Chapter I: The Attributes Of God (5)

_Mat. 6:16—_“be not as the hypocrites.” In God the outer
expression and the inward reality always correspond. Assyrian
wills were written on a small tablet encased in another upon which
the same thing was written over again. Breakage, or falsification,
of the outer envelope could be corrected by reference to the
inner. So our outer life should conform to the heart within, and
the heart within to the outer life. On the duty of speaking the
truth, and the limitations of the duty, see Newman Smyth,
Christian Ethics, 386-403—“Give the truth always to those who in
the bonds of humanity have a right to the truth; conceal it, or
falsify it, only when the human right to the truth has been
forfeited, or is held in abeyance, by sickness, weakness, or some
criminal intent.”

(_b_) In virtue of his faithfulness, he fulfills all his promises to his people, whether expressed in words or implied in the constitution he has given them.

In God’s faithfulness we have the sure ground of confidence that
he will perform what his love has led him to promise to those who
obey the gospel. Since his promises are based, not upon what we
are or have done, but upon what Christ is and has done, our
defects and errors do not invalidate them, so long as we are truly
penitent and believing: _1 John 1:9—_“faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins” = faithful to his promise, and righteous to
Christ. God’s faithfulness also ensures a supply for all the real
wants of our being, both here and hereafter, since these wants are
implicit promises of him who made us: _Ps. 84:11—_“No good thing
will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”; _91:4—_“His truth
is a shield and a buckler”; _Mat. 6:33—_“all these things shall be
added unto you”; _1 Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear
heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever
things God prepared for them that love him.”

Regulus goes back to Carthage to die rather than break his promise
to his enemies. George William Curtis economizes for years, and
gives up all hope of being himself a rich man, in order that he
may pay the debts of his deceased father. When General Grant sold
all the presents made to him by the crowned heads of Europe, and
paid the obligations in which his insolvent son had involved him,
he said: “Better poverty and honor, than wealth and disgrace.”
Many a business man would rather die than fail to fulfil his
promise and let his note go to protest. “Maxwelton braes are
bonnie, Where early falls the dew, And ’twas there that Annie
Laurie Gave me her promise true; Which ne’er forget will I; And
for bonnie Annie Laurie I’d lay me down and dee.” Betray the man
she loves? Not “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks
melt wi’the sun.” God’s truth will not be less than that of mortal
man. God’s veracity is the natural correlate to our faith.

2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.

By mercy and goodness we mean the transitive love of God in its two-fold relation to the disobedient and to the obedient portions of his creatures.

_Titus 3:4—_“his love toward man”; _Rom. 2:4—_“goodness of God”;
_Mat. 5:44, 45—_“love your enemies ... that ye may be sons of your
Father”; _John 3:16—_“God so loved the world”; _2 Pet.
1:3—_“granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and
godliness”; _Rom. 8:32—_“freely give us all things”; _John
4:10—_“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

(_a_) Mercy is that eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to seek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed themselves to his will, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice.

Martensen: “Viewed in relation to sin, eternal love is
compassionate grace.” God’s continued importation of natural life
is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what he desires to do
for his creatures in the higher sphere—the communication of
spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When he bids us
love our enemies, he only bids us follow his own example.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 2:2—“Wilt thou draw near the nature
of the gods? Draw near them, then, in being merciful.” Twelfth
Night, 3:4—“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be
called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty.”

(_b_) Goodness is the eternal principle of God’s nature which leads him to communicate of his own life and blessedness to those who are like him in moral character. Goodness, therefore, is nearly identical with the love of complacency; mercy, with the love of benevolence.

Notice, however, that transitive love is but an outward
manifestation of immanent love. The eternal and perfect object of
God’s love is in his own nature. Men become subordinate objects of
that love only as they become connected and identified with its
principal object, the image of God’s perfections in Christ. Only
in the Son do men become sons of God. To this is requisite an
acceptance of Christ on the part of man. Thus it can be said that
God imparts himself to men just so far as men are willing to
receive him. And as God gives himself to men, in all his moral
attributes, to answer for them and to renew them in character,
there is truth in the statement of Nordell (Examiner, Jan. 17,
1884) that “the maintenance of holiness is the function of divine
justice; the diffusion of holiness is the function of divine
love.” We may grant this as substantially true, while yet we deny
that love is a mere form or manifestation of holiness.
Self-impartation is different from self-affirmation. The attribute
which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute
which moves him to maintain. The two ideas of holiness and of love
are as distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of
generosity on the other. Park: “God loves Satan, in a certain
sense, and we ought to.” Shedd: “This same love of compassion God
feels toward the non-elect; but the expression of that compassion
is forbidden for reasons which are sufficient for God, but are
entirely unknown to the creature.” The goodness of God is the
basis of _reward_, under God’s government. Faithfulness leads God
to keep his promises; goodness leads him to make them.

Edwards, Nature of Virtue, in Works, 2:263—Love of benevolence
does not presuppose beauty in its object. Love of complacence does
presuppose beauty. Virtue is not love to an object for its beauty.
The beauty of intelligent beings does not consist in love for
beauty, or virtue in love for virtue. Virtue is love for being in
general, exercised in a general good will. This is the doctrine of
Edwards. We prefer to say that virtue is love, not for being in
general, but for good being, and so for God, the holy One. The
love of compassion is perfectly compatible with hatred of evil and
with indignation against one who commits it. Love does not
necessarily imply approval, but it does imply desire that all
creatures should fulfil the purpose of their existence by being
morally conformed to the holy One; see Godet, in The Atonement,
339.

