is it the same as Nothing. But, on the other hand, it is not God. Primarily it is a purely internal product of God, for whose generation intelligence and love have combined. This He internally distinguishes as a product from Himself, but at the same time as containing the basis-lying within God -for the actual world, and especially its aim. To this inner creation is then added creation in external reality through divine Omnipotence-the minister of Love, and this again at the impulse of Love. Power transforms the ideal into visible reality.

The world-idea, therefore, is the idea of a second object. over against God, which object by means of the conception of its possibility is converted by divine Wisdom and Love from merely possible into destined existence, and will be called into actual existence. And now, having grounded a second to God in God as the idea of the real universe destined to exist, we are in a position to find room for God's self-communication to and participation in the world, and at the same time to define the idea of the world more exactly.

4. The world-idea, conceived and willed by God, while on one hand the idea of a second to God, existing not through itself, but through God who alone has eternally independent existence (Aseität), on the other hand is the idea of a second, from which as a unity God withholds none of His communicable gifts. On the contrary, it is designed to be the object of His perfect, unreserving love, and by this means perfect, God's likeness outside God. To describe the world in virtue of its divine idea as God's likeness, as a perfectly faithful mirror of Himself, even when its design is taken into account, may seem too high. To Christian faith it is not too high. Faith claims to possess in the Son of Man the complete conception of divine self-communication, and yet to reckon Him part of the world in the fullest sense and for ever, yea, to regard Him as the world's centre and withal its true reality which He represents before God.1 But with Christ God wills freely to give us all things.2 Holy Scripture is not satisfied with saying merely, that God is willing to impart Himself to the world in a degree proportioned to its limited receptiveness for Him; 12 Cor. iii. 18, iv. 1-6.

2 Rom. viii. 32; 1 Cor. iii. 21-23; John iii. 16; Matt. xxiv. 47.

for this might be said with respect to the least measure of receptiveness in the world for God. Rather, the kernel of the matter is, that God's wise love has so sketched the outlines of the world-idea, that the world is susceptible of God's perfect communication of Himself.1 Beside His unfathomable love, desiring this, power stands ready to lend its aid. No. doubt the objection is here raised: "In the creature is no room for God's infinitude, finitum non capax infiniti." Nature, as such, must here be left out of sight, because it cannot be destined in the moral sense to bear God's image. Consequently the share it has in life and power is but a limited one; for it is in the moral world that the supreme seat of power, and supremacy over everything merely physical, lie. The objection would certainly retain its force, if God's selfcommunication extended to His absolute self-existence, which remains an eternal distinction between God and the creature, and a safeguard against the danger of confounding the two even by God's act of self-communication. So, again, the objection would have force if God were to be conceived as an infinitely extended being or Quantum. But God is rather to be conceived as intensive infinitude, which at its culminating point is love, and by reason of love omnipotence (§ 32, 19). But of the infinitely excellent and divine the creature is certainly receptive. It is not merely finite, but possesses as well receptiveness for the intensively infinite. Thus the finitude of the creature imposes no limit on divine love. it is God's will to impart Himself in a peculiar sense to the world, in order that His triune life may be imaged and bodied forth even in cosmical form, so it is His will that there should be a world belonging in a peculiar sense to Him, His living temple, in which He wills to live His triune life. The distinction between the triune Image of God-God the Son in the immanent divine Essence—and the cosmical image, is not that in the latter God cannot have His dwelling-place,for Christ is part of the world's constitution in the proper and full sense, but this, that the latter, which is without the divine power of self-existence, through a state destitute of the divine perfection, yea, through a state of non-existence, is to come into existence and to receive perpetually what divine love 11 Cor. xv. 28; 1 John iii. 2; 2 Cor. v. 7; 1 Cor. xiii. 12. DORNER.-CHRIST. DOCT. II.

B

As

wills.

Without losing Himself in the act of self-communication, God wills to have cosmical existence as well as existence in Himself. This twofold state of the transcendent and immanent is no contradiction, but, as we have seen, has its ground in God's ethical essence. It is therefore part of the primary idea of the world that God exist in it, really know and will Himself in it, and that the world live, move, and have its being in Him.

