THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD.

CHAPTER 1.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

In contemplating the words and acts of God, as in contemplating the words and acts of individual men, we are compelled to assign uniform and permanent effects to uniform and permanent causes. Holy acts and words, we argue, must have their source in a principle of holiness; truthful acts and words, in a settled proclivity to truth; benevolent acts and words, in a benevolent disposition.

Moreover, these permanent and uniform sources of expression and action to which we have applied the terms principle, proclivity, disposition, since they exist harmoniously in the same person, must themselves inhere, and find their unity, in an underlying spiritual substance or reality of which they are the inseparable characteristics and partial manifestations.

Thus we are led naturally from the works to the attributes, and from the attributes to the essence, of God.

For all practical purposes we may use the words essence, substance, being, nature, as synonymous with each other. So, too, we may speak of attribute, quality, characteristic, principle, proclivity, and disposition, as practically one. As, in cognizing matter, we pass from its effects in sensation to the qualities which produce the sensations, and then to the material substance to which the qualities belong; and as, in cognizing mind, we pass from its phenomena in thought and action to the faculties and dispositions which give rise to these phenomena, and then to the mental substance to which these faculties and dispositions belong; so, in cognizing God, we pass from his words and acts to his qualities or attributes, and then to the substance or essence to which these qualities or attributes belong.

The teacher in a Young Ladies’ Seminary described substance as a cushion, into which the attributes as pins are stuck. But pins and cushion alike are substance, — neither one is quality. The opposite error is illustrated from the experience of Abraham Lincoln on the Ohio River. “What is this transcendentalism that we hear so much about?” asked Mr. Lincoln. The answer came: “You see those swallows digging holes in yonder bank? Well, take away the bank from around those holes, and what is left is transcendentalism.” Substance is often represented as being thus transcendental. If such representations were correct, metaphysics would indeed be “that, of which those who listen understand nothing, and which he who speaks does not himself understand,” and the metaphysician would be the fox who ran into the hole and then pulled in the hole after him. Substance and attributes are correlates, — neither one is possible without the other. There is no quality that does not qualify something; and there is no thing, either material or spiritual, that can be known or can exist without qualities to differentiate it from other things. In applying the categories of substance and attribute to God, we indulge in no merely curious speculation, but rather yield to the necessities of rational thought and show how we must think of God if we think at all. See Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:240; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:172-188.

I. DEFINITION OF THE TERM ATTRIBUTES.

The attributes of God are those distinguishing characteristics of the divine nature which are inseparable from the idea of God and which constitute the basis and ground for his various manifestations to his creatures.

We call them attributes, because we are compelled to attribute them to God as fundamental qualities or powers of his being, in order to give rational account of certain constant facts in God’s self-revelations.

II. RELATION OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES TO THE DIVINE ESSENCE.

1. The attributes have an objective existence. They are not mere names for human conceptions of God — conceptions, which have their only ground in the imperfection of the finite mind. They are qualities objectively distinguishable from the divine essence and from each other.

The nominalistic notion that God is a being of absolute simplicity, and that in his nature there is no internal distinction of qualities or powers, tends directly to pantheism; denies all reality of the divine perfections; or, if these in any sense still exist, precludes all knowledge of them on the part of finite beings. To say that knowledge and power, eternity and holiness, are identical with the essence of God and with each other, is to deny that we know God at all.

The Scripture declarations of the possibility of knowing God, together with the manifestation of the distinct attributes of his nature, are conclusive against this false notion of the divine simplicity.

Aristotle says well that there is no such thing as a science of the unique, of that which has no analogies or relations. Knowing is distinguishing; what we cannot distinguish from other things we cannot know. Yet a false tendency to regard God as a being of absolute simplicity has come down from medieval scholasticism, has infected much of the post-reformation theology, and is found even so recently as in Schleiermacher, Rothe, Olshausen, and Ritschl. E.G. Robinson defines the attributes as “our methods of conceiving of God.” But this definition is influenced by the Kantian doctrine of relativity and implies that we cannot know God’s essence, that is, the thing-in-itself, God’s real being. Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 141 — “This notion of the divine simplicity reduces God to a rigid and lifeless stare… The One is manifold without being many.”

The divine simplicity is the starting point of Philo: God is a being absolutely bare of quality. All quality in finite beings has limitation, and no limitation can be predicated of God who is eternal, unchangeable, simple substance, free, self-sufficient, better than the good and the beautiful. To predicate any quality of God would reduce him to the sphere of finite existence. Of him we can only say that he is, not what he is; see art. by Schurer. in Encyc. Brit., 18:761.

Illustrations of this tendency are found in Scotus Erigena: “Deus nescit se quid est, qula non est quid”; and in Occam: The divine attributes are distinguished neither substantially nor logically from each other or from the divine essence; the only distinction is that of names; so Gerhard and Quenstedt. Charnock, the Puritan writer, identifies both knowledge and will with the simple essence of God. Schleiermacher makes all the attributes to be modifications of power or causality; in his system God and world = the “natura naturans” and “natura naturata” of Spinoza.

There is no distinction of attributes and no succession of acts in God, and therefore no real personality or even spiritual being; see Pfleiderer, Prot.

Theol. seit Kant, 110. Schleiermacher said: “My God is the Universe.”

God is causative force. Eternity, omniscience and holiness are simply aspects of causality. Rothe, on the other hand, makes omniscience to be the all-comprehending principle of the divine nature; and Olshausen, on John 1:1, in a similar manner attempts to prove that the Word of God must have objective and substantial being, by assuming that knowing = willing; whence it would seem to follow that since God wills all that he knows, he must will moral evil.

Bushnell and others identify righteousness in God with benevolence, and therefore cannot see that any atonement needs to be made to God. Ritschl also holds that love is the fundamental divine attribute, and that omnipotence “and even personality are simply modifications of love; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine, & Herbert Spencer only carries the principle further when he concludes God to be simple unknowable force.

But to call God everything is the same as to call him nothing. With Dorner, we say that “definition is no limitation.” As we rise in the scale of creation from the mere jelly sac to man, the homogeneous becomes the heterogeneous, there is differentiation of functions, complexity increases.

We infer that God, the highest of all, instead of being simple force, is infinitely complex, that he has an infinite variety of attributes and powers.

