Author: Albert C. Knudson
[p. 325]
THUS far we have dealt for the most part with the philosophical presuppositions of the Christian doctrine of God rather than with the doctrine itself. Christianity assumes that God exists, that he is absolute, and that he is a personal Being, but it is primarily interested in his ethical character; and this holds true also of religion in general. The bare absoluteness of God might awaken the sense of wonder and his metaphysical personality might elicit a spirit of inquiry with reference to the ultimate meaning of life; but these mental states belong only to the antechamber of religion. In its essence religion is trust in the goodness of God. If God were a nonmoral Being, either intelligent or nonintelligent, he would not be a proper object of religious faith. It is only insofar as he is morally good, and so worthy of being trusted, that he is truly God in the religious sense of the term. At first the idea of divinity probably had very little ethical content; the gods were feared more than they were trusted. But they were never entirely devoid of ethical character. If they had been, they would not properly have been classed as divine beings. For it is characteristic of gods as distinguished from demons and spirits that they are to some degree dependable and that they evoke from the human heart [p. 326] more or less confidence. If they had not had this characteristic, religion would never have been born, or at least would never have taken on a theistic form. Faith in the responsiveness of the superworld to human need has always been the heart of religion, and the development of religion through the ages has consisted largely in the increasing clearness and thoroughness with which men have moralized this responsiveness. The first great step in the process was the more definite personalizing of the superhuman world through animistic influences a change that laid the foundation of a more distinctly ethical relation between the human and the divine. The second great step was the rise of ethical monotheism in Israel and the ascription of moral absoluteness to God. This advance was due to the prophets, who thus created a new ethical and spiritual atmosphere in which the Jewish-Christian religion has since lived and moved and had its being. Here it is that we have the essence of “revealed” religion. The biblical revelation was in its essential and distinctive nature a revelation of the moral character of God, a revelation of his righteousness and love, or, in the broader sense of the term, a revelation of his goodness.
Historical evidence favors the view that there was a distinct ethical element in the conception of Jehovah from the beginning of Israel’s history. Whether the Decalogue came from Moses or not, there are still good grounds for holding that he looked upon Jehovah as a God of right and law and that he inculcated [p. 327] absolute loyalty and devotion to him on the part of his people. It was, indeed, the intensity and sustained power of this devotion that constituted the distinctive factor in the early religion of Israel and that led to its unique development. [1] But while there was a moral element in the Mosaic and early Israelitic conception of Jehovah, this element did not become absolutely dominant and controlling until the eighth century B. c. It was the great prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, who first completely moralized the conception of Jehovah and identified him with the moral principle of the universe. In his name they condemned the traditional ceremonialism and every degrading feature of the contemporary worship. In his name they denounced unrighteousness and inhumanity of every kind, and insisted on moral obedience as the only way of winning the divine favor. “Let justice,” they cried, “roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” “What,” they asked, “doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” [2] But even more significant was their announcement of an imminent day of the Lord, a day when all iniquity and evil would be overwhelmed and an eternal kingdom of righteousness would be inaugurated. Before the bar of this impending event, this marvelous manifestation of the divine power and will, they summoned the people of their day, and thus lifted them to a new level of insight by disclosing Jehovah to them as the absolute moral ideal. Hence [p. 328] forth transcendent perfection was linked with his name, and moral absoluteness was bound up with the thought of Deity.
In expounding the moral ideal represented by Jehovah the prophets and their successors laid stress on the commonly accepted virtues. Jehovah was righteous, just, holy. He punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous. On the other hand, he was also loving, merciful, longsuffering, faithful, forgiving. He did not deal with erring men according to their sins nor reward them according to their iniquities. As the heaven is high above the earth, so great was his mercy toward them that feared him. He thus maintained an even balance between kindness and severity. He was “a just God and a Saviour,” [3] as merciful as he was just and as just as he was merciful. One prophet or psalmist might stress one aspect of his being, and another might stress another. But the total Old Testament conception of his character was that of a well-rounded ethical ideal.
There was, however, this general limitation, that he was thought of predominantly as King or Sovereign; and this tended to interfere with the highest and completest moralization of his character. A king is usually more or less capricious; his attitude toward his subjects is official rather than personal; and it is not customary to think of him as sacrificing himself for the good of others. He symbolizes the state; and the state has never represented a high degree of ethical development. It stands for power rather than for goodness of heart. Thinking of God chiefly as [p. 329] king, therefore, as the ancient Jews did, tended to obscure those intimate personal and lofty ethical qualities in which alone absolute confidence can be placed. Unlimited power was ascribed to Jehovah and also perfect holiness, but still there was more or less of a feeling of uncertainty concerning him. The Old Testament saint complained of the way in which both the nation and the individual were at times treated. [4] He could not escape the feeling that God was more or less arbitrary in his dealings with men. [5] This arbitrariness was regarded as inherent in his sovereignty and not as a moral shortcoming, but it was on that account none the less a fact that needed to be reckoned with. It introduced a disturbing factor into Old Testament faith. It left the believer with a feeling of insecurity. He did not know with certainty what God might do, and this was inevitable so long as he was thought of primarily as King or Judge. Belief in the divine Kingship had its ethical and religious value for the ancient Israelite. It meant the deification of law and the common conscience, and in that respect it marked a most significant advance beyond the earlier nature-religions. But it also meant a one-sided and imperfect moralization of Deity, and in this respect it fell short of the Christian conception of the divine goodness.
It has recently been argued that Jesus’ idea of God was wholly Jewish, that it represented no advance beyond the view held by his contemporaries. Nothing, we are told, could be more erroneous than [p. 330] the notion that Jesus went beyond his countrymen in preaching the love and forgiveness of God and in emphasizing his Fatherhood. The novel element in the Christian conception of God came through Paul and was due to his extending the category of Deity so as to include Christ. The idea of a self-sacrificing God formed no part of Jesus’ own teaching. In his life and death, however, he illustrated the sacrificial principle in a supreme way, and hence, when he was deified by Paul and the early Christians, the idea of self-sacrifice was carried up into the thought of God himself. The characteristic element in the Christian conception of God thus did not originate with Jesus, but grew up after his death as the result of his deification. [6]
In this radical theory there is no doubt a grain of truth. It was the personality of Jesus rather than his teaching that exercised the profoundest influence upon his disciples. But while this is freely conceded, it by no means follows that there was a contrast between the two and that what Jesus taught concerning the character of God did not square with his own ethical ideal. That in his own life Jesus represented a moral ideal far in advance of that which he attributed to God, is certainly inherently improbable. He who bade his disciples be as perfect as their heavenly Father (Matt. 5. 48) would surely not ascribe to the Father -a moral standard below that which he regarded as obligatory upon himself and others. There is every reason to believe that he regarded the spirit [p. 331] which led him to the cross as the spirit of God. Indeed, he said to Peter, who was seeking to turn him away from the path that led to suffering and death, “Be gone, thou Satan, for thy thoughts are man’s, not God’s.” It could hardly be more plainly and emphatically stated than in these words of Jesus that the divine way is not the way of shrinking from self-sacrifice.
