with which we are most familiar are often those of which we are the least able to give an intelligent account. Space, time, and infinity, are among the most difficult problems of human thought. What is space? is a question which has never been satisfactorily answered. Some say it is nothing; where nothing is, space is not; it is "negation defined by boundary lines;" others, with Kant and Hamilton, say that it is "a condition of thought," "the subjective condition of sensibility;" others that it is an attribute or accident of God; others that it is that in which real existences can act and move. Notwithstanding these conflicting statements of philosophers, and the real obscurity of the subject, every man knows clearly and definitely what the word "space" means, although no man may be able to define it satisfactorily. It is much the same with the idea of infinity. If men would be content to leave the word in its integrity, as simply expressing what does not admit of limitation, there would be no danger in speculating about its nature. But in all ages wrong views of what the infinite is, have led to fatal errors in philosophy and religion. Without attempting to detail the speculations of philosophers on this subject, we shall simply endeavor to state what is meant when it is said that God is infinite in his being and perfections.
The Idea of Infinity not merely Negative.
Being, in this connection, is that which is or exists. The being of God is his essence or substance, of which his perfections are the essential attributes or modes of manifestation. When it is said that God is infinite as to his being, what is meant is, that no limitation can be assigned to his essence. It is often said that our idea of the infinite is merely negative. There is a sense in which this may be true, but there is a sense in which it is not true. It is true that the form of the proposition is negative when we say that no limit can be assigned to space, or possible duration, or to the being of God. But it implies the affirmation that the object of which infinity is predicated is illimitable. It is as much a positive idea which we express when we say a thing is infinite as when we say that it is finite. We cannot, indeed, form a conception or mental image of an infinite object, but the word nevertheless expresses a positive judgment of the mind. Sir William Hamilton and others, when they say that the infinite is a mere negation, mean that it implies a negation of all thought. That is, we mean nothing when we say that a thing is infinite. As we know nothing of the inhabitants of the other planets of our system, if such there be, or of the mode in which angels and disembodied spirits take cognizance of material objects, our ideas on such subjects are purely negative, or blank ignorance. "The infinite," Mansel says, "is not a positive object of human thought."7 Every man, however, knows that the propositions "Space is infinite," and "Space is finite," express different and equally definite thoughts. When, therefore, we say that God is infinite, we mean something; we express a great and positive truth.
A. The Infinite not the All.
The infinite, although illimitable and incapable of increase, is not necessarily all. An infinite body must include all bodies, infinite space all portions of space, and infinite duration all periods of duration. Hence Mr. Mansel says that an infinite being must of necessity include within itself all actual and all possible forms or modes of being. So said Spinoza, many of the schoolmen, and even many Christian theologians. The sense in which Spinoza and Mansel make this assertion is the fundamental principle of Pantheism. Mr. Mansel, as we have seen, escapes that conclusion by appealing to faith, and teaching that we are constrained to believe what reason pronounces to be impossible, which itself is an impossibility. The sense in which theologians teach that an infinite being must comprehend within it all being, is, that in the infinite is the cause or ground of all that is actual or possible. Thus Howe8 says, "Necessary being must include all being." But he immediately adds, not in the same way, "It comprehends all being, besides what itself is, as having had, within the compass of its productive power, whatsoever hath actually sprung from it; and having within the compass of the same power, whatsoever is still possible to he produced." This, however, is not the proper meaning of the words, nor is it the sense in which they are generally used. What the words mean, and what they are generally intended to mean by those who use them is, that there is only one being in the universe; that the finite is merely the modus existendi, or manifestation of the Infinite. Thus Cousin says, God must be "infinite and finite together,.... at the summit of being and at its humblest degree....; at once God, nature, and humanity."9 Even some of the Remonstrants regard this as the necessary consequence of the doctrine of the infinitude of the divine essence. Episcopius10 says, "Si essentia Dei sic immensa est, tum intelligi non potest quomodo et ubi aliqua creata essentia esse possit. Essentia enim creata non est essentia divina; ergo aut est extra essentiam divinam, aut, si non est extra eam, est ipsa essentia illa, et sic omnia sunt Deus et divina essentia." "God is infinite," says Jacob Bohme, "for God is all." This, says Strauss,11 is exactly the doctrine of the modern philosophy.
