Prothesis expresses the absolute identity or eternal co-inherence of Reason, Love, and Power (the Divine Essence). Thesis expresses Power in the form of Love (the Divine Self-sufficiency and Self-potency). Antithesis expresses Reason in the form of Power (the Divine Efficiency). Synthesis expresses the diversity in unity of Reason, Love, and Power (the Divine Perfection). And Mesothesis expresses the essential correlations which integrate the whole (the Triunity of the manifested God). Thus Absolute Reality, Infinite Efficiency, and Perfect Personality are all, as a triplicity, contained in the fundamental unity of an unconditioned Will, which has Love as its motive, Power as its agent, and Reason as its light and law.
And now let us retire within our own consciousness, and see if this fundamental axiom of rational integration—Will as the principle of all Reality, Efficiency, and Perfection—is not reflected in our reason, and evolved in our inner experience. Do we not find that the central point of our consciousness—that which makes each man what he is in contradistinction from every other man—that which expresses the real essence of the soul apart from its formal processes and regulative laws—is the WILL? Without Will man would fall back from the elevation which he now assumes to the level of impersonal nature: in a word, he would be a thing, and not a power. Power, spontaneity, causality, will—these, or similar forms, express, as nearly as can be, the essential nature or principle of the human soul.[21] Furthermore, it is obvious that mere Power or Energy does not suffice for the notion of Will—there must also be Reason and Affection.[22] Indeed, "Will is contemplated universally as the inseparable union and perpetual differentiation of Intelligence and originative Power, and as such the sole ground of the intelligibility of all causation."[23]
A volitional act, a moral and responsible act, must be one which is performed under the influence of motives, and for which, when called to account, we can assign valid reasons. All true volition supposes a purpose or end to be realized, an inward appetency or motive which makes the end desirable, and the selection and adaptation of means to accomplish that end. Power divorced from reason is simply blind force, and can not be dignified with the name of Will. The mind of man is sometimes in a predominant state of knowing, sometimes in a predominant state of feeling, and sometimes in a predominant state of determination. To call these separate faculties, however, is altogether beside the mark. No act of intelligence can be performed without some determination of the Ego, no act of determination without some cognition, and no act of the one or the other without some amount of feeling being mingled in the process. Thus, while each mental state may have its distinctive characteristics, there is unity at the root—the identical Ego, spirit, WILL.[24]
Sensibility is the condition, Reason is the light, Will is the centre of human consciousness. Consciousness is a threefold phenomenon in which feeling, knowing, and self-determination are reciprocal elements, and in their connection and simultaneousness, and at the same time their differentiation, they compose the entire intellectual life.[25] The finite spirit or will unfolds itself, first, subjectively, in the spontaneous affirmation of self-being or self-potency (IPSËITY); secondly, objectively, in the exertion of power to produce motion, change, phenomena (EFFICIENCY); thirdly, synthetically, in the unity of motive and intention, purpose and act, means and end (PERSONALITY).
Thus does "Will present the middle point, which embraces thought on the one hand and force on the other; and which yet, so far from appearing to us to be a compound arising out of them as an effect, is more easily conceived as the originative prefix (prothesis) of all mental phenomena.... It carries with it, in its very idea, the co-presence of thought as the necessary element within whose sphere it has to manifest itself; its phenomena can not exist alone; it acts on preconceptions, which stand related to it, not however as its source, but as its conditions, and are its co-ordinates in the effect, rather than its generating antecedents."[26]
Psychological analysis leads us inevitably to this conclusion, that all things are issued by Will, whether in the sphere of the finite or the infinite, and therefore we postulate an UNCONDITIONED WILL, A PERFECT MIND, at the source of all becoming. Thus, as Martineau truly remarks, between the FORCE of the physical atheist and the THOUGHT of the metaphysical pantheist, we fix upon WILL as the true balancing-point of a moral theism.
The intelligent reader scarce needs to be reminded that this is the conclusion reached by reflective thought in that best and fullest exhibition of it which is found in Greek philosophy. The great problem of Greek philosophy, as of all philosophy, was, "What is the ἀρχῆ, the First Principle—the ground and cause and reason of all existence?" The final answer of that age is found in Plato, for Platonism was the culmination, the ripened fruit of the ages of earnest thought which preceded Plato. He gathered up, co-ordinated, and grasped into unity the results bequeathed by the mental efforts of his predecessors. The Platonic answer to this great question of philosophy is clear and unequivocal. A perfect MIND is the primal source of all being—a Mind in which Intellect, Efficiency, and Goodness are one and identical. "Mind is the most worthy ἀρχῆ." "God is the most excellent of causes."[27] "Mind is king of heaven and earth."[28] "Motion and life and soul and mind are present with absolute being. We can not imagine being to be devoid of life and mind, remaining in awful unmeaningness and everlasting fixture."[29]
"Whatever begins to be, must necessarily be produced by some cause; for nothing can have its generation without a cause." "The Maker and Father of the universe ... had no beginning of his being." He formed the universe according to the eternal model or archetype which his own reason supplied, and for motives which his own essential goodness proposed. "Let us now tell for what cause the Maker of this creation and this universe made it as it is. He was good; and he who is good grudges no advantage to any creature. Being thus free from envy, He willed that the universe should be good like Himself; and this, the special ground of the creation and the world, which we receive from the wisest philosophers, we must accept."[30]
It would be easy to show that the recognition of intelligent Will, as standing at the fountain-head of all the force which is manifested in the universe, is common to the first Physicists of this age.