Tennyson, Palace of Art (lines omitted in the later editions): “All nature widens upward: evermore The simpler essence lowers lies: More complex is more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.” Jeremiah 10:10 — God is “the living God”; John 5:26 — he “hath life in himself” — unsearchable riches of positive attributes; John 17:23 — “thou lovedst me” — manifoldness in unity. This complexity in God is the ground of blessedness for him and of progress for us: Timothy 1:11 — “the blessed God”; Jeremiah 9:23,24 — “let him glory in this, that he knoweth me.” The complex nature of God permits anger at the sinner and compassion for him at the same moment: Psalm 7:11 — “a God that hath indignation every day”; John 3:16 — “God so loved the world”; Psalm 85:10,11 — “mercy and truth are met together.” See Julius Muller, Doct. Sin, 2:116 sq .; Schweizer, Glaubenslehre, I:229-235; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:43, 50; Martensen, Dogmatics, 91 — “If God were the simple One, to< ajplw~v e[n , the mystic abyss in which every form of determination were extinguished, there would be nothing in the Unity to be known.” Hence “nominalism is incompatible with the idea of revelation. We teach, with realism, that the attributes of God are objective determinations in his revelation and as such are rooted in his inmost essence.” 2. The attributes inhere in the divine essence. They are not separate existences. They are attributes of God.

While we oppose the nominalistic view, which holds them to be mere names with which, by the necessity of our thinking, we clothe the one simple divine essence, we need equally to avoid the opposite realistic extreme of making them separate parts of a composite God.

We cannot conceive of attributes except as belonging to an underlying essence, which furnishes their ground of unity. In representing God as a compound of attributes, realism endangers the living unity of the Godhead.

Notice the analogous necessity of attributing the properties of matter to an underlying substance, and the phenomena of thought to an underlying spiritual essence; else matter is reduced to mere force, and mind, to mere sensation, — in short, all things are swallowed up in a vast idealism. The purely realistic explanation of the attributes tends to low and polytheistic conceptions of God. The mythology of Greece was the result of personifying the divine attributes. The nomina were turned into numina, as Max Muller says; see Taylor, Nature on the Basis of Realism, 293.

Instance also Christmas Evans’s sermon describing a Council in the Godhead, in which the attributes of Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, and Power argue with one another. Robert Hall called Christmas Evans “the oneeyed orator of Anglesey,” but added that his one eye could “light an army through a wilderness”; see Joseph Cross, Life and Sermons of Christmas Evans, 112-116; David Rhys Stephen, Memoirs of Christmas Evans, 168- 176. We must remember that “Realism may so exalt the attributes that no personal subject is left to constitute the ground of unity. Looking upon Personality as anthropomorphism, it falls into a worse personification, that of omnipotence, holiness, benevolence, which are mere blind thoughts, unless there is one who is the Omnipotent, the Holy, the Good.”

See Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 70. 3. The attributes belong to the divine essence as such. They are to be distinguished from those other powers or relations which do not appertain to the divine essence universally.

The personal distinctions (proprietates) in the nature of the one God are not to be denominated attributes; for each of these personal distinctions belongs not to the divine essence as such and universally, but only to the particular person of the Trinity who bears its name, while on the contrary all of the attributes belong to each of the persons.

The relations, which God sustains to the world (predicata), moreover, such as creation, preservation, government, are not to be denominated attributes; for these are accidental, not necessary or inseparable from the idea of God. God would be God, if he had never created.

To make creation eternal and necessary is to dethrone God and to enthrone a fatalistic development. It follows that the nature of the attributes is to be illustrated, not alone or chiefly from wisdom and holiness in man, which are not inseparable from man’s nature, but rather from intellect and will in man, without which he would cease to be man altogether. Only that is an attribute, of which it can be safely said that he who possesses it would, if deprived of it, cease to be God. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:335 — The attribute is the whole essence acting in a certain way. The center of unity is not in any on attribute, but in the essence… The difference between the divine attribute and the divine person is, that the person is a mode of the existence of the essence, while the attribute is a mode either of the relation, or of the operation, of the essence.” 4. The attributes manifest the divine essence. The essence is revealed only through the attributes. Apart from its attributes it is unknown and unknowable.

But though we can know God only as he reveals to us his attributes, we do, notwithstanding, in knowing these attributes, know the being to whom these attributes belong. That this knowledge is partial does not prevent its corresponding, so far as it goes, to objective reality in the nature of God.

All God’s revelations are, therefore, revelations of himself in and through his attributes. Our aim must be to determine from God’s works and words what qualities, dispositions, determinations, powers of his otherwise unseen and unsearchable essence he has actually made known to us; or in other words, what are the revealed attributes of God. John 1:18 — “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”; Timothy 6:16 — “whom no man hath seen, nor can see”; Matthew 5:8 — “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”; 11:27 — “neither doth any man know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.” C.A. Strong: “Kant, not content with knowing the reality in the phenomena, was trying to know the reality apart from the phenomena; he was seeking to know, without fulfilling the conditions of knowledge; in short, he wished to know without knowing.” So Agnosticism perversely regards God as concealed by his own manifestation. On the contrary, in knowing the phenomena we know the object itself. J.C.C. Clarke, Self and the Father,6 — “In language, as in nature, there are no verbs without subjects, but we are always hunting for the noun that has no adjective, and the verb that has no subject, and the subject that has no verb. Consciousness is necessarily a consciousness of self. Idealism and monism would like to see all verbs solid with their subjects, and to write ‘I do ‘or ‘I feel’ in the mazes of a monogram, but consciousness refuses, and before it says ‘Do’ or ‘Feel,’ it finishes saying ‘I.”’ J. G. Holland’s Katrina, to her lover: “God is not worshiped in his attributes. I do not love your attributes, but you. Your attributes all meet me otherwhere, Blended in other personalities. Nor do I love nor do I worship them, Nor those who bear them. E’en the spotted pard Will dare a danger which will make you pale; But shall his courage steal my heart from you? You cheat your conscience, for you know That I may like your attributes, Yet love not you.”

III. METHODS OF DETERMINING THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES.

We have seen that the existence of God is a first truth. It is presupposed in all human thinking, and is more or less consciously recognized by all men.

This intuitive knowledge of God we have seen to be corroborated and explicated by arguments drawn from nature and from mind. Reason leads us to a causative and personal Intelligence upon whom we depend. This Being of indefinite greatness we clothe, by a necessity of our thinking, with all the attributes of perfection. The two great methods of determining what these attributes are, are the Rational and the Biblical. 1. The Rational method. This is threefold: — (a) the via negationis, or the way of negation, which consists in denying to God all imperfections observed in created beings; (b) the via eminentia, or the way of climax, which consists in attributing to God in infinite degree all the perfections found in creatures; and (c) the via causalitatis or the way of causality, which consists in predicating of God those attributes which are required in him to explain the world of nature and of mind.

