VII. History of the Doctrine of God. — The history of the argument for the being of God will be found under Naturae Theology. We treat here briefly the his- torj' of the doctrine of the nature and attributes of God. The first office of Christianity was to vindicate the spiritualit}' of God against the material and anthro- pomorphic ideas of paganism, and even of corrupted Judaism. The proposition "God is a Spirit" was therefore a fundamental one ; yet at an early period anthropo/norphic ideas were developed in the Church. Melito, bishop of Sardis, in his treatise Tltpi tvaLond- rov BfoD (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iv, 26), tauglit a cor- poreal representation of God. Tertullian {adv. Pi-ax- eam, c. vii) declares Deuni corpus esse, etsi Spi)-itus est; nihil enim incorporate nisi quod non est; and thus plainlj' shows that he could not distinguish reality from corporeity, even in God. Tlie Anthropomor- phites took the phrase "image of God" in a material sense, and taught that God is man per eminentiam, (2.) The second error was Dualism (q. v.), brought in \<y the Gnostic distinction between the supreme God and the Demiurge. See Gnosticism. (3.) Opposed to both these was the philosophical mode of conceiving God, including the idea of immateriality, proved neg- atively, e. g. Minucius Felix : Hie nee videri potest — visa clarior est ; nee comprehendi potest — tactu puiior est ; nee cestimari — sendbus major est : infinitus, immen- sus, et soli sibi tantus qiianius est notus. " Tlie Alex- andrians opposed all crude anthropopathisms, but they were not successful in correctly separating the real and the sensuous view, and hence were led into a sub- tilizing of the divine attributes. Clement attributes all errors in the apprehension of the Old Testament to the sensuous and liberal mode of understanding it, which led men to represent, after human fashion, the nature of God, Avho is exalted above all hunum pas- sions. The prophets could represent God to us, not as he is, but only as we sensuous men can understand it (Strom, p. 391). Origen also sees in the Old Testa- ment a condescension of God to the weakness of man.
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In fact, there is no wrath in God, but he must appear as it' wrathful to the bad, on account of the sufferings ■\vhicli their own evil conduct entails upon them {Uom. 18, in Jere?)i.). The Alexandrians disputed the self- subsistence of God's primitive justice, and merged it in the idea of a Cucaiotrvvi] crajr/;(i(or, a disciplining re- forniatorj' love." Augustine speaks of God as the ipsa incommutahllis Veritas . . . illud solum quod non tan- tum non mutatur, verum etiam mutari non potest, etc. But lie declares that no complete definition of God can be given: Beus ineffabilis est : facilius dicimus quod Dens non sit, quam quid sit (Conim. in Psal. Ixxxv). In the period of the Arian controversj', all questions as to the nature of God were bound up with the dis- cussion of the Trinity (q. v.) ; and in the period from Gregory I to the scholastic age (lltli century), with that of the doctrines of the Holy Spirit and the Person of Christ. See Christology. In the scholastic pe- riod Anselm supposed an analog}' (before used by Au- gustine) between the divine mind and the human. "We cannot know," he says, "the supreme Being in himself, hut only after a certain analogy with created beings, therefore most of all witli the rational spirit. The more this spirit enters into itself and observes it- self, the more will it succeed in raising itself to the knowledge of the absolute Spirit. The human spirit is a mirror in which we maj' see the image of that which we do not directh' behold. The supreme Spirit presupposes his own existence, knows himself; the Word begotten from himself is one with his own es- sence. Thus the supreme Being expressed himself. As everj'thing which is produced hy human art was before in the idea of the formative spirit, and as this idea remains even when the work perishes, and is, in this respect, one with the art of the formative spirit it- self, so it is not another, but the same word by which God knows himself and all creatures. In the divine Word creatures have a higher being than in them- selves ; the ideal being rests in the divine thoughts. Tlie relation of the Son to the Father is something ele- vated above all language. The expression gtncration is best suited to represent the relation, but yet it is symbolical. Further, as God knows himself, he loves himself; his love to himself presupposes his being and knowing. This is also denoted by the procession of the Holy Spirit from both ; all three pass completely into one another, and thus constitute the unity of the Supreme Being" {Mouoloffium, c. G4). The view of God taught b}' Scotus Erigena — In deo immiitahiliter et essenlialiter sunt omnia — led, in the hands of David of Dinanto and Amalrich of Bena, to a pantheistic theorj', which was opposed b}' Aquinas and the later schoolmen, especially by Albertus Magnus. As to the attributes of God, the principal discussions of the scho- lastic period related to his omnipotence and omnipres- ence. The confessions of faith of the Reformation pe- riod generalh' agree as to the doctrine of the nature, attributes, and works of God : the discussions that have arisen in the bosom of Protestantism on this sub- ject refer chiefl}- to the doctrines of the Trinity (q. v.) and predestination (q. v.). The later theories of the philosophical period, on the sceptical side, are those of Idealism, IMaterialism, and Pantheism (see the several heads). Some later Christian writers, in opposing the extremes of German Rationalism, have denied the pos- sibility of any scientific knowledge of God. Mansell {/.iviits of lieligious Thought, Bamjiton Lectures for 1850) maintains that only a regidatii-e (as distinguisli- ed from a speculative) knowledge of God is possible. "To conceive," says he, "the Deity as he is, we must conceive him as first cause, as absolute, and as infi- nite. But do not these three conceptions implj- con- tradiction to each other, when viewed in conjunction, as attributes of one and the same being ? A cause cannot, as such, be absolute : the absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. How can the infinite become that which it was not from the first?" Mr. Mansell here