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 GOD

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GOD

sciousness or intuition of the Divine, (b) tliat such a theory obscures, and tends to do away with, the dif- ference, on which St. Paul insists (I Cor., xiii, 12), be- tween our earthly knowledge of God ("through a glass in a dark manner ") and the vision of Him which the blessed in heaven enjoy ("face to face"), and seems irreconcilable with the Catholic doctrine, de- fined by the Council of Vienne, that, to be capable of the face to face or intuitive vision of God, the human intellect needs to be endowed with a special supernat- ural light, the lumen glorice, and (c) finally that, in so far as it is clearly intelligible, the theory goes danger- ously near to Pantheism.

In the decree " Lamentabili " (.3 July, 1907) and the Encyclical" Pascendi" (7 Sept., 1907), issued by Pope Pius X, the Catholic position is once more reaffirmed and theological Agnosticism condemned. In its bear- ing on our subject this latest act of Church authority is merely a restatement of the teaching of St. Paul and of the Vatican Council and a reassertion of the princi- ple which has been always maintained, that God must be naturally knowable if faith in Him and His revela- tion is to be reasonable; and if a concrete example be needed to show how, of logical necessity, the substance of Christianity vanishes into thin air once the agnostic principle is adopted, one has only to point the finger at Modernism. Rational theism is a necessary logical basis for revealed religion; and that the natural knowl- edge of God and natural religion, which Catholic teaching holds to be possible, are not necessarily the result of grace, i. e. of a supernatural aid given directly by God Himself, follows from the condemnation by Clement XI of one of the propositions of Qiiesnel (prop. 41) in which the contrary is asserted (Denzin- ger, 1.391— old no. 1256).

B. The Divine Nature and Attributes. — (1) As we have already seen, reason teaches that God is one simple and infinitely perfect spiritual substance or nature, and Sacred Scripture and the Church teach the same. The creeds, for example, usually liegin with a profes- sion of faith in the one true God, Who is the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, and is also, in the words of the Vatican Council, "omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection " (Sess. Ill, cap. i, De Deo. in Denzinger, "Enchiridion", 1782 — old no. 1631). The best way in which we can describe the Divine na- ture is to say that it is infinitely perfect, or that God is the infinitely perfect Being; but we must always re- member that even being itself, the most abstract and universal term we possess, is predicated of God and of creatures not univocally or identically, but only ana- logically. But other predicates, which, as applied to creatures, express certain specific determinations of being, are also used of God — analogically, if in them- selves they express pure or unmixed perfection, but only metaphorically if they necessarily connote im- perfection. Now of such predicates as applied to creatures we distinguish between those that are used in the concrete to denote being as such, more or less de- termined (v. g., substance, spirit, etc.), and those that are used in the abstract or adjectively to denote deter- minations, or qualities, or attributes oi being (v. g.,good, goodness; intelligent, intelligence; etc.) ; and we find it useful to transfer this distinction to God, ami to speak of the Divine nature or essence and Divine attributes, being careful at the same time, by insisting on Divine simplicity (see above I.), to avoid error or contradic- tion in its application. For, as applied to God, the distinction between nature and attributes, and be- tween the attributes themselves, is merely logical and not real. The finite mind is not capable of compre- hending the Infinite so as ailecjuatoly to describe its essence by any single eonce])t or term; but while using a mviltitude of terms, all of which arc analogically true, we do not mean to imply that there is any kind of com- position in God. Thus, as applied to creatures, good-

ness and justice, for example, are distinct from each other and from the nature or substance of the beings in whom they are found, and if finite limitations com- pel us to speak of such perfections in God as if they were similarly distinct, we know, nevertheless, and are ready, when needful, to explain, that this is not really so, but that all Divine attributes are really identical with one another and with the Divine essence.

(2) The Divine attributes or perfections which may thus logically lie dLstiiiguished are very numerous, and it would be a needless task to attempt to enumerate them fully. But among them some are recognized as being of fundamental importance, and to these in par- ticular is the term attributes applied and special notice devoted by theologians — though there is no rigid agreement as to the number or classification of such attributes. As good a classification as any other is that based on the analogy of entitative and operative perfections in creatures — the former qualifying nature or essence as such and abstracting from activity, the latter referring especially to the activity of the nature in question. Another distinction is often made be- tween physical, and moral or ethical, attributes — the former of themselves abstracting from, while the lat- ter directly express, moral perfection. But without la- bouring with thequestion of classification, it willsufhce to notice separately those attributes of leading im- portance that have not been already explained. Noth- ing need be added to what has been said above con- cerning self-existence, infinity, unity, and simplicity (which belong to the entitative class); but eternity, immensity, and immutability (also of the entitative class), together with the active attributes, whether physical or moral, connected with the Divine intellect and will, call for some explanation here.

(a) Eternity. — By saying that God is eternal we mean that in essence, life, and action He is altogether beyond temporal limits and relations. He has neither beginning, nor end, nor duration by way of sequence or succession of moments. There is no past or future for God — but only an eternal present. If we say that He was or that He acted, or that He ivill be or will act, we mean in strictness that He is or that He acts; and this truth is well expressed by Christ when He says (John, viii, 58 — A.V.) : " Before Abraham was, I am. " Eternity, therefore, as predicated of God, does not mean indefinite duration in time — a meaning in which the term is sometimes used in other connexions — but it means the total exclusion of the finiteness which time implies. We are obliged to use negative language in describing it, but in itself eternity is a positive perfec- tion, and as such may be best defined in the words of Boethius as being "interminabilis vitse tota simul et perfecta possessio ", i. e. possession in full entirety and perfection of life without beginning, end, or succes- sion.

The eternity of God is a corollary from His self-ex- istence and infinity. Time being a measure of finite existence, the infinite must transcend it. God, it is true, coexists with time, as He coexists with creatures, but He does not exist in time, so as to be subject to temporal relations: His self-existence is timeless. Yet the positive perfection expressed by duration as such, i. e. persistency and permanency of being, belongs to God and is truly predicated of Him, as when He is spoken of, for example, as " Him that is, and that was, and that is to come" (Apoc, i, 4); but the strictly temporal connotation of such predicates must always be corrected by recalling the true notion of eternity.

(b) Immensity and llbiquity, or Omnipresence. — Space, like time, is one of the measures of the finite, anil as by the attribute of eternity we describe God's transcendence of all temporal limitations, so by the attribute of immensity we express His transcendent relation to space. There is this difference, however, to be noted between eternity and immensity, that the positive aspect of the latter is more easily realized by