But more important than this specific statement was Jesus’ teaching concerning the divine Fatherhood. God is called “Father” a number of times in the Old Testament, [7] and the term was in common use among Jesus’ contemporaries. But it is generally held by New Testament scholars that its use by Jesus had a new and distinctive character. [8] He made the idea of fatherhood the unifying principle in his conception of God, giving to it “a position of sole and sovereign authority,” as had not been done before. And this he did, not because of any reasoned conclusion to which he had come with reference to the divine nature, but because his own religious experience took the form of a conscious filial relation to God. No doubt he had been taught by his mother to call God “Father,” but this formal address had in his case been translated into a vivid personal consciousness, so that he spoke of God not simply as “Father,” [p. 332] but as “my Father.” [9] Indeed, this was one of the most characteristic things in his; teaching, that God appears in it not simply as the Father of men in general, but as his Father. Instinctively he cried “Abba” in his prayers, and “the ‘Abba’ of the praying Jesus as Deissmann says, “resounded as far as Galatia and Rome [10] and is found to-day in all the languages in which the Bible is translated.” [11] This fact alone is convincing evidence of the new intimacy and moving power which Jesus gave to the word “Father.”
It was, however, not only its personal and experiential basis that gave uniqueness to Jesus’ conception of the divine Fatherhood, but also its content. In the Old Testament God is usually called Father in the kindly and affectionate sense of the term, but the idea of fatherhood was not lifted up distinctly to the plane of self-sacrificing love, nor was such love clearly and definitely attributed to God. In one instance [12] it is said of him that “in all their afflictions he was afflicted,” but the text is here corrupt and the original reading was quite different. [13] In Hosea suffering love is ascribed to Jehovah, and in Isaiah 53 vicarious suffering is exalted in such a way that one would naturally expect it to be predicated of Deity. But Old Testament thought did not rise to that level nor did later pre-Christian Judaism. In the Old Testament a man might suffer in spite of his [p. 333] being just, but in the New Testament suffering is a necessity for one who is in perfect fellowship with God. In other words, self-sacrifice is inherent in perfect love. And this thought Jesus introduced into his conception of God. For him God was love, self-sacrificing love. He was not only a forgiving God, but one whose love went in search of the sinner. And so we read of Jesus that sinners drew near to him. “Surely,” says a distinguished Jewish scholar, “this is a new note, something which we have not yet heard in the Old Testament or of its heroes, something which we do not hear in the Talmud or of its heroes. . . . The virtues of repentance are gloriously praised in the rabbinical literature, but this direct search for and appeal to the sinner are new and moving notes of high import and significance.” [14] In this new element in the ministry of Jesus we do not have a mere personal idiosyncrasy nor do we merely have the expression of a new human ideal; we have the reflection of a new conception of the divine Fatherhood. Jesus’ view of God was not, then, “wholly Jewish.” It transcended the Old Testament and Jewish standpoint in its emphasis on self-sacrificing love. This emphasis is the distinctive characteristic of the Christian conception of God and would remain such even if it owed its origin to Paul rather than to Jesus. But there is, as we have seen, ample ground for holding the traditional view. Jesus and after him Paul linked up religion with the uncommon conscience, [p. 334] with the heroic and sacrificial spirit, as had not been done before, and carried this idea up into the thought of God himself. In so doing they did not break with prophetic and Jewish teaching, but they did transform it into something higher and nobler. For them God remained a God of righteousness and mercy, but these traditional attributes were lifted to a new level and transfigured by the overshadowing sense of the divine sacrificial love. This higher thought of God did not, however, obliterate the distinction between the divine righteousness and grace. God continued to be regarded as “good” in the twofold sense of being just and loving; and about these two foci the ellipse of Christian thought relative to the divine character was drawn.
Before we proceed to a discussion of these two aspects of the divine character we need to consider briefly the more important ethical terms applied to the Deity in Scripture. We have just referred in the preceding paragraph to his goodness, his righteousness, his justice, his love, his mercy and his grace. To these should be added his holiness, his truth, and his faithfulness. Other ethical terms such as compassion, pity, longsuffering, indignation, anger, and wrath may be subsumed under those just mentioned. All of these terms fall readily into one or the other of two groups, in the first of which is expressed the divine embodiment of and regard for the moral law as such and in the other of which is expressed the divine regard for other spiritual beings. Some of them, however, are at times used in a comprehensive sense to express the entire ethical character [p. 335] of God. Goodness, for instance, may denote simply benevolence or kindness and is often so used by theologians, but it may also denote moral rectitude in general, >and it is in this sense that it is used in the title of the present chapter. The goodness of Grod includes what he is in himself as well as what lie is in his relation to others. In a word, it covers his whole moral life. The terms “holiness” and “righteousness” are also at times used in the same comprehensive sense. God, it is said, would not be truly holy or righteous unless he were also a God of love. And it is also claimed that he would not be love in the proper sense of the term unless he were also holy and righteous. But while each of these terms may be stretched so as to designate the whole moral character of God, the term “goodness” is most naturally given this meaning. The other terms are best used to denote a particular aspect of the divine character.
Righteousness, justice, truth and holiness express different phases of the divine perfection insofar as it has to do with the moral law and the moral ideal. Of these the most distinctively religious term is “holiness.” Originally the Hebrew word for “holy” (kadosh), as we have previously pointed out, had no direct ethical connotation. It denoted that mysterious, indefinable, fear-inspiring quality that differentiates divinity from humanity. But in the course of time under prophetic influence the term was moralized. “God the Holy One,” said Isaiah, “is sanctified in righteousness.” [15] This change not only lifted holiness [p. 336] to a higher plane, it also lifted morality or righteousness to a higher level. Holiness became now not only the equivalent of righteousness, it became transfigured righteousness, it became righteousness raised to its highest power, it became righteousness completely divinized. It might thus be said to be the crowning ethical attribute of Deity. Indeed, it has been described as “nothing less than the sum of his goodness, the glorious fullness of his moral excellence.” [16] It implies stainless purity and the perfect realization of the moral ideal conceived actively as well as passively. It, consequently, includes righteousness, justice, veracity, and even love itself, since all of these belong to the moral ideal. But it is customary to associate holiness with rectitude of will rather than with warmth of affection and hence to think of it as characteristic of the divine love rather than inclusive of it. That it embraces the other three attributes is evident, though each has its own special meaning.