Observation.-One thing, therefore, God cannot communicate, absolute self-existence or self-origination. The world remains eternally distinct from God,-even in Christ the human side remains distinct from the divine,-the ground of its existence being outside itself in God. It cannot be denied that even the world in a derivative sense has self-existence reflective of God's. It possesses a power of self-conservation and self-culture in a physical, spiritual, and moral respect, and thus participates in its own production, in shaping its own. character. But its existence is every moment through God, and we are unable, with Rothe, after the creation to believe. only in such a government, of the world as excludes the idea of conservation, or to regard spirits in their perfection as living an absolutely self-dependent life. Self-existence in the proper sense God alone possesses and retains, and this secures the distinction between God and the world, whereas the continuance of the second existence alongside God is secured by the volition of divine love, which proposes this as its end.

5. Comprehensive as is the purpose of God's communication of Himself to the world, designing it for complete participation in His Life and Spirit, still the separateness of the world, its actual existence præter Deum, is not thereby imperilled. It might seem, indeed, as if by the perfect self-communication of God, creation, by reason of its very perfection, were again withdrawn. But what divine love desires is a really separate object, not as if this second object as such had value for God's love, whatever its character, but as designed for goodness, with which of course happiness is bound up (§ 32). The design of God's love in regard to the rational creature, in

1 So Marcellus of Ancyra seems to have wrongly understood the passage 1 Cor. xv. 28, which yet in their presupposes the continuance of the world, in which God will be all.

conformity with its own pure goodness, must be to bestow on the creature itself, and call forth in it, the sentiment of love. It is not therefore an object of love to God's self-communication, save in so far as He views it as destined to be a subject of love, and thus desires it for its own sake. Thus, in the ethical character of the divine self-communication the comparative independence of the creature is secured; and the divine life remains withal distinct from the creature. New homes of love are really gained in the world for God's life of love in it. Further, the ethical life of God's love, including in itself righteousness, desires freedom as the form in which God's moral communication is to be appropriated. Consequently the other existence desired by God is one that is not simply irresistibly determined by the force of His love (so that, e.g., creation might immediately coincide with the period of consummation and absolute self-communication), but one capable of entering into a spontaneous communion of love with Him, which is a fresh security for the abiding distinctiveness of the creature in relation to God's act of self-communication. Love cannot absorb the other existence for this reason, that it does not receive the other into itself, without at the same time making it objectively its end, for the accomplishment of which it even makes itself the means. The other existence, therefore, to which the gaze of creative love is at first directed, and in which alone it finds fitting, independent objects of love, is the world of the free designed for communion of love with God, but which can only itself become capable of love through the primal love itself. For the sake of this free existence and its consummation, on which the gaze of divine love is fixed as its goal, is the world created. Everything else is willed as an organ, means, and theatre of the kingdom of love, being also included under this point of view in the worldidea.

Observation 1.-Only by means of the free act of reception can the consummation of the world be brought about. Now both truths-first, the institution of freedom, which is not constrained to exercise love, and to which therefore the possibility of the opposite-of evil-must be left open; and secondly, that the world of the free is the scene of God's 1 On the contrary, 1 Cor. xv. 45 ff.

self-communication or of His life of love-coincide in the proposition, first, that true freedom is only realized when it yields to the emancipating Spirit of God who desires the free, but desires it as destined for the morally necessary; and secondly, that the divine self-communication, not desiring to impart mere passive, dead gifts, but to receive love in return, by this very means becomes the instrument of confirming the living, personal independence of the creature. The formula expressing the truth, that the world can only be what it is meant to be in the communion of the divine life, is, that the world is meant to be God's real image. The formula expressing the truth, that God desires to give a perfect communication of Himself to the world, while not suppressing, but perfecting the free personality by His cosmical form of being, is, that He desires the perfect, absolute revelation of His love in the form of free alities, or, that He desires likenesses of Himself.

person

Observation 2.-The idea of the world, as retained in God, not yet realized, is certainly in a manner a part of God Himself. Its separateness is not yet real, but merely a determination (Bestimmtheit) in God, in His wisdom and love. And herein lies the ultimate ground of its communion with God. But still the world-idea must not be identified with God. It is still conceived by God as other than Himself. Since it is the idea of the non-existent, and yet of the other than God destined to real existence, God already distinguishes Himself from the world-idea, which simply includes something possible through God. And this self-distinction already from the world as possible becomes in the world the self-distinction of the world from God, precisely in so far as in its life and spirit it resembles God.