says : " Deus est ipsum esse subsistens, omnibus modis indetermi- natum." ^ " Solus Deus summe simplex est, ut nee actus et poten- tiae, nee esse et essentige compositio ipsi competat." ^ " Essentia, bonitas, potentia, sapientia, justitia, et reliqua attributa omnia sunt in Deo realiter unum.^ He also says : " In Deo idem est esse et intelligere et veils." In like manner the Reformed theologian Heidegger * says : " Voluntas ab intellectu non difFert, quia intelli- gendo vult et volendo intelligit. Intelligere et velle ejus idemque perpetuus indivisus actus." This does not mean simply that in an intelligent being, every act of the will is an intelligent act. He knows while he wills, and knows what he wills. The meaning is, that knowledge and power in God are identical. To know a thing is, and to will it, are the same undivided and perpetual act. From this it would seem to follow, that as God knows from eternity He creates fi'om eternity ; and that " all He knows, is." We are thus \ led, by these speculations, into pantheistical views of the nature of God and of his relation to the world.
This mode of representation is carried still further by the mod- ern philosophical theologians. With Schleiermacher, all the attri- butes of God are virtually merged into the idea of causality. With him God is ens summum prima caum? He says that God's think- ing and willing are the same, and that his omnipotence and om- niscience are identical. When we say that He is omnipotent, we only mean that He is the cause of all that is. And when we say that He is omniscient, we only mean that He is an intelligent cause. His power and knowledge are limited to the actual. The possible is nothing ; it is the object neither of knowledge nor of power. " Gott," says Schleiermacher, "weiss Alles was ist; und AUes ist, was Gott weiss und dieses beides ist nicht zweiei'lei son- dern einerlei, weil sein Wissen und sein allmiichtiges Wollen eines und dasselbe ist," i. g., God knows all that is, and all is that God knows. God, therefore^ is limited to the world, which is the phe- nomeiion of which He is the substance.
Another philosophical view of this subject, adopted even by those who repudiate the pantheistic system and maintain that God and the world are distinct, is, that as God is immanent in the world, there is in Him no difference between self-consciousness and A'orld-consciousness, as they express it, i. e., between God's knowl- edge of Himself and his knowledge of the world. They therefore
1 Tom. i. loc. iii. cap. vi. § 4-3, p. lOG, edit. Tubingen, 1762.
5 Ibid. cap. X. § 80. p. 119. 8 Jbid. chap. vii. § 47, p. 108. * Corpus Theologice Cliris/lnncr, Tiguri. 17-32.
6 Lhristiic'u Ulaube, i. § 5-5, Werke, edit. Berlin. 1842, vol. iii. p. 295.
396 PART I — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. - Divink Attributes.
define omniscience by saying, " Insofern Gott gedaclit wird als die Welt mit seinem Bewusstseyn umfassend, nennen wir ihn den Allwissenden." ^ That is, " So far as we conceive of God as em- bracing the world in his consciousness, we call him omniscient." Whatever such language may mean to those who use it, to the ordinary mind it conveys the revolting idea that all the sins of men enter into the consciousness of God.
The Doctrine of the ScrijJtures on this Subject. The Scriptural vieAv of this subject, which distinguishes the at- tributes in God as distinct, and assumes that knowledge in Him, in its essential nature, is what knowledge is in us, does not conflict with the unity and simplicity of God as a spiritual being. There is a sense in which knowledge and power, intellect and will, may be said to be identical in man. They are not different substances. They are different modes in which the life or activity of the soul manifests itself. So in God when we conceive of Him as a spirit, we do not think of Him as a compound being, but as manifesting his infinite life and activity, in knowing, willing, and doing. What, therefore, we must hold fast to, if we would hold fast to God, is, that knowledge in God is knowledge, and not power or eternity ; that it is what knowledge is in us, not indeed in its rhodes and ob- jects, but in its essential nature. We must remove from our con- ceptions of the divine attributes all the limitations and imperfections which belong to the corresponding attributes in us ; but we are not to destro}*^ their nature. And in determining what is, and what is not, consistent with the nature of God as an infinitely perfect being, we are to be controlled by the teachings of the Scriptui'es, and by the necessities (or laws) of our moral and religious nature, and not by our speculative notions of the Infinite and Absolute. God, therefore, does and can know in the ordinary and proper sense of that word. He is an ever present eye, to which all things are perfectly revealed. "■ All things," says the Apostle, " are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." (Heb. iv. 13.) " The darkness and the light are both alike " to Him. (Ps. cxxxix. 12.) " He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall he not see ? " (Ps. xciv. 9.) " O Lord thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and my up-rising, thou understandest my thought afar off." (Ps. cxxxix. 1, 2.) "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good "
1 Bruch, Die Lehre von den goUlichen Eigenscha/len, p. 162.