This rational method explains God’s nature from that of his creation, whereas the creation itself can be fully explained only from the nature of God. Though the method is valuable, it has insuperable limitations, and its place is a subordinate one. While we use it continually to confirm and supplement results otherwise obtained, our chief means of determining the divine attributes must be 2. The Biblical method. This is simply the inductive method, applied to the facts with regard to God revealed in the Scriptures. Now that we have proved the Scriptures to be a revelation from God, inspired in every part, we may properly look to them as decisive authority with regard to God’s attributes.

The rational method of determining the attributes of God is sometimes said to have been originated by Dionysius the Areopagite, reputed to have been a judge at Athens at the time of Paul and to have died AD 95. It is more probably eclectic, combining the results attained by many theologians, and applying the intuitions of perfection and causality, which lie at the basis of all religious thinking. It is evident from our previous study of the arguments for God’s existence, that from nature we cannot learn either the Trinity or the mercy of God, and that these deficiencies in our rational conclusions with respect to God must be supplied, if at all, by revelation. Spurgeon, Autobiography, 166 — “The old saying is ‘Go from Nature up to Nature’s God.’ But it is hard work going up hill. The best thing is to go from Natures God down to Nature and it you once get to Nature’s God and believe him and love him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds, and to see God everywhere.” See also Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:181.

IV. CLASSIFICATION OF THE ATTRIBUTES.

The attributes may be divided into two great classes: Absolute or Immanent, and Relative or Transitive.

By Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the inner being of God, which are involved in God’s relations to himself, and which belong to his nature independently of his connection with the universe.

By Relative or Transitive Attributes, we mean attributes which respect the outward revelation of God’s being, which are involved in God’s relations to the creation, and which are exercised in consequence of the existence of the universe and its dependence upon him.

Under the head of Absolute or Immanent Attributes, we make a threefold division into Spirituality, with the attributes therein involved, namely, Life and Personality; Infinity, with the attributes therein involved, namely, Self- existence, Immutability, and Unity; and Perfection, with the attributes therein involved, namely, Truth, Love, and Holiness.

Under the head of Relative or Transitive Attributes, we make a threefold division, according to the order of their revelation, into Attributes having relation to Time and Space, as Eternity and Immensity; Attributes having relation to Creation, as Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence; and Attributes having relation to Moral Beings, as Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth; Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love; and Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.

This classification may be better understood from the following schedule: 1.Absolute or Immanent Attributes:

A. Spirituality, involving (a) Life, (b) Personality Spirit B. Infinity, involving (a) Self-existence, (b) Immutability, (c) Unity.

Infinite C. Perfection, involving (a) Truth, (b) Love, (c) Holiness.

Perfect 2. Relative or Transitive Attributes; A. Related to Time and Space (a) Eternity, (b) Immensity The Source B. Related to Creation (a) Omnipresence, (b) Omniscience, (c) Omnipotence.

The Support C. Related to Moral Beings (a) Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth. (b) Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love (c) Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.

The End Of All Things It will be observed, upon examination of the preceding schedule, that our classification presents God first as Spirit, then as the infinite Spirit, and finally as the perfect Spirit. This accords with our definition of the term God (see page 52). It also corresponds with the order in which the attributes commonly present themselves to the human mind. Our first thought of God is that of mere Spirit, mysterious and undefined, over against our own spirits. Our next thought is that of God’s greatness; the quantitative element suggests itself: his natural attributes rise before us: we recognize him as the infinite One. Finally comes the qualitative element; our moral natures recognize a moral God; over against our error, selfishness and impurity, we perceive his absolute perfection.

It should also be observed that this moral perfection, as it is an immanent attribute, involves relation of God to himself. Truth, love and holiness, as they respectively imply an exercise in God of intellect, affection and will, may be conceived of as God’s self-knowing, God’s self-loving, and God’s self-willing. The significance of this will appear more fully in the discussion of the separate attributes.

Notice the distinction between absolute and relative, between immanent and transitive, attributes. Absolute — existing in no necessary relation to things outside of God. Relative — existing in such relation. Immanent — “remaining within, limited to, God’s own nature in their activity and effect, inherent and indwelling, internal and subjective — opposed to immanent or transitive.” Transitive — having an object outside of God himself. We speak of transitive verbs, and we mean verbs that are followed by an object. God’s transitive attributes are so called, because they respect and affect things and beings outside of God.

The aim of this classification into Absolute and Relative Attributes is to make plain the divine self-sufficiency. Creation is not a necessity, for there is plh>rwma in God ( Colossians 1:19), even before he makes the world or becomes incarnate. And plh>rwma is not “the filling material,” nor “the vessel filled,” but “that which is complete in itself,” or, in other words, “plenitude,” “fullness,” “totality,” “abundance.” The whole universe is but a drop of dew upon the fringe of God’s garment, or a breath exhaled from his mouth. He could create a universe a hundred times as great. Nature is but the symbol of God. The tides of life that ebb and flow on the far shores of the universe are only faint expressions of his life. The Immanent Attributes show us how completely matters of grace are Creation and Redemption, and how unspeakable is the condescension of him who took our humanity and humbled himself to the death of the Cross. Psalm 8:3,4 — “When I consider thy heavens… what is man that thou art mindful of him?”; 13:5, 6 — “Who is like unto Jehovah our God, that hath his seat on high, that humbleth himself?”; Philippians 2:6,7 — “Who, existing in the form of God,… emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

Ladd, Theory of Reality, 69 — “I know that I am, because, as the basis of all discriminations as to what I am, and as the core of all such selfknowledge, I immediately know myself as will .” So as to the non-ego, “that things actually are is a factor in my knowledge of them which springs from the root of an experience with myself as a will, at once active and inhibited, as an agent and yet opposed by another.” The ego and the non-ego as well are fundamentally and essentially will. “Matter must be, per se, Force. But this is… to be a Will” (439). We know nothing of the atom apart from its force (442). Ladd quotes from G. E.

Bailey: “The life principle, varying only in degree, is omnipresent. There is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence, and this thrills through every atom of the whole Cosmos” (446). “Science has only made the Substrate of material things more and more completely self-like” (449). Spirit is the true and essential Being of what is called Nature (472). “The ultimate Being of the world is a self-conscious Mind and Will, which is the Ground of all objects made known in human experience” (550) On classification of attributes, see Luthardt, Compendium, 71; Rothe, Dogmatik, 71; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:162; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:47, 52, 136. On the general subject, see Charnock, Attributes; Bruce, Eigenschaftslehre.

