The Divine Attributes not to he resolved into Causality. It amounts to much the same doctrine, to resolve all the attri- butes of God hitp causality. It was a principle with some of the schoolmen, " AfFectus in Deo denotat effectum." This was so ap- plied as to limit our knowledge of God to the fact that God is the cause of certain effects. Thus, when we say God is just, we mean notliing more than that He causes misery to fqllow sin ; when we say He is holy, it only means tKal'Hels the cause oF conscience in us. As a tree is not sweet, because its fruit is luscious, so God is not holy. He is only the cause of holiness. Against this appli- cation of the principle, Aquinas himself protested, declaring, " Cum igitur dicitur, Deus est bonus ; non est sensus, Deus est causa bonitatis i vel Deus non est mains. Sed est sensus : Id, quod boni- tatemdicimus in creaturis, preeexistit in Deo; et hoc quidem se- cundum modum altiorem. Unde ex hoc non sequitur, quod Deo competat esse bonum, in quantum causat bonitatem ; sed potius e converso, quia est bonus, bonitatem rebus diffundit." ^ And the Lutheran theologian, Quenstedt, says, " Dicunt nonnulli, ideo Deum dici justum, sanctum, misericordem, veracem, etc., non quod revera sit talis, sed quod duntaxat sanctitatis, justitiae, misericor- dige, veritatis, etc., causa sit et auctor in aliis. Sed si Deus non est vere misericors, neque vere perfectus, vere sanctus, etc., sed/ causa tantum misericordise et sanctitatis in aliis, ita etiam et nos, / pariter juberemur esse non vere misericordes, non vere perfecti,/ etc., sed sanctitatis saltern et misericordiae in aliis auctores." ^ J/
The Divine Attributes differ Virtualiter. Theologians, to avoid the blank ignorance of God which must follow from the extreme view of the simplicity of his essence, which requires us to assume that the divine attributes differ only in our conceptions, or as expressing the diverse effects of the ac- tivity of God, made a distinction between the ratio rationantis and the ratio rationatce. That is, the reason as determining, and the reason as determined. The attributes, they say, differ not re, but ratione ; not in our subjective reason only ; but there is in God a reasQn.why we think of Him as possessing these diverse perfec- tions. This idea, as before stated, was often expressed by saying that tlie divine attributes differ neither realiter, nor nominaliter^ ^^ui virtualiter. If this be understood to mean that the divine per- fections are really what the Bible declares them to be; that God truly
1 Summa, i. xiii. 2, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 28. 2 Theologia, i. viii. § ii. 2, p. 481.
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374 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine Attributes.
thinks, feels, and acts ; that He is truly wise, just, and good ; that He is truly omnipotent, and voluntary, acting or not acting, as He sees fit; that He can hear and answer prayer; it may be admitted. But we are not to give up the conviction that God is really in Himself what He reveals Himself to be, to satisfy any metaphysi- cal speculations as to the difference between essence and attribute in an infinite Being. The attributes of God, therefore, are not merely different conceptions in our minds, but different modes in which God reveals Himself to his creatures (or to Himself) ; just as our several faculties are different modes in which the inscruta- ble substance self reveals itself in our consciousness and acts. It is an old saying, " Qualis homo, talis Deus." And Clemens Alex- andrinus ^ says, " If any one knows himself, he will know God." And Leibnitz expresses the same great truth when he says,^ " The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He possesses them without limit. He is an ocean of which Ave have only re- ceived a few drops. There is in us something of power, something of knowledge, something of goodness ; but these attributes are in
I'eme ;
entireness in Him." There is indeed danger in either exti
danger of degrading God in our thoughts, by reducing Him to the standard of our nature, and danger of denying Him as He is re- vealed. In our day, and among educated men, and especially among students of philosophy, the latter danger is by far the greater of the two. We should remember that we lose God, when we lose our confidence in saying Thou ! to Him, with the as- surance of being heard and helped.
§ 3. Classification of the Divine Attributes.
On few subjects have greater thought and labor been expended than on this. Perhaps, however, the benefit has not been com- mensurate with the labor. The object of classification is order, and the object of order is clearness. So far as this end is secured, it is a good. But the great diversity of the methods which have been proposed, is evidence that no one method of arrangement has such advantages as to secure for it general recognition.
1. Some, as has been seen, preclude all necessity of a classifica- tion of the attributes, by reducing them all to unity, or regarding them as different phases under which we contemplate the Snpreme Bemg as the ground of all things. With them the whole discus- sion of the divine atti'ibutes is an analysis of the idea of the Infi- nite and Absolute.
1 Pcedagogus, ill. i. edit. Cologne, 1688, p. 214 a.
2 " Theodic^e," Preface, Works, p. 469, edit. Berlin, 1840