Chapter I: The Attributes Of God (2)

_Ps. 71:15—_“My mouth shall tell of thy righteousness, And of thy
salvation all the day; For I know not the numbers thereof” = it is
infinite. _Ps. 89:2—_“Mercy shall be built up forever” = ever
growing manifestations and cycles of fulfilment—first literal,
then spiritual. _Ps. 113:4-6—_“Jehovah is high above all nations,
And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto Jehovah our God,
That hath his seat on high, That humbleth himself [stoopeth down]
to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” _Mal.
2:15—_“did he not make one, although he had the residue of the
Spirit?” = he might have created many wives for Adam, though he
did actually create but one. In this “residue of the Spirit,” says
Caldwell, Cities of our Faith, 370, “there yet lies latent—as
winds lie calm in the air of a summer noon, as heat immense lies
cold and hidden in the mountains of coal—the blessing and the life
of nations, the infinite enlargement of Zion.”

_Is. 52:10—_“Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm” = nature does
not exhaust or entomb God; nature is the mantle in which he
commonly reveals himself; but he is not fettered by the robe he
wears—he can thrust it aside, and make bare his arm in
providential interpositions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty
movements of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the
setting up of his own kingdom. See also _John 1:16—_“of his
fulness we all received, and grace for grace” = “Each blessing
appropriated became the foundation of a greater blessing. To have
realized and used one measure of grace was to have gained a larger
measure in exchange for it χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος”; so Westcott, in
Bib. Com., _in loco_. Christ can ever say to the believer, as he
said to Nathanael _(John 1:50): _“thou shalt see greater things
than these.”

Because God is infinite, he can love each believer as much as if
that single soul were the only one for whom he had to care. Both
in providence and in redemption the whole heart of God is busy
with plans for the interest and happiness of the single Christian.
Threatenings do not half reveal God, nor his promises half express
the “eternal weight of glory”_ (2 Cor. 4:17)_. Dante, Paradiso,
19:40-63—God “Could not upon the universe so write The impress of
his power, but that his word Must still be left in distance
infinite.” To “limit the Holy One of Israel”_ (Ps. 78:41_—marg.)
is falsehood as well as sin.

This attribute of infinity, or of transcendence, qualifies all the
other attributes, and so is the foundation for the representations
of majesty and glory as belonging to God (see _Ex. 33:18_; _Ps.
19:1_; _Is. 6:3_; _Mat. 6:13_; _Acts 7:2_; _Rom. 1:23_; _9:23_;
_Heb. 1:3_; _1 Pet. 4:14_; _Rev. 21:23_). Glory is not itself a
divine attribute; it is rather a result—an objective result—of the
exercise of the divine attributes. This glory exists irrespective
of the revelation and recognition of it in the creation (_John
17:5_). Only God can worthily perceive and reverence his own
glory. He does all for his own glory. All religion is founded on
the glory of God. All worship is the result of this immanent
quality of the divine nature. Kedney, Christian Doctrine,
1:360-373, 2:354, apparently conceives of the divine glory as an
eternal material environment of God, from which the universe is
fashioned. This seems to contradict both the spirituality and the
infinity of God. God’s infinity implies absolute completeness
apart from anything external to himself. We proceed therefore to
consider the attributes involved in infinity.

Of the attributes involved in Infinity, we mention:

1. Self-existence.

By self-existence we mean

(_a_) That God is “_causa sui_,” having the ground of his existence in himself. Every being must have the ground of its existence either in or out of itself. We have the ground of our existence outside of us. God is not thus dependent. He is _a se_; hence we speak of the aseity of God.

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

But lest this should be misconstrued, we add

(_b_) That God exists by the necessity of his own being. It is his nature to be. Hence the existence of God is not a contingent but a necessary existence. It is grounded, not in his volitions, but in his nature.

Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:126, 130, 170, seems to hold
that God is primarily will, so that the essence of God is his act:
“God’s essence does not precede his freedom”; “if the essence of
God were for him something given, something already present, the
question ‘from whence it was given?’ could not be evaded; God’s
essence must in this case have its origin in something apart from
him, and thus the true conception of God would be entirely swept
away.” But this implies that truth, reason, love, holiness,
equally with God’s essence, are all products of will. If God’s
essence, moreover, were his act, it would be in the power of God
to annihilate himself. Act presupposes essence; else there is no
God to act. The will by which God exists, and in virtue of which
he is _causa sui_, is therefore not will in the sense of volition,
but will in the sense of the whole movement of his active being.
With Müller’s view Thomasius and Delitzsch are agreed. For
refutation of it, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:63.

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

2. Immutability.

By this we mean that the nature, attributes, and will of God are exempt from all change. Reason teaches us that no change is possible in God, whether of increase or decrease, progress or deterioration, contraction or development. All change must be to better or to worse. But God is absolute perfection, and no change to better is possible. Change to worse would be equally inconsistent with perfection. No cause for such change exists, either outside of God or in God himself.

_Psalm 102:27—_“thou art the same”; _Mal. 3:6—_“I, Jehovah, change
not”; _James 1:17—_“with whom can be no variation, neither shadow
that is cast by turning.” Spenser, Faerie Queen, Cantos of
Mutability, 8:2—“Then ’gin I think on that which nature sayde, Of
that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of
all things, firmly stayed Upon the pillours of eternity; For all
that moveth doth in change delight, But henceforth all shall rest
eternally With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight; Oh thou great
Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath’s sight!” Bowne, Philos. of
Theism, 146, defines immutability as “the constancy and continuity
of the divine nature which exists through all the divine acts as
their law and source.”