V. ABSOLUTE OR IMMANENT ATTRIBUTES.

First division. — Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.

In calling spirituality an attribute of God, we mean, not that we are justified in applying to the divine nature the adjective “spiritual,” but that the substantive “Spirit” describes that nature ( John 4:24, margin — “God is spirit”; Romans 1:20 — “the invisible things of him”; 1 Timothy 1:17 — “incorruptible, invisible”; Colossians 1:15 — “the invisible God”). This implies, negatively, that (a) God is not matter. Spirit is not a refined form of matter but an immaterial substance, invisible, uncompounded, indestructible. (b) God is not dependent upon matter. It cannot be shown that the human mind, in any other state than the present, is dependent for consciousness upon its connection with a physical organism.

Much less is it true that God is dependent upon the material universe as his sensorium. God is not only spirit, but he is pure spirit. He is not only not matter, but he has no necessary connection with matter ( Luke 24:39 — “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”).

John gives us the three characteristic attributes of God when he says that God is “spirit,” “light” “love” ( John 4:24; I John 1:5; 4:8), — not a spirit, a light, a love. Le Conte, in Royce’s Conception of God,45 — “God is spirit, for spirit is essential Life and essential Energy, and essential Love, and essential Thought; in a word, essential Person.”

Biedermann, Dogmatik, 631 — “Das Wesen des Geistes als des reinen Gegensatzes zur Materie, ist das reine Sein, das in sich ist, aber nicht da ist.” Martineau, Study, 2:366 — “The subjective Ego is always here, as opposed to all else, which is variously there… Without local relations, therefore, the soul is inaccessible.” But, Martineau continues, “if matter be but centers of force, all the soul needs may be centers from which to act.” Romanes, Mind and Motion, 34 — “Because within the limits of human experience mind is only known as associated with brain, it does not follow that mind cannot exist in any other mode.” La Place swept the heavens with his telescope, but could not find anywhere a God. “He might just as well,” says President Sawyer, “have swept his kitchen with a broom.” Since God is not a material being, he cannot be apprehended by any physical means.

Those passages of Scripture, which seem to ascribe to God the possession of bodily parts and organs, as eyes and hands, are to be regarded as anthropomorphic and symbolic. When God is spoken of as appearing to the patriarchs and walking with them, the passages are to be explained as referring to God’s temporary manifestations of himself in human form — manifestations, which prefigured the final tabernacling of the Son of God in human flesh. Side by side with these anthropomorphic expressions and manifestations, moreover, are specific declarations which repress any materializing conceptions of God; as, for example, that heaven is his throne and the earth his footstool ( Isaiah 66:1) and that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him ( 1 Kings 8:27). Exodus 33:18-20 declares that man cannot see God and live; Corinthians 2:7-16 intimates that without the teaching of God’s Spirit we cannot know God; all this teaches that God is above sensuous perception, in other words, that he is not a material being. The second command of the decalogue does not condemn sculpture and painting, but only the making of images of God. It forbids our conceiving God after the likeness of a thing, but it does not forbid our conceiving God after the likeness of our inward self, i.e., as personal. This again shows that God is a spiritual being. Imagination can be used in religion, and great help can be derived from it. Yet we do not know God by imagination, — imagination only helps us vividly to realize the presence of the God whom we already know. We may almost say that some men have not imagination enough to be religious. But imagination must not lose its wings. In its representations of God, it must not be confined to a picture, or a form, or a place. Humanity tends too much to rest in the material and the sensuous, and we must avoid all representations of God which would identify the Being who is worshiped with the helps used in order to realize his presence; John 4:24 — “they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

An Egyptian Hymn to the Nile, dating from the 19th dynasty (14th century BC), contains these words: “His abode is not known; no shrine is found with painted figures; there is no building that can contain him” (Cheyne. Isaiah, 2:120). The repudiation of images among the ancient Persians (Herod. 1:131), as among the Japanese Shintos, indicates the remains of a primitive spiritual religion. The representation of Jehovah with body or form degrades him to the level of heathen gods. Pictures of the Almighty over the chancels of Romanist cathedrals confine the mind and degrade the conception of the worshiper. We may use imagination in prayer, picturing God as a benignant form holding out arms of mercy, but we should regard such pictures only as scaffolding for the building of our edifice of worship, while we recognize, with the Scripture, that the reality worshipped is immaterial and spiritual. Otherwise our idea of God is brought down to the low level of man’s material being. Even man’s spiritual nature may be misrepresented by physical images, as when medieval artists pictured death, by painting a doll like figure leaving the body at the mouth of the person dying.

The longing for a tangible, incarnate God meets its satisfaction in Jesus Christ. Yet even pictures of Christ soon lose their power. Luther said: “If I have a picture of Christ in my heart, why not one upon canvas?” We answer: Because the picture in the heart is capable of change and improvement, as we ourselves change and improve; the picture upon canvas is fixed, and holds to old conceptions which we should outgrow.

Thomas Carlyle: “Men never think of painting the face of Christ, till they lose the impression of him upon their hearts.” Swedenborg, in modern times, represents the view that God exists in the shape of a man — an anthropomorphism of which the making of idols is only a grosser and more barbarous form; see H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 9, 10. This is also the doctrine of Mormonism; see Spencer, Catechism of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons teach that God is a man, that he has numerous wives by whom he peoples space with an infinite number of spirits. Christ was a favorite son by a favorite wife, but birth as man was the only way he could come into the enjoyment of real life. These spirits are all the sons of God, but they can realize and enjoy their son-ship only through birth.

They are about every one of us pleading to be born. Hence, polygamy.

We come now to consider the positive import of the term Spirit. The spirituality of God involves the two attributes of Life and Personality. 1. Life.

The Scriptures represent God as the living God. Jeremiah 10:10 — “He is the living God”; 1 Thessalonians 1:9 — “turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God”; John 5:26 — “hath life in himself”; cf. 14:6 — “I am… the life,” and Hebrews 7:16 — “the power of an endless life’’ Revelations 11:11 — “the Spirit of life.”