_Rom. 5:8—_“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We ought to love our
enemies, and Satan is our worst enemy. We ought to will the good
of Satan, or cherish toward him the love of benevolence, though
not the love of complacence. This does not involve a condoning of
his sin, or an ignoring of his moral depravity, as seems implied
in the verses of Wm. C. Gannett: “The poem hangs on the berry-bush
When comes the poet’s eye; The street begins to masquerade When
Shakespeare passes by. The Christ sees white in Judas’ heart And
loves his traitor well; The God, to angel his new heaven, Explores
his deepest hell.”

3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.

By justice and righteousness we mean the transitive holiness of God, in virtue of which his treatment of his creatures conforms to the purity of his nature,—righteousness demanding from all moral beings conformity to the moral perfection of God, and justice visiting non-conformity to that perfection with penal loss or suffering.

_Gen. 18:25—_“shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
_Deut. 32:4—_“All his ways are justice; A God of faithfulness and
without iniquity, Just and right is he”; _Ps. 5:5—_“Thou hatest
all workers of iniquity”; _7:9-12—_“the righteous God trieth the
hearts ... saveth the upright ... is a righteous judge, Yea, a God
that hath indignation every day”; _18:24-26—_“Jehovah recompensed
me according to my righteousness.... With the merciful, thou wilt
show thyself merciful ... with the perverse thou wilt show thyself
froward”; _Mat. 5:48—_“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect”; _Rom. 2:6—_“will render to every man
according to his works”; _1 Pet. 1:16—_“Ye shall be holy; for I am
holy.” These passages show that God loves the same persons whom he
hates. It is not true that he hates the sin, but loves the sinner;
he both hates and loves the sinner himself, hates him as he is a
living and wilful antagonist of truth and holiness, loves him as
he is a creature capable of good and ruined by his transgression.

There is no abstract sin that can be hated apart from the persons
in whom that sin is represented and embodied. Thomas Fuller found
it difficult to starve the profaneness but to feed the person of
the impudent beggar who applied to him for food. Mr. Finney
declared that he would kill the slave-catcher, but would love him
with all his heart. In our civil war Dr. Kirk said: “God knows
that we love the rebels, but God also knows that we will kill them
if they do not lay down their arms.” The complex nature of God not
only permits but necessitates this same double treatment of the
sinner, and the earthly father experiences the same conflict of
emotions when his heart yearns over the corrupt son whom he is
compelled to banish from the household. Moberly, Atonement and
Personality, 7—“It is the sinner who is punished, not the sin.”

(_a_) Since justice and righteousness are simply transitive holiness—righteousness designating this holiness chiefly in its mandatory, justice chiefly in its punitive, aspect,—they are not mere manifestations of benevolence, or of God’s disposition to secure the highest happiness of his creatures, nor are they grounded in the nature of things as something apart from or above God.

Cremer, N. T. Lexicon: δίκαιος = “the perfect coincidence existing
between God’s nature, which is the standard for all, and his
acts.” Justice and righteousness are simply holiness exercised
toward creatures. The same holiness which exists in God in
eternity past manifests itself as justice and righteousness, so
soon as intelligent creatures come into being. Much that was said
under Holiness as an immanent attribute of God is equally
applicable here. The modern tendency to confound holiness with
love shows itself in the merging of justice and righteousness in
mere benevolence. Instances of this tendency are the following:
Ritschl, Unterricht, § 16—“The righteousness of God denotes the
manner in which God carries out his loving will in the redemption
alike of humanity as a whole and of individual men; hence his
righteousness is indistinguishable from his grace”; see also
Ritschl, Rechtf. und Versöhnung, 2:113; 3:296. Prof. George M.
Forbes: “Only right makes love moral; only love makes right
moral.” Jones, Robert Browning, 70—“Is it not beneficence that
places death at the heart of sin? Carlyle forgot this. God is not
simply a great taskmaster. The power that imposes law is not an
alien power.” D’Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 237-240—“How can
self-realization be the realization of others? Why must the true
good be always the common good? Why is the end of each the end of
all?... We need a concrete universal which will unify all
persons.”

So also, Harris, Kingdom of Christ on Earth, 39-42; God the
Creator, 287, 290, 302—“Love, as required and regulated by reason,
may be called righteousness. Love is universal good will or
benevolence, regulated in its exercise by righteousness. Love is
the choice of God and man as the objects of trust and service.
This choice involves the determination of the will to seek
universal well-being, and in this aspect it is benevolence. It
also involves the consent of the will to the reason, and the
determination to regulate all action in seeking well-being by its
truths, laws, and ideals; and in this aspect it is
righteousness.... Justice is the consent of the will to the law of
love, in its authority, its requirements, and its sanctions. God’s
wrath is the necessary reaction of this law of love in the
constitution and order of the universe against the wilful violator
of it, and Christ’s sufferings atone for sin by asserting and
maintaining the authority, universality, and inviolability of
God’s law of love in his redemption of men and his forgiveness of
their sins.... Righteousness cannot be the whole of love, for this
would shut us up to the merely formal principle of the law without
telling us what the law requires. Benevolence cannot be the whole
of love, for this would shut us up to hedonism, in the form of
utilitarianism, excluding righteousness from the character of God
and man.”