The passages of Scripture which seem at first sight to ascribe change to God are to be explained in one of three ways:

(_a_) As illustrations of the varied methods in which God manifests his immutable truth and wisdom in creation.

Mathematical principles receive new application with each
successive stage of creation. The law of cohesion gives place to
chemical law, and chemistry yields to vital forces, but through
all these changes there is a divine truth and wisdom which is
unchanging, and which reduces all to rational order. John Caird,
Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:140—“Immutability is not
stereotyped sameness, but impossibility of deviation by one hair’s
breadth from the course which is best. A man of great force of
character is continually finding new occasions for the
manifestation and application of moral principle. In God infinite
consistency is united with infinite flexibility. There is no
iron-bound impassibility, but rather an infinite originality in
him.”

(_b_) As anthropomorphic representations of the revelation of God’s unchanging attributes in the changing circumstances and varying moral conditions of creatures.

_Gen. 6:6—_“it repented Jehovah that he had made man”—is to be
interpreted in the light of _Num. 23:19—_“God is not a man, that
he should lie: neither the son of man, that he should repent.” So
_cf._ _1 Sam. 15:11_ with _15:29_. God’s unchanging holiness
requires him to treat the wicked differently from the righteous.
When the righteous become wicked, his treatment of them must
change. The sun is not fickle or partial because it melts the wax
but hardens the clay,—the change is not in the sun but in the
objects it shines upon. The change in God’s treatment of men is
described anthropomorphically, as if it were a change in God
himself,—other passages in close conjunction with the first being
given to correct any possible misapprehension. Threats not
fulfilled, as in _Jonah 3:4, 10_, are to be explained by their
conditional nature. Hence God’s immutability itself renders it
certain that his love will adapt itself to every varying mood and
condition of his children, so as to guide their steps, sympathize
with their sorrows, answer their prayers. God responds to us more
quickly than the mother’s face to the changing moods of her babe.
Godet, in The Atonement, 338—“God is of all beings the most
delicately and infinitely sensitive.”

God’s immutability is not that of the stone, that has no internal
experience, but rather that of the column of mercury, that rises
and falls with every change in the temperature of the surrounding
atmosphere. When a man bicycling against the wind turns about and
goes with the wind instead of going against it, the wind seems to
change, though it is blowing just as it was before. The sinner
struggles against the wind of prevenient grace until he seems to
strike against a stone wall. Regeneration is God’s conquest of our
wills by his power, and conversion is our beginning to turn round
and to work with God rather than against God. Now we move without
effort, because we have God at our back; _Phil. 2:12, 13—_“work
out your own salvation ... for it is God who worketh in you.” God
has not changed, but we have changed; _John 3:8—_“The wind bloweth
where it will ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Jacob’s first wrestling with the Angel was the picture of his
lifelong self-will, opposing God; his subsequent wrestling in
prayer was the picture of a consecrated will, working with God
(_Gen. 32:24-28_). We seem to conquer God, but he really conquers
us. He seems to change, but it is we who change after all.

(_c_) As describing executions, in time, of purposes eternally existing in the mind of God. Immutability must not be confounded with immobility. This would deny all those imperative volitions of God by which he enters into history. The Scriptures assure us that creation, miracles, incarnation, regeneration, are immediate acts of God. Immutability is consistent with constant activity and perfect freedom.

The abolition of the Mosaic dispensation indicates no change in
God’s plan; it is rather the execution of his plan. Christ’s
coming and work were no sudden makeshift, to remedy unforeseen
defects in the Old Testament scheme: Christ came rather in “the
fulness of the time”_ (Gal. 4:4)_, to fulfill the “counsel” of God
(_Acts 2:23_). _Gen. 8:1—_“God remembered Noah” = interposed by
special act for Noah’s deliverance, showed that he remembered
Noah. While we change, God does not. There is no fickleness or
inconstancy in him. Where we once found him, there we may find him
still, as Jacob did at Bethel (_Gen. 35:1, 6, 9_). Immutability is
a consolation to the faithful, but a terror to God’s enemies
(_Mal. 3:6—_“I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of
Jacob, are not consumed”; _Ps. 7:11—_“a God that hath indignation
every day”). It is consistent with constant activity in nature and
in grace (_John 5:17—_“My Father worketh even until now, and I
work”; _Job 23:13, 14—_“he is in one mind, and who can turn
him?... For he performeth that which is appointed for me: and many
such things are with him”). If God’s immutability were immobility,
we could not worship him, any more than the ancient Greeks were
able to worship Fate. Arthur Hugh Clough: “It fortifies my soul to
know, That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe’er I stray
and range, Whate’er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step
when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.” On this
attribute see Charnock, Attributes, 1:310-362; Dorner, Gesammelte
Schriften, 188-377; translated in Bib. Sac., 1879:28-59, 209-223.

3. Unity.

By this we mean (_a_) that the divine nature is undivided and indivisible (_unus_); and (_b_) that there is but one infinite and perfect Spirit (_unicus_).