Life is a simple idea, and is incapable of real definition. We know it, however, in ourselves, and we can perceive the insufficiency or inconsistency of certain current definitions of it. We cannot regard life in God as (a) Mere process, without a subject for we cannot conceive of a divine life without a God to live it. Versus Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 1:10 — “Life and mind are processes; neither is a substance; neither is a force… the name given to the whole group of phenomena becomes the personification of the phenomena, and the product is supposed to have been the producer.” Here we have a product without any producer — a series of phenomena without any substance of which they are manifestations. In a similar manner we read in Dewey, Psychology. 247 — “Self is an activity. It is not something which acts; it is activity… it is constituted by activities… Through its activity the soul is.” Here it does not appear how there can be activity, without any subject or being that is active. The inconsistency of this view is manifest when Dewey goes on to say: “The activity may further or develop the self,” and when he speaks of “the organic activity of the self.” So Dr. Burdon Sanderson: “Life is a state of ceaseless change, — a state of change with permanence; living matter ever changes while it is ever the same.” “Plus ca change, plus c’est la m’me chose.”

But this permanent thing in the midst of change is the subject, the self, the being, that has life.

Nor can we regard life as (b) Mere correspondence with outward condition and environment for this would render impossible a life of God before the existence of the universe. Versus Herbert Spencer, Biology, 1:59-71 — “Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistence and sequences.” Here we have, at best, a definition of physical and finite life; and even this is insufficient, because the definition recognizes no original source of activity within, but only a power of reaction in response to stimulus from without. We might as well say that the boiling teakettle is alive (Mark Hoptins). We find this defect also in Robert Browning’s lines in The Ring and the Book I The Pope, 1307): “O Thou — as represented here to me In such conception as my soul allows — Under thy measureless, my atomwidth — Man’s mind, what is it but a convex glass Wherein are gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known Unknown, our God revealed to man?” Life is something more than a passive receptivity. (c) Life is rather mental energy, or energy of intellect, affection, and will.

God is the living God, as having in his own being a source of being and activity, both for himself and others.

Life means energy, activity, and movement. Aristotle: “Life is energy of mind.” Wordsworth, Excursion, book 5:602 — “Life is love and immortality, The Being one, and one the element… Life, I repeat, is energy of love Divine or human.” Prof. C. L. Herrick, on Critics of Ethical Monism, in Denison Quarterly, Dec. 1896:248 — “Force is energy under resistance, or self-limited energy, for all parts of the universe are derived from the energy. Energy manifesting itself under selfconditioning or differential forms is force. The change of pure energy into force is creation.” Prof. Herrick quotes from S. T. Coleridge, Anima Poetæ: Space is the name for God; it is the most perfect image of soul — pure soul being to us nothing but unresisted action. Whenever action is resisted, limitation begins — and limitation is the first constituent of body; the more omnipresent it is in a given space, the more that space is body or matter; and thus all body Presupposes soul, inasmuch as all resistance presupposes action.” Schelling: “Life is the tendency to individualism.”

If spirit in man implies life, spirit in God implies endless and inexhaustible life. The total life of the universe is only a faint image of that moving energy, which we call the life of God. Dewey, Psychology, 253 — “The sense of being alive is much more vivid in childhood than afterwards. Leigh Hunt says that, when he was a child, the sight of certain palings painted red gave him keener pleasure than any experience of manhood.” Matthew Arnold: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.” The child’s delight in country scenes, and our intensified perceptions in brain fever, shows us by contrast how shallow and turbid is the stream of our ordinary life. Tennyson, Two Voices: “‘Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life; and fuller, that we want.” That life the needy human spirit finds only in the infinite God. Instead of Tyndall’s: “Matter has in it the promise and potency of every form of life,” we accept Sir William Crookes’s dictum: “Life has in it the promise and potency of every form of matter.’ See A. H. Strong, on The Living God, in Philos. and Religion, 180-187. 2. Personality.

The Scriptures represent God as a personal being. By personality we mean the power of self-consciousness and of self-determination. By way of further explanation we remark (a) Self-consciousness is more than consciousness. This last the brute may be supposed to possess, since the brute is not an automaton. Man is distinguished from the brute by his power to objectify self. Man is not only conscious of his own acts and states, but also, by abstraction and reflection he recognizes the self, which is the subject of these, acts and states. (b) Self-determination is more than determination. The brute shows determination, but his determination is the result of influences from without; there is no inner spontaneity. Man, by virtue of his freewill, determines his action from within. He determines self in view of motives, but his determination is not caused by motives; he himself is the cause.

God, as personal, is in the highest degree self-conscious and selfdetermining.

The rise in our own minds of the idea of God, as personal, depends largely upon our recognition of personality in us. Those who deny spirit in man place a bar in the way of the recognition of this attribute of God. Exodus 3:14 — And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” God is not the everlasting “IT IS,” or “I WAS,” but the everlasting “I AM” (Morris, Philosophy and Christianity, 128); “I AM” implies both personality and presence. 1 Corinthians 2:11 — “the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”; Ephesians 1:9 — “good pleasure which he purposed”; 11 — “the counsel of his will.”

Definitions of personality are the following: Boethius — “Persona est animÆ rationalis individua substantia” (quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415). F. W. Robertson, Genesis 3 — “Personality — selfconsciousness, will, character.” Porter, Human Intellect, 626 — “Distinct subsistence, either actually or latently self-conscious and selfdetermining.”

Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism: Person “being, conscious of self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.” See Harris, 98, 99, quotation from Mansel — “The freedom of the will is so far from being, as it is generally considered, a controvertible question in philosophy, that it is the fundamental postulate without which all action and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches and human consciousness itself, would be impossible.”

One of the most astounding announcements in all literature is that of Matthew Arnold, in his “Literature and Dogma,” that the Hebrew Scriptures recognize in God only “the power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness” = the God of pantheism. The “I AM” of Exodus 3:14 could hardly have been so misunderstood, if Matthew Arnold had not lost the sense of his own personality and responsibility. From free will in man we rise to freedom in God — “That living Will that shall endure, When all that seems shall suffer shock.” Observe that personality needs to be accompanied by life — the power of self-consciousness and selfdetermination needs to be accompanied by activity — in order to make up our total idea of God as Spirit. Only this personality of God gives proper meaning to his punishments or to his forgiveness. See Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1884:217-233; Eichhorn, die Personlichkeit Gottes.

