PART IV.

THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD.

CHAPTER I.

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, 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.

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.

Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:240; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3: 172-188.

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 to 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 can 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 mediæval scholasticism, has infected much of the post-reformation theology, and is found even as recently as Schleiermacher, Rothe, and Olshausen.

Illustrations of this tendency are found in Scotus Erigena: "Deus nescit se quid est, quia 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, Rothe of omniscience; Olshausen, on John 1: 1, 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. 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 lower lies: More complex is more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise."

Jer. 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: 1 Tim. 1: 11-"the blessed God"; Jer. 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: Ps. 7: 11-" a God that hath indignation every day"; John 3:16-"God so loved the world"; Ps. 85: 10, 11-"mercy and truth are met together". See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2: 116 sq.; Schweizer, Glaubenslehre, 1 : 229–235 ; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1: 43, 50; Martensen, Dogmatics, 91-“If God were the simply One, тò à¤λôs êv, 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. Instance Christmas Evans's sermon describing a Council in the Godhead, in which the Attributes of Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, and Power argue with one another. "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: "The attribute is the whole essence acting in a certain way. The centre of unity is not in any one attribute, but in 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, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath

declared him "; 1 Tim. 6: 16-" whom no man hath seen, nor can see"; Mat. 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."

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 infinite 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 eminentiæ, 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 A. D. 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 of the Trinity or of the mercy of God, and that these deficiencies in our rational conclusions with respect to God must be supplied, if at all, by revelation. See 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:

Spirit, Infinite and Perfect, the Source, Support, and 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 29). 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