_Deut. 6:4—_“Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah”; _Is.
44:6—_“besides me there is no God”; _John 5:44—_“the only God”;
_17:3—_“the only true God”; _1 Cor. 8:4—_“no God but one”; _1 Tim.
1:17—_“the only God”; _6:15—_“the blessed and only Potentate”;
_Eph. 4:5, 6—_“one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.” When
we read in Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 25—“The unity of God is not
numerical, denying the existence of a second; it is integral,
denying the possibility of division,” we reply that the unity of
God is both,—it includes both the numerical and the integral
elements.

Humboldt, in his Cosmos, has pointed out that the unity and
creative agency of the heavenly Father have given unity to the
order of nature, and so have furnished the impulse to modern
physical science. Our faith in a “universe” rests historically
upon the demonstration of God’s unity which has been given by the
incarnation and death of Christ. Tennyson, In Memoriam: “That God
who ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one
far off divine event To which the whole creation moves.” See A. H.
Strong, Christ in Creation, 184-187. Alexander McLaren: “The
heathen have many gods because they have no one that satisfies
hungry hearts or corresponds to their unconscious ideals.
Completeness is not reached by piecing together many fragments.
The wise merchantman will gladly barter a sack full of ‘goodly
pearls’ for the one of great price. Happy they who turn away from
the many to embrace the One!”

Against polytheism, tritheism, or dualism, we may urge that the notion of two or more Gods is self-contradictory; since each limits the other and destroys his godhood. In the nature of things, infinity and absolute perfection are possible only to one. It is unphilosophical, moreover, to assume the existence of two or more Gods, when one will explain all the facts. The unity of God is, however, in no way inconsistent with the doctrine of the Trinity; for, while this doctrine holds to the existence of hypostatical, or personal, distinctions in the divine nature, it also holds that this divine nature is numerically and eternally one.

Polytheism is man’s attempt to rid himself of the notion of
responsibility to one moral Lawgiver and Judge by dividing up his
manifestations, and attributing them to separate wills. So Force,
in the terminology of some modern theorizers, is only God with his
moral attributes left out. “Henotheism” (says Max Müller, Origin
and Growth of Religion, 285) “conceives of each individual god as
unlimited by the power of other gods. Each is felt, at the time,
as supreme and absolute, notwithstanding the limitations which to
our minds must arise from his power being conditioned by the power
of all the gods.”

Even polytheism cannot rest in the doctrine of many gods, as an
exclusive and all-comprehending explanation of the universe. The
Greeks believed in one supreme Fate that ruled both gods and men.
Aristotle: “God, though he is one, has many names, because he is
called according to states into which he is ever entering anew.”
The doctrine of God’s unity should teach men to give up hope of
any other God, to reveal himself to them or to save them. They are
in the hands of the one and only God, and therefore there is but
one law, one gospel, one salvation; one doctrine, one duty, one
destiny. We cannot rid ourselves of responsibility by calling
ourselves mere congeries of impressions or mere victims of
circumstance. As God is one, so the soul made in God’s image is
one also. On the origin of polytheism, see articles by Tholuck, in
Bib. Repos., 2:84, 246, 441, and Max Müller, Science of Religion,
124.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 83—“The Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and end and sum and meaning of Being, is but One. We who
believe in a personal God do not believe in a limited God. We do
not mean one more, a bigger specimen of existences, amongst
existences. Rather, we mean that the reality of existence itself
is personal: that Power, that Law, that Life, that Thought, that
Love, are ultimately, in their very reality, identified in one
supreme, and that necessarily a personal Existence. Now such
supreme Being cannot be multiplied: it is incapable of a plural:
it cannot be a generic term. There cannot be more than one
all-inclusive, more than one ultimate, more than one God. Nor has
Christian thought, at any point, for any moment, dared or endured
the least approach to such a thought or phrase as ‘two Gods.’ If
the Father is God, and the Son God, they are both the same God
wholly, unreservedly. God is a particular, an unique, not a
general, term. Each is not only God, but is the very same
‘singularis unicus et totus Deus.’ They are not both _generically_
God, as though ‘God’ could be an attribute or predicate; but both
_identically_ God, the God, the one all-inclusive, indivisible,
God.... If the thought that wishes to be orthodox had less
tendency to become tritheistic, the thought that claims to be free
would be less Unitarian.”

Third Division.—Perfection, and attributes therein involved.

By perfection we mean, not mere quantitative completeness, but qualitative excellence. The attributes involved in perfection are moral attributes. Right action among men presupposes a perfect moral organization, a normal state of intellect, affection and will. So God’s activity presupposes a principle of intelligence, of affection, of volition, in his inmost being, and the existence of a worthy object for each of these powers of his nature. But in eternity past there is nothing existing outside or apart from God. He must find, and he does find, the sufficient object of intellect, affection, and will, in himself. There is a self-knowing, a self-loving, a self-willing, which constitute his absolute perfection. The consideration of the immanent attributes is, therefore, properly concluded with an account of that truth, love, and holiness, which render God entirely sufficient to himself.

_Mat. 5:48—_“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect”; _Rom. 12:2—_“perfect will of God”; _Col.
1:28—_“perfect in Christ”; _cf._ _Deut. 32:4—_“The Rock, his work
is perfect”; _Ps. 18:30—_“As for God, his way is perfect.”