Illingworth, Divine and Human Personality, 1:25, shows that the sense of personality has had a gradual growth; that its pre-Christian recognition was imperfect; that its final definition has been due to Christianity. In 29- 53, he notes the characteristics of personality as reason, love, will. The brute perceives; only the man apperceives, e.g., recognizes his perception as belonging to himself. In the German story, Dreiauglein, the three-eyed child, had besides her natural pair of eyes one other to see what the pair did, and besides her natural will had an additional will to set the first to going right. On consciousness and self-consciousness, see Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:179-189 — “In consciousness the object is another substance than the subject; but in self-consciousness the object is the same substance as the subject.” Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, speaks of “the abysmal depths of personality.” We do not fully know ourselves, nor yet our relation to God. But the divine consciousness embraces the whole divine content of being: “the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” ( 1 Corinthians 2:10).

We are not fully masters of ourselves. Our self-determination is as limited as is our self-consciousness. But the divine will is absolutely without hindrance; God’s activity is constant, intense, infinite; Job 23:13 — “What his soul desireth, even that he doeth”; John 5:17 — “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.” Self-knowledge and self-mastery are the dignity of man; they are also the dignity of God; Tennyson: “Selfreverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three lead life to sovereign power.” Robert Browning, The Last Ride Together: “What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen?” Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 6, 161, 216-255 — “Perhaps the root of personality is capacity for affection.”… Our personality is incomplete: we reason truly only with God helping; our love in higher Love endures; we will rightly, only as God works in us to will and to do; to make us truly ourselves we need an infinite Personality to supplement and energize our own; we are complete only in Christ ( Colossians 2:9,10 — “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full.” Webb, on the Idea of Personality as applied to God, in Jour. Theol.

Studies, 2:50 — “Self knows itself and what is not itself as two, just because both alike are embraced within the unity of its experience, stand out against this background, the apprehension of which is the very essence of that rationality or personality which distinguishes us from the lower animals. We find that background, God, present in us, or rather, we find ourselves present in it. But if I find myself present in it, then it, as more complete, is simply more personal than I. Our not-self is outside of us, so that we are finite and lonely, but God’s not-self is within him, so that there is a mutual inwardness of love and insight of which the most perfect communion among men is only a faint symbol. We are ‘hermit-spirits,’ as Keble says, and we come to union with others only by realizing our union with God. Personality is not impenetrable in man, for ‘in him we live, and move, and have our being’ ( Acts 17:28), and ‘that which hath been made is life in him ( John 1:3,4).” Palmer, Theologic Definition, 39 — “That which has its cause without itself is a thing, while that which has its cause within itself is a person.” Second Division. — Infinity, and attributes therein involved.

By infinity we mean, not that the divine nature has no known limits or bounds, but that it has no limits or bounds. That which has simply no known limits is the indefinite. The infinity of God implies that he is in no way limited by the universe or confined to the universe; he is transcendent as well as immanent. Transcendence, however, must not be conceived as freedom from merely spatial restrictions, but rather as unlimited resource, of which God’s glory is the expression. <19E503> Psalm 145:3 — “his greatness is unsearchable”; Job 11:7-9 — “high as heaven… deeper than Sheol”; Isaiah 66:1 — “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool”; 1 Kings 8:27 — “Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee”; Romans 11:33 — “how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out” There can be no infinite number since to any assignable number a unit can be added, which shows that this number was not infinite before. There can be no infinite universe, because an infinite universe is conceivable only as an infinite number of worlds or of minds. God himself is the only real Infinite, and the universe is but the finite expression or symbol of his greatness.

We therefore object to the statement of Lotze, Microcosm, 1:446 — “The complete system, grasped in its totality, offers an expression of the whole nature of the One… The Cause makes actual existence its complete manifestation.” In a similar way Schurman, Belief in God,26, 173-178, grants infinity, but denies transcendence: “The infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the idea of a single organism embraces within a single life a plurality of members and functions… The world is the expression of an ever active and inexhaustible will. That the external manifestation is as boundless as the life it expresses, science makes exceedingly probable. In any event, we have not the slightest reason to contrast the finitude of the world with the infinity of God.

If the natural order is eternal and infinite, as there seems no reason to doubt, it will be difficult to find a meaning for ‘beyond’ or ‘before.’ Of this illimitable, ever-existing universe, God is the inner ground or substance. There is no evidence, neither does any religious need require us to believe, that the divine Being manifest in the universe has any actual or possible existence elsewhere, in some transcendent sphere… The divine will can express itself only as it does, because no other expression would reveal what it is. Of such a will, the universe is the eternal expression.”

In explanation of the term infinity, we may notice: (a) That infinity can belong to but one Being, and therefore cannot be snared with the universe. Infinity is not a negative but a positive idea. It does not take its rise from an impotence of thought, but is an intuitive conviction, which constitutes the basis of all other knowledge.

See Porter. Human Intellect, 651, 652, and this Compendium, pages 59- 62. Versus Mansel, Proleg. Logica, chap. 1 — “Such negative notions… imply at once an attempt to think, and a failure in that attempt.” On the contrary, the conception of the Infinite is perfectly distinguishable from that of the finite, and is both necessary and logically prior to that of the finite. This is not true of our idea of the universe, of which all we know is finite and dependent. We therefore regard such utterances as those of Lotze and Schurman above, and those of Chamberlin and Caird below, as pantheistic in tendency, although the belief of these writers in divine and human personality saves them from falling into other errors of pantheism.

Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago: “it is not sufficient to the modern scientific thought to think of a Ruler outside of the universe, nor of a universe with the Ruler outside. A supreme Being who does not embrace all the activities and possibilities and potencies of the universe seems something less than the most supreme Being, and a universe with a Ruler outside seems something less than a universe. And therefore the thought is growing on the minds of scientific thinkers that the supreme Being is the universal Being, embracing and comprehending all things.”

Caird, Evolution of Religion, 2:62 — “Religion, if it would continue to exist, must combine the monotheistic idea with that which it has often regarded as its greatest enemy, the spirit of pantheism.” We grant in reply that religion must appropriate the element of truth in pantheism, namely, that God is the only substance, ground and principle of being, but we regard it as fatal to religion to side with pantheism in its denials of God’s transcendence and of God’s personality. (b) That the infinity of God does not involve his identity with ‘the all,’ or the sum of existence, nor prevent the coexistence of derived and finite beings to which he bears relation. Infinity implies simply that God exists in no necessary relation to finite things or beings, and that whatever limitation of the divine nature results from their existence is, on the part of God, a self-limitation. <19B305> Psalm 113:5,6 — “that humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth.” It is involved in God’s infinity that there should be no barriers to his self-limitation in creation and redemption (see page 9, F.). Jacob Boehme said: “God is infinite, for God is all.” But this is to make God all imperfection, as well as all perfection. Harris, Philos.