Newman Smyth also, in his Christian Ethics, 227-231, tells us that
“love, as self-affirming, is righteousness; as self-imparting, is
benevolence; as self-finding in others, is sympathy.
Righteousness, as subjective regard for our own moral being, is
holiness; as objective regard for the persons of others, is
justice. Holiness is involved in love as its essential respect to
itself; the heavenly Father is the holy Father (_John 17:11_).
Love contains in its unity a trinity of virtue. Love affirms its
own worthiness, imparts to others its good, and finds its life
again in the well-being of others. The ethical limit of
self-impartation is found in self-affirmation. Love in
self-bestowal cannot become suicidal. The benevolence of love has
its moral bounds in the holiness of love. True love in God
maintains its transcendence, and excludes pantheism.”

The above doctrine, quoted for substance from Newman Smyth, seems
to us unwarrantably to include in love what properly belongs to
holiness. It virtually denies that holiness has any independent
existence as an attribute of God. To make holiness a manifestation
of love seems to us as irrational as to say that self-affirmation
is a form of self-impartation. The concession that holiness
regulates and limits love shows that holiness cannot itself be
love, but must be an independent and superior attribute. Right
furnishes the rule and law for love, but it is not true that love
furnishes the rule and law for right. There is no such double
sovereignty as this theory would imply. The one attribute that is
independent and supreme is holiness, and love is simply the
impulse to communicate this holiness.

William Ashmore: “Dr. Clarke lays great emphasis on the character
of ‘a good God.’... But he is more than a merely _good_ God; he is
a just God, and a righteous God, and a holy God—a God who is
‘angry with the wicked,’ even while ready to forgive them, if they
are willing to repent in his way, and not in their own. He is the
God who brought in a flood upon the world of the ungodly; who
rained down fire and brimstone from heaven; and who is to come in
‘flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God’ and
obey not the gospel of his son.... Paul reasoned about both the
‘goodness’ and the ‘severity’ of God.”

(_b_) Transitive holiness, as righteousness, imposes law in conscience and Scripture, and may be called legislative holiness. As justice, it executes the penalties of law, and may be called distributive or judicial holiness. In righteousness God reveals chiefly his love of holiness; in justice, chiefly his hatred of sin.

The self-affirming purity of God demands a like purity in those
who have been made in his image. As God wills and maintains his
own moral excellence, so all creatures must will and maintain the
moral excellence of God. There can be only one centre in the solar
system,—the sun is its own centre and the centre for all the
planets also. So God’s purity is the object of his own will,—it
must be the object of all the wills of all his creatures also.
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 282—“It is not rational or safe for the
hand to separate itself from the heart. This is a _universe_, and
God is the heart of the great system. Altruism is not the result
of society, but society is the result of altruism. It begins in
creatures far below man. The animals which know how to combine
have the greatest chance of survival. The unsociable animal dies
out. The most perfect organism is the most sociable. Right is the
debt which the part owes to the whole.” This seems to us but a
partial expression of the truth. Right is more than a debt to
others,—it is a debt to one’s self, and the self-affirming,
self-preserving, self-respecting element constitutes the limit and
standard of all outgoing activity. The sentiment of loyalty is
largely a reverence for this principle of order and stability in
government. _Ps. 145:5—_“Of the glorious majesty of thine honor,
And of thy wondrous works, will I meditate”; _97:2—_“Clouds and
darkness are round about him: Righteousness and justice are the
foundation of his throne.”

John Milton, Eikonoklastes: “Truth and justice are all one; for
truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but truth in
our practice.... For truth is properly no more than contemplation,
and her utmost efficiency is but teaching; but justice in her very
essence is all strength and activity, and hath a sword put into
her hand to use against all violence and oppression on the earth.
She it is who accepts no person, and exempts none from the
severity of her stroke.” A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
326—“Even the poet has not dared to represent Jupiter torturing
Prometheus without the dim figure of Avenging Fate waiting
silently in the background.... Evolution working out a nobler and
nobler justice is proof that God is just. Here is ‘preferential
action’.” S. S. Times, June 9, 1900—“The natural man is born with
a wrong personal astronomy. Man should give up the conceit of
being the centre of all things. He should accept the Copernican
theory, and content himself with a place on the edge of things—the
place he has always really had. We all laugh at John Jasper and
his thesis that ‘the sun do move.’ The Copernican theory is
leaking down into human relations, as appears from the current
phrase: ‘There are others’.”

(_c_) Neither justice nor righteousness, therefore, is a matter of arbitrary will. They are revelations of the inmost nature of God, the one in the form of moral requirement, the other in the form of judicial sanction. As God cannot but demand of his creatures that they be like him in moral character, so he cannot but enforce the law which he imposes upon them. Justice just as much binds God to punish as it binds the sinner to be punished.

All arbitrariness is excluded here. God is what he is—infinite
purity. He cannot change. If creatures are to attain the end of
their being, they must be like God in moral purity. Justice is
nothing but the recognition and enforcement of this natural
necessity. Law is only the transcript of God’s nature. Justice
does not make law,—it only reveals law. Penalty is only the
reaction of God’s holiness against that which is its opposite.
Since righteousness and justice are only legislative and
retributive holiness, God can cease to demand purity and to punish
sin only when he ceases to be holy, that is, only when he ceases
to be God. “Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.”

