Chapter I: The Attributes Of God (1)

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.

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 mediæval 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
Schürer, in Encyc. Brit., 18:761.

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 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, 8. 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 simple One, τὸ
ἁπλῶς ἕν, 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 Müller 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 one-eyed 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, Dogm. Theol., 1:335—“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.... 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”; _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.” 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 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 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 Nature’s
God down to Nature; and, if 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 three-fold 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 three-fold 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.
B. Infinity, involving (a) Self-existence, (b) Immutability, (c)
Unity.
C. Perfection, involving (a) Truth, (b) Love, (c) Holiness.

2. Relative or Transitive Attributes:
A. Related to Time and Space—(a) Eternity, (b) Immensity.
B. Related to Creation—(a) Omnipresence, (b) Omniscience, (c)
Omnipotence.
C. Related to Moral Beings—(a) Veracity, (b) Mercy, (c) Justice.

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 emanent 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 a πλήρωμα in God (_Col. 1:19_),
even before he makes the world or becomes incarnate. And πλήρωμα
is not “the filling material,” nor “the vessel filled,” but “that
which is complete in itself,” or, in other words, “plenitude,”
“fulness,” “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. _Ps. 8:3, 4—_“When I
consider thy heavens ... what is man that thou art mindful of
him?” _113:5, 6—_“Who is like unto Jehovah our God, that hath his
seat on high, that humbleth himself?” _Phil. 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 self-knowledge, 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, marg.—“God is spirit”; Rom. 1:20—“the invisible things of him”; 1 Tim. 1:17—“incorruptible, invisible”; Col. 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; 1 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 centres of force, all
the soul needs may be centres 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 (Is. 66:1), and that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him (1 K. 8:27).”

_Ex. 33:18-20_ declares that man cannot see God and live; _1 Cor.
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 B. C.), 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 worshiped 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 mediæval 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 sonship 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.

_Jer. 10:10—_“He is the living God”; _1 Thess. 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 _Heb. 7:16—_“the power of an endless life”; _Rev. 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 ça change, plus c’est la même 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 coëxistences 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 tea-kettle is alive (Mark Hopkins). We find
this defect also in Robert Browning’s lines in The Ring and the
Book (The Pope, 1307): “O Thou—as represented here to me In such
conception as my soul allows—Under thy measureless, my
atom-width!—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, 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 self-conditioning 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, show 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 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 free-will, 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 self-determining. The rise in our own minds of the idea of God, as personal, depends largely upon our recognition of personality in ourselves. Those who deny spirit in man place a bar in the way of the recognition of this attribute of God.

_Ex. 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 Cor. 2:11—_“the
things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”; _Eph.
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 = self-consciousness, will, character.” Porter,
Human Intellect, 626—“Distinct subsistence, either actually or
latently self-conscious and self-determining.” 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
_Ex. 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 self-determination 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 Bib. Sac.,
April, 1884:217-233; Eichhorn, die Persönlichkeit 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_, _i. e._, recognizes his
perception as belonging to himself. In the German story,
Dreiäuglein, 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, Dogm. Theol.,
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 Cor.
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: “Self-reverence,
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 (_Col. 2:9, 10—_“In him dwelleth all the fulness 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.

_Ps. 145:3—_“his greatness is unsearchable”; _Job 11:7-9—_“high as
heaven ... deeper than Sheol”; _Is. 66:1—_“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool”; _1 K. 8:27—_“Heaven and the heaven
of heavens cannot contain thee”; _Rom. 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 shared 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 supremest 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 coëxistence 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.

_Ps. 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, Dogm. Theol.,
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, 90—“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; ’tis
ours, For we and it 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 mœnia 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
them. 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”_ (Ex. 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.”