It is evident that this question of the relation of the divine attributes to the divine essence merges itself into the general ques- tion of the relation between atti'ibutes and substance. It is also evident that this is a subject about which one man knows jast as much as another ; because all that can be known about it is given immediately in consciousness.
This subject has already been referred to. We are conscious of ourselves as a thinking substance. That is, we are conscious that that which is ourselves has identity, continuance, and power. We are further conscious that the substance self thinks, wills, and feels. Intelligence, will, and sensibility, are its functions, or attributes, and consequently the attributes of a spirit. These are the ways in which a spirit acts. Anything which does not thus act, which has not these functions or attributes, is not a spirit. If you take from a spirit its intelligence, will, and sensibility, nothing remains; its substance is gone ; at least it ceases to be a spirit. Substance and attributes are inseparable. The one is known in the other. A substance without attributes is nothing, i. e., no real existence. What is true of spiritual substances is true of matter. Matter, without the essential properties of matter, is a contradiction.
We know, therefore, from consciousness, as far as it can be known, the relation between substance and its attributes. And all that can be done, or need be done, is to deny or correct the false representations which are so often made on the subject.
The Divine Attributes do not differ merely in our Conceptions. To say, as the schoolmen, and so many even of Protestant theo- logians, ancient and modern, were accustomed to say, that the divine attributes differ only in name, or in our conceptions, or in their effects, is to destroy all true knowledge of God. Thus even Augustine confounds knowledge and power, when he says,^ " Nos ista, quae fecisti videmus quia sunt : tu autem quia vides ea, sunt." So Scotus Erigena ^ says, " Non aliud est ei videre, aliud facere ; sed visio illius voluntas ejus est, et voluntas operatio." Thomas Aquinas ^ says the same thing : " Deus per intellectum suum causat res, cum suum esse sit suum intelligere." And again, " Scientia (Dei) causat res ; nostra vero causatur rebus et dependat ab eis." Even Mr. Mansel,* to aggravate our ignorance of God, speaks of Him as " an intellect whose thought creates its own object." It is
1 Confessimes, xni. xxxviii. 53, edit. Benedictines, vol. i. p. 410 b.
2 De Divh'wne Natune, iii. 29, edit. Westphalia, 1838, p. 26'!.
• Summa, i. xiv. 8, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 30. * lArt^, p. 196.
372 PART I. -THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine Attributes.
obvious that, according to this view, God is simply a force of which we know nothing but its effects. If in God eternity is identical with knowledge, knowledge with power, power with ubiquity, and ubiquity with holiness, we are using words without meaning when we attribute any perfection to God. We must, therefore, either give up the attempt to determine the divine attributes from our speculative idea of an infinite essence, or renounce all knowledge of God, and all faith in the revelation of Himself, which He has made in the constitution of our nature, in the external world, and in his Word. Knowledge is no more identical with power in God than it is in us. Thought in Him is no more .cnatjyj^JJiailJs thought in us. Otherwise creation is eternal, ami. God-d'eates everything — all the thouglits, feelings, and volitions of his crea- tures, good and evil ; and God is the only real agent, and the only real being in the universe. According to this doctrine, also, there can be no diflPerence between the actual and the possible, for the one as well as the other is always present to the divine mind. It would also follow that the creation must be_m finite, or God finite. For if knowledge is causative, God creates all He knows, and you must limit his knowledge if you limit creation. It need hardly be remarked that this doctrine is derogatory to God. It is not only a much higher idea, but one essential to personality, that there should be a real distinction between the divine attributes. That which from its nature and by necessity does all that it can do, is a force, and not a person. Rcan have no wi[L_ The doctrine in question, therefore, is essentially pantheistic. " However much," says Martensen, " we must guard our idea of God from being de- gi-aded by anything that is merely human, from all false Anthro- pomorphism, yet we can find in Nominalism only the denial of God as He is revealed in the Scriptures. It is the denial of the very essence of faith, if it is only in our thoughts that God is holy and righteous, and not in his own nature ; if it is we who so address Him, and not He who so reveals Himself. We teach, therefore, with the Realists (of one class), that the attributes of God are object- ively true as revealed, and therefore have their ground in the di- vine essence." There is a kind of Realism, as Martensen admits, which is as destructive of the true idea of God as the Nominalism which makes his attributes differ only in name. It grants, indeed, objective reality to our ideas ; but these ideas, according to it, have no real subject. " The idea of otnnipotence, righteousness, and holiness," he says, "is a mere blind thought, if there be not an omnipotent, righteous, and holy One." ^
1 Dogmaiik, p. 113.