Simon, Reconciliation, 141—“To claim the performance of duty is as
truly obligatory as it is obligatory to perform the duty which is
prescribed.” E. H. Johnson, Systematic Theology, 84—“Benevolence
intends what is well for the creature; justice insists on what is
fit. But the well-for-us and the fit-for-us precisely coincide.
The only thing that is well for us is our normal employment and
development; but to provide for this is precisely what is fitting
and therefore due to us. In the divine nature the distinction
between justice and benevolence is one of form.” We criticize this
utterance as not sufficiently taking into account the nature of
the right. The right is not merely the fit. Fitness is only
general adaptation which may have in it no ethical element,
whereas right is solely and exclusively ethical. The right
therefore regulates the fit and constitutes its standard. The
well-for-us is to be determined by the right-for-us, but not _vice
versa_. George W. Northrup: “God is not bound to bestow the same
endowments upon creatures, nor to keep all in a state of holiness
forever, nor to redeem the fallen, nor to secure the greatest
happiness of the universe. But he is bound to purpose and to do
what his absolute holiness requires. He has no attribute, no will,
no sovereignty, above this law of his being. He cannot lie, he
cannot deny himself, he cannot look upon sin with complacency, he
cannot acquit the guilty without an atonement.”

(_d_) Neither justice nor righteousness bestows rewards. This follows from the fact that obedience is due to God, instead of being optional or a gratuity. No creature can claim anything for his obedience. If God rewards, he rewards in virtue of his goodness and faithfulness, not in virtue of his justice or his righteousness. What the creature cannot claim, however, Christ _can_ claim, and the rewards which are goodness to the creature are righteousness to Christ. God rewards Christ’s work _for_ us and _in_ us.

Bruch, Eigenschaftslehre, 280-282, and John Austin, Province of
Jurisprudence, 1:88-93, 220-223, both deny, and rightly deny, that
justice bestows rewards. Justice simply punishes infractions of
law. In _Mat. 25:34—_“inherit the kingdom”—inheritance implies no
merit; _46_—the wicked are adjudged to eternal punishment; the
righteous, not to eternal reward, but to eternal life. _Luke
17:7-10—_“when ye shall have done all the things that are
commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done
that which it was our duty to do.” _Rom. 6:23_—punishment is the
“_wages of sin_”: but salvation is “_the gift of God_”; _2:6_—God
rewards, not _on account of_ man’s work but “_according to his
works_.” Reward is thus seen to be in Scripture a matter of grace
to the creature; only to the Christ who works for us in atonement,
and in us in regeneration and sanctification, is reward a matter
of debt (see also _John 6:27_ and _2 John 8_). Martineau, Types,
2:86, 244, 249—“Merit is toward man; virtue toward God.”

All mere service is unprofitable, because it furnishes only an
equivalent to duty, and there is no margin. Works of
supererogation are impossible, because our all is due to God. He
would have us rise into the region of friendship, realize that he
has been treating us not as Master but as Father, enter into a
relation of uncalculating love. With this proviso that rewards are
matters of grace, not of debt, we may assent to the maxim of
Solon: “A republic walks upon two feet—just punishment for the
unworthy and due reward for the worthy.” George Harris, Moral
Evolution, 139—“Love seeks righteousness, and is satisfied with
nothing other than that.” But when Harris adopts the words of the
poet: “The very wrath from pity grew, From love of men the hate of
wrong,” he seems to us virtually to deny that God hates evil for
any other reason than because of its utilitarian disadvantages,
and to imply that good has no independent existence in his nature.
Bowne, Ethics, 171—“Merit is desert of reward, or better, desert
of moral approval.” Tennyson: “For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.” Baxter: “_Desert_ is written
over the gate of hell; but over the gate of heaven only, _The Gift
of God_.”

(_e_) Justice in God, as the revelation of his holiness, is devoid of all passion or caprice. There is in God no selfish anger. The penalties he inflicts upon transgression are not vindictive but vindicative. They express the revulsion of God’s nature from moral evil, the judicial indignation of purity against impurity, the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. But because its decisions are calm, they are irreversible.

Anger, within certain limits, is a duty of man. _Ps. 97:10—_“ye
that love Jehovah, hate evil”; _Eph. 4:28—_“Be ye angry, and sin
not.” The calm indignation of the judge, who pronounces sentence
with tears, is the true image of the holy anger of God against
sin. Weber, Zorn Gottes, 28, makes wrath only the jealousy of
love. It is more truly the jealousy of holiness. Prof. W. A.
Stevens, Com. on _1 Thess. 2:10_—“_Holily_ and _righteously_ are
terms that describe the same conduct in two aspects; the former,
as conformed to God’s character in itself; the latter, as
conformed to his law; both are positive.” Lillie, on _2 Thess.
1:6_—“Judgment is ‘_a righteous thing with God_.’ Divine justice
requires it for its own satisfaction.” See Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:175-178, 365-385; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:180, 181.

Of Gaston de Foix, the old chronicler admirably wrote: “He loved
what ought to be loved, and hated what ought to be hated, and
never had miscreant with him.” Compare _Ps. 101:5, 6—_“Him that
hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer. Mine eyes
shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with
me.” Even Horace Bushnell spoke of the “wrath-principle” in God.
_1 K. 11:9—_“And Jehovah was angry with Solomon” because of his
polygamy. Jesus’ anger was no less noble than his love. The love
of the right involved hatred of the wrong. Those may hate who hate
evil for its hatefulness and for the sake of God. Hate sin in
yourself first, and then you may hate it in itself and in the
world. Be angry only in Christ and with the wrath of God. W. C.
Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 264—“But we must purge ourselves of
self-regard, Or we are sinful in abhorring sin.” Instance Judge
Harris’s pity, as he sentenced the murderer; see A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 192, 193.