The attribute of righteousness brings out the thought that God is the ultimate source and ground of moral distinctions and that in him we have the perfect standard of right. The justice of God involves the same general idea, but directs special attention to the activity of the divine will in apportioning good and ill to men according to their deserts. This retributive aspect of the divine justice will come up for further discussion a little later. The attribute of truth differs from the preceding attributes in that it takes special cognizance of God as Revealer. He [p. 337] is righteous, just and holy in himself and in the execution of his laws, but in addition to this he is truthful in the revelation he has made of himself. He “is not a man, that he should lie.” His “word is truth”; it “endureth forever.” [17] Whether spoken through nature or through man it is trustworthy. The heavens, that declare the glory of God, do not deceive us. The universe is veracious. It is on this assumption that all knowledge is based; and it is on the further assumption that the divine word spoken through seers and saints is equally veracious that all the higher forms of religion are based.
Of the ethical attributes expressive of the divine benevolence and governed more by the idea of the good than by that of abstract right, love is generally conceded to be supreme. In Scripture we find the categorical statement that God is love; [18] he has no higher attribute. By love in its human form is meant a craving and also a giving impulse. Both impulses are essential to true love. As a mere craving, a mere desire to possess its object, love would be selfish and would contradict its own ethical nature. On the other hand, love does not consist merely in giving. One might, according to Paul, bestow all one’s goods to feed the poor and give one’s body to be burned, and yet not have love. In true love there must be the warmth of personal interest as well as the sacrificial spirit. Each of these finds its necessary ethical complement in the other. So it is on the human plane. And what holds true of man may properly be regarded [p. 338] as holding true also of God. The divine love should probably be thought of as primarily good will, the love of benevolence. It is objective, it seeks the welfare, the redemption of all men. In this respect, in the purity of its altruism, it transcends everything human. It is the prototype, the pattern, the standard of human love. [19] At the same time there must be in it more or less of the love of complacency, the love which takes pleasure in men and seeks fellowship with them. This is implied in the idea of the divine Fatherhood. God the Father looks with favor on his children and seeks to reclaim those that have gone astray. Here we have the climax of all human and inspired thought relative to the divine character. All other terms expressive of the divine benevolence are but specifications under the general conception of fatherhood or love.
Mercy and grace, for instance, are both manifestations of the divine love insofar as it is directed toward the redemption of the sinful, while faithfulness is a manifestation of the divine love when directed toward those who are obedient and submissive to the divine will. Mercy is commonly used as a synonym of grace, but, strictly taken, it is a broader term. It has reference to the general misery of sin, while grace is concerned with the more specific evil of guilt. Mercy is extended to sinful men insofar as they are wretched; grace is granted them insofar as they are culpable. But in ordinary usage this distinction is not observed. The two terms are, as a rule, employed interchangeably. Faithfulness expresses the attitude [p. 339] of God toward those who in turn are faithful to him. It signifies that his love toward them is constant and that it will manifest itself in ever new forms of redemptive activity. But since even the most faithful among men are at the best unprofitable servants, without merit of their own and without claim upon the divine favor, it is evident that the divine faithfulness toward them is, after all, only a form of the divine grace. “We have all sinned,” and hence the divine love directed toward us must in every instance be a love of the sinful. But inasmuch as we do distinguish between believers and unbelievers and between the misery and the guilt of sin, the above distinction between the mercy, grace, and faithfulness of God is warranted. All three are specific expressions of the divine love.
That love is the proper term to designate one side of the divine character is then admitted by all. But what term should be used to express the other side is a matter of difference of opinion. Some prefer the term “holiness,” others “righteousness,” and still others “justice.” But since holiness and justice have certain specific connotations, due to their history, which righteousness does not have, it seems best to use the latter term. The question consequently arises as to the relation of righteousness and love to each other.
So far as actual usage goes, righteousness and love may be described as overlapping circles with circumferences so elastic that either one can be stretched so [p. 340] as to include the other. Perfect righteousness, for instance, would commonly be understood to include love, [20] and perfect love would generally be understood to include righteousness. But while the two terms thus stand closely related to each other, they still have different associations and different connotations. Righteousness is primarily concerned with moral excellence as an ideal, while love is primarily concerned with the happiness of other sentient beings. Righteousness, as ordinarily understood, has to do with the common virtues recognized in the larger social groups, while love in its higher form has to do with the morality of self-sacrifice realized especially in the family. Righteousness, again, fixes its attention on the act, while love has to do with the underlying motive. A greater inwardness, depth, and self-effacement thus belong to love than to righteousness.
This difference appears clearly in the contrast between the Old and New Testament conceptions of God. Taken by and in the large, the God of the Old Testament was a God of righteousness. What gave historic significance to the prophetic teaching concerning Jehovah was the ascription of moral rectitude to him in a more absolute way than had heretofore been done. He was now declared to be interested, not in rites and ceremonies nor in feasts and sacrifices, but in social justice. Righteousness and humanity were declared to be his one great concern. [p. 341] Religion was thus linked up with the elemental virtues more completely than ever before, and the holiness of Jehovah became the mainstay of social order and the guarantee of social progress. His ethical interest, it is true, did not confine itself to the external virtues; it penetrated also the inner life of the individual. But on the whole it was in the maintenance and the execution of the objective moral law that his ethical character manifested itself most distinctly. Righteousness and justice were the signature of his being.
The tendency in the later Old Testament period, however, was for the social passion connected with the earliest enunciation of the divine righteousness to degenerate into a barren legalism. Prophetism tended to give way to Pharisaism. Instead of being the leader in a mighty moral crusade God now became a glorified martinet, demanding meticulous obedience to law, but without the inspiration of a great spiritual enterprise. The result was that religion became cold, formal, and legalistic. The common man was, to a large extent, shut out from its comforts. To him. God seemed distant, the upholder of a more or less arbitrary law, and without any deep significance for his own personal life. To right this evil Jesus appeared on the scene with a new vision of God, with a God who had not been imposed upon by human respectability, a God of the Fourth Estate, a God who was eager to save the lost and ready to sacrifice himself in order to achieve their salvation, a God of redemptive love. This was the distinctive element in the Christian conception of God, and under its influence [p. 342] religion became again a vital and inspiring power. The older prophetic idea of the divine righteousness was retained; indeed, it was the presupposition of the Christian conception of the divine love. It was because God was holy and just that the proclamation of his love had such a wondrous and subduing power. Love as a natural and nonmoral passion is no doubt wonderfully appealing to the human heart, but it is not divine love. The love of God is holy love, a love that redeems from sin as well as from loneliness. There is, therefore, no antithesis between the divine holiness and the divine love. The two go together. Love does not annul the divine justice, it fulfills it. Such is the teaching of Jesus and of the New Testament as a whole.
But in the course of the development of Christian theology the conviction arose that the divine righteousness and the divine love are logically opposed to each other and that the real genius of Christianity lies in the way in which this opposition was overcome in the interest of the divine love. Righteousness, it was argued, implies distributive justice, and distributive justice forbids any departure from the strict law of reward and punishment as determined by one’s deserts. There can, therefore, be no forgiveness of sins until the demands of justice have been met. These demands were, however, met by the death of Christ, and thus a new era of divine grace was inaugurated. This theory will naturally come up for more complete discussion in connection with the work of Christ, which will be dealt with in a later volume, but it has an important bearing on one’s conception [p. 343] of the divine righteousness and in that respect calls for consideration here. The question it raises is as to whether righteousness necessarily implies strict distributive and more particularly retributive justice. Does God regard and especially does he punish men in strict accordance with their deserts? If so, there would seem to be a conflict in his own nature between his righteousness and his love. One would seem to exclude the other.