1. Truth.

By truth we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God’s being and God’s knowledge eternally conform to each other.

In further explanation we remark:

A. Negatively:

(_a_) The immanent truth of God is not to be confounded with that veracity and faithfulness which partially manifest it to creatures. These are transitive truth, and they presuppose the absolute and immanent attribute.

_Deut 32:4—_“A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, Just and
right is he”; _John 17:3—_“the only true God” (ἀληθινόν); _1 John
5:20—_“we know him that is true” (τὸν ἀληθινόν). In both these
passages ἀληθινός describes God as the genuine, the real, as
distinguished from ἀληθής, the veracious (compare _John 6:32—_“the
true bread”; _Heb. 8:2—_“the true tabernacle”). _John 14:6—_“I am
... the truth.” As “I am ... the life” signifies, not “I am the
living one,” but rather “I am he who is life and the source of
life,” so “_I am ... the truth_” signifies, not “I am the truthful
one,” but “I am he who is truth and the source of truth”—in other
words, truth of being, not merely truth of expression. So _1 John
5:7—_“the Spirit is the truth.” _Cf._ 1 Esdras 1:38—“The truth
abideth and is forever strong, and it liveth and ruleth forever” =
personal truth? See Godet on _John 1:18_; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:181.

Truth is God perfectly revealed and known. It may be likened to
the electric current which manifests and measures the power of the
dynamo. There is no realm of truth apart from the world-ground,
just as there is no law of nature that is independent of the
Author of nature. While we know ourselves only partially, God
knows himself fully. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
1:192—“In the life of God there are no unrealized possibilities.
The presupposition of all our knowledge and activity is that
absolute and eternal unity of knowing and being which is only
another expression for the nature of God. In one sense, he is all
reality, and the only reality, whilst all finite existence is but
a _becoming_, which never _is_.” Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
57-63—“Truth is reality revealed. Jesus is the Truth, because in
him the sum of the qualities hidden in God is presented and
revealed to the world, God’s nature in terms of an active force
and in relation to his rational creation.” This definition however
ignores the fact that God is truth, apart from and before all
creation. As an immanent attribute, truth implies a conformity of
God’s knowledge to God’s being, which antedates the universe; see
B. (_b_) below.

(_b_) Truth in God is not a merely active attribute of the divine nature. God is truth, not only in the sense that he is the being who truly knows, but also in the sense that he is the truth that is known. The passive precedes the active; truth of being precedes truth of knowing.

Plato: “Truth is his (God’s) body, and light his shadow.” Hollaz
(quoted in Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137) says that
“truth is the conformity of the divine essence with the divine
intellect.” See Gerhard, loc. ii:152; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:272,
279; 3:193—“Distinguish in God the personal self-consciousness
[spirituality, personality—see pages 252, 253] from the unfolding
of this in the divine knowledge, which can have no other object
but God himself. So far, now, as self-knowing in God is absolutely
identical with his being is he the absolutely true. For truth is
the knowledge which answers to the being, and the being which
answers to the knowledge.”

Royce, World and Individual, 1:270—“Truth either may mean that
about which we judge, _or_ it may mean the correspondence between
our ideas and their objects.” God’s truth is both object of his
knowledge and knowledge of his object. Miss Clara French, The
Dramatic Action and Motive of King John: “You spell Truth with a
capital, and make it an independent existence to be sought for and
absorbed; but, unless truth is God, what can it do for man? It is
only a personality that can touch a personality.” So we assent to
the poet’s declaration that “Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise
again,” only because Truth is personal. Christ, the Revealer of
God, is the Truth. He is not simply the medium but also the object
of all knowledge; _Eph. 4:20—_“ye did not so learn Christ” = ye
knew more than the doctrine about Christ,—ye knew Christ himself;
_John 17:3—_“this is life eternal that they should know thee the
only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.”

B. Positively:

(_a_) All truth among men, whether mathematical, logical, moral, or religious, is to be regarded as having its foundation in this immanent truth of the divine nature and as disclosing facts in the being of God.

There is a higher Mind than our mind. No apostle can say “I am the
truth,” though each of them can say “I speak the truth.” Truth is
not a scientific or moral, but a substantial, thing—“nicht
Schulsache, sondern Lebenssache.” Here is the dignity of
education, that knowledge of truth is knowledge of God. The laws
of mathematics are disclosures to us, not of the divine reason
merely, for this would imply truth outside of and before God, but
of the divine nature. J. W. A. Stewart: “Science is possible
because God is scientific.” Plato: “God geometrizes.” Bowne: “The
heavens are crystalized mathematics.” The statement that two and
two make four, or that virtue is commendable and vice condemnable,
expresses an everlasting principle in the being of God. Separate
statements of truth are inexplicable apart from the total
revelation of truth, and this total revelation is inexplicable
apart from One who is truth and who is thus revealed. The separate
electric lights in our streets are inexplicable apart from the
electric current which throbs through the wires, and this electric
current is itself inexplicable apart from the hidden dynamo whose
power it exactly expresses and measures. The separate lights of
truth are due to the realizing agency of the Holy Spirit; the one
unifying current which they partially reveal is the outgoing work
of Christ, the divine Logos; Christ is the one and only Revealer
of him who dwells “in light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen,
nor can see”_ (1 Tim. 6:16)_.