Horace’s “Ira furor brevis est”—“Anger is a temporary madness”—is
true only of selfish and sinful anger. Hence the man who is angry
is popularly called “mad.” But anger, though apt to become sinful,
is not necessarily so. Just anger is neither madness, nor is it
brief. Instance the judicial anger of the church of Corinth in
inflicting excommunication: _2 Cor. 7:11—_“what indignation, yea
what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging!”
The only revenge permissible to the Christian church is that in
which it pursues and exterminates sin. To be incapable of moral
indignation against wrong is to lack real love for the right. Dr.
Arnold of Rugby was never sure of a boy who only loved good; till
the boy also began to hate evil, Dr. Arnold did not feel that he
was safe. Herbert Spencer said that good nature with Americans
became a crime. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty: “There is one thing
worse than corruption, and that is acquiescence in corruption.”

Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 139—“Xenophon intends to say a very
commendable thing of Cyrus the Younger, when he writes of him that
no one had done more good to his friends or more harm to his
enemies.” Luther said to a monkish antagonist: “I will break in
pieces your heart of brass and pulverize your iron brains.” Shedd,
Dogmatic Theology, 1:175-178—“Human character is worthless in
proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of
Charles II that ‘he felt no gratitude for benefits, and no
resentment for wrongs; he did not love anyone, and he did not hate
anyone.’ He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and the only
feeling he had was contempt.” But see the death-bed scene of the
“merry monarch,” as portrayed in Bp. Burnet, Evelyn’s Memoirs, or
the Life of Bp. Ken. Truly “The end of mirth is heaviness”_ (Prov.
14:13)_.

Stout, Manual of Psychology, 22—“Charles Lamb tells us that his
friend George Dyer could never be brought to say anything in
condemnation of the most atrocious crimes, except that the
criminal must have been very eccentric.” Professor Seeley: “No
heart is pure that is not passionate.” D. W. Simon, Redemption of
Man, 249, 250, says that God’s resentment “is a resentment of an
essentially altruistic character.” If this means that it is
perfectly consistent with love for the sinner, we can accept the
statement; if it means that love is the only source of the
resentment, we regard the statement as a misinterpretation of
God’s justice, which is but the manifestation of his holiness and
is not a mere expression of his love. See a similar statement of
Lidgett, Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, 251—“Because God is
love, his love coëxists with his wrath against sinners, is the
very life of that wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath
as its instrument, while at the same time it seeks and supplies a
propitiation.” This statement ignores the fact that punishment is
never in Scripture regarded as an expression of God’s love, but
always of God’s holiness. When we say that we love God, let us
make sure that it is the true God, the God of holiness, that we
love, for only this love will make us like him.

The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against
moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened
conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection
of the awful revulsion of God’s infinite justice from the impurity
and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic,
necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in
self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see _Jer. 44:4—_“Oh,
do not this abominable thing that I hate!” _Num. 32:23—_“be sure
your sin will find you out”; _Heb. 10:30, 31—_“For we know him
that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And
again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God.” On justice as an attribute
of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government,
2:253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works,
10:483-624.

VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.

The attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection and will in man, no one of them is to be conceived of as exercised separately from the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others. God’s love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God’s knowledge, power, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high rank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy of higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God, than the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. And yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and of its supremacy we now proceed to speak.

Water is not water unless composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen
cannot be resolved into hydrogen, nor hydrogen into oxygen. Oxygen
has its own character, though only in combination with hydrogen
does it appear in water. Will in man never acts without intellect
and sensibility, yet will, more than intellect or sensibility, is
the manifestation of the man. So when God acts, he manifests not
one attribute alone, but his total moral excellence. Yet holiness,
as an attribute of God, has rights peculiar to itself; it
determines the attitude of the affections; it more than any other
faculty constitutes God’s moral being.

Clarke, Christian Theology, 83,92—“God would not be holy if he
were not love, and could not be love if he were not holy. Love is
an element in holiness. If this were lacking, there would be no
perfect character as principle of his own action or as standard
for us. On the other hand only the perfect being can be love. God
must be free from all taint of selfishness in order to be love.
Holiness requires God to act as love, for holiness is God’s
self-consistency. Love is the desire to impart holiness. Holiness
makes God’s character the standard for his creatures; but love,
desiring to impart the best good, does the same. All work of love
is work of holiness, and all work of holiness is work of love.
Conflict of attributes is impossible, because holiness always
includes love, and love always expresses holiness. They never need
reconciliation with each other.”

The general correctness of the foregoing statement is impaired by
the vagueness of its conception of holiness. The Scriptures do not
regard holiness as including love, or make all the acts of
holiness to be acts of love. Self-affirmation does not include
self-impartation, and sin necessitates an exercise of holiness
which is not also an exercise of love. But for the Cross, and
God’s suffering for sin of which the Cross is the expression,
there would be conflict between holiness and love. The wisdom of
God is most shown, not in reconciling man and God, but in
reconciling the holy God with the loving God.

1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.

That holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, is evident:

(_a_) From Scripture,—in which God’s holiness is not only most constantly and powerfully impressed upon the attention of man, but is declared to be the chief subject of rejoicing and adoration in heaven.

It is God’s attribute of holiness that first and most prominently
presents itself to the mind of the sinner, and conscience only
follows the method of Scripture: _1 Pet. 1:16—_“Ye shall be holy;
for I am holy”; _Heb. 12:14—_“the sanctification without which no
man shall see the lord”_;_ _cf._ _Luke 5:8—_“Depart from me; for I
am a sinful man, O Lord.” Yet this constant insistence upon
holiness cannot be due simply to man’s present state of sin, for
in heaven, where there is no sin, there is the same reiteration:
_Is. 6:3—_“Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts”; _Rev.
4:8—_“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty.” Of no other
attribute is it said that God’s throne rests upon it: _Ps.
97:2—_“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his
throne”; _99:4, 5, 9—_“The king’s strength also loveth justice....
Exalt ye Jehovah our God.... holy is he.” We would substitute the
word holiness for the word love in the statement of Newman Smyth,
Christian Ethics, 45—“We assume that love is lord in the divine
will, not that the will of God is sovereign over his love. God’s
omnipotence, as Dorner would say, exists for his love.”

(_b_) From our own moral constitution,—in which conscience asserts its supremacy over every other impulse and affection of our nature. As we may be kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be merciful, but must be holy.

See Bishop Butler’s Sermons upon Human Nature, Bohn’s ed.,
385-414, showing “the supremacy of conscience in the moral
constitution of man.” We must be just, before we are generous. So
with God, justice must be done always; mercy is optional with him.
He was not under obligation to provide a redemption for sinners:
_2 Pet. 2:4—_“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast
them down to hell.” Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt.
Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 277-298—“The quality of justice is
necessary exaction; but ‘the quality of mercy is not
(con)strained’ ” [_cf._ Denham: “His mirth is forced and
strained”]. God can apply the salvation, after he has wrought it
out, to whomsoever he will: _Rom. 9:18—_“he hath mercy on whom he
will.” Young, Night-Thoughts, 4:233—“A God all mercy is a God
unjust.” Emerson: “Your goodness must have some edge to it; else
it is none.” Martineau, Study, 2:100—“No one can be just without
subordinating Pity to the sense of Right.”

We may learn of God’s holiness _a priori_. Even the heathen could
say “Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” or “pereat mundus.” But, for our
knowledge of God’s mercy, we are dependent upon special
revelation. Mercy, like omnipotence, may exist in God without
being exercised. Mercy is not grace but debt, if God owes the
exercise of it either to the sinner or to himself; _versus_ G. B.
Stevens, in New Eng., 1888:421-443. “But justice is an attribute
which not only _exists_ of necessity, but must be _exercised_ of
necessity; because not to exercise it would be injustice”; see
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:218, 219, 389, 390; 2:402, and Sermons to
Nat. Man, 366. If it be said that, by parity of reasoning, for God
not to exercise mercy is to show himself unmerciful,—we reply that
this is not true so long as higher interests require that exercise
to be withheld. I am not unmerciful when I refuse to give the poor
the money needed to pay an honest debt; nor is the Governor
unmerciful when he refuses to pardon the condemned and unrepentant
criminal. Mercy has its conditions, as we proceed to show, and it
does not cease to _be_ when these conditions do not permit it to
_be exercised_. Not so with justice: justice must always be
exercised; when it ceases to _be exercised_, it also ceases to
_be_.

The story of the prodigal shows a love that ever reaches out after
the son in the far country, but which is ever conditioned by the
father’s holiness and restrained from acting until the son has
voluntarily forsaken his riotous living. A just father may banish
a corrupt son from the household, yet may love him so tenderly
that his banishment causes exquisite pain. E. G. Robinson: “God,
Christ and the Holy Spirit have a conscience, that is, they
distinguish between right and wrong.” E. H. Johnson, Syst.
Theology, 85, 86—“Holiness is primary as respects benevolence; for
(_a_) Holiness is itself moral excellence, while the moral
excellence of benevolence can be explained. (_b_) Holiness is an
attribute of being, while benevolence is an attribute of action;
but action presupposes and is controlled by being. (_c_)
Benevolence must take counsel of holiness, since for a being to
desire aught contrary to holiness would be to wish him harm, while
that which holiness leads God to seek, benevolence finds best for
the creature. (_d_) The Mosaic dispensation elaborately
symbolized, and the Christian dispensation makes provision to
meet, the requirements of holiness as supreme; _James
3:17_—‘_First pure, then_ [by consequence] _peaceable_.’ ”

We are “_to do justly_,” as well as “to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with” our God (_Micah 6:8_). Dr. Samuel Johnson: “It is
surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society
contains.” There is a sinful mercy. A School Commissioner finds it
terrible work to listen to the pleas of incompetent teachers
begging that they may not be dismissed, and he can nerve himself
for it only by remembering the children whose education may be
affected by his refusal to do justice. Love and pity are not the
whole of Christian duty, nor are they the ruling attributes of
God.

(_c_) From the actual dealings of God,—in which holiness conditions and limits the exercise of other attributes. Thus, for example, in Christ’s redeeming work, though love makes the atonement, it is violated holiness that requires it; and in the eternal punishment of the wicked, the demand of holiness for self-vindication overbears the pleading of love for the sufferers.