A common method of explaining away this conflict is to say that the divine justice is always actuated by love. “Punishment is for the good of the offender and for the prevention of evil.” [21] This view has been widely held in the church; but there has also been strenuous objection to it. It has been stoutly maintained that punitive justice is not benevolence. [22] It is an expression of the divine wrath, not of the divine love. To merge justice in benevolence is to misunderstand its essential nature. “Justice is the exact distribution of reward or of punishment,” and as such may be regarded as self-operative for an omniscient Being. In its remunerative aspect it no doubt aims at the promotion of righteousness and in its retributive aspect at the destruction of sin, but in and of itself it is guided by the demand of the moral law and by that alone. Punishment is not inflicted simply for the purpose of reforming the offender and of preventing further evil. It is inflicted because it is required by the divine righteousness. Holiness is an [p. 344] end of the divine action quite as much as happiness. Indeed, it is the more fundamental end of the two, and because it is such its demands cannot be subordinated to the promotion of well-being. Sin must be punished regardless of its bearing on human happiness. The divine justice requires it. Love and justice cannot, therefore, be merged together by subordinating the latter to the former. The two must be retained intact as more or less disparate attributes of the Divine Being.
For this view not a little support can be found in Scripture. The retributive justice of God is there asserted again and again, [23] and much is also said about the divine wrath. 24 But how much doctrinal significance should be attributed to these utterances is a question. That God is righteous in the sense that he is not indifferent to moral distinctions and does not treat the upright and the wicked alike, and in the further sense that he betrays no favoritism in dealing with men, would be generally accepted as an essential part of Christian teaching. But that his righteousness requires him to mete out rewards and punishments to men in exact proportion to their deserts is quite another matter.
Such a view of God would make of him an unfeeling Judge and would reduce his relation to men to a purely ethico-legal basis. It would obscure his redemptive purpose and put in its stead a heartless calculation of merit and demerit. This was the tendency [p. 345] in Pharisaism, and it was against it that the main polemic, if such it may be called, of Jesus’ teaching was directed. He represented God as a Father, whose love welcomes back the undeserving prodigal son and who freely bestows his gifts upon all who ask. [24] The legalistic objection to such an attitude on God’s part as unfair and unjust he expressly rejected as invalid, [25] and set forth the highest form of the divine love as that which manifests itself in disregard of the principle of exact distributive justice. [26] Love does not, of course, exclude remuneration and retribution from the principles operative in God’s dealings with men. It recognizes both as valid and manifests itself to some degree in and through them. But forgiving love cannot be bound by them. It transcends the law of merit and demerit. It bestows favors on men in spite of their demerit. In so doing it does not altogether disregard their moral qualities. But the qualities it most prizes are those associated with the consciousness of demerit rather than those associated with the consciousness of merit. The consciousness of demerit may, it is true, be in a certain sense meritorious, but not in the sense that it can claim the divine grace as its right. The divine love is not attracted simply by human merit. If it were, it would be seriously curtailed in its operations, and would fall far short of what is implied in the divine Fatherhood. There would seem, then, to be no principle in the divine nature that requires that rewards [p. 346] and punishments be meted out to men in strict accordance with their deserts. The divine righteousness, in other words, does not involve strict retributive justice. No atonement in the ordinary sense of the term is necessary before the forgiving love of God can become operative. This is a point of decisive importance in the Christian conception of the divine character.
The wrath of God, which figures so prominently in both the Old and New Testaments, stands closely related to the divine holiness and may be regarded as the emotional expression of it occasioned by sin. As a just and holy Being God looks with approval upon right conduct, but wrongdoing awakens in him indignation and wrath. At first human analogy suggests that we have here two antithetical states of mind. One is directed toward the welfare of men, the other apparently toward their injury; and the two states may alternate in the divine attitude toward the same individual. The question consequently has arisen as to whether wrath may properly be attributed to God, and, if so, how it should be construed. Some theologians have rejected it as an unworthy anthropomorphism on the ground that it is inconsistent with the divine love and would, if real, require us to ascribe to God a change of will that in turn would be inconsistent with his eternity. Ritschl, [27] for instance, says that “according to the New Testament, God’s wrath signifies his determination to destroy those who definitely set themselves against redemption and the final end of the kingdom of God.” It thus stands [p. 347] opposed to his eternal redemptive will; and hence “from the point of view of theology no validity can be assigned” to it. But the term, “wrath” in the New Testament is 1 not used exclusively in the eschatological sense as stated by Ritschl, [28] and even if it were, it would not need to be so construed by us. The more general meaning of indignation at wrongdoing would be quite permissible, and in this sense the divine wrath would stand in the same general relation to the divine love that the divine righteousness does. It would be viewed either as a co-ordinate and independent aspect of the divine character or as included within the divine love as a modified form of it.
According to the latter view, wrath is a “restrained manifestation of love.” It is “holy love itself, feeling itself so far hindered because they have turned away from its blessed influence whom it would have received into its fellowship.” [29] There is in the divine wrath, therefore, nothing of the vindictive or vengeful. It stands closer to grief and compassion; but it differs from them in that it expresses the sacredness of the moral law and the divine hostility to sin. There is in thwarted love a militant element and this on the moral plane finds vent in indignation. The love of righteousness implies hatred of sin. Between the wrath of God and his love there is, consequently, no antithesis. Both serve the same holy purpose, and if love be the proper designation of this purpose, then wrath is an instrument of love or an altered form of it.
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To this it is objected that such an interpretation of the divine wrath does violence to linguistic usage. Wrath is not love, nor is justice love. Justice and wrath represent an independent aspect of the divine nature that cannot be fused with love. In God there is a deep-seated dualism, a dualism that in practice can be overcome only by an act of atonement. This view in the past commended itself to a large part of the church, and is still held by many. Indeed, it may be regarded as 1 almost inevitable so long as we distinguish sharply between happiness and holiness and between the love of men and the love of righteousness. If human welfare and moral excellence represent two independent and ultimate values, there would seem to be no way of avoiding a conflict in the divine nature between love and justice. The former would seek the well-being of men, while the latter would guard the interests of absolute rectitude; and between the two there could be no harmony until the demands of justice were somehow met by an atoning act. But the assumption of such a fundamental antinomy is unnecessary, and is possible only so long as we remain on the natural plane. Our idea of happiness needs to be moralized and our idea of holiness needs to be personalized. The two ideas need to be brought together in the concrete conception of the kingdom of God, and when this is done the antinomy vanishes. Instead of two divine ends we now have one. The moral ideal and human well-being are fused together, and in God we no longer have justice and love at variance with each other, but one holy and loving will seeking the moral redemption of men. A moral [p. 349] monism thus takes the place of the older dualism. God is no longer righteousness and love, but righteous or holy love.