Prof. H. E. Webster began his lectures “by assuming the Lord Jesus
Christ _and_ the multiplication-table.” But this was tautology,
because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth, the only revealer of
God, includes the multiplication-table. So Wendt, Teaching of
Jesus, 1:257; 2:202, unduly narrows the scope of Christ’s
revelation when he maintains that with Jesus truth is not the
truth which corresponds to reality but rather the right conduct
which corresponds to the duty prescribed by God. “Grace and
truth”_ (John 1:17)_ then means the favor of God and the
righteousness which God approves. To understand Jesus is
impossible without being ethically like him. He is king of truth,
in that he reveals this righteousness, and finds obedience for it
among men. This ethical aspect of the truth, we would reply,
important as it is, does not exclude but rather requires for its
complement and presupposition that other aspect of the truth as
the reality to which all being must conform and the conformity of
all being to that reality. Since Christ is the truth of God, we
are successful in our search for truth only as we recognize him.
Whether all roads lead to Rome depends upon which way your face is
turned. Follow a point of land out into the sea, and you find only
ocean. With the back turned upon Jesus Christ all following after
truth leads only into mist and darkness. Aristotle’s ideal man was
“a hunter after truth.” But truth can never be found disjoined
from love, nor can the loveless seeker discern it. “For the loving
worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless God” (Robert
Browning). Hence Christ can say: _John 18:37—_“Every one that is
of the truth heareth my voice.”

(_b_) This attribute therefore constitutes the principle and guarantee of all revelation, while it shows the possibility of an eternal divine self-contemplation apart from and before all creation. It is to be understood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.

To all this doctrine, however, a great school of philosophers have
opposed themselves. Duns Scotus held that God’s will made truth as
well as right. Descartes said that God could have made it untrue
that the radii of a circle are all equal. Lord Bacon said that
Adam’s sin consisted in seeking a good in itself, instead of being
content with the merely empirical good. Whedon, On the Will,
316—“Infinite wisdom and infinite holiness consist in, and result
from, God’s volitions eternally.” We reply that, to make truth and
good matters of mere will, instead of regarding them as
characteristics of God’s being, is to deny that anything is true
or good in itself. If God can make truth to be falsehood, and
injustice to be justice, then God is indifferent to truth or
falsehood, to good or evil, and he ceases thereby to be God. Truth
is not arbitrary,—it is matter of being—the being of God. There
are no regulative principles of knowledge which are not
transcendental also. God knows and wills truth, because he is
truth. Robert Browning, A Soul’s Tragedy, 214—“Were’t not for God,
I mean, what hope of truth—Speaking truth, hearing truth—would
stay with Man?” God’s will does not make truth, but truth rather
makes God’s will. God’s perfect knowledge in eternity past has an
object. That object must be himself. He is the truth Known, as
well as the truthful Knower. But a perfect objective must be
personal. The doctrine of the Trinity is the necessary complement
to the doctrine of the Attributes. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:183—“The
pillar of cloud becomes a pillar of fire.” See A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 102-112.

On the question whether it is ever right to deceive, see Paine,
Ethnic Trinities, 300-339. Plato said that the use of such
medicines should be restricted to physicians. The rulers of the
state may lie for the public good, but private people not:
“officiosum mendacium.” It is better to say that deception is
justifiable only where the person deceived has, like a wild beast
or a criminal or an enemy in war, put himself out of human society
and deprived himself of the right to truth. Even then deception is
a sad necessity which witnesses to an abnormal condition of human
affairs. With James Martineau, when asked what answer he would
give to an intending murderer when truth would mean death, we may
say: “I suppose I should tell an untruth, and then should be sorry
for it forever after.” On truth as an attribute of God, see Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1877:735; Finney, Syst. Theol., 661; Janet, Final
Causes, 416.

2. Love.

By love we mean that attribute of the divine nature in virtue of which God is eternally moved to self-communication.

_1 John 4:8—_“God is love”; _3:16—_“hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us”; _John 17:24—_“thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”; _Rom. 15:30—_“the love of the Spirit.”

In further explanation we remark:

A. Negatively:

(_a_) The immanent love of God is not to be confounded with mercy and goodness toward creatures. These are its manifestations, and are to be denominated transitive love.

Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:138, 139—“God’s regard for
the happiness of his creatures flows from this self-communicating
attribute of his nature. Love, in the true sense of the word, is
living good-will, with impulses to impartation and union;
self-communication (bonum communicativum sui); devotion, merging
of the _ego_ in another, in order to penetrate, fill, bless this
other with itself, and in this other, as in another self, to
possess itself, without giving up itself or losing itself. Love is
therefore possible only between persons, and always presupposes
personality. Only as Trinity has God love, absolute love; because
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he stands in perfect
self-impartation, self-devotion, and communion with himself.”
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:136—“God has in himself the eternal
and wholly adequate object of his love, independently of his
relation to the world.”