Basis Theism: “The relation of the absolute to the finite is not the mathematical relation of a total to its parts, but it is a dynamical and rational relation.” Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189-191 — “The infinite is not the total; ‘the all’ is a pseudo-infinite, and to assert that it is greater than the simple infinite is the same error that is committed in mathematics when it is asserted that an infinite number plus a vast finite number is greater than the simple infinite.” Fullerton, Conception of the Infinite, — “The Infinite, though it involves unlimited possibility of quantity, is not itself a quantitative but rather a qualitative conception.” Hovey, Studies of Ethics and Religion, 39-47 — “Any number of finite beings, minds, loves, wills, cannot reveal fully an infinite Being, Mind, Love, Will. God must be transcendent as well as immanent in the universe, or he is neither infinite nor an object of supreme worship.”

Clarke. Christian Theology, 117 — “Great as the universe is, God is not limited to it, wholly absorbed by what he is doing in it, and capable of doing nothing more. God in the universe is not like the life of the tree in the tree, which does all that it is capable of in making the tree what it is.

God in the universe is rather like the spirit of a man in his body, which is greater than his body, able to direct his body, and capable of activities in which his body has no share. God is a free spirit, personal, self-directing, unexhausted by his present activities.” The Persian poet said truly: “The world is a bud from his bower of beauty; the sun is a spark from the light of his wisdom; the sky is a bubble on the sea of his power.” Faber: “For greatness which is infinite makes room For all things in its lap to lie. We should be crushed by a magnificence Short of infinity. We share in what is infinite; it is ours, For it and we alike are Thine. What I enjoy, great God, by right of Thee, Is more than doubly mine.” (c) That the infinity of God is to be conceived of as intensive, rather than as extensive. We do not attribute to God infinite extension, but rather infinite energy of spiritual life. That which acts up to the measure of its power is simply natural and physical force. Man rises above nature by virtue of his reserves of power. But in God the reserve is infinite. There is a transcendent element in him, which no self-revelation exhausts, whether creation or redemption, whether law or promise.

Transcendence is not mere outsideness, — it is rather boundless supply within. God is not infinite by virtue of existing “extra flammantia múnia mundi” (Lucretius) or of filling a space outside of space, — he is rather infinite by being the pure and perfect Mind that passes beyond all phenomena and constitutes the ground of theta. The former conception of infinity is simply supra cosmic, the latter alone is properly transcendent; see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 244. “God is the living God, and has not yet spoken his last word on any subject” (G. W. Northrup). God’s life “operates unspent.” There is “ever more to follow.” The legend stamped with the Pillars of Hercules upon the old coins of Spain was Ne plus ultra — “Nothing beyond,” but when Columbus discovered America the legend was fitly changed to Plus ultra — More beyond.” So the motto of the University of Rochester is Meliora — “Better things.”

Since God’s infinite resources are pledged to aid us, we may, as Emerson bids us, “hitch our wagon to a star,” and believe in progress. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new, That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.” Millet’s L’ Angelus is a witness to man’s need of God’s transcendence. Millet’s aim was to paint, not air but prayer. We need a God who is not confined to nature. As Moses at the beginning of his ministry cried, “Show me, I pray thee, thy glory” ( Exodus 33:18), so we need marked experiences at the beginning of the Christian life, in order that we may be living witnesses to the supernatural. And our Lord promises such manifestations of himself: John 14:21 — “I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.” Psalm 71:15 — “My mouth shall tell of thy righteousness, And of thy salvation all the day; For I know not the numbers thereof” = it is infinite. Psalm 89:2 — “Mercy shall he built up forever” = ever growing manifestations and cycles of fulfillment — first literal, then spiritual. <19B304> Psalm 113:4-6 — “Jehovah is high above all nations, And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto Jehovah our God, That hath his seat on high, That humbleth himself [stoopeth down] to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” Malachi 2:15 — “did he not make one although he had the residue of the Spirit” — he might have created many wives for Adam, though he did actually create but one. In this “residue of the Spirit,” says Caldwell, Cities of our Faith, 370, “there yet lies latent — as winds lie calm in the air of a summer noon, as heat immense lies cold and hidden in the mountains of coal — the blessing and the life of nations, the infinite enlargement of Zion.” Isaiah 52:10 — “Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm” = nature does not exhaust or entomb God; nature is the mantle in which he commonly reveals himself; but he is not fettered by the robe he wears — he can thrust it aside, and make bare his arm in providential inter-positions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty movements of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the setting up of his own kingdom. See also John 1:16 — of his fullness we all received, and grace for grace” = “Each blessing appropriated became the foundation of a greater blessing. To have realized and used one measure of grace was to have gained a larger measure in exchange for it ca>rin ajnti> ca>ritov”; so Westcott, in Bib.

Com., in loco . Christ can ever say to the believer, as he said to Nathanael ( John 1:50): “thou shalt see greater things than these.”

Because God is infinite, he can love each believer as much as if that single soul were the only one for whom he had to care. Both in providence and in redemption the whole heart of God is busy with plans for the interest and happiness of the single Christian. Threatenings do not half reveal God, nor his promises half express the “eternal weight of glory” ( Corinthians 4:17). Dante, Paradiso, 19:40-63 — God “Could not upon the universe so write The impress of his power, but that his word Must still be left in distance infinite.” To “limit the Holy One of Israel” ( Psalm 78:41 — margin) is falsehood as well as sin.

This attribute of infinity, or of transcendence, qualifies all the other attributes and so is the foundation for the representations of majesty and glory as belonging to God (see Exodus 33:18; Psalm 19:1; Isaiah 6:3; Matthew 6:13; Acts 7:2; Romans 1:23, 9:23; Hebrews 1:3; 1 Peter 4:14; Revelation 21:23). Glory is not itself a divine attribute; it is rather a result — an Objective result — of the exercise of the divine attributes. This glory exists irrespective of the revelation and recognition of it in the creation ( John 17:5). Only God can worthily perceive and reverence his own glory. He does all for his own glory. All religion is founded on the glory of God. All worship is the result of this immanent quality of the divine nature. Kedney, Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373, 2:354, apparently conceives of the divine glory as an eternal material environment of God, from which the universe is fashioned. This seems to contradict both the spirituality and the infinity of God. God’s infinity implies absolute completeness apart from anything external to himself. We proceed therefore to consider the attributes involved in infinity.