Grove concludes his admirable essay on "The Correlation of the Physical Forces" with these words: "In all phenomena the more closely they are investigated the more are we convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is unattainable [by science]—Causation is the WILL, Creation is the act, of God."[31] Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to express his conviction that "it is but reasonable to regard the Force of Gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a WILL existing somewhere."[32] Dr. Carpenter, with his usual sagacity in penetrating to the essential point, remarks that the WILL "is that form of Force which must be taken as the type of all the rest;" "Force must be regarded as the direct expression of WILL."[33] "If," says Wallace, "we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be WILL-FORCE, and thus the whole universe is not only dependent on, but actually is the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."[34] In short, the present attitude of science in relation to this great problem is, I think, fairly represented by the Duke of Argyll: "Science, in the modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy and the Convertibility of Forces, is already getting hold of the idea that all kinds of Force are but forms and manifestations of some one Central Force issuing from some one Fountain-head of Power." "This one Force, into which all others return again, is itself but a mode of action of the Divine Will."[35] Even Spencer concedes that "the Force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of all analysis ... all other modes of consciousness are derived from our consciousness of exerting Force."[36] "The order of nature is doubtless very imperfect, but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent will than with that of blind mechanism."[37] Physical science is surely coming into harmony with metaphysical thought. It looks upon nature with the eye of reason as well as the eye of sense. And it reduces the phenomena to unity, not simply by comparative abstraction, which classifies under resemblance, co-existence, and succession, but by that rational integration which operates under the necessary laws of substance, causality, intentionality, and absolute unity. It regards the forces of nature as the product or manifestation of a higher force—a force which is not merely dynamical in its nature—a force which can compass not merely concurrent and antagonistic motions in space, but which is able so to adjust these concurrences and antagonisms as to construct agencies which shall realize designs—a force, therefore, which is thoughtful and percipient: in one word, intelligent—a force, in fine, which is not a mere mechanical dynamism in space and time, but a true Power existing in its type and fullness: in one word—God.[38]
Thus does all reflective thought, whether directed to the phenomena of the human mind or the phenomena of nature, confirm the à priori intuition of an unconditioned Will unfolding itself in Thought and Power, and completing itself in a harmonious Totality, as the First Principle and Originative Cause of all existences and of all relations, of all individual beings, and of that harmonious whole men call the Cosmos.
And now we pass to the important question—How are we to bring all our acquired conceptions of God into harmony with this fundamental idea? Assuming that we have certain conceptions of God which are derived from verbal instruction, and ultimately from Divine revelation, can we bring these into unity under this First Principle? Or, in other words, can we logically evolve the attributes and perfections of God out of this fundamental Idea, and find the result in harmony with the Christian doctrine?
As the object of thought, even of Christian thought, God must necessarily be conceived by us under the fundamental categories of Being, Attribute, and Relation. All objects of thought must come under these categories, and out of or beyond these categories we can not think at all. Furthermore, we can not think of God as the unconditioned Being conditioning Himself, without conceiving Him as Reality, Efficiency, and Personality. These constitute the conception of the Divine essence whereby it is what it is. When we think of the Attributes of such a Being, we must necessarily conceive them as Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect.[39] And when we think of the Relations of God to finite existences and finite consciousness, we are constrained to regard Him as the Ground and Cause and Reason of all dependent being.
In the unity and completeness of this categorical scheme of thought, we can not fail to recognize the following logical order:
In the Absolute Reality we have the ultimate ground; in the Infinite Efficiency we have the adequate cause; and in the Perfect Personality we have the sufficient reason or final cause of all existence.
1. Being or Essence, as Reality, Efficiency, and Personality. The intuition of Being is the most fundamental and the most abstract of all ideas. After every property and relation has been eliminated, there still remains the affirmation that something is. Non-existence, except as the negation of being, is inconceivable. But, at the same time, pure being is the most indeterminate of all ideas. Simple being, without attributes, and out of all relation to other ideas, is a notion without contents, and consequently indescribable and unknowable. For us, therefore, pure abstract being is equal to non-being, and the paradox of Hegel has some truth: Pure Being = Nothing. Distinction—differentiation, determination—is the condition of all reality. Real being must be determined, only pure nothing can be undetermined. The least determined being is the least real; the most determined is the most real, the most perfect being. Exactly in proportion as the nature of beings is differentiated and complicated do they rise in the scale of being. The vegetable has more determinations than inanimate matter; the percipient animal has more determinations than the vital plant; rational man has more determinations than the percipient animal, he is the most complicated, the most determined, and therefore the most perfect being in creation. An absolutely perfect being must be the most determined of all beings; he must contain within himself a fullness of determinations.
The pantheist Spinoza tells us that determination is negation—that is, limitation. "Omnis determinatio negatio est." Nothing can be falser or more arbitrary than this principle. Its fallacy consists in the confusion of two things essentially different, namely, the limits of a being, and its determinate characteristics. A pure Ego, by determining itself to thought, affection, or action, is not thereby limited. The limitation or the illimitation depends simply upon the character of the thought, affection, or act as perfect or imperfect. "I am an intelligent being, and my intelligence is limited; these are two facts equally certain. The possession of intelligence is the constitutive characteristic of my being which distinguishes me from the brute. The limitation imposed upon my intellect, which can only see a small number of truths at a time, is my limit, and this is what distinguishes me from the Absolute Being, from Perfect Intelligence which sees all truths at a glance. That which constitutes my imperfection is not certainly my being intelligent; therein, on the contrary, lies the strength, the richness, and the dignity of my being. What constitutes my weakness and my nothingness is that this intelligence is inclosed in a narrow circle. Thus, inasmuch as I am intelligent, I participate in being and perfection; inasmuch as I am only intelligent within certain limits, I am imperfect."[40] Determination differs from limitation as much as being differs from nothing.
The Causative Principle of all reality must itself be real, that is, it must be a self-manifesting and self-conscious power, for there can be no reality without consciousness. Being which is not known to itself, and can not manifest itself, is as though it were not. Intuition, sui conscia, is the essence of reality. Here being and knowing are identical. It must also contain within itself a fullness of determinations, must be rich in ideas, must be the archetype of all possible existences. All forms and relations, all ideas and laws, all individual and special adaptations, all harmonious systems, must be present to the Absolute Reality. "Uncreated must be Mental Being. This seems an invincible necessity of all thought. Whatever else, or whatever more it is, it must be Mental Being" = REASON.