In the Greek mythology, Eros was one of the oldest and yet one of
the youngest of the gods. So Dante makes the oldest angel to be
the youngest, because nearest to God the fountain of life. In _1
John 2:7, 8, _“the old commandment” of love is evermore “_a new
commandment_,” because it reflects this eternal attribute of God.
“There is a love unstained by selfishness, Th’ outpouring tide of
self-abandonment, That loves to love, and deems its preciousness
Repaid in loving, though no sentiment Of love returned reward its
sacrament; Nor stays to question what the loved one will, But
hymns its overture with blessings immanent; Rapt and sublimed by
love’s exalting thrill, Loves on, through frown or smile, divine,
immortal still.” Clara Elizabeth Ward: “If I could gather every
look of love, That ever any human creature wore, And all the looks
that joy is mother of, All looks of grief that mortals ever bore,
And mingle all with God-begotten grace, Methinks that I should see
the Savior’s face.”

(_b_) Love is not the all-inclusive ethical attribute of God. It does not include truth, nor does it include holiness.

Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct, 352, very properly denies that
benevolence is the all-inclusive virtue. Justness and Truth, he
remarks, are not reducible to benevolence. In a review of Ladd’s
work in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903:185, C. M. Mead adds: “He comes to
the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve all the virtues
into the generic one of love or benevolence without either giving
a definition of benevolence which is unwarranted and virtually
nullifies the end aimed at, or failing to recognize certain
virtues which are as genuinely virtues as benevolence itself.
Particularly is it argued that the virtues of the will (courage,
constancy, temperance), and the virtues of judgment (wisdom,
justness, trueness), get no recognition in this attempt to subsume
all virtues under the one virtue of love. ’The unity of the
virtues is due to the unity of a personality, in active and varied
relations with other persons’ (361). If benevolence means wishing
_happiness_ to all men, then happiness is made the ultimate good,
and eudæmonism is accepted as the true ethical philosophy. But if,
on the other hand, in order to avoid this conclusion, benevolence
is made to mean wishing the highest _welfare_ to all men, and the
highest welfare is conceived as a life of virtue, then we come to
the rather inane conclusion that the essence of virtue is to wish
that men may be virtuous.” See also art. by Vos, in Presb. and
Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-37.

(_c_) Nor is God’s love a mere regard for being in general, irrespective of its moral quality.

Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise On the Nature of Virtue, defines
virtue as regard for being in general. He considers that God’s
love is first of all directed toward himself as having the
greatest quantity of being, and only secondarily directed toward
his creatures whose quantity of being is infinitesimal as compared
with his. But we reply that being in general is far too abstract a
thing to elicit or justify love. Charles Hodge said truly that, if
obligation is primarily due to being in general, then there is no
more virtue in loving God than there is in loving Satan. Virtue,
we hold, must consist, not in love for being in general, but in
love for good being, that is, in love for God as holy. Love has no
moral value except as it is placed upon a right object and is
proportioned to the worth of that object. “Love of being in
general” makes virtue an irrational thing, because it has no
standard of conduct. Virtue is rather the love of God as right and
as the source of right.

G. S. Lee, The Shadow-cross, 38—“God is love, and law is the way
he loves us. But it is also true that God is law, and love is the
way he rules us.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 88—“Love is God’s
desire to impart himself, and so all good, to other persons, and
to possess them for his own spiritual fellowship.” The intent to
communicate himself is the intent to communicate holiness, and
this is the “terminus ad quem” of God’s administration. Drummond,
in his Ascent of Man, shows that Love began with the first cell of
life. Evolution is not a tale of battle, but a love-story. We
gradually pass from selfism to otherism. Evolution is the object
of nature, and altruism is the object of evolution. Man =
nutrition, looking to his own things; Woman = reproduction,
looking to the things of others. But the greatest of these is
love. The mammalia = the mothers, last and highest, care for
others. As the mother gives love, so the father gives
righteousness. Law, once a latent thing, now becomes active. The
father makes a sort of conscience for those beneath him. Nature,
like Raphael, is producing a Holy Family.

Jacob Boehme: “Throw open and throw out thy heart. For unless thou
dost exercise thy heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man
in the world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy envy, thy distaste,
thy dislike, will still have dominion over thee.... In the name
and in the strength of God, love all men. Love thy neighbor as
thyself, and do to thy neighbor as thou doest to thyself. And do
it now. For now is the accepted time, and now is the day of
salvation.” These expressions are scriptural and valuable, if they
are interpreted ethically, and are understood to inculcate the
supreme duty of loving the Holy One, of being holy as he is holy,
and of seeking to bring all intelligent beings into conformity
with his holiness.

(_d_) God’s love is not a merely emotional affection, proceeding from sense or impulse, nor is it prompted by utilitarian considerations.

Of the two words for love in the N. T., φιλέω designates an
emotional affection, which is not and cannot be commanded (_John
11:36—_“Behold how he loved him!”), while ἀγαπάω expresses a
rational and benevolent affection which springs from deliberate
choice (_John 3:16—_“God so loved the world”; _Mat. 19:19—_“Thou
shall love thy neighbor as thyself”; _5:44—_“Love your enemies”).
Thayer, N. T. Lex., 653—Ἀγαπᾶν “properly denotes a love founded in
admiration, veneration, esteem, like the Lat. _diligere_, to be
kindly disposed to one, to wish one well; but φιλεîν denotes an
inclination prompted by sense and emotion, Lat. _amare_.... Hence
men are said ἀγαπᾶν God, not φιλεîν.” In this word ἀγάπη, when
used of God, it is already implied that God loves, not for what he
can get, but for what he can give. The rationality of his love
involves moreover a subordination of the emotional element to a
higher law than itself, namely, that of holiness. Even God’s
self-love must have a reason and norm in the perfections of his
own being.