It is customary to say that God loves the sinner and hates the sin. In this way provision is made in the nature of God for hatred or wrath in the ordinary sense of these terms, and that without any conflict with the divine love. The love of God toward men is eternal. It never changes, is never succeeded by wrath. His wrath is 1 directed against sin, is eternally directed against it, and coexists with the love of the sinner. In this distinction between sin and the sinner there is an element of truth. But it is not a distinction made by Scripture, nor is it one that can be -accepted as ultimately valid. Love is properly directed only toward persons, and the same is true of hate insofar as it is the ethical antithesis of love. It is only in an accommodated sense that we speak of loving and hating things. The proper objects alike of love and hate are personal beings. It is not, then, strictly correct to distinguish between the divine love and the divine hate by making the object of the one personal and the object of the other impersonal. Indeed, sin apart from personality is an abstraction. It is only free intelligence that can give moral quality to an act. Condemnation of an act as sinful means, therefore, condemnation of its author also. We cannot completely separate the two. We cannot at one and the same time disapprove the act and approve the agent.
And yet there is a sense in which we may think of [p. 350] God as hating the sin and loving the sinner. Only in very extreme cases, if at all, does the sinner completely identify himself with his sin. The sin is not a complete expression of his personality. Something of good remains within him and this good makes him redeemable. Toward him as the subject of redemption the divine love in the sense of benevolence is, consequently, directed. Sin, on the other hand, is by its very nature evil. It has nothing good in it, and hence upon it the divine wrath or hatred is properly vented. Its destruction is the necessary condition of the salvation of the sinner. In fact, to hate it means to love the moral agent who is seeking to free himself from bondage to it. Hatred of sin and love of the sinner thus imply each other; they are but two sides of the divine redemptive purpose, a purpose directed toward personal beings and meaningless apart from them.
The question has been raised as to whether love or personality is the more essential and significant element in the Christian conception of God. Ritschl decided emphatically in favor of love. “There is,” he said, “no other conception of equal worth beside this which need be taken into account.” It is “the only adequate conception of God.” “Even the recognition of the personality of God does not imply independent knowledge apart from our defining Mm as loving Will.” [30] It simply determines the form under which the real content of his being, his loving will, is conceived. Theodore Haering also takes essentially the same view. “The statement, ‘God is love,’” he says, [p. 351] “is the whole Christian doctrine of God.” If we were required to choose between thinking of God as Absolute Personality and as Love, we should decide immediately in favor of the latter. As Christians “we believe in the (supramundane, unconditioned) personal love, not in the loving ( supramundane, unconditioned) personality.” [31] Julius Kaftan, on the other hand, assigns the precedence to the idea of personality on the ground that love consists in self-communication and that apart from a self or personality to communicate it would lose its deepest and most characteristic content. [32] As mere benevolence it might still exist, but without self-impartation it would fall short of what true love should be.
The situation here is similar to that which obtains in the relation of love and righteousness to each other. From one point of view love is the more ultimate term and from another point of view righteousness, but both imply each other; and so it is with personality and love. From the metaphysical point of view personality is the profounder attribute, but it needs love in order to complete itself. Without a loving will it would lack direction and also an ultimate and worthy goal. From the practical point of view, however, love is manifestly the more important attribute. It is the divine love that forms the basis of religious faith. But apart from personality love would be a mere abstraction, it would be like the smile of the Cheshire cat without the cat, of which we read in Alice in Wonderland. Love owes both its being and [p. 352] its content to the personal agent who both possesses and expresses it. It is, then, a mistake to think of the divine love and the divine personality as in any sense opposed to each other or as rival claimants for the hegemony among the divine attributes. Personality is incomplete without love, and love without personality is nonexistent. Nor can it be truly said that “personal love” expresses the divine nature more correctly than a “loving personality.” From one standpoint we may properly emphasize the divine love and from another the divine personality. As over against a legalistic but theistic Pharisaism we would naturally say that God is personal love, but as over against an impersonal naturalism we would more fittingly say that God is a loving Person. At bottom the two expressions have virtually the same meaning.
There is, however, a point of difference between them that should not be overlooked. If personality is put in an adjectival relation to love, there is danger that their organic and structural relation to each other may be obscured. The divine love may, for instance, be objectified and thought of as so exclusively expressed in the relation of men to each other and to the world that it can be known only through the practical exercise of love and through triumph over the world. This tendency we find in Ritschl, and no doubt it expresses an important truth, but it curtails the divine love insofar as it fails to bring out adequately the thought of a direct relation to God and of immediate fellowship with him. If, on the other hand, personality is made primary, provision [p. 353] is made for the love of self-communication as well as for the love of objectified benevolence. If God be first of all a Person, then love will mean not only good will, but also the communication of his life and his spirit to men; and this is clearly the teaching of Scripture. There is thus a genuine religious as well as a philosophical reason for affirming that God is pre-eminently a “loving Person.” It is because he is such that he is also “personal love.”
It remains to be pointed out that the attributes of personality and love agree in fixing attention on the volitional, as distinguished from the intellectual, side of the divine nature. The fundamental thing in personality is will, and this also is true of love. In emphasizing these two attributes and making them basal in its conception of God Christianity consequently differentiates itself sharply from the intellectualism of Greek philosophy. For Aristotle God \vas thought, a thinking on thinking; and this has been true of various forms of modern as well as ancient idealism. The causal, volitional, and emotional elements in the Divine Being did not come to adequate recognition in them. In its stress on these factors we have the most distinctive feature in the Christian conception of God. For Christianity God is intelligence, wisdom, reason, but he is also, and more fundamentally, will, purpose, Benevolence. This viewpoint it is that we have in mind when we ascribe central importance to either the personality or the love of God. Both attributes have a common volitional rootage and both in their spiritual form tend to merge into each other.
[p. 354]
Thus far we have dealt chiefly with the biblical doctrine of the divine goodness and its treatment in the history of theology, and have not raised the question as to its philosophical basis. In Chapter VI we expounded briefly the moral argument for the existence of God, devoting particular attention to the Kantian formulation of it. But the special reasons for affirming the goodness of God we have not yet considered. These reasons may be reduced to three: the analogical, the empirical, and the aprioristic.