Of the attributes involved in Infinity, we mention: 1. Self-existence.

By self-existence we mean (a) That God is “causa sui,” having the ground of his existence in himself.

Every being must have the ground of its existence either in or out of itself We have the ground of our existence outside of us. God is not thus dependent. He is a se; hence we speak of the aseity of God.

God’s self-existence is implied in the name “Jehovah” ( Exodus 6:3) and in the declaration I AM THAT I AM” ( Exodus 3:14), both of which signify that it is God’s nature to be. Self-existence is certainly incomprehensible to us, yet a self-existent person is no greater mystery than a self-existent thing, such as Herbert Spencer supposes the universe to be; indeed it is not so great a mystery, for it is easier to derive matter from mind than to derive mind from matter. See Porter, Human Intellect, 661. Joh. Angelus Silesius: “Gott ist das was Er ist; Ich was Ich durch Ihn bin; Doch kennst du Einen wohl, So kennst du mich und Ihn.” Martineau, Types, 1:302 — “A cause may be eternal, but nothing that is caused can be so.” He protests against the phrase “causa sui”. So Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:338, objects to the phrase “God is his own cause,” because God is the uncaused Being. But when we speak of God as “causa sui ,” we do not attribute to him beginning of existence. The phrase means rather that the ground of his existence is not outside of himself, but that he himself is the living spring of all energy and of all being.

But lest this should be misconstrued, we add (b) That God exists by the necessity of his own being. It is his nature to be.

Hence the existence of God is not a contingent but a necessary existence. It is grounded, not in his volition, but in his nature.

Julius Muller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:126, 130, 170, seems to hold that God is primarily will, so that the essence of God is his act: “God’s essence does not precede his freedom”; “if the essence of God were for him something given, something already present, the question ‘from whence it was given?’ could not be evaded; God’s essence must in this case have its origin in something apart from him, and thus the true conception of God would be entirely swept away.” But this implies that truths, reason, love, holiness, equally with God’s essence, are all products of will. If God’s essence moreover, were his act, it would be in the power of God to annihilate himself. Act presupposes essence; else there is no God to act.

The will by which God exists, and in virtue of which he is causa sui , is therefore not will in the sense of volition, but will in the sense of the whole movement of his active being. With Muller’s view Thomasius and Delitzsch are agreed. For refutation of it, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:63.

God’s essence is not his act, not only because this would imply that he could destroy himself, but also because before willing there must be being. Those who hold God’s essence to be simple activity are impelled to this view by the fear of postulating some dead thing in God, which precedes all exercise of faculty. So Miller, Evolution of Love,43 — “Perfect action, conscious and volitional, is the highest generalization, the ultimate unit, the unconditioned nature, of infinite Being”; i.e. , God’s nature is subjective action, while external nature is his objective action. A better statement, however, is that of Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 170 — “While there is a necessity in the soul, it becomes controlling only through freedom; and we ‘nay say that everyone must constitute himself a rational soul… This is absolutely true of God.” 2. Immutability.

By this we mean that the nature, attributes, and will of God are exempt from all change. Reason teaches us that no change is possible in God, whether of increase or decrease, progress or deterioration, contraction or development. All change must be to better or to worse. But God is absolute perfection, and no change to better is possible. Change to worse would be equally inconsistent with perfection. No cause for such change exists, either outside of God or in God himself. <19A227> Psalm 102:27 — “thou art the same”; Malachi 3:6 — “I, Jehovah, change not”; James 1:17 — “with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” Spenser, Faerie Queen, Cantos of Mutability, 8:2 — “Then ‘gin I think on that which nature sayde, Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayed Upon the pillars of eternity; For all that moveth doth in change delight, But henceforth all shall rest eternally With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight; Oh thou great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath’s sight!” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 146, defines immutability as “the constancy and continuity of the divine nature which exists through all the divine acts as their law and source.”

The passages of Scripture, which seem at first sight to ascribe change to God, are to be explained in one of three ways: (a) As illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his immutable truth and wisdom in creation.

Mathematical principles receive new application with each successive stage of creation. The law of cohesion gives place to chemical law, and chemistry yields to vital forces, but through all these changes there is a divine truth and wisdom which is unchanging, and which reduces all to rational order. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:140 — “Immutability is not stereotyped sameness, but impossibility of deviation by one hair’s breadth from the course which is best. A man of great force of character is continually finding new occasions for the manifestation and application of moral principle. In God infinite consistency is united with infinite flexibility. There is no iron-bound impossibility, but rather an infinite originality in him.” (b) As anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God’s unchanging attributes in the changing circumstances and varying moral conditions of creatures. Genesis 6:6 — “it repented Jehovah that he had made man” — is to be interpreted in the light of Numbers 23:19 — “God is not a man that he should lie: neither the son of man that he should repent.” So cf. I Sam. 15:11 with 15:29. God’s unchanging holiness requires him to treat the wicked differently from the righteous. When the righteous become wicked, his treatment of them must change. The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax but hardens the clay, — the change is not in the sun but in the objects it shines upon. The change in God’s treatment of men is described anthropomorphically, as if it were a change in God himself, — other passages in close conjunction with the first being given to correct any possible misapprehension. Threats not fulfilled, as in Jonah 3:4,10, are to be explained by their conditional nature. Hence God’s immutability itself renders it certain that his love will adapt itself to every varying mood and condition of his children, so as to guide their steps, sympathize with their sorrows, answer their prayers. God responds to us more quickly than the mother’s face to the changing moods of her babe. Godet, in The Atonement, 338 — “God is of all beings the most delicately and infinitely sensitive.”

God’s immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal experience, but rather that of the column of mercury, that rises and fails with every change in the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.

When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to change, though it is blowing just as it was before. The sinner struggles against the wind of prevenient grace until he seems to strike against a stone wall.

Regeneration is God’s conquest of our wills by his power, and conversion is our beginning to turn round and to work with God rather than against God. Now we move without effort, because we have God at our back; Philippians 2:12,13 — “work out your own salvation… for it is God who worketh in you.” God has not changed, but we have changed; John 3:8 — “The wind bloweth where it will… so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Jacob’s first wrestling with the Angel was the picture of his lifelong self-will, opposing God; his subsequent wrestling in prayer was the picture of a consecrated will, working with God ( Genesis 32:24-28). We seem to conquer God, but he really conquers us. He seems to change, but it is we who change after all. (c) As describing executions, in time, of purposes eternally existing in the mind of God. Immutability must not be confounded with immobility. This would deny