B. Positively:

(_a_) The immanent love of God is a rational and voluntary affection, grounded in perfect reason and deliberate choice.

Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:277—“Love is will,
aiming either at the appropriation of an object, or at the
enrichment of its existence, because moved by a feeling of its
worth.... Love is to persons; it is a constant will; it aims at
the promotion of the other’s personal end, whether known or
conjectured; it takes up the other’s personal end and makes it
part of his own. Will, as love, does not give itself up for the
other’s sake; it aims at closest fellowship with the other for a
common end.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405—“Love is
not rightfully independent of the other faculties, but is subject
to regulation and control.... We sometimes say that religion
consists in love.... It would be more strictly true to say that
religion consists in a new direction of our love, a turning of the
current toward God which once flowed toward self.... Christianity
rectifies the affections, before excessive, impulsive,
lawless,—gives them worthy and immortal objects, regulates their
intensity in some due proportion to the value of the things they
rest upon, and teaches the true methods of their manifestation. In
true religion love forms a copartnership with reason.... God’s
love is no arbitrary, wild, passionate torrent of emotion ... and
we become like God by bringing our emotions, sympathies,
affections, under the dominion of reason and conscience.”

(_b_) Since God’s love is rational, it involves a subordination of the _emotional_ element to a higher law than itself, namely, that of truth and holiness.

_Phil. 1:9—_“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment.” True love among men illustrates God’s love. It merges self in another instead of making that other an appendage to self. It seeks the other’s true good, not merely his present enjoyment or advantage. Its aim is to realize the divine idea in that other, and therefore it is exercised for God’s sake and in the strength which God supplies. Hence it is a love for holiness, and is under law to holiness. So God’s love takes into account the highest interests, and makes infinite sacrifice to secure them. For the sake of saving a world of sinners, God “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”_ (Rom. 8:32)_, and “Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”_ (Is. 53:6)_. Love requires a rule or standard for its regulation. This rule or standard is the holiness of God. So once more we see that love cannot include holiness, because it is subject to the law of holiness. Love desires only the best for its object, and the best is _God_. The golden rule does not bid us give what others desire, but what they need: _Rom. 15:2—_“Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying.”

(_c_) The immanent love of God therefore requires and finds a perfect standard in his own holiness, and a personal object in the image of his own infinite perfections. It is to be understood only in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity.

As there is a higher Mind than our mind, so there is a greater
Heart than our heart. God is not simply the loving One—he is also
the Love that is loved. There is an infinite life of sensibility
and affection in God. God has feeling, and in an infinite degree.
But feeling alone is not love. Love implies not merely receiving
but giving, not merely emotion but impartation. So the love of God
is shown in his eternal giving. _James 1:5—_“God, who giveth,” or
“the giving God” (τοῦ διδόντος Θεοῦ) = giving is not an episode in
his being—it is his nature to give. And not only to _give_, but to
give _himself_. This he does eternally in the self-communications
of the Trinity; this he does transitively and temporally in his
giving of himself for us in Christ, and to us in the Holy Spirit.

Jonathan Edwards, Essay on Trinity (ed. G. P. Fisher), 79—“That in
John God is love shows that there are more persons than one in the
Deity, for it shows love to be essential and necessary to the
Deity, so that his nature consists in it, and this supposes that
there is an eternal and necessary object, because all love
respects another that is the beloved. By love here the apostle
certainly means something beside that which is commonly called
self-love: that is very improperly called love, and is a thing of
an exceeding diverse nature from the affection or virtue of love
the apostle is speaking of.” When Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
226-239, makes the first characteristic of love to be
self-affirmation, and when Dorner, Christian Ethics, 73, makes
self-assertion an essential part of love, they violate linguistic
usage by including under love what properly belongs to holiness.

(_d_) The immanent love of God constitutes a ground of the divine blessedness. Since there is an infinite and perfect object of love, as well as of knowledge and will, in God’s own nature, the existence of the universe is not necessary to his serenity and joy.

Blessedness is not itself a divine attribute; it is rather a
result of the exercise of the divine attributes. It is a
subjective result of this exercise, as glory is an objective
result. Perfect faculties, with perfect objects for their
exercise, ensure God’s blessedness. But love is especially its
source. _Acts 20:35—_“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Happiness (hap, happen) is grounded in circumstances; blessedness,
in character. Love precedes creation and is the ground of
creation. Its object therefore cannot be the universe, for that
does not exist, and, if it did exist, could not be a proper object
of love for the infinite God. The only sufficient object of his
love is the image of his own perfections, for that alone is equal
to himself. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 264—“Man most truly realizes
his own nature, when he is ruled by rational, self-forgetful love.
He cannot help inferring that the highest thing in the individual
consciousness is the dominant thing in the universe at large.”
Here we may assent, if we remember that not the love itself but
that which is loved must be the dominant thing, and we shall see
that to be not love but holiness.