By the “analogical” I mean the reason based on the analogy of the human spirit insofar as the latter implies a union of the intellectual and the ethical. It is true that there is no way of logically deducing the ethical character of God from his metaphysical attributes. These attributes are “ethically barren.” The omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, unity, identity, omniscience, and even freedom of God are conceivable without reference to the idea of moral obligation. We might have adequate rational grounds for believing in the existence of a being endowed with these various attributes and yet be under no logical compulsion to ascribe to him a moral character. But while this is true, it is also true that the analogy of the human spirit suggests with almost irresistible cogency that where we have free intelligence there we will also have moral responsibility. If, then, God is omniscient and free, there is every reason to believe that he is also a moral Being. He might conceivably be malevolent in nature. There are evil human beings. But on the same basis we might ascribe irrationality [p. 355] to the Deity. If we are warranted in thinking of him as rational, we are equally warranted in thinking of him as good. The same logic holds in both instances. Personality binds reason and conscience together so that the existence of one justifies our inferring the existence of the other. Consequently, on the basis of human analogy we may argue from the omniscience and freedom of God to his goodness. Indeed, so inevitable has this connection seemed that in the history of theism it has commonly been thought sufficient to establish the intelligence of God and then to assume that this carried with it his ethical character. The empirical argument for the divine goodness is based on the moral nature of man, on the moral structure of human society, and on the moral principles operative in human history. The moral nature, it is urged, requires for its explanation a moral author. Man is organic to nature and owes his capacities to the power that lies back of nature. This back-lying Power must, as cause, be at least equal to the human spirit which it produces. He that formed the capacity for righteousness, shall he not himself be righteous? To ask the question is to answer it. Yet numerous efforts have been made to derive the moral from, the nonmoral. It has been argued that man’s ethical nature developed out of various animal impulses and requires no other account of its origin. But this naturalistic theory confuses temporal antecedence with metaphysical causation, and fails, furthermore, to recognize the unique character of the moral life. Between the “natural” and the “moral” there is a gulf which no logic can bridge. If an adequate cause of [p. 356] man’s moral nature is, therefore, to be found, it must be in a world-ground that is itself moral. This line of reasoning is as sound in principle as it is convincing to spontaneous thought.
It might in a similar way be argued that human society also has a moral character and that as such it too points to a moral author. But in dealing with the ethical element in society and in the course of history it is customary to lay stress, not on its transcendent source, but on its reality as a revelation of an immanent divine power. Society, it is urged, is so constructed that it makes the way of the transgressor hard and encourages a life of moral obedience. This holds true not only of the individual, but of social groups. A righteous nation is exalted, but doom awaits the wicked. This, we are told, is the one great lesson of human history. There is a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.
If this were manifestly so, if right were clearly regnant in human society and human history, it would point strongly to a moral governor of the world. But is it so? “There is the rub.” One can by picking his facts make quite a showing in favor of the view that right reigns in the world. But over against these facts stand others of a contrary character. The righteous suffer while the wicked spread themselves as the green bay tree. Justice and humanity are trodden under foot, while cruelty and brute force sit regnant on the throne. How often have tyrannical and oppressive governments held sway in the world ! How unequal and disproportionate is the allotment of outward fortune to the sons [p. 357] of men! How great is the load of suffering that weighs down upon unnumbered thousands, and even millions, of men through no conscious fault of their own ! When one dwells upon such facts as these, the moral story of life is seen to be a complex and bewildering one. Instead of the simple and monotonous lesson of Hebrew history, we are confronted with an ambiguous oracle. Whether the unsifted facts of life speak for or against the reign of right, one can hardly say. Often they seem to present a moral chaos rather than the well-ordered system one would expect under a moral government.
The empirical appeal to history thus fails us. If we had no other source of light than the outward facts of life, we would hardly know what to say concerning the character of God. Certainly, we would have no adequate ground for a confident faith in his goodness. If such a faith had come to us from some other source, we might find here and there in the external course of events illustrations and confirmations of it, but nothing approaching a scientific proof. All that a study of the objective moral facts of life can do is to show that these facts do not negate faith in the goodness of God. They do not ground it, but they also do not contradict it. They simply leave the door open to it. This is as far as the social and historical argument can go.
The real strength of the argument for the goodness of God is to be found in its aprioristic form. Here we are not concerned with the outward experiences of men, nor with the ultimate source of our moral nature, but with our moral nature itself, its validity and [p. 358] its implications. The contention is that our moral consciousness stands in its own right, that in this sense it is absolute, and that it “carries with it a demand that reality shall be in accordance with it.” [33] It matters not how we describe this demand or the doctrine implied in it. We may with Sorley speak of the objectivity of values, or with Troeltsch of a religious a priori, or with Bowne of an implicit faith in the reality of the ideal, or with Kant of the moral necessity of religion. At bottom they all amount to about the same thing. We begin with the assumption of the absoluteness of the moral law. The sense of “ought” is one that we cannot escape. Duty stands above us with a sway we cannot break. This is an ultimate fact which each must recognize for himself and one which, when recognized, justifies itself. But however valid and authoritative the subjective law of right may be, it is theoretically possible that we may have in it simply a personal idiosyncrasy or a mere reflection of the authority of society. As such it would still have its value, a value, however, that would be purely aesthetic or practical. It would ground no objective belief. The next point consequently to be noted is that the absolute moral law would not be absolute if it did not contain “an authentic intimation of the nature of the system to which we belong.” [34] When we say “I must,” we mean that the nature of things demands that we do it. Not my own ego, not society, but the larger realm of reality stands back of the moral law. This assumption [p. 359] is implicit in the sense of duty, and it is this fact that gives to duty its absolute character. To affirm the absoluteness of the moral law means, then, to affirm its objective validity or, in other words, the moral character of the universe.
It is only translating the same thought into other terms when we insist on the objectivity of values, or on a religious a priori, or on the fundamental and inevitable character of our faith in the reality of the ideal. Value-judgments, we say, have an objective reference. They would be meaningless without it. The affirmation of value means the affirmation of an objective order that has value. No purely subjective interpretation of value would be true to what we have in mind when we talk about values and particularly moral or ideal values. In the very conception of these values their objectivity is implied. If there were no existence corresponding to them, they would not be values. Valuation carries with it objectification. We are so constituted that this is inevitable, and hence there is a certain warrant in speaking of a religious a priori. By this expression we mean that religion is an autonomous validity, that the idealizing process involved in it is structural in the human reason, that there is an inner logic within the practical reason that leads to religious faith. There is, in other words, a kind of rational or moral impossibility about denying value to reality or, what is practically the same thing, denying reality to our ideals. Our mental life begins with an implicit faith in these ideals. We may describe this faith as an objectification of our ideals or as a religious a priori, but how [p. 360] ever described, it is an ultimate fact of our nature, a kind of moral necessity. And it is on this necessity that we rest our case for religion and for the belief in the goodness of God. Other considerations, rational and empirical, may lend support to it, but in the last analysis belief in the divine righteousness rests on the self-evidencing power of our instinctive and irrepressible faith in the ideal.
Assuming the general trustworthiness of Scripture and the validity of the inference from what ought to be to what is, we may confidently affirm that God is good. But while from the human side this may seem clear, difficulties arise when we think of goodness in its relation to absoluteness.