Love cannot be the fundamental attribute of God, because love
always requires a norm or standard, and this norm or standard is
found only in holiness; _Phil. 1:9—_“And this I pray, that your
love may abound yet more in knowledge and all discernment”; see A.
H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405. That which conditions all
is highest of all. Holiness shows itself higher than love, in that
it conditions love. Hence God’s mercy does not consist in
outraging his own law of holiness, but in enduring the penal
affliction by which that law of holiness is satisfied. Conscience
in man is but the reflex of holiness in God. Conscience demands
either retribution or atonement. This demand Christ meets by his
substituted suffering. His sacrifice assuages the thirst of
conscience in man, as well as the demand of holiness in God: _John
6:55—_“For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”
See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 280, 291, 292; Dogmatic
Theology, 1:377, 378—“The sovereignty and freedom of God in
respect to justice relates not to the _abolition_, nor to the
_relaxation_, but to the _substitution_, of punishment. It does
not consist in any power to violate or waive legal claims. The
exercise of the other attributes of God is regulated and
conditioned by that of justice.... Where then is the mercy of God,
in case justice is strictly satisfied by a vicarious person? There
is mercy in _permitting_ another person to do for the sinner what
the sinner is bound to do for himself; and greater mercy in
_providing_ that person; and still greater mercy in _becoming_
that person.”

Enthusiasm, like fire, must not only burn, but must be controlled.
Man invented chimneys to keep in the heat but to let out the
smoke. We need the walls of discretion and self-control to guide
the flaming of our love. The holiness of God is the regulating
principle of his nature. The ocean of his mercy is bounded by the
shores of his justice. Even if holiness be God’s self-love, in the
sense of God’s self-respect or self-preservation, still this
self-love must condition love to creatures. Only as God maintains
himself in his holiness, can he have anything of worth to give;
love indeed is nothing but the self-communication of holiness. And
if we say, with J. M. Whiton, that self-affirmation in a universe
in which God is immanent is itself a form of self-impartation,
still this form of self-impartation must condition and limit that
other form of self-impartation which we call love to creatures.
See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137-155, 346-353;
Patton, art. on Retribution and the Divine Goodness, in Princeton
Rev., Jan. 1878:8-16; Owen, Dissertation on the Divine Justice, in
Works, 10: 483-624.

(_d_) From God’s eternal purpose of salvation,—in which justice and mercy are reconciled only through the foreseen and predetermined sacrifice of Christ. The declaration that Christ is “the Lamb ... slain from the foundation of the world” implies the existence of a principle in the divine nature which requires satisfaction, before God can enter upon the work of redemption. That principle can be none other than holiness.

Since both mercy and justice are exercised toward sinners of the
human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is
removed only by the atoning death of the God-man. Their opposing
claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the
reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God. This is
intimated in _Rev. 13:8—_“the Lamb that hath been slain from the
foundation of the world.” This same reconciliation is alluded to
in _Ps. 85:10—_“Mercy and truth are met together; Righteousness
and peace have kissed each other”; and in _Rom. 3:26—_“that he
might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in
Jesus.” The atonement, then, if man was to be saved, was
necessary, not primarily on man’s account, but on God’s account.
Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 279—The sacrifice of Christ was an
“atonement _ab intra_, a self-oblation on the part of Deity
himself, by which to satisfy those immanent and eternal
imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their
satisfaction in the punishment of the transgressor, or else be
outraged.” Thus God’s word of redemption, as well as his word of
creation, is forever “settled in heaven”_ (Ps. 119:89)_. Its
execution on the cross was “according to the pattern” on high. The
Mosaic sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Christ; but the
sacrifice of Christ was but the temporal disclosure of an eternal
fact in the nature of God. See Kreibig, Versöhnung, 155, 156.

God requires satisfaction because he is holiness, but he makes
satisfaction because he is love. The Judge himself, with all his
hatred of transgression, still loves the transgressor, and comes
down from the bench to take the criminal’s place and bear his
penalty. But this is an eternal provision and an eternal
sacrifice. _Heb. 9:14—_“the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God.”
Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 215, 216—“Christ’s sacrifice was
offered through the Spirit. It was not wrung from a reluctant soul
through obedience to outward law; it came from the inner heart,
from the impulse of undying love. It was a completed offering
before Calvary began; it was seen by the Father before it was seen
by the world. It was finished in the Spirit, ere it began in the
flesh, finished in the hour when Christ exclaimed: ‘not as I will,
but as thou wilt’_ (Mat. 26:39)._”

Lang, Homer, 506—“Apollo is the bringer of pestilence and the
averter of pestilence, in accordance with the well-known rule that
the two opposite attributes should be combined in the same deity.”
Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: “Neither angel, man nor world,
could stand or can stand one moment in God’s sight without
beholding the same in the face of a Mediator; and therefore before
him, with whom all things are present, the Lamb of God was slain
before all worlds; without which eternal counsel of his, it was
impossible for him to have descended to any work of creation.”
Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 819—“Creation is built
on redemption lines”—which is to say that incarnation and
atonement were included in God’s original design of the world.

2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.

A. Erroneous Views. The ground of moral obligation is not

(_a_) In power,—whether of civil law (Hobbes, Gassendi), or of divine will (Occam, Descartes). We are not bound to obey either of these, except upon the ground that they are right. This theory assumes that nothing is good or right in itself, and that morality is mere prudence.