The Causative Principle of all efficiency must itself be power, pluri-efficiency, it must be self-determined and self-moved, and perfectly adequate to the production of being, motion, change, life, and intelligence objective to itself; in a word, it must be adequate to the realization of all the ideals which reason supplies; it must be unlimited Infinite Efficiency = SPIRIT.
The Causative Principle of all personality must itself be personal—that is, it must have a self-conceived, self-determined purpose; must freely choose and wisely adapt the means to realize that purpose; above all, it must have a worthy motive, a best and highest reason for both purpose and act; and must make all conform to and result in a moral order in harmony with the blessedness and worthy the approbation of the All-perfect One. Intuition and choice, affection and conscience—these are the grand momenta of personality.
The necessary demand of reason is that the first and originative cause of all finite personality shall be Himself a person. Consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness, reason can not be generated from unreason, personality can not have its birth from impersonality, no more than something can be born of nothing. There must be intelligence answering to our intelligence, freedom answering to our freedom, feeling responding to our feeling, and moral sentiment unisonant with our moral sentiment: in short, personality correlated with our personality, in the cause and author of finite responsible being. That perfection which is mirrored in our finite personality exists in all its fullness in the unconditionally perfect Being, the Perfect Personality whose name is LOVE.[41]
God, then, is the Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect Being in whom, by whom, and for whom the finite has existence and consciousness. He is the unconditioned, conditionating Will. The Divine Essence can not be apprehended or expressed in a higher universal. This is the first dim intuition of spontaneous reason, and the final goal of all reflective thought. The Divine Being is He who is before all, and who originates, destines, and conditions all. The Biblical idea of the unconditioned Being is in perfect harmony with the philosophical idea. In the language of Scripture, "the Will of God" stands for the remotest, inmost essence of the Godhead—a will which is the absolute identity, the eternal co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The Divine Will as efficient cause is never dissociated from the Divine Will as the formal cause and the final cause. That will is at once cause and law and reason of all things. God "effectuates all things according to the counsel (τὴν βουλὴν = deliberation, purpose, design) of his own Will" (Eph. i. 11). And not only according to the counsel, but "according to the good pleasure (τὴν εὐδοκίαν = the benevolent affection) of his own will" (ver. 5); a "good pleasure which He hath PURPOSED (προέθετο) in Himself" (ver. 9). He "created all things, and for his own pleasure (θέλημα = will) they are and were created." Here "Will" is clearly more than power, more than efficiency: it is thought or purpose; it is reason or end; in a word, it is the identity and co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The unconditioned Will as revealed to us in Scripture is an intelligent Will—a will that thinks, deliberates, counsels, designs; and it is also a benevolent Will—a will that loves and delights in and desires the good of being. And in thinking and desiring it effectuates, for thinking and operating, desiring and doing, are one with God. "He speaks and it is done, He commands and it stands fast." Creation is a speech of God, a language in which He reveals his thoughts, his purposes, his benevolent designs, his will—that is, Himself. Every revelation of God is the development in us of the consciousness of the REAL BEING (τὸ ὄντως ὄν). All the proofs of the being of God—the etiological, the cosmological, the teleological, and the moral—are centred in the ontological: this is first and last. And just as our consciousness of the indivisible identical EGO as the unity and co-inherence of reason, feeling, and power is the exact arresting-point of psychological science, beyond which thought can not pass, so our intuition of the unconditioned BEING as the absolute identity of Reason, Power, and Love is the exact arresting point of Theological science, beyond which nothing can be known. Spirit, Light, Love—these designate essence or being. "God is spirit" (πνεῦμα = Spirit, not a Spirit—John iv. 24), the self-moving, efficient, animating principle, the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity; ἡ ζωὴ αἰώνιος—vita absoluta—underived, eternal Life (John v. 26; xi. 25; 1 John v. 20). God is light (1 John i. 5), the self-manifesting, intuitional, revealing principle = ὁ λόγος; the Eternal Reason, in which Spirit becomes objective to itself, and God is revealed to Himself (John i. 1; 1 Tim. vi. 16). God is love (1 John iv. 8, 16), the self-complete, self-sufficient, self-satisfying principle = τὸ τέλος, the Perfect One (Matth. v. 48). This Divine Love finds its fullest satisfaction in the κόσμος νοητός, the intelligible world as revealed and rendered objective to Himself in "the WORD." Reason, Spirit, Love are the simplest elements in the conception of the unconditioned Being: Reason as Reality, Spirit as Efficiency, and Love as Perfection.
The unconditioned Being is revealed, may we not say "incarnated,"[42] in the κόσμος αἴσθησις—the sensible world: 1, by the incarnation of the Spirit in the moving and animating forces of nature; 2, by the incarnation of the Reason in the typical forms and permanent laws or relations of the universe, by which reality becomes known to finite minds; 3, by the incarnation of Love in the final causes, the benevolent purposes, which are realized in the completed Cosmos and the life of Humanity.[43]
2. Attribute or Related Essence. The knowledge of the Divine Essence is the root of the knowledge of the Divine Attributes, for in every conception of an attribute the Divine Essence is, in some mode or other, supposed. We may therefore define an attribute as a conception of the unconditioned Being under some relation to our consciousness. That conception may be either positive or negative, and the relation may consequently be one of causation or abstraction.
