self-acting laws, but to an intelligent, personal God, to whom we are accountable for our character and conduct, and who rewards and punishes his creatures according to their works. V
As a philosophical theory, this doctrine is much below the stand- \ ard of the German theologians. For they, as far as they are Theists, admit that these immutable laws are determined by the nature of , God, and are the uniform modes of his operation. Indeed, as God and his creatures exhaust the whole category of being, the " nature of things," apart from the nature of God and of his creatures, seems to be a phrase without meaning. It is tantamount to th«» " nature of nonentity."
§ 13. The Goodness of Cfod.
A. The Scriptural Doctrine.
Goodness, in the Scriptural sense of the term, includes benevo- lence, love, mercy, and grace. By benevolence is meant the dispo sition to promote happiness ; all sensitive creatures are its objects. Love includes complacency, desire, and delight, and has rational beings for its objects. Mercy is kindness exercised towards the miserable, and includes pity, compassion, forbearance, and gentle- ness, which the Scriptures so abundantly ascribe to God. Grace is love exercised towards the unworthy. The love of a holy God to sinners is the most mysterious attribute of the divine nature. The manifestation of this attribute for the admiration and beatifi- cation of all intelligent creatures, is declared to be the special design of redemption. God saves sinners, we are told, " That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus." (Eph. ii. 7.) This is the burden of that Epistle.
As all the modifications of goodness above mentioned are found even in our dilapidated nature, and commend themselves to our moral approbation, we know they must exist in God without measure and without end. In him they are infinite, eternal, and immutable.
Benevolence.
The goodness of God in the form of benevolence is revealed m the whole constitution of nature. As the universe teems with life, it teems also with enjoyment. There are no devices in nature for the promotion of pain for its own sake ; whereas the mani- festations of design for the production of happiness are beyond computation. The manifestation of the goodness of God in the
428 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine Attributes.
form of love, and specially of love to the undeserving, is, as just stated, the great end of the work of redemption. " God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John iii. 16.) " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John iv. 10.) The Apostle prays that believers might be able to comprehend the height and depth, the length and breadth, of that love which passes knowledge. (Eph. iii. 19.)
Love.
Love in us includes complacency and delight in its object, with the desire of possession and communion. The schoolmen, and often the philosophical theologians, tell us that there is no feeling in God. This, they say, would imply passivity, or susceptibility of impression from without, which it is assumed is incompatible with the nature of God. " We must exclude," says Bruch,i "passivity from the idea of love, as it exists in God. For God cannot be the subject of passivity in any form. Besides, if God experienced com- placency in intelligent beings. He would be dependent on them ; Avhich is inconsistent with his nature as an Absolute Being." Love, therefore, he defines as that attribute of God which secures the development of the rational universe ; or, as Schleiermacher expresses it, " It is that attribute in virtue of which God communi- cates Himself." 2 According to the philosophei's, the Lifinite de- velops itself in the finite ; this fact, in theological language, is due to love. The only point of analogy between love in us and love in the Absolute and Infinite, is self-communication. Love in us leads to self-revelation and communion ; in point of fact the In- finite is revealed and developed in the universe, and specially in humanity. Bruch admits that this doctrine is in real contratliction to the representations of God in the Old Testament, and in appar- ent contradiction to those of the New Testament. If love in God is only a name for that which accounts for the rational universe ; if God is love, simply because He develops himself in thinking and conscious beings, then the word has for us no definite meaning ; it reveals to us nothing concerning the real nature of God. Here again we have to choose betvveen a mere philosophical speculation and the clear' testimony of the Bible, and of our own moral and religious nature. Love of necessity involves feeling, and if
1 Eigenschaften, page 240.
3 Christliche Glaube,^166; Works, Berlin, 1843, vol. iv. p. 513