_Civil law_: See Hobbes, Leviathan, part i, chap. 6 and 13; part
ii, chap. 30; Gassendi, Opera, 6:120. Upon this view, might makes
right; the laws of Nero are always binding; a man may break his
promise when civil law permits; there is no obligation to obey a
father, a civil governor, or God himself, when once it is certain
that the disobedience will be hidden, or when the offender is
willing to incur the punishment. Martineau, Seat of Authority,
67—“Mere magnitude of scale carries no moral quality; nor could a
whole population of devils by unanimous ballot confer
righteousness upon their will, or make it binding upon a single
Abdiel.” Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, xvii—“Justice, good, and
truth were still Divine if, by some demon’s will, Hatred and wrong
had been proclaimed Law through the world, and right misnamed.”

_Divine will_: See Occam, lib. 2, quæs. 19 (quoted in Porter,
Moral Science, 125); Descartes (referred to in Hickok, Moral
Science, 27, 28); Martineau, Types, 148—“Descartes held that the
will of God is not the revealer but the inventor of moral
distinctions. God could have made Euclid a farrago of lies, and
Satan a model of moral perfection.” Upon this view, right and
wrong are variable quantities. Duns Scotus held that God’s will
makes not only truth but right. God can make lying to be virtuous
and purity to be wrong. If Satan were God, we should be bound to
obey him. God is essentially indifferent to right and wrong, good
and evil. We reply that behind the divine will is the divine
nature, and that in the moral perfection of that nature lies the
only ground of moral obligation. God pours forth his love and
exerts his power in accordance with some determining principle in
his own nature. That principle is not happiness. Finney, Syst.
Theology, 936, 937—“Could God’s command make it obligatory upon us
to will evil to him? If not, then his will is not the ground of
moral obligation. The thing that is most valuable, namely, the
highest good of God and of the universe must be both the end and
the ground. It is the divine reason and not the divine will that
perceives and affirms the law of conduct. The divine will
publishes, but does not originate, the rule. God’s will could not
make vice to be virtuous.”

As between power or utility on the one hand, and right on the
other hand, we must regard right as the more fundamental. We do
not, however, as will be seen further on, place the ground of
moral obligation even in right, considered as an abstract
principle; but place it rather in the moral excellence of him who
is the personal Right and therefore the source of right. Character
obliges, and the master often bows in his heart to the servant,
when this latter is the nobler man.

(_b_) Nor in utility,—whether our own happiness or advantage present or eternal (Paley), for supreme regard for our own interest is not virtuous; or the greatest happiness or advantage to being in general (Edwards), for we judge conduct to be useful because it is right, not right because it is useful. This theory would compel us to believe that in eternity past God was holy only because of the good he got from it,—that is, there was no such thing as holiness in itself, and no such thing as moral character in God.

_Our own happiness_: Paley, Mor. and Pol. Philos., book i, chap.
vii—“Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will
of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.” This unites
(_a_) and (_b_). John Stuart Mill and Dr. N. W. Taylor held that
our own happiness is the supreme end. These writers indeed regard
the highest happiness as attained only by living for others
(Mill’s altruism), but they can assign no reason why one who knows
no other happiness than the pleasures of sense should not adopt
the maxim of Epicurus, who, according to Lucretius, taught that
“ducit quemque voluptas.” This theory renders virtue impossible;
for a virtue which is mere regard to our own interest is not
virtue but prudence. “We have a sense of right and wrong
independently of all considerations of happiness or its loss.”
James Mill held that the utility is not the criterion of the
morality but itself constitutes the morality. G. B. Foster well
replies that virtue is not mere egoistic sagacity, and the moral
act is not simply a clever business enterprise. All languages
distinguish between virtue and prudence. To say that the virtues
are great utilities is to confound the effect with the cause.
Carlyle says that a man can do without happiness. Browning, Red
Cotton Nightcap Country: “Thick heads ought to recognize The
devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads
Downward perhaps, but fiddles all the way.” This is the morality
of Mother Goose: “He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And
said, ‘What a good boy am I!’ ”

E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 160—“Utility
has nothing ultimate in itself, and therefore can furnish no
ground of obligation. Utility is mere fitness of one thing to
minister to something else.” To say that things are right because
they are useful, is like saying that things are beautiful because
they are pleasing. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:170, 511,
556—“The moment the appetites pass into the self-conscious state,
and become ends instead of impulses, they draw to themselves terms
of censure.... So intellectual conscientiousness, or strict
submission of the mind to evidence, has its inspiration in pure
love of truth, and would not survive an hour if entrusted to the
keeping either of providence or of social affection.... Instincts,
which provide for they know not what, are proof that _want_ is the
original impulse to action, instead of pleasure being the end.” On
the happiness theory, appeals to self-interest on behalf of
religion ought to be effective,—as a matter of fact few are moved
by them.

Dewey, Psychology, 300, 362—“Emotion turned inward eats up itself.
Live on feelings rather than on the things to which feelings
belong, and you defeat your own end, exhaust your power of
feeling, commit emotional suicide. Hence arise cynicism, the _nil
admirari_ spirit, restless searching for the latest sensation. The
only remedy is to get outside of self, to devote self to some
worthy object, not for feeling’s sake but for the sake of the
object.... We do not desire an object because it gives us
pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because it satisfies the
impulse which, in connection with the idea of the object,
constitutes the desire.... Pleasure is the accompaniment of the
activity or development of the _self_.”