There is an ethical as well as a metaphysical absoluteness. The latter we discussed in Chapter VII. It receives its most definite and most fundamental expression in the attribute of omnipotence. The human spirit in its quest after life meets with resistance. This resistance at first seems to come from many independent sources, but eventually the mind rises to the thought of one ultimate and irresistible power, upon which everything depends, the eternal Whence and Whither of our own being and of all that is. Science joins with religion in enforcing this thought of a dynamic Absolute. But the human spirit not only meets with resistance, it seeks peace and satisfaction. This satisfaction it cannot find in itself, nor can it find it in the various objects round [p. 361] about it. Hence it rises to the thought of an ultimate and highest good, a good in which the restless soul finds rest and out of which no new and unsatisfied desire arises. An ethical Absolute thus takes its place alongside of the dynamic or metaphysical Absolute, and the two are fused together by faith. Indeed, it is not certain but the belief in the ethical Absolute was historically the source of the belief in the metaphysical Absolute. It has at any rate been maintained that it was the prophetic faith in the moral absoluteness of Jehovah that led to the belief in his omnipotence. It was because the prophets looked upon the moral law as universal and absolute that they assumed or asserted the unlimited power of Jehovah, whom they regarded as its living embodiment. This theory may or may not be correct; but whether correct or not, it can hardly be doubted that in the history of thought the sense of moral necessity has co-operated with that of causal necessity in producing the idea of the Absolute. In the Absolute we have a conjunction of the moral and theoretical ideals, a union of the highest good with the highest power. But while the main stream of speculative thought since the time of Plato has not hesitated to combine moral with metaphysical absoluteness in its conception of God, several scruples have from time to time arisen with reference to the validity of this combination. Three of these scruples call for brief consideration. The first has to do with the supposed incompatibility of omnipotence and perfect goodness, the second with the assumed inconsistency between morality and absoluteness, and the third with the apparent contradiction [p. 362] between the implications of love and a fundamental monism.
The difficulty involved in the conception of God as both good and all-powerful is of long standing, [35] but it did not become acute in Western thought until toward the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Previous to that time several factors tended to keep it in abeyance. One was the belief in the immediate sovereignty of God, another the doctrine of original sin, and yet another the vividness of the eschatological hope. These beliefs contained a relatively simple solution of the problem of evil. Since an almighty God is the direct author of all that occurs, humility would suggest that men accept the ills of life without complaint. But if they did not, it was sufficient to remind them that these ills are traceable to original sin; and then, if this did not altogether quiet their protest, it could be and was added as an effective ground of consolation that these ills are only temporary and serve as a means of attaining to life eternal. With the rise, however, of modern rationalism, humanism, and a more impersonal view of the world this simple solution proved inadequate, and the problem of evil be [p. 363] came the hot spot of theological interest. It was Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) who by his radical criticism first projected the problem into philosophy and made it a subject of vital concern in the field of religious thought. [36] He sought to show that the traditional conception of God and his relation to the world was shot through and through with inconsistencies and that in particular his power and his goodness could not be harmonized with each other. In taking this position he himself professed to aim at strengthening the cause of revealed religion as over against rationalism, and in this he may have been sincere. But the actual effect of his criticism was to call in question the very right of religion to exist. It was generally felt that he had made a formidable attack upon religious faith itself and that the attack must somehow be met if faith was to maintain itself in the modern world.
By far the most significant and influential response was that made by Leibnitz (1646-1716), to whom we owe the application of the term “theodicy” to the problem. It was his contention that both physical and moral evil are due to metaphysical imperfection, and that metaphysical imperfection follows with logical necessity from the very concept of a world. The world, therefore, could not exist without suffering and sin, and hence in spite of these evils we may regard it as the best possible world; and if it be such there is, of course, no conflict between the divine goodness and [p. 364] the divine power. In maintaining this view Leibnitz fell into numerous inconsistencies; but his main thesis that evil is a rational necessity and consequently no reflection upon the divine goodness, wag for a time widely accepted as an adequate reply to the criticism of Bayle and as a satisfactory apology for religious belief in general. [37]
To us the Leibnitzian and whole eighteenth-century treatment of the problem of theodicy seems abstract and artificial. The idea of a best possible world, which necessarily involves more or less of the quantitative if carefully thought through, is a contradictory conception like that of a highest possible number. The present world, furthermore, does not admit of deduction from any necessary truths of reason. The evils of life are not logical necessities. They are contingent events and might conceivably have been either nonexistent or quite different from what they are. Whether in their present form they are consistent with the divine goodness is not a question that can be settled by invoking the abstract idea of a perfect world. The perfection or goodness of the world is dependent upon the end that it is supposed to serve, and this end does not admit of logical demonstration. If it be mere enjoyment, we may pass one judgment upon the world; if it be the development of character, we may pass another; and if it be some nonhuman end, our judgment would probably be still different. There is no commonly accepted standard by which the world can be judged, nor is there any abstract ideal which enables us to determine whether its evils [p. 365] are consistent with creative goodness or not. The whole question of theodicy needs to be taken out of the abstract realm in which it, to a large extent, moved in the eighteenth century and carried over into the realm of actual experience. Whether life is worth living or not depends on the kind of life lived. Apart from living experience itself the question cannot be settled. And so it is with the problem of the divine goodness. Only life itself can solve it. We cannot prove that this is the best possible world, nor can we prove that it is even a good world. On the other hand, we cannot prove the contrary. The facts of life, taken logically and abstractly, are ambiguous. They permit faith in the divine goodness, but do not require it. The question admits, therefore, only of a practical solution, and this is something that can be arrived at only through the living experience of each individual. [38]
But while the tendency during the past century has been to transfer the problem of theodicy from the theoretical to the practical realm, the old scruple with reference to the possibility of harmonizing the goodness of God with his omnipotence has lingered, and in recent years has given rise to the theory of a finite God. This theory we considered at some length in Chapter VII. In its more extreme form we rejected it as both religiously and philosophically untenable. And even in its more moderate form, as represented by Professor Brightman, we found it open to rather serious objections. It is freely admitted that, if we limit the power of God, we to that [p. 366] extent reduce his responsibility for the evils of the world and thus render belief in his subjective goodness easier. But at the same time we limit what may be called his objective goodness and thus weaken the grounds of faith. From the purely theoretical or rationalistic standpoint there may be a certain advantage in seeking to save the divine goodness at the expense of the divine power. By so doing the gulf between the world and God is to some degree narrowed. But there is, in my opinion, a more excellent way, and that is frankly to recognize the limitations of human knowledge when it comes to evaluating the varied experiences of life, and to hold that if we knew all, as God does, the unideal aspects of the world would not seem so entirely out of harmony with an absolute and holy love as they now do. This, it is true, does not solve the problem, but it is quite as tenable an hypothesis as that of “a resisting and retarding element” in the divine nature, and it has the distinct advantage of being more congenial to religious faith. In the last analysis all faith in God rests on faith in the ideal, and nothing short of the highest will satisfy this faith. If the existence of evil requires us to affirm either the divine impotence or human ignorance, and if one theory is logically as tenable as the other, faith will have no hesitancy in making its choice in favor of the latter.
