Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/693

 GOD

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It is also clear that if the universe depends on God for its production it must also depend on Him for its conservation or continuance in Ijeing; and this truth will perhaps be best presented by explaining the much- talked-of principle of Divine immanence as corrected and counterbalanced by the equally important prin- ciple of Divine transcendence.

(2) Divine Immanence and Transcendence. — To Deists (see Deism) is attributed the view — or at least a tendency towards the view — that God, having cre- ated the universe, leaves it to pursue its own course according to fixed laws, and ceases, so to speak, to take any further interest in, or responsibility for, what may happen; and Divine immanence is urged, sometimes too strongly, in opposition to this view. God is immanent, or intimately present, in the uni- verse because His power is required at every moment to sustain creatures in being and to concur with tliem in their activities. Conservation and concursus are, so to speak, continuations of creative activity, and imply an equally intimate relation of God towards creatures, or rather an equally intimate and unceasing dependence of creatures on God. Whatever crea- tures are, they are by virtue of God's conserving power; whatever they do, they do by virtue of God's concursus. It is not of course denied that creatures are true causes and produce real efi'ects; but they are only secondary causes; their efficiency is always de- pendent and derived; God as the First Cause is an ever active co-operator in their actions. This is true even of the free acts of an intelligent creature like man; only it should be added in this case that Divine responsibility ceases at the point where sin or moral evil enters in. Since sin as such, however, is an im- perfection, no limitation is thus imposed on God's supremacy.

But lest insistence on Divine immanence should degenerate into Pantheism — and there is a tendency in this direction on the part of many modern writers — it is important at the same time to emphasize the truth of God's transcendence, to recall, in other words, what has been stated several times already, that God is one simple and infinitely perfect personal Being whose nature and action in their proper character as Divine infinitely transcend all possible modes of the finite, and cannot, without contradiction, be formally identi- fied with these.

(3) Possibihty of the Supernatural. — From a study of nature we have inferred the existence of God and deduced certain fundamental truths regarding His nature and attributes, and His relation to the created universe. .\nd from these it is easy to deduce a fur- ther important truth, with a brief mention of which we may fittingly conclude this section. However wonderful we may consider the universe to be, we rec- ognize that neither in its substance nor in the laws by which its order is maintained, in so far as unaided reason can come to know them, does it exliaust God's infinite power or perfectly reveal His nature. If then it be suggested that, to supplement what philosophy teaches of Himself and His purposes, God may be willing to favour rational creatures with an immediate personal revelation, in which He aids the natural powers of reason by confirming what they already know, and by imparting to them nmch that they could not otherwise know, it will be seen at once that this suggestion contains no impossibility. All that is required to realize it is that God should be able to communicate directly with the created mind, and that men should be able to recognize with sufficient cer- tainty that the communication is really Divine; and that both of these conditions are capable of being ful- filled no Theist can logically deny (see Revelation; MiR.\CLE.s). This bein" so, it will follow further that knowledge so obtained, being guaranteed by the authority of Him who is infinite Truth, is the most certain and reliable knowledge we can possess; and

this is the knowledge we shall freely utilize in the fol- lowing section of this article.

II. The God of Revelation. — We assume here — what is elsewhere proved by Catholic apologists — that a supernatural revelation of Himself has de facto been given by God in the Jewisli and Christian religions, and guaranteed by such evidence that men are reason- ably bound to accept it; and we assume, further, that our authoritative sources for obtaining a knowledge of the contents of this revelation are the inspired Scrip- tures and the uninspired but infallible teaching of the Catholic Church. 'Tliis does not of course mean that reason abdicates its office when authority takes con- trol, for, besides the fact that submission to such au- thority is eminently rational, there is always an appeal back to reason itself against anything that would be self-contradictory or absurd. As a matter of fact, however, although there is mystery, there is no con- tradiction in what God has revealed about Himself. On the contrary reason is helped very much, instead of being hindered, in its effort to acquire a worthy knowledge of Him Who is infinite and therefore neces- .sarily mysterious both in His own being and in His re- lations to creatures; but apart from the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, and the supernatural economy of salvation of which the Incarnation is the centre, there is scarcely an important truth about God and His relation to creatures that could not, abso- lutely speaking, be known by the light of reason alone.

In naming the Scriptures and Catholic teaching as sources, it is not intended to treat them separately and independently but in combination. Devtlc>|)cd ( ';itli- olic teaching has collected and systeiiiatized all im- portant truths concerning God which may lie gathered from the Scriptures, and we shall accordingly make tliis teaching our guide, referring back as occasion may require to Biblical sources. For the discussion of questions that are merely exegetical and critical the reader is referred to the article on God in standard dic- tionaries or encyclopedias of the Bible.

A. Existence and Knowahleness oj God. — (1) Neither in the Old or New Testament do we find any elaborate argumentation devoted to proving that God exists. This truth is rather taken for granted, as being some- thing, for example, that only the fool will deny in his heart [Ps. xiii (xiv), 1; Hi (liii), 1]; and argumentation, when resorted to, is directed chiefly against polythe- ism and idolatry. But in several passages we have a cursory appeal to some phase of the general cosnio- logical argument: v. g. Ps. xviii (xix), 1; xciii (xciv), 5 sqq.; Is., xli, 26 sqq.; II Mach., vii, 2S, etc.; and in some few others — Wis., xiii, 1-9; Rom., i, 18-20 — the argument is presented in a philosophical way, and men who reason rightly are held to be inexcusable for failing to recognize and worship the one true God, the Author and Ruler of the universe.

These two latter texts merit more than passing at- tention. Wis., xiii, 1-9 reads: " But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not under- stand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman: but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted . took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their power and effects, let them understand by tliem, that he that made them, is mightier than they: for by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby. But yet as to these they are less to be blamed. For they perhaps err, seeking God, and de- sirous to find him. For being conversant among his works, they search: and they are persuaded that the