Jones, Robert Browning, 219—“Love is for Browning the highest,
richest conception man can form. It is our idea of that which is
perfect; we cannot even imagine anything better. And the idea of
evolution necessarily explains the world as the return of the
highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound.... All things
are potentially spirit, and all the phenomena of the world are
manifestations of love.... Man’s reason is not, but man’s love is,
a direct emanation from the inmost being of God” (345). Browning
should have applied to truth and holiness the same principle which
he recognized with regard to love. But we gratefully accept his
dicta: “He that created love, shall not he love?... God! thou art
Love! I build my faith on that.”

(_e_) The love of God involves also the possibility of divine suffering, and the suffering on account of sin which holiness necessitates on the part of God is itself the atonement.

Christ is “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of
the world”_ (Rev. 13:8);_ _1 Pet. 1:19, 20—_“precious blood, as of
a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ:
who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”
While holiness requires atonement, love provides it. The
blessedness of God is consistent with sorrow for human misery and
sin. God is passible, or capable of suffering. The permission of
moral evil in the decree of creation was at cost to God. Scripture
attributes to him emotions of grief and anger at human sin (_Gen.
6:6—_“it grieved him at his heart”; _Rom. 1:18—_“wrath of God”;
_Eph. 4:30—_“grieve not the Holy Spirit of God”); painful
sacrifice in the gift of Christ (_Rom. 8:32—_“spared not his own
son”; _cf._ _Gen. 22:16—_“hast not withheld thy son”) and
participation in the suffering of his people (_Is. 63:9—_“in all
their affliction he was afflicted”); Jesus Christ in his sorrow
and sympathy, his tears and agony, is the revealer of God’s
feelings toward the race, and we are urged to follow in his steps,
that we may be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. We
cannot, indeed, conceive of love without self-sacrifice, nor of
self-sacrifice without suffering. It would seem, then, that as
immutability is consistent with imperative volitions in human
history, so the blessedness of God may be consistent with emotions
of sorrow.

But does God feel in proportion to his greatness, as the mother
suffers more than the sick child whom she tends? Does God suffer
infinitely in every suffering of his creatures? We must remember
that God is infinitely greater than his creation, and that he sees
all human sin and woe as part of his great plan. We are entitled
to attribute to him only such passibleness as is consistent with
infinite perfection. In combining passibleness with blessedness,
then, we must allow blessedness to be the controlling element, for
our fundamental idea of God is that of absolute perfection.
Martensen, Dogmatics, 101—“This limitation is swallowed up in the
inner life of perfection which God lives, in total independence of
his creation, and in triumphant prospect of the fulfilment of his
great designs. We may therefore say with the old theosophic
writers: ‘In the outer chambers is sadness, but in the inner ones
is unmixed joy.’ ” Christ was “_anointed ... with the oil of
gladness above his fellows,_” and “for the joy that was set before
him endured the cross”_ (Heb. 1:9; 12:2)_. Love rejoices even in
pain, when this brings good to those beloved. “Though round its
base the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on
its head.”

In George Adam Smith’s Life of Henry Drummond, 11, Drummond cries
out after hearing the confessions of men who came to him: “I am
sick of the sins of these men! How can God bear it?” Simon,
Reconciliation, 338-343, shows that before the incarnation, the
Logos was a sufferer from the sins of men. This suffering however
was kept in check and counterbalanced by his consciousness as a
factor in the Godhead, and by the clear knowledge that men were
themselves the causes of this suffering. After he became incarnate
he suffered without knowing whence all the suffering came. He had
a subconscious life into which were interwoven elements due to the
sinful conduct of the race whose energy was drawn from himself and
with which in addition he had organically united himself. If this
is limitation, it is also self-limitation which Christ could have
avoided by not creating, preserving, and redeeming mankind. We
rejoice in giving away a daughter in marriage, even though it
costs pain. The highest blessedness in the Christian is coincident
with agony for the souls of others. We partake of Christ’s joy
only when we know the fellowship of his sufferings. Joy and sorrow
can coëxist, like Greek fire, that burns under water.

Abbé Gratry, La Morale et la Loi de l’Histoire, 165, 166—“What! Do
you really suppose that the personal God, free and intelligent,
loving and good, who knows every detail of human torture, and
hears every sigh—this God who sees, who loves as we do, and more
than we do—do you believe that he is present and looks pitilessly
on what breaks your heart, and what to him must be the spectacle
of Satan reveling in the blood of humanity? History teaches us
that men so feel for sufferers that they have been drawn to die
with them, so that their own executioners have become the next
martyrs. And yet you represent God, the absolute goodness, as
alone impassible? It is here that our evangelical faith comes in.
Our God was made man to suffer and to die! Yes, here is the true
God. He has suffered from the beginning in all who have suffered.
He has been hungry in all who have hungered. He has been immolated
in all and with all who have offered up their lives. He is the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Similarly Alexander
Vinet, Vital Christianity, 240, remarks that “The suffering God is
not simply the teaching of modern divines. It is a New Testament
thought, and it is one that answers all the doubts that arise at
the sight of human suffering. To know that God is suffering with
it makes that suffering more awful, but it gives strength and life
and hope, for we know that, if God is in it, suffering is the road
to victory. If he shares our suffering we shall share his crown,”
and we can say with the _Psalmist, 68:19—_“Blessed be God, who
daily beareth our burden, even the God who is our salvation,” and
with _Isaiah 63:9—_“In all their affliction he was afflicted, and
the angel of his presence saved them.”