The second scruple, above referred to, had to do with the idea of the Absolute and its relation to that of moral goodness. There is a notion in certain circles that morality is relative to man and that it cannot properly be affirmed of the Infinite. This conclusion [p. 367] is supported by two lines of thought. First, it is said that morality implies the coexistence of good and evil, and that the Absolute is the unity or identity beyond all differences, so that for him or it no moral distinctions can exist. He must be regarded, therefore, as “super-moral.” This view is akin to that of a “superpersonal” Being. In discussing the latter conception we pointed out that the word “superpersonal” is ambiguous. It may denote a higher type of personality than that represented by man, or it may denote a type of existence that completely transcends personality and is exclusive of it. The same ambiguity appears in the use of the term “supermoral.” The word may simply denote a higher type of morality than that represented by the human consciousness or it may denote a type of Being that transcends the moral altogether and excludes it. With reference to the first of these interpretations there is no dispute. All theists not only admit, but affirm that if personality and morality are attributed to the Absolute, it must be in a form that transcends their limited realization in human life. It is the second interpretation that is the cause of debate and that alone gives significance to the insistence on the “supermoral” and “superpersonal” character of the Infinite. In this sense, however, the terms imply an “agnostic” or “logical” conception of the Absolute which we have found ample ground for rejecting as invalid. The true view of the Absolute is that which regards it as the unconditioned ground or cause of the world, and when so understood there is no conflict between it and the idea of goodness. [p. 368] Indeed, the cause of man’s capacity for goodness must, it would seem, also be good.
Still, it is urged that v from the religious point of view evil as well as good is referred to God, and that we must, therefore, think of him as sharing in neither and as beyond both. But this confuses moral with natural evil. The latter we ascribe to God, but not the former. Some theological theories have held God ultimately responsible for sin, but this view runs counter to one of the most fundamental characteristics of religion, namely, its instinctive or a priori alliance with moral idealism. The unsophisticated as well as the enlightened religious consciousness has always repudiated the idea that God is the cause of sin as he is of goodness. To ascribe moral neutrality to him is as obnoxious to our religious as it is to our ethical nature. [39]
But while this may be true of God in his relation to the world, the situation, we are told, is different when we think of him as a self-existent and independent Being. It is here that the third difficulty, above mentioned, emerges. How, it is asked, can love be predicated of a Being who has no ontological other? A similar problem exists in connection with knowledge, but there the solution is relatively easy. For the knower may make himself his object. But not so the lover. He must have an object other than himself. How, then, can love be ascribed to the Absolute, in and of himself, apart from the beings whom he has created? One might look upon creation as an eternal [p. 369] and necessary consequence of the divine nature and so hold that there have always been beings toward whom the divine love could be directed. But this would lead to pantheism. Another suggestion is that we deny to the Absolute love in our sense of the term and content ourselves with affirming his free personal self-determination without attempting to define more precisely the concrete content of his moral consciousness. [40] But this does not seem altogether satisfactory. It has, consequently, been maintained that the true solution of the problem is to be found in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Here personal distinctions are introduced into the absolute consciousness which make possible an eternal love-life within the Deity himself. This doctrine, as we shall see in the next chapter, is not free from serious difficulties, but in its relation to the problem under consideration it has not a little speculative value. One may perhaps achieve essentially the same end by holding that creation is eternal, yet free and actuated by love. In this way love would be made an eternal attribute of Deity and there would also be eternally for him objects of love. But however that may be, the important thing religiously is not the love that may exist within the Godhead itself, nor the divine love toward prehuman or angelic beings, but the love of God toward men. And this we may affirm, regardless of the other possible expressions of his good will. There is nothing in his absoluteness, correctly conceived, that is inconsistent with his righteous and loving attitude toward the world.
See my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 792., 157ff. ↩︎
Arthur C. McGiffert, The God of the Early Christians, pp. 140. ↩︎
Jer. 3. 14, 19; 31. 9; Isa. 63. 16; 64. 8; Deut. 32. 6; 2 Sam. 7. 14; Psa. 68. 5; 89. 27; Mal. 1. 6; 2. 10. See my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 182-84. ↩︎
H. H. Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, I, pp. 191ff.; J. Scott Lidgett, The Fatherhood of God, pp. 50ff.; James Moffatt, The Theology of the Gospels, pp. 85-126; John W. Buckham, The Humanity of God, pp. 44ff.; Adolf Deissmann, The Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Pau: pp. 54, 68, 86. ↩︎
Matt. 7. 21; 10. 32f.; 11. 27; 12. 50; 15. 13; 16. 17; 18. 10; 19. 35; 25. 34; Luke 2. 49; 10. 22; 22. 29; 24. 49; etc. ↩︎
The Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul, p. 54. ↩︎
Cf . my Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, p. 303. ↩︎
C. G. Moritefiore, The Synoptic Gospels, first ed., II, p. 985. See also I, pp. Ixxviii, 86; II, p. 574, and Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus, p. 57. ↩︎
W. N. Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 101. ↩︎
See Hosea 2. 3, and Matt. 5. 43-48. ↩︎
Cf . Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 473f .: “God’s righteousness is his self-consistent and undeviating action in behalf of the salvation of the members of his community; in essence it is identical with his grace.” ↩︎
Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, I, p. viii. ↩︎
W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, I, pp. 364-85; Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I, pp. 416-27. ↩︎
Gen. 2. 17; Exod. 34. 7; Deut. 27. 26; Ezek. 18. 4; Rom. 1. 32; 2. 8; 6. 23; 12. 19; Gal. 3. 10; 2 Thess. 1. 8; etc. ↩︎
Justification and Reconciliation, p. 323. ↩︎
See Rom. 1. 18; Eph. 2. 3; John 3. 36. ↩︎
H. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, p. 303. ↩︎
Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 273f. ↩︎
The Christian Faith, I, p. 323. ↩︎
Dogmatik, pp. 200-03. ↩︎
W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God, p. 336. ↩︎
John Baillie, The Interpretation of Religion, p. 352. ↩︎
Lactantius in expounding the view of Epicurus put the difficulty as follows: “God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or he is able, and is unwilling; or he is neither willing nor able, or he is both willing and able. If he is willing and is unable, he is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if he is able and unwilling, he is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if he is neither willing nor .able, he is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does he not remove them?” A Treatise on the Anger of God, Chap. XIII. ↩︎
Dr. Otto Lempp, Das Problem der Theodicee in der Philosophic und Literatur des 18 Jahrhunderts bis auf Kant und Schiller, PP. 1-32. . ↩︎
Otto Lempp, id., pp. 33-64. ↩︎
See B. P. Bowne, Theism, pp. 263-90. ↩︎
Cf . Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, II, PP268-91. ↩︎
So E. Troeltsch, Glaubenslehre, p. 187. ↩︎