It has already been remarked in a previous chapter, in reference to this mode of reasoning, that it proceeds on a wrong idea of the infinite. A thing may be infinite in its own nature without precluding the possibility of the existence of things of a different nature. An infinite spirit does not forbid the assumption of the existence of matter. There may even be many infinites of the same kind, as we can imagine any number of infinite lines. The infinite, therefore, is not all. An infinite spirit is a spirit to whose attributes as a spirit no limits can be set. It no more precludes the existence of other spirits than infinite goodness precludes the existence of finite goodness, or infinite power the existence of finite power. God is infinite in being because no limit can be assigned to his perfections, and because He is present in all portions of space. A being is said to be present wherever it perceives and acts. As God perceives and acts everywhere, He is everywhere present. This however, does not preclude the presence of other beings. A multitude of men even may perceive and act at the same time and place. Besides, we have very little knowledge of the relation which spirit bears to space. We know that bodies occupy portions of space to the exclusion, of other bodies; but we do not know that spirits may not coexist in the same portion of space. A legion of demons dwelt in one man.
B. Infinitude of God in relation to Space.
The infinitude of God, so far as space is concerned, includes his immensity and his omnipresence. These are not different attributes, but one and the same attribute, viewed under different aspects. His immensity is the infinitude of his being, viewed as belonging to his nature from eternity. He fills immensity with his presence. His omnipresence is the infinitude of his being, viewed in relation to his creatures. He is equally present with all his creatures, at all times, and in all places. He is not far from any one of us. "The Lord is in this place," may be said with equal truth and confidence, everywhere. Theologians are accustomed to distinguish three modes of presence in space. Bodies are in space circumscriptively. They are bounded by it. Spirits are in space definitively. They have an ubi. They are not everywhere, but only somewhere. God is in space repletively. He fills all space. In other words, the limitations of space have no reference to Him. He is not absent from any portion of space, nor more present in one portion than in another. This of course is not to be understood of extension or diffusion. Extension is a property of matter, and cannot be predicated of God. If extended, He would be capable of division and separation; and part of God would be here, and part elsewhere. Nor is this omnipresence to be understood as a mere presence in knowledge and power. It is an omnipresence of the divine essence. Otherwise the essence of God would be limited. The doctrine, therefore, taught by the older Socinians that the essence of God is confined to heaven (wherever that may be), and that He is elsewhere only as to his knowledge and efficiency, is inconsistent with the divine perfections and with the representations of Scripture. As God acts everywhere, He is present everywhere; for, as the theologians say, a being can no more act where he is not than when he is not.
The older and later theologians agree in this view of the divine immensity and omnipresence. Augustine12 says God is not to be regarded as everywhere diffused, as the air or the light: "Sed in solo coelo totus, et in sola terra totus, et in coelo et in terra totus, et nullo contentus loco, sed in seipso ubique totus." Thomas Aquinas says,13 Deus "est in omnibus per potentiam, in quantum omnia ejus potestati subduntur; est per præsentiam in omnibus, in quantum omnia nuda sunt et aperta oculis ejus. Est in omnibus per essentiam in quantum adest omnibus ut causa essendi sicut dictum est." Quenstedt says,14 "Est Deus ubique illocaliter, impartibiliter, efficaciter; non definitive ut spiritus, non circumscriptive ut corpora, sed repletive citra sui multiplicationem, extensionem, divisionem, inclusionem, aut commixtionem more modoque divino incomprehensibili." The Bible teaches the infinitude of God, as involving his immensity and omnipresence, in the clearest terms. He is said to fill all in all, i.e., the universe in all its parts. (Eph. i. 23.) "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord." (Jer. xxiii. 23, 24.) "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." (Ps. cxxxix. 7-12.) It is "in Him we (i.e., all creatures) live, and move, and have our being." (Acts xvii. 28.) Everywhere in the Old and in the New Testament, God is represented as a spiritual Being, without form, invisible, whom no man hath seen or can see; dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, and full of glory; as not only the creator, and preserver, but as the governor of all things; as everywhere present, and everywhere imparting life, and securing order; present in every blade of grass, yet guiding Arcturus in his course, marshalling the stars as a host, calling them by their names; present also in every human soul, giving it understanding, endowing it with gifts, working in it both to will and to do. The human heart is in his hands and He turneth it even as the rivers of water are turned. Wherever, throughout the universe, there is evidence of mind in material causes, there, according to the Scriptures, is God, controlling and guiding those causes to the accomplishment of his wise designs. He is in all, and over all things; yet essentially different from all, being over all, independent, and infinitely exalted. This immensity and omnipresence of God, therefore, is the ubiquity of the divine essence, and consequently of the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. As the birds in the air and the fish in the sea, so also are we always surrounded and sustained by God. It is thus that He is infinite in his being, without absorbing all created beings into his own essence, but sustaining all in their individual subsistence, and in the exercise of their own powers.
§ 6. Eternity.