When we conceive of the Divine Essence as reality, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of reality. The intuition of reality is immanent to our own consciousness. We know self as a reality, an indivisible, identical Ego—a unity, but yet a conditioned and dependent reality, which must have its ground and cause in an independent and unconditioned reality. Thus the pure intuition of reality is a preluding for the affirmation of absolute reality. We can not, however, affirm such reality on purely subjective grounds. To the eye of reason, which is the organ of necessary and absolute truth, the Divine Essence abstracts itself from the limits of space and time, and absolves itself from all the determinations of objective being. It is a reality which is not conditioned by kind, a reality which is independent of, absolved from, undetermined by any other antecedent or contemporaneous being—absolute reality.
Furthermore, when we conceive the Divine Essence as power or efficiency, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of power. We know ourselves as a power, a cause of our own volitions, and a power which can control and modify external nature, but yet a limited and finite cause. To the eye of reason the Divine efficiency transcends all limitation and mensuration. It is a power which is not conditioned by quantity. It is limitless power, spaceless, all-mighty presence, self-directive power, carrying its own light and seeing its own way—infinite efficiency.
And, finally, when we conceive of the Divine Essence as personality, again our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of personality. We are conscious of desiring and purposing, of determining and doing, of approving and delighting in our artistic and ethical creations, and in these we stand out from the plane of nature as persons and not things. But we are also conscious of limitation and imperfection. We fall short even of our own ideals; we feel we have unsatisfied longings and daily wants. The Divine Essence reveals itself to reason as exempt from all limitation by degree. "Pure personality is no more limited than absolute being, but it is deeper by all the contents of perfect consciousness." It is a personality which has no defect and no want: unconditioned, unlimited perfection—perfect personality.
Our conception of the Attributes of God may thus be formed through some relation to our consciousness, but by a process of immediate abstraction—the negation of all limitation by kind, by quantity, or by degree.
1. As related to our intuition of real being; by abstraction from all other being and personality—the Immanent attributes of God.
2. As causally related to finite, dependent existence; by elimination of all necessary limitation—the Relative or Transitive attributes of God.
3. As ethically related to finite personality; by elimination of all imperfection—the Moral attributes of God.
1. The IMMANENT attributes. The absolute reality (REASON) must necessarily be conceived as First, Supreme, and Sole; must be underived, and therefore eternal; must be absolved from all necessary relation to other being, and therefore independent; must be above all law of change, and therefore immutable; must have incomposite unity, and therefore indivisible; and must be the only one, for two absolutes would limit each other, and are thus inconceivable. Finally, absolute reality must be the fullness and archetype of all being in which every form and every relation, every totality and every harmony, conceivable or possible, must be ideally and eternally present.
Eternity (1 Tim. i. 17; vi. 15, 16; Rev. i. 4, 8; Heb. i. 8).
Immutability (James i. 17; Psalm cii. 26, 27; Heb. i. 12).
Unity (Isaiah xliv. 6; Eph. iv. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5; John xvii. 3).
Ideality (Psalm cxxxix. 16; Rom. xi. 36; Acts xv. 18).
These are the immanent attributes of God.
2. The TRANSITIVE OR RELATIVE attributes. The Infinite Efficiency (SPIRIT) must necessarily be conceived as all-mighty, all-present, and all-knowing. The Infinite Spirit fills, penetrates, moves, and vitalizes the universe. He is in all, and through all, and transcends all. He can not be bounded in space or limited in power, therefore He is spaceless and infinite. "He is every where present, not virtually but substantially, for virtue can not subsist without substance." And as the All-mighty is present every where, present to all things, so all things exist "in Him," and are present to Him in an immediate and intuitive vision—He knows all things.
Omnipotence (Psalm cxv. 3; Jer. xxxii. 27; Rom. xi. 36; 1 Cor. viii. 6).
Ubiquity (Psalm cxxxix. 7-13; Jer. xxiii. 23, 24; 1 Cor. xv. 28; Matth. x. 29).
Omniscience (Psalm cxxxix. 1-6; Acts i. 24; Heb. iv. 13; Matth. vi. 8).
These are the relative or transitive attributes of God.
3. The MORAL attributes. Perfect Personality (LOVE) must by the very conception be wise and holy, righteous and blessed, for these are the attributes of personality, and may all be ultimately grounded in love. The reason of all existence and all personality is found, not in infinite causality, but in the free love of the perfect personality. This is the final cause of all existence. And if perfect Love be the final cause of all existence, it must know the end, and ordain the law and means. The highest end of the world is the perfect fellowship of man with God; the physical must therefore be subordinated to the moral order of the universe. The Perfect Personality must freely will to impart his fellowship to those who are obedient to his moral law; and it must be removed from fellowship with and deny itself to evil, which is antagonistic to the ends of Love. Or, in other words, it must establish a fixed and changeless relation between righteousness and blessedness in the creature. It must approve the good and condemn the evil. And in making the righteous "partakers of his joy," He must be "well pleased." The absolute blessedness of God is found in the fullness and harmony of the Divine life. He has in Himself the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his love. But there is a Divine satisfaction, "a good pleasure of God," which is found in the communication of Himself to the creature. "He rejoiceth in the habitable parts of the earth, and his delights are with the sons of men." "He taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in his mercy."
Wisdom (Job xii. 13; Rom. xi. 33, 34; Eph. iii. 9, 10).
Goodness (Psalm xxxiii. 5; xxxiv. 8; cvii. 1, 8).
Holiness (Deut. xxxii. 4; Psalm v. 5; James i. 13, 17).
Blessedness (1 Tim. i. 11; vi. 15).
These are the moral attributes of God.[44] They are also called by pre-eminence the Perfections of God, because they are free determinations of the Divine nature, an everlasting "BECOMING," rather than an eternal "BEING." The immanent attributes of God are a necessary inbeing; the moral attributes of God are a voluntary outgoing, an eternally free, alternative forth-putting of choice for the right and the good.[45]
The doctrine concerning God above presented, in which we fain would hope that philosophy and Christian thought are brought into harmony, may now be summarily presented in the following schema:
The references to the Sacred Scriptures already given will show the harmony between the conceptions of reason and the verbal revelations of God. Reason and Scripture unite in proclaiming that God is "the great and holy One that inhabiteth eternity," who "only hath immortality," "with whom is no variableness," and who "filleth all in all;" to whom "all his works are known from eternity," in whose book "all our members were written when as yet there was none of them," and whose "purposes," ideas, and plans are "eternal." These are mainly the immanent attributes of God, conceptions which flow from the very idea of the Absolute and Infinite Being. They are evolved from Real Being by the negation of all limit, all parts, all change; the canceling of time and space and matter, the recognition of God as pure Reason, pure Spirit, pure Love.
The Scriptures, however, deal more immediately with the causal, transitive, and relational aspects of the Divine attributes—that is, with the conception of God in his voluntary relations to finite being and finite personality. They speak of God in his historically known existence, as a Being who voluntarily conditions his Omnipotence and Sovereignty under concessions of self-reality, self-life, and freedom to finite beings, without Himself being conditioned by any thing—a self-limitation which in nowise detracts from the absoluteness and infinity of God—an unconditioned conditionating Will.[46]
The relation which God sustains to his works is not a necessary relation—it is a voluntary and self-imposed relation. Free Love is the highest determining principle for the efficiency of Divine Omnipotence. Power thus directed and conditioned by wisdom and love does not, can not detract from the perfection of God. The substitution of choice for necessity is, in fact, no real limitation; on the contrary, it ascribes to God the most absolute perfection.
The causal attributes of God, or those conceptions of God which are especially grounded upon his relation to the world and humanity, are properly divided into those which are Cosmical and those which are Ethical. The first, of course, embrace his relation to the world, the second his relation to personal, responsible beings. The content of the cosmological conception is Omnipotence, Ubiquity, Omniscience. The content of the ethical conception is Wisdom, Goodness, Holiness, and Blessedness. God as the Creator and Sustainer of the world, God as the Father, Teacher, and Ruler of humanity, are the two grand manifestations of the one infinite and perfect Being, and "Elohim" and "Jehovah" are his expressive and distinctive names, the first denoting the cosmical activity of God, the latter his government and kingdom among men.
These two grand aspects of the Divine manifestation are marked in the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions of the first revelation given to the Semitic race. They are still more distinctly recognized in Paul's discourse before the assembled Athenian philosophers, where Christian theology was for the first time presented to the Greek mind—God the Creator and Conservator of the world (Acts xvii. 24, 25); God the Father, Teacher, Ruler, and Judge of humanity (Acts xvii. 26-31).
God is the Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect Being, in whom, through whom, and for whom are all things. This is the Christian conception of God; and it is the only conception which furnishes an adequate and satisfactory explanation of all the facts of the universe. Here we have a First Principle, an Originative Cause which is sufficient to account for all existence.
But what conception are we to form of the nature and mode of this Origination? Was it a pure, supernatural Origination, an absolute Creation? or was it simply a formation out of a first substance existing coeval with and independent of God? Was that act of creation determined by necessity? was it an unconscious emanation from, or a necessary development of that First Principle? Or was it a conscious, free exertion of power for the realization of a foreseen and predetermined plan—a mental Order? What is the Biblical conception of Creation? This is the question we must now endeavor to answer.
Until very recently it has been the practice of theologians to attempt the determination of the Biblical notion of Creation on purely philological grounds. It is now generally conceded that this method is inadequate and inconclusive. The Greeks probably never conceived the idea of an absolute creation (commonly, though we judge incorrectly, styled creation ex nihilo), and consequently the Greek language has no terms expressive of a primal origination, an absolute beginning of the world. Ποιεῖν, the term employed in the LXX. (Gen. i. 1), and also by St. Paul (Acts xvii. 24), means to endow with a certain quality (ποῖος = qualis)—to construct, make, form, build, and evidently conveys the notion of formation rather than origination, the production of qualitative phenomena rather than real entity; κτίζειν is also ordinarily used in the sense of forming, fashioning, building, and seems to imply pre-existing materials.
There is also a wide difference of opinion among Oriental scholars with respect to the precise import of the verbs בָּרָא (bara), עָשָׂה (aysah), and יִצֶר (yetsar), as employed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some distinguished critics, as Parkhurst, Clarke, Lange, and Delitzsch, assert that בָּרָא means to originate de novo, to create in an absolute sense; and that עָשָׂה and יִצֶר strictly mean to fashion out of pre-existent materials.[47] But Pusey, Kitto, Tayler Lewis, and some of the Rabbinical commentators (Aben Ezra especially), affirm that בָּרָא, both by its etymology and its connections, indicates formation as much as origination, and is, in fact, indifferent and neutral either as to a supposed creation ex nihilo, or a creation, that is, a formation from pre-existing materials. Furthermore, it is affirmed that the three Hebrew verbs are used indiscriminately in the Mosaic record. It is said in Gen. i. 27 that God created בָּרָא man, and that statement is amplified and explained at ch. ii. 7: "And the Lord God formed עָשָׂה man out of the dust of the earth."[48] An appeal to the merely verbal expressions of Scripture does not, therefore, promise any satisfactory and conclusive results.
By what method, then, are we to determine the Biblical notion of Creation? Clearly, not by a critical study of the several words which are employed to express the creative act—not by confining our attention to the visible embodiment of the Divine word, and neglecting the informing thought. We must ground our conception of creation upon the fundamental ideas and principles of Divine revelation, and determine it in harmony with the Christian idea of God, and the Christian doctrine of the relation of the world to God.
These fundamental principles we have already presented. They may be succinctly restated in the following propositions:
(1.) God is the one only self-existent, independent, unconditioned Being, "who alone hath immortality," "the incorruptible or immutable God" (ἀφθάρτος Θεός), "with whom is no variableness or shadow of change."[49] (2.) God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth, in the most absolute sense. Whatever is, and is not God, is the creature of God. "By Him were all things created which are in heaven and which are upon earth, things visible and things invisible"—the objects of sense-perception and of rational intuition. The origin, development, and end, the principle, law, and reason of all existence, are in God and from God—πάντα ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐν τῷ Θεῷ, εἰς τὸν Θεόν.[50] (3.) The all of the finite is in ceaseless and complete dependence on the Divine causality—"He upholdeth all things," and "by Him all things consist."
Our interpretation of the formal language of Scripture, especially of the verbs which are employed to denote the act of creation, must therefore be informed and determined by these fundamental principles. If God is the unconditioned Cause of all existence, then the Creation must be the absolutely free and self-determined act of God. As such, it can not have been conditioned by any immanent necessity in the Divine nature itself, nor by any necessary existence out of and extraneous to the Divine nature. By this conception of God, and of his relation to the world, we are debarred from supposing the coeval existence of any thing besides God (e. g., ἄπειρον, τὸ μὴ ὄν of Plato, the ὕλη of Aristotle, the "matter" of the modern Physicist) as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation. While, therefore, it is acknowledged that in Gen. i. 21, 27, בָּרָא (bara) denotes the formation of organic bodies out of pre-existent materials, we can not be restricted to this meaning of the term when dealing with verse 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." We are compelled to believe that "bara" here means origination—origination de novo; first, because the primal act of creation must have been a supernatural, miraculous production of something which had not previously existed under any form—an unconditioned creation antecedent to nature; and, secondly, because we are informed that after this primal act of creation, "the earth was still without form and void." No possible ingenuity of criticism can construe that opening sentence of revelation to mean, "In the beginning God gave form to pre-existing matter." That first beginning is the principium principiorum, the beginning of all beginnings, and must be distinguished from the six new beginnings of the six days' work.[51] We must regard this sublime utterance, standing at the head of all God's communications, as affirming this foundation-idea of revelation—that God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense, the efficient cause of time, and all temporal relations; the all-mighty cause of space, and all spatial relations; the originator of the primordial substance, and all its qualities—in a word, the unconditioned Creator of all finite being, quality, and relation—"בְּרֵאשִית—ἐν ἀρχῆ—in principio—first of all (in the order of conception rather than the order of time) God originated, laid the foundations of, the heavens and the earth."[52]
And now that the Creation here affirmed was an absolute origination, a bringing into being of the primordial elements out of which the heavens and the earth were subsequently "formed," is the doctrine of the best Hebrew lexicographers. It is held by many of the best authorities that the particle אֵת (ayth) means "the very substance of," "the very or real essence." Fürst, in his recently published Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, gives "being, essence, substance," as the meaning of "ayth." Gesenius, in his Hebrew Grammar, says "'ayth' means being, substance" (p. 216). And furthermore, he says "'ayth' is a substantive derived from a pronominal stem, and signifies essence, substance, being." "The particle 'ayth,'" says Aben Ezra, "signifies the substance of a thing." Kimchi, in his famous "Book of Hebrew Roots," gives a similar definition. In the Syriac version, "yoth" takes the place of "ayth," and is very appropriately rendered in Walton's Polyglot, "esse coeli et esse terræ"—the being or substance of the heavens and the earth. It is not, therefore, a fanciful and altogether unauthorized reading of this opening sentence of Divine revelation which the Christian idea of God, and of his relation to the world, seems to demand—"In the beginning God originated, brought into being, the primordial elements of the heavens and the earth."
For manageable clearness, in dealing with the Mosaic primeval history, we shall find ourselves under the necessity of accepting the distinction made by theologians between creatio prima, immediata, and creatio mediata, formativa.
1. An absolute Creation, a pure supernatural origination—the Beginning of all beginnings.
2. An artistic, architectonic Creation, a supernatural formation out of a first substance—the production of new things or beings by aggregation, organization, and development according to pre-established laws and archetypal ideas.
The first notion of Creation is grounded on the Omnipotence of God, the second on the Infinite Wisdom of God, and both are united in and ultimately grounded on the unconditioned Will.
And now let us confine our attention to the first conception of Creation—creatio prima, immediata, or ABSOLUTE CREATION.
The fundamental Theistic conception which lies at the very root of the Biblical doctrine of Creation, and clearly distinguishes it from all Materialistic, Pantheistic, and Dualistic notions of the origin of the world, is that God is the Absolute Personality—the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, self-sufficient Being, all the determinations of whose nature and action are grounded in his absolute Will. The Divine essence, in its inmost, deepest ground, is not determined being, but unlimited power of self-determination. The primitive, root idea of the Godhead is an ever-living, unconditioned Will—an unconditioned Will as the indivisible unity and perpetual differentiation of reason and power, a will which realizes itself in self-affirmation (IPSËITY); manifests itself in self-determination and choice (ALTERITY); and completes itself in the actualization of a final purpose (PERFECTION).[53] The nature of God, as distinct from his essence, is absolutely his own act.[54] God, as the manifested God, is what He is by his own determination and choice. God is just, because He wills to be just; God is holy, because He wills to be holy; God is good, because He wills to be good, and not from any constraining, immanent necessity, otherwise He could not be the object of praise, adoration, and love. If God is not good by virtue of his own determination and choice, then there is nothing praiseworthy and adorable in his nature, and all the thanksgiving of sacred psalmody is meaningless; worship is groundless, religion has no significance, and love to God is impossible. A necessitated goodness can no more command our moral esteem than the uniform revolution of the planetary orbs, and where there is no moral esteem, there can be no love, no worship, and no praise.[55]
If, then, God is a personal Being, the Absolute Personality, another being can not proceed from Him except in virtue of his own free determination. Creation must therefore be a VOLUNTARY act.
And for the full comprehension of this fundamental principle, we must remember that volition is something more than a simple efflux of power, something more than a mere developing tendency—an evolution or process without motive and without design. A voluntary act is a designed, an intentional act, the act of a being who can previously contemplate the act in thought, who can have a reason or motive for the doing of the act, and who can determine and condition the deed. This conception of creation as a voluntary act is unmistakably presented in the oft-repeated language of the Mosaic record, "God said, Let there be—and there was!" "The speaking of God most certainly indicates the thinking of God, and it thence follows that all the works of creation are thoughts of God (idealism). But it indicates also a will making itself externally known, an active operation of God; and thence it follows that all the works of creation are deeds of God (realism). Thinking and operating, however, are one in the Divine speaking, the primal source of language—his personality making Himself known (personalism).... Through creating, speaking, making, forming, the world is ever and again denoted as the free deed of God."[56] Furthermore, creation is a voluntary act in the most absolute sense—that is, it is an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature, and an act which was not conditioned, in a necessary manner, by any thing out of, distinct from, and extraneous to the Divine nature.
1. Creation was an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature.
If God is the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, and self-sufficient Being, He is under no necessity to create other beings in order to realize perfect self-consciousness, or to secure his own perfect blessedness. He does not need "otherness"—that which is not Himself—in order to become manifest to Himself; neither does He "crave beings not Himself"[57] in order to his complete felicity. The antithesis of self and non-self—the ego and the non-ego—may be a necessary condition of finite personality, but it can not be a necessary condition of Absolute Personality. God is eternally revealed to Himself in an unconditioned manner as self-conscious Love, self-conscious Reason, self-conscious Energy—the Father, the Word, the Spirit; and He is from all eternity "the ever-blessed God," who has in the Divine Triunity the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his Love, independent of every relation to the world and humanity—"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John xvii. 24), "before the world was" (ver. 5).[58]
If, then, creation be the act of an Absolute Personality, the act of a Being who freely and unconditionally determines his own nature and conditionates all existence, then the Will of God is the sole causality of the world, and in his Will alone we have the unlimited, infinite ground-principle of all reality. Absolute Personality tolerates no other transition from the idea of God to the idea of the world than that of a Will which freely conditions itself by Love. This Free Love is the highest determining principle for the Divine efficiency. Therefore, in order to derive the essential existence of the world from God, the Scriptures postulate nothing beside or beyond an ever-living, intelligent Will which has its reason or motive, but not its necessitating cause, in Love—"the benevolence (εὐδοκία) of his Will" (Eph. i. 5). The Creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God, who is Himself eternally self-complete and self-sufficient, but who from love alone wills that other beings shall have existence and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life.[59]
It is only by holding fast to these principles in all their integrity that we can escape the seductions of Pantheism, that perpetual temptation of metaphysical minds. The fundamental idea of Pantheism is "an indeterminate principle which is necessarily determined to become successively every thing. Absolute necessity is the beginning, middle, and end."[60] We can escape its iron grasp only by distinctly recognizing and firmly holding the Absolute Personality of God—that is, by affirming a perfect self-consciousness which is not conditioned by an antithetical not-self; a perfect self-determination which is not conditioned by an antecedent natura naturans; and a perfect self-sufficiency which knows no want. The first affirmation rejects the dialectical necessity of Hegel, the second excludes the mathematical necessity of Spinoza, the third cancels the metaphysical necessity of Cousin.[61]
2. Creation as the free act of God was not conditioned by any thing out of and foreign to the Divine nature.
A moment's reflection will suffice to convince us that a limitation posited from without would be as fatal to the idea of God as a supposed inherent necessity determining the Divine causality from within. The idea of God as the Being who is absolutely self-grounded, self-sufficient, and self-determined, equally excludes both. If God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense—the efficient cause of time and all temporal succession—the all-mighty cause of space, and of all spatial relations—the sole originator of the primordial substance, and of all its qualities, then the creative act can not have been conditioned by Time or Space or Matter.
In his otherwise admirable essay on "Nature and God," Mr. Martineau asserts that we can have no conception of even the possibility of a creation except on the assumption of the coeval existence of something objective to God as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation. He therefore affirms the coeval and co-eternal existence of Space and Matter, Time and Number, "with Him, and yet independent of Him."[62] The idea of God's "supplying Himself with objectivity" is, in his judgment, "discredited by modern science." The creative act must therefore have been conditioned by something other than God, and independent of God.
Now it must be obvious to every thoughtful mind that this assumption tends to the invalidation of every proof of the existence of God. If it can be shown that any one thing exists aside from and independent of God—that any thing exists which was not created by God—then may we claim equal independence for every other thing, and He who claims to be the Creator of all things is discredited. As Herbert Spencer urges, with great force, "If we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing."[63] With what reason can we say that some things do exist that never were created, but others can not so exist? If substances are eternal, why not attributes? If matter is self-existent, why not force? If space is independent, why not form? And if we concede the eternity of matter and force, why not admit the eternity of law—that is, uniformity of relations? And if so much is granted, why not also grant that a consequent order of the universe is also eternal? If we admit that any thing besides God is self-existent, that any thing exists independent of God as "the condition of the Divine agency and manifestation," then God is not the unconditioned Absolute Being. "A limitation posited from without directly destroys the idea of God, for it contradicts the idea of the Absolute."[64]
Mr. Martineau admits that the assumption of "the coeval existence of matter as the condition and medium of the Divine agency" "rests on quite other grounds than those which support our belief respecting space."[65] We can conceive the non-existence of matter, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space. The idea of space is absolutely necessary, therefore "no one asks a cause for the space of the universe."[66] In making this assertion, however, Mr. Martineau betrays some want of acquaintance with the history of the philosophy of space and time. Many able and thoroughly philosophic minds have "asked a cause," and have assigned a cause for "the space of the universe." Sir Isaac Newton held that "God endures always and is present every where, and by existing always and every where constitutes duration and space."[67] This doctrine, thus generally stated, is held by Saisset to be incontestible.[68] McCosh also believes that time and space are not independent of God: "I am not necessarily obliged to believe that the infinity of space and time is independent of the infinity of God.... Who will venture to affirm that space and time, being dependent on God, may not stand in some relation to God which is altogether indefinable and utterly incomprehensible by us."[69] Finally, Schleiermacher and Nitzsch do not hesitate to teach that "God is the all-mighty cause of space" and "the efficient cause of time."[70]
The question whether the idea of space is conditionally or unconditionally necessary can only be determined by the solution of the deeper question whether space is a real entity or a relation. If space is a real entity, it must have properties or attributes, but what philosopher of any reputation has ever attempted to set down the properties or attributes of space? They who assert that space is an uncreated, independent, and indestructible entity, ought to be able to define it and tell what it is. Dr. Porter tells us that space can not be defined, "We can not form a concept of this entity by means of generalized attributes or relations."[71] Can that be for us an entity of which we can form no concept, and which we can not determine in thought by any attribute or relation? The writer of the article on "The Philosophy of Time and Space," in the North American Review,[72] is an earnest defender of the objective reality of space as an independent and indestructible entity, and he has defined and analyzed the concept. "Space is absolute vacuity" (p. 91). "The idea of space is a triple synthesis ... of three negative notions—receptivity, unity, and infinity; the first is the negation of matter, the second is the negation of divisibility, the third is the negation of limitation" (p. 95). Do these words convey any knowledge? Absolute vacuity is void, empty, inane. Absolute vacuity is pure nothing, and of course there is nothing to be divided and nothing to be limited. Absolute vacuity is a negation, and unity and infinity are negations of a negation—that is, they are predicates of nothing. "Negative notions" must be predicates of something, otherwise they are a mere negation or absence of thought, and convey absolutely no knowledge. We may, if we please, assert with Hegel, that "Nothing is the same as Being," and then amuse ourselves with making affirmations concerning vacuity, nihility, and unreality to the disgrace of philosophy; but the common-sense of mankind will repudiate our absurdities. We can not think about nothing; all thought must be positive. Thought must have an object, and that object must be either an entity, or the attribute of an entity, or a relation between entities.
If pure space is regarded as "absolute vacuity"—pure nothing—then we may readily dispose of the argument on which Prof. Stewart relies with so much confidence. "Divine omnipotence can not annihilate space,"[73] therefore it must be an independent reality. We have simply to answer—the notion of annihilating nihility is an absurdity and a contradiction. There is nothing to be annihilated, and Omnipotence even must be inadequate to the annihilation of nothing.
If, with Leibnitz, Lord Monboddo, Calderwood, and many modern physicists,[74] we reject the notion of "absolute vacuity"—infinite space—and regard space as a relation—the relation of position, distance, direction—then, like all the quantitive relations of mathematics, it may be regarded as conditionally necessary—that is, bodies being given, they must necessarily have place, distance, and direction.[75] Space as a necessary relation is a reality, but a reality which is conditioned and conditional, and "God is the all-mighty cause of space." If all bodies were annihilated, there would be no position, no distance, no direction, and consequently space would be annihilated. There would remain nothing but the timeless, spaceless, Infinite One, who is the efficient cause of all existence, all qualities, and all relations. This, again, would be a sufficient answer to the sophism of Dr. Clark, quoted and indorsed by Stewart—"God can not annihilate the space in this room!" Annihilate the room, and the relative space in the room is no more—that is, the distance between the inclosing walls. Of "pure space" apart from the relations of bodies we have no conception, can have no conception; for to annihilate all bodies, in thought, we must annihilate our own body, and to a disembodied spirit there can be no here and no there. Place is a relation belonging to extension, and extension is a property of matter only.[76]
There has been so much confusion of thought generated by the mere word-jugglery of philosophers in the use of the terms time and space, duration and extension, eternity and immensity, that a revision of the whole terminology in the interest of true science is demanded. It is perilous to launch out upon this ocean of equivocal phraseology, called the philosophy of time and space, before taking our bearings, amid notions so closely related, yet so dissimilar, and endeavoring to fix some definite meaning to these terms, which, like points of the compass, shall enable us to find our position.
1. Let us commence our effort with SPACE, EXTENSION, and IMMENSITY. Some philosophers—Cousin,[77] Hamilton,[78] Spencer,[79] McCosh,[80] for example—confound space and extension, and all of them confound both with absolute immensity.[81]
Now if space is identical with extension, it must be cognized by the senses and the sensuous imagination. This is unhesitatingly affirmed by Hamilton: "We see extension," and "by the name extension we designate our empirical knowledge of space."[82] So also McCosh: "Of space in the concrete we have an immediate knowledge by the senses, certainly by some of them, such as the touch and sight."[83] Space in this connection can not therefore be regarded as an à priori cognition. It is equally obvious that if space is identical with extension, it must have color and form. This also is admitted by Hamilton: "I can easily annihilate all corporeal existence [in imagination]. I can imagine empty space. But there are two attributes of which I can not divest it—that is, shape and color."[84] Now if space has "shape," that is, figure, it must have dimensions, and accordingly we find almost all philosophers speaking of the three dimensions of space—length, breadth, and depth. That which has length, breadth, and depth must be divisible, must have parts and proportions, must have susceptibilities of exact measurement, and therefore must be finite. This again is the doctrine of Hamilton: "Space is finite, and a finite, that is, a bounded space constitutes a figure"—a sphere.[85] The fundamental doctrine of Hamilton is that "space, like time, is only the intuition or the concept of a certain correlation of existence—of existence, therefore, pro tanto, as conditioned. It is thus itself only a form of the conditioned."[86] But if space be only a correlation of conditioned, and therefore finite existence, how can he speak of it "being conceived as infinite,"[87] and, above all, how can he speak of "the absolute totality" and "the infinite immensity of space."