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through the laws and forces implanted in them, in accordance with which they pursue their constant course; but these forces and laws are nevertheless nothing but a constant outflow of the divine will, and cease as soon as the latter is altered;1 hence the subsistence of the world is every moment unconditionally dependent upon God. It is likewise true, in respect to the rational creation, that God has imposed upon His operations a limitation of His powers, so as duly to maintain the freedom of man, and therefore that, in fact, for a long while He does not interpose, but quiescently looks on and waits, allowing us to dispose of matters just as if we were completely "our own masters." But all this is nothing more than His patience and long-suffering, His wise remission, in which, however, He is never inactive, but is only making His preparations in secret for a subsequent intervention. But from this attribute of God it does not follow that He does not trouble Himself about us, or that there is no special providence on His part, but only that our freedom is a fact, and not a sham!

Hence, when Deism one-sidedly overstrains the points of truth contained in it, by condemning God to inaction as regards the world, and by utterly severing the world from God, Pantheism, on the other hand, maintains against it its special truth, that God is omnipresent, and constantly active everywhere in the world; just as, conversely, against the onesidedness of Pantheism, which would blend Him entirely with the world, Deism justly maintains its theory of a separation of God, as a personal Being and Will, from the world. Pantheism and Deism bear, therefore, such a relation to one another, that what is false and one-sided in either system is annihilated by the other, and what is true has its deficiencies supplied. Let us abandon the false and cleave to the true. If we adopt from Pantheism the doctrine of the divine activity and immanence within the world, and from Deism that of God's supramundane position and separate Personality, we shall have a near approach to the teaching of Holy Scripture.

1 See Corrigenda.

FOURTH LECTURE

THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE AND OF THE CHURCH.

H

ITHERTO we have followed out one by one the various non-scriptural conceptions of the divine nature, and endeavoured to exhibit their untenableness from a scientific point of view, without at the same time closing our eyes to the scattered elements of truth which are nevertheless enshrined within them. We now turn to the Biblico-Christian conception as to that which alone is fundamentally true and scientifically tenable. In order to present it, we have only to gather up the various threads of our previous argument. The truth of the scriptural conception of the nature of God is evident from this, that while it excludes all that in those other conceptions we have recognised as false and negative, it combines in a living unity all their scattered elements of positive truth. In doing this we shall have to solve a twofold problem: first, to exhibit in general terms the fundamental scriptural conception of the divine nature, i.e. Biblical Theism, and establish the truth of its various Principles; and then to justify its full development in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as the deepest, highest, perfectest presentation of the Idea of God.

I.--BIBLICAL THEISM.

The teaching of Scripture concerning God is based on the theistic conception, that, namely, which holds fast at once His supramundane and His intramundane character; the one in virtue of His nature and essence, the other of His will and power. For while Theism, on the one hand, regards the Theos (God) as a personal Being, and so as essentially distinct from the whole created universe and from man, it is no less careful, on the other hand, to present Him as the ever-living and

working One in His immediate personal relationship to man and the universe by the doctrine of a universal Divine Providence. This view of the divine nature is virtually expressed in the first verse of the Bible: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and in the fundamental article of the Apostles' Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Let me now briefly endeavour to show you how this and other definitions of Holy Scripture exclude what is false in those conceptions of God and the universe which we have been examining.

And first, against Atheism, which we need scarcely mention, Scripture here, as everywhere, teaches an eternally existing unbeginning God, from whose creative activity heaven and earth and time itself took their beginning, an absolute selfexistent One, who saith, I AM THAT I AM, having in Himself the ground of His own being, the unchangeable, ever-living One, who "hath life in Himself, and therefore hath given to the Son to have life in Himself" (St. John v. 26); "who is, and who was, and who is to come" (Rev. i. 4, 8).

created in that beginning. God, but came into existAnd He is distinguished

Against Materialism we find a protest in the first sentence of the Bible. Matter is not eternal. It had a beginning along with time; heaven and earth were Matter, therefore, cannot itself be ence through an act of His will. from it not only by priority of existence, but difference of nature. "God is a Spirit" (St. John iv. 24), that is, a thinking Being: e.g. "Thy thoughts are very deep" (Ps. xcii. 6); and "of His wise thinking there is no end" (literal rendering of Ps. cxlvii. 5).

In like manner we find in those first words of Scripture a protest against Pantheism, with its confusion of God and world, and its assumption of the identity of essence in both. God is both antemundane and supramundane, and as to His essence distinct and separate from the world, and existing independently of it: "In the beginning God created-heaven and earth." God Is-is absolutely and without beginning; the world is brought into existence, and is dependent on its Creator, not He on it. Moreover, it comes into existence through Him, but not from Him. Every theory of emanation which would make the world, in whatever form, old Indian

or modern pantheistic, an efflux from the Divine Essence, is from the first excluded by the word "created," which simply expresses the fact that the world's origin' is derived not from the essence, but from the will of its Creator; that its production was not a necessity, but a free act on God's part, who is therefore to be distinguished and separated from the world as a living, thinking, willing, and personal Being. Throughout Scripture God speaks as a person-I-who does not, as Hegel thought, attain to self-consciousness in the human spirit, but has possessed it independently from the beginning. So little, according to Scripture, is God from us, that we are rather from Him. He is not a mere Idea, but Personality itself, absolute Freedom, and the highest Self-consciousness,-the prototype of all other Self-consciousness, all other Personality, that which alone and eternally is, whilst we are always becoming,-who is before and above all, and from whom our own personality is derived (Gen. ii. 7; Eph. iv. 6). Whereas modern Pantheism affirms, in words which a well-known professor inscribed under his own portrait, " Our God is an immanent God, and His true spirit is the human spirit," the God of Holy Scripture says of Himself, "My thoughts are not as your thoughts" (Isa. lv. 8): His Spirit, therefore, is not our spirit. His Spirit searches out our spirit, His thoughts comprehend our thoughts: “Thou searchest me out and knowest me: Thou understandest my thoughts afar off” (Ps. cxxxix.). The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man (Ps. xciv. 11 et passim). He is fully conscious of all His own thoughts and works: "I know the thoughts which I think toward you," saith the Lord (Jer. xxix. 11). "Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world" (Acts xv. 18). Even in holding communion with man through His Spirit, He does not confound His Consciousness with ours: "The Spirit (of God) beareth witness to our spirit" (Rom. viii. 16).

Finally, against the false deistic and rationalistic separation between God and world, Holy Scripture makes like protest in that same opening sentence, which declares the dependence of the world in both its parts (heaven and earth) on the will of Him who called it into being. The same is also indicated in the divine names most commonly used in Scripture, expressive of divine power and might (Elohim, El, Eloah), as well as of

1 Even as regards its substance.

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lordship and dominion (Adon, Adonai), and indicating at once the essential unity of God in opposition to Polytheism (Deut. vi. 4) and His fulness of living energies: hence the plural form of the divine name Elohim, used ordinarily when reference is made to the Divine Activity in the creation, preservation, and providential government of the world in general. God (it tells us) makes Himself seen and felt by us, both in the universe as a whole and in its smallest details, as the absolutely simple and yet complex Life. He is, therefore, in the highest sense the living One and the living Agency, which not only created the world, but also continuously upholds and maintains it who, "upholding all things by the word of His power" (Heb. i. 3), and in His omnipresence pervading everything, "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things' (Acts xvii. 25). So much, too, is He needed by the world at every moment of its existence, that all life would cease were His influence withdrawn: "Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust" (Ps. civ. 29). Whereas Deism asserts that the Creator has withdrawn Himself from His work, and is now far removed from the world; the Scriptures say: "He is not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts xvii. 27, 28). He is not merely the Creator of ourselves, but also, in one point of view, of our actions (l's. cxxxix. 5): He is the Ruler of hearts, who "worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure' (Phil. ii. 13). Whereas the deist is of opinion that the providence of God extends to the world only as a whole, and to matters great and universal, the God of the Holy Scriptures, on the contrary, "beholdeth all the sons of men and considereth all their works" (Ps. xxxiii. 13, 15); He is the keeper of men, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, who marks every sigh, and numbers the hairs of our heads; nor permits even a sparrow to fall to the ground without the will of Him whose providence extends to the smallest things.

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All these attributes follow still more clearly from the name "Jehovah." Just as the general activity of God in the world

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In the Authorized Version, almost invariably rendered by "the LORD." The capitals serve to distinguish the translation of "Jehovah" from that of "Adonai," which is also rendered "